235078 Sgt. Joseph James McGee Harrison British Army Royal Scots Fusiliers from:Edinburgh My grandfather, Joe Harrison, was in the British Army both as a career and in service during WW2. He was posted to Alexandria and Cairo, there serving with the Royal Veterinary Corps.
After the war, he and my grandmother ran The Scots Fusiliers Ex-Serviceman's Club at 77 East Claremont St, Edinburgh.
He was at other times a PT Instructor, with the rank of Sergeant and was stationed at Edinburgh Castle at one time (presumably also Redford Barracks).
He won trophies in the 1930s and 1940s for boxing (fly-weight) and gymnastics. He was a slightly built man of a very funny and cheerful disposition.
However, during a routine medical, two "medics", injected ammonia into the veins of his legs, leaving him with terrible varicose veins in knots. They did this apparently "for a laugh" just because he was a sergeant.
He was given a small disabled pension from the Army because of it.
None of my maternal family are still living, having lost both my mother and aunt in the space of the last five years quite suddenly in their 60s and I would like to know more my grandfather's war records and anything else. I have no idea if he was awarded medals but he certainly had sporting achievements of note.
My grandmother regularly threw things away whilst she was alive.
Joe was a blacksmith and time-served panel beater and welder as one of his many skills and abilities. He had a great ability to work with animals but was also the most wonderful person, kind and insightful and very very funny. He looked like Stan Laurel.
I would like to know more about his service and career in the Army as the stories he told us were all invented. Such as meeting an Egyptian Princess and saying his terrible varicose lumps on his knee were where a bullet got lodged. He never stopped joking. We moved away from Edinburgh so I only saw him once every year or two years between the age of 7 and 17 when he passed away aged 82 in 1985. He was born on 11th July 1903 in Edinburgh.
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