Luck of the Draw

My uncles, Frank and Leonard Morgan, were gas fitters in 1940. This was a "protected occupation" so neither of them were called up until 1941. Frank joined the Royal Engineers, and Leonard went into the Royal Artillery. When Frank went into a nursing home at the age of 92, I cleared out his house and found some photos of him standing by a grave in a desert cemetery. He then told me that he had gone out to El Alamein for the 25th and 50th Anniversaries of the Battle of El Alamein. I asked who was buried there, and he told me it was Sergeant Weller. As far as I know, I was the only person he told the story to.

The night before the Battle Frank's unit had gone into the minefield to clear a path wide enough for the tanks to go through. There were a group of them in the lorry, and Sergeant Weller told the driver to pull over to the left hand side of the track. He told Frank and a few other soldiers to jump out and start work, as they had done it before. The lorry travelled a bit further into the minefield and Sgt Weller and the other soldiers turned off to the right hand side of the track - and went over a land mine. Frank never forgot Sergeant Weller and paid his respects at his grave whenever he went there.

He also took part in Operation Market Garden, the attempt to rescue a group of parachutists who had been dropped on the wrong side of the Rhine. His unit spent the night rowing backwards and forwards over the river picking up the unfortunate parachutists under constant fire from the German artillery. The younger uncle, Leonard, was at the Battle of The Bulge and got quite upset when he saw the film of the same name, which he said made it look as if the Americans had won the battle on their own!