Description
Vernon Jones was born on the 5th of June 1923 in south Wales and the son on of a miner.
He joined the Home Guard when he was sixteen and was called up when he reached eighteen and joined the 1st Battalion Ox & Bucks Light Infantry Division on January the 29th 1942. Vernon was then transferred to the 2nd Battalion Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire Regiment, which was called No. 9 Beach Group. They were preparing for D Day.
On the 6th of June he landed on Gold Beach near a village called Ver-sur-Mer. Vernon was part of the Logistics who helped make the beachhead and stay in position to help unload ammunition, petrol and food. Vernon stayed there until July when the floating dock ‘Mulberry’ arrived at Arromanches. Vernon then rejoined his old Battalion the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry and fought through France, Belgium, Holland, and onto the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945, then into Germany and fought in the Reichswald Forest. Vernon finally finished the war in Hamburg.
‘I don’t worry about dying, when you get to my age you never think about it, you just carry on with life and enjoy it.’
Print taken from the book ‘A TIME TO FIGHT Living and Remembering WWII’
