Mand.

I was a young Leiutenant in the British Army’s 3rd Parachute Brigade at the time, aged 22, serving under the brilliant Lt-Col Otway. We were to destroy five bridges over the river Dives near Caen. I have never felt sicker in my life as we thundered across the Channel that night. We all had a swig of whisky before the drop to calm the nerves though!

Soon after the whisky the ack-ack began, the pilot throwing the crate all over the sky as the red hot shrapnell exploded around the formation. Things were going badly. Everything was chaos, and I don’t remember how I got to the door for the jump. I learned later that our plane had been hit in the tail and the pilot was struggling to keep her strainght and level.

The boys were scattered everywhere. As I floated down, I could see the German searchlights and tracers dancing across the blackness. The jump seemed to have calmed me, but I still felt sick in the pit of my stomach.

The ground approached. I didn’t have much control of the ‘chute, and I could see that I was coming down into a copse near to a farm house. As the ground rushed up, I noticed the trees. I didn’t want to get tangled in one as I’d have been a sitting duck for the Germans. But try as I might I couldn’t avoid the final crunch. I hit the tree at what seemed like terrifying speed. And the searing pain glanced into my belly. I dropped out of the tree and landed on the soft grass with a thump. I threw up. Pulled myself together and could hear the fight going on around me. The rest, as they say, is history. We won the fight and I lost some brothers.

It turned out that I had lost a testicle that night. Andy (Jock) Strap, my Scottish best friend in the Regiment hooked up with me and off we went. The pain subsided once we got into the thick of it. I was treated in the field hospital two days later and taken back to Blighty the day after that. But Jock was the one who branded me Spunky on the strength of my little accident.

I suppose the point is, that your tree is definitely a Walnut. I’ve been back to Normandy many times and the Rospierre family are firm friends of the Rice’s. Jean-Luc Rospierre (he died in 1968) showed me great hospitality,and showed me around his land where my gang had landed. Indeed we found the very tree where I had come a cropper.

Since those days I had 3 kids with my wife Dot and we have 9 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren.

I have never enjoyed walnuts since the 5 June 1944.

Tom