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This true account was written by my dad before he died on 23/06/2005. I'm submitting it as a fitting tribute to a brave, proud man that loved and was loved by all.

"I had been very badly wounded in Northern Burma on 12/11/1944. After many operation to my injured arm, I landed back in Liverpool on May 6th 1945 where, at Wallsey Hospital, the doctors changed my plaster cast.

The following day I sat listening to the radio where Mr Churchill told the world that that War in Europe was over and that the next day, May 8th, was to be a Bank Holiday.

I pestered the doctors until they let me try to get home to South Wales. The trains were stopped from midnight but with the help of a railway guard, I managed to get to Abergavenny Railway Station. It was just on midnight and I was only 11 miles from my wife and daughter.

I was very tired. suffering from my wounds but I felt that I had to go on. About two hours later I managed to get to the bottom of the hill we call 'Black Rock' I had two miles of hill to climb and it seemed like Everest.
I sat on the kerb preparing myself for the long steep climb, when a bus load of women factory workers at the end of their shift, came along and gave me a lift to Brynmawr (3 miles from my home town)
I slung my pack and headed along toward Ebbw Vale and home.

I was very weary and that walk through Brynmawr seemed endless, but still I was going home. I became very thirsty and, seeing a light in a house, I knocked the door. The man and woman who opened it listened to my plea for a drink of water and nearly carried me in to their home and soon tea and toast were given to me.
They offered me a bed but I told them that I was on my way home. After thanking them, the man gave me five 'Woodbines' and wished me good luck.
I felt like a new man. Three miles from home, I did not feel the road under my feet.

As I walked through Beaufort I passed the school and stopped to light up a cigarette. I leaned against the railway fence and looked, into the dark, at my home town.
As I stood there the lights of Ebbw Vale lit up and I cried. I was home and I felt that the stuggle that I had to get there had all been worth it.

I got to my Mother-in-law's house where my wife and little daughter were and, as I held my wife, a sleepy little voice said 'Hello Daddy' The very first words I had heard my child say.
That is the thoughts I remember of VE Day 1945."

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