About the contributor

I posted this article which was about the only time my father spoke or wrote about the war apart from an odd comment or two over the years. He was always an avid reader of books about the War and watcher of TV programmes especially the WWII series. But he was not very forthcoming about his days in the Army. About the time of the 50th Anniversary of D Day he was asked by the Local Housing Estate Magazine (of which he was Chairman of the Committee) to write about his experiences and the piece put on the Web Site is what he put to paper.

One of the comments he did make outside of the article was the anti-semitism he met from some of those in the Army and how standing up against this contributed to him being made a Lance-Corporal (though he certainly wasn't the toughest guy in the world). He said that most of the troops were not political and did not know about Fascism - they were anti-German because Britain was fighting Germany. Even after the war he found it difficuly to work as a travelling salesman around the Home Counties due to his name Gontarsky, which resulted in him changing it to Godfrey.

Jon Godfrey