With all the publicity and media reports about the Centenary of the end of the First World War and the signing of the Armistice, my thoughts have turned to my father, Gilbert Fleming, who fought in World War II. He volunteered for the Army in 1942 nine days after his 18 th birthday and served with his local regiment, the Royal Scots Fusiliers in Paisley, Scotland. He completed his basic training in Scotland and then transferred to the south of England before being deployed to North Africa. He saw action in
He was part of the invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky and then onto mainland Italy and took part in the assault of Monte Cassino. It was there while out on a night patrol that his platoon was ambushed, and he was wounded by a mortar round that landed quite close to him. He was fortunate in that his best friend was to his left and slightly ahead of him. He took the full force of the blast and was killed instantly. Coming around and lying on his back my dad could feel that his left leg was badly da
The young German called for a medic and my dad was taken to a medical field station. There he was seen by two doctors. A young doctor wanted to try and save his leg and the older doctor wanted to amputate. My dad lay on the table listening to these two doctors arguing over what to do and thought he might just bleed out in the process. The older doctor seemed to walk off in disgust and left the younger one to perform the surgery alone. This action by his ‘enemy’ saved my father’s leg and on his return to the