221989 Pte. George Atkinson British Army Royal Army Medical Corps from:Marton, Lancs In the months before the war, my father, George Atkinson was employed at Millom Iron works in Westmoreland, as a labourer, casting gun barrels for RN ships. Ironically, he was laid off because of a lack of orders.
On the dole, he volunteered for the Army. This was on family advice; as relatives who had left it too late in WW1 had been conscripted into the infantry and ended up on the front line. As he had been educated at grammar school for one year after the age of 13, he had the extra literacy and numeracy skills, when he took his recruiting tests, to become a Nursing Orderly in the RAMC. This, he thought, would get him a cushy number.
Unfortunately, he was posted to a Field Ambulance Unit serving on the front line throughout the war. He served in the Middle-East, Far-East and Italy; seeing active service at El-Alamein, in Burma and Monte Casino.
As a regular he was not de-mobbed in 1945,but went on to work in a British military hospital in Belgium until 1947.
When he left the Army he worked for Glaxo making antibiotics until his retirement in 1980- a medical advance he witnessed first hand in the middle-east in 1941-42.
My father died in 1985 aged 66. I know a great deal about his service - even though he hardly ever spoke of it to the rest of the family - because I was determined to join the Army myself as a boy soldier. He made it his business to tell me about his experiences and leave me without any doubt about life in the Army. I know he was trying, in his way, to put me off. Nevertheless I joined the Royal Artillery.
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