Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Dad told me before he died that he joined the army to be like his father (Eric French fought at Villiers Bretonneux in 1918). Eric however did not want his son to be an infantry man.  He would only sign the permission slip (Alan was under age at 18 and not yet 19) unless Alan agreed to be a gunner.  That is because Eric remembered the carnage of war in 1918 climbing out of trenches to fight the enemy.  He wanted his son to be on the big guns.  It was General Monash who developed the better way of fighting by using planes first, then the guns and then the men, in order to save lives.  Dad told me he fought against the Japanese battalion that fought the Chinese in Nanking in 1939 where there was blood running in the streets. He said they were a particularly brutal enemy in jungle warfare.  Of course the jungle warfare was nothing like the trench warfare of WW1. So Eric's protection of his son was somewhat misdirected, but none the less caring.