260479 Gnr. John Joseph Shale British Army 104th (Essex Yeomanry) Btry. Royal Horse Artillery from:Liverpool As recounted to me:
John Shale embarked the Athlone Castle at Glasgow, heading for India via the Cape of Good Hope. His unit, the 463rd Battery, Royal Horse Artillery (part of the Eighth Army), called in at Durban, intending to ship on to Bombay but instead took the Dutch, NavaSota up the Persian Gulf and went from Basra to Baghdad.
They arrived in the desert and he got hit by a shell burst at Fiska aerodrome as his unit was heading for Hellfire pass. He was hospitalised, and his battery moved on to Syria with the 9th Army (concern about Germans heading for the oilfields). He was subsequently inducted into the 104th Essex Yeomanry RHA.
He received parachute training for Greece but ended up instead taking a Liberty Boat (with a crack down the side) called the USS Thistledown. He walked off the ship into Heraklion. The Germans had been chased off by the paratroopers (who, it was rumoured, sustained about 70% casualties because of high winds).
He attended an address by Churchill in Athens. Later, he went on to Bari and his unit worked its way up Italy’s east coast into Austria. He won the lottery and had a trip home before returning and chasing werewolves.
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