Sidney Eccles's Wartime Service

<p dir="ltr">Started off as a private when enlisted on 28 Oct 1939.<br>Finished as Company Quarter Master Sargent 25 April 1946.<br>Senior NCO in a company of approx. 150 men.<br>Demobbed on 24 April 1946.<br>Evacuated from Dunkirk on 25 May 1940.<br>Had a serious motorbike accident, and almost died in 1943. <br>On D-Day and the 5th and 11th of June 1944, landed in Normandy and then spent the next 18 and more months going through France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany with the Allied forces.<br>Driver with Royal Army Service Corps.<br>Knocked off his motorcycle by a lorry on his training exercise, on 25 July 1943.<br>Both wife and mother were summoned to South Wales because a priest had read last rites - didn't think he was going to survive.<br>Did survive.<br>The family received the notification that Sidney was seriously ill.<br>Personal message from General Montgomery<br>Given a booklet on Germany and the Germans - tell them what to expect when got to Germany, which took about a year.<br>Newspaper clipping of where Sidney landed on either the Gold or Juno beach.<br> "They landed in two feet of water", quoted from the war diary of his unit, 552 Company RASC.</p>