Originally a member of the Green Howards (his service number indicates that on first enlistment he was enlisted shortly after Joseph Jefferson and Eric Major) John was reassigned at some point during his training to the 43^rd Regiment, Reconnaissance Corps whose job it was to keep track of enemy troop movements.  At the end of this training the regiment was reattached to the 2^nd/5^th Battalion, Royal Gloucestershire Regiment and it was with this group of men that he went to the front.

          John had lived in Filey all his life and was part of the town’s cup winning football side of 1938/39; his family lived there and he had stayed there after leaving school.

          John was, most likely, part of the Army when it was involved in the bitter struggle in North Africa in 1942 and Italy in 1943 because his age suggests that he would have been conscripted shortly after the outbreak of war.

          At the time of his death the Allies had just taken their first steps back onto the continent with the D-Day landings of 6^th June 1944.  After two months of heavy fighting they were just beginning to push into the heartland of France and at the time of John’s death were involved in the final stages of the breakout from the Normandy bridgehead.  John was killed in this action and laid to rest in St. Charles de Percy War Cemetery in Calvados.