My Dad's War Story.

I never knew my father, Ernest Jonathan Owen Brown, he died of pneaumonia and collapsed lung in 1947, the year I was born. As he only had one lung he was not allowed active duty, so, he was posted to York where he was in the Pay Corps.

After D-Day his unit was in Germany delivering money to the troops up-front. One night their open back truck was driving through a wood. My father was un-armed but his sergeant had a machine gun. My father saw the branches above and ahead twitch, he grabbed the sergeant's gun and sprayed the trees. A body fell out.

When they investigated they found the body of the sniper with no tags was that off a fourteen year old German boy. The hand-grenade that would have ended up in the truck was still clutched in his fist.

The sergeant said: "You'll get a medal for this, Brown."
Dad answered: "I don't want a medal for shooting a kid!"

Dad killed only once in the whole war. He had saved his mates - was glad for that. He was never proud of of killing the boy and always remained concerned that they couldn't even tell the boy's mother that the lad was dead as the kid had no tags.

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