'All of a sudden, the Germans arrived and the bullets came'

Reg Hunter joined the Army under age and witnessed the brutality of the Second World
War. He tells Alex Metcalfe some amazing tales from a generation that’s now leaving us

WHEN Reg Hunter saw his old friend George Iceton labelled as Teesdale’s “last DLI veteran from the Second World War” he had a thing or two to say.

The 95-year-old, from Barnard Castle, was a member of the 1st Battalion of the DLI and saw action at Tobruk, Malta, Kos and Italy.

Now well into his tenth decade, he still plays golf twice a week and lives with his wife of 67 years, Dorothy.

“I used to work overtime twice a week breaking metal to make some pocket money – there were very low wages in them days,” he says.

“These lads today talking about this and that do not know what tough life is.”

The grandfather-of-two was born in King Street in 1922, went to school in the town and became an apprentice at Downs Iron Foundry aged 14.

As the 1930s drew to a close, Mr Hunter and his brother decided to join the army – but there was one thing holding him back.

“I was underage,” he says. “I put my age down wrong and they found out. My brother was a year and a month older than me and I said we were only a month apart in age.”

The young Mr Hunter was put into an “immature battalion” – a group devised after the heavy loss of young men during the Great War.

Trained up and now an adult, he was shipped out to just south of Tobruk in Egypt before the well known siege of the city by Rommel’s German troops in 1941. He adds: “The journey was on the Stratheden to Nova Scotia, into the West Indies, down to Cape Town and up to the Bitter Lakes through Africa – it was a hell of a journey but beautiful.”

From soldiering in the shadow of Mount Sinai, Mr Hunter was sent east to Palestine and Syria, before returning to Cairo and going on to defend the crucial Mediterranean island of Malta.

It was there he experienced the brutality of a siege firsthand.

Mr Hunter says: “It was nice to start with – then the bombing started and it was hellish.

“We were on the aerodromes and we had to go out and fill the holes caused by bombs.

“All the stone from the houses that were blown up was used to build a three layered housing to protect the aircraft.

“The Italians were so adept we could tell within 50 yards where a bomb was going to drop.”

Bombing from the Italians was bad enough but when the German Luftwaffe arrived the situation deteriorated.

Mr Hunter says: “They had Stukas, Junker 88s and Heinkels and that’s when it really started. We lost quite a lot of lads then.

“I remember the food – 16 men to one tin of bully. It got to such a stage where they picked a bloke a week and weighed them to see how bad it had got.”

From Malta, Mr Hunter was posted east again into the Dodecanese Islands, near Turkey, after a brief stopover in Palestine. He joined the 1st DLI on Kos with about 1,500 allied soldiers.

“It was a pet theory of Churchill – the soft underbelly,” adds Mr Hunter.

“We were there for about three weeks and we had no support. The Americans wouldn’t enter into the idea of helping because they thought it was madness.”

A night patrol of the island brought Mr Hunter a close shave and the loss of a colleague.

He says: “We were up all night in three jeeps just above the town when all of a sudden the Jerry arrived.

“We only had three Jeeps between us so we got out of there pretty quick. Our captain said he would go first and that was the last I saw of him. There were bullets going through and I thought ‘we’re in trouble here’.”

But Mr Hunter’s Jeep escaped and thoughts then turned to getting off the island.

He adds: “We got down to the town and I said to this Copley lad ‘I’m not getting taken prisoner even if we have to swim across here’.

“In the harbour there was an old RAF rescue boat but something was wrong with the motor.

“There was about 20-odd blokes hauled onto this thing and it conked out but we managed to get it going again and get to Turkey.”

But the group weren’t out of the woods yet and required the help of a Turkish fishermen to usher them down past German-held Rhodes for five days and nights in the ship’s hull.

Mr Hunter says: "Halfway down on the third night we were just cruising along the Turkish Coast nicely.

“A German E-Boat popped up out of the darkness and I was underneath with a Tommy Gun – I was praying they didn’t blow us out of the water. This fishermen must have made the right remarks because he shrugged them off.” Mr Hunter made it back to Allied territory and geared up ready for the campaign in Italy where he fought until the end of the war.

He was granted LIAP (Leave in Advance of Python) for three years’ service without leave and sent home.

But Mr Hunter’s wartime adventures could have been halted long before they began when he, his brother and a cousin got lost on Cotherstone Moor in 1927.

“You’d never believe it – we were playing on the ice under a bridge and a bloke came and chased us off,” he says.

“In them days nobody bothered about anybody getting taken away – you just got on with it.”

The party escaped to the Yorkshire side and walked along the Sills before they took a wrong turn, headed towards Bowes and wandered out over the moors.

Mr Hunter adds: “The first door we knocked on was the policeman’s wife – she said they had been looking all over for us – they thought we’d been lost under the ice.”

After the war, Mr Hunter did odd jobs down south before returning to County Durham.

He became a railway signaller on the Barnard Castle to Penrith stretch of the line and worked on the Selset Reservoir before ending his career at Glaxo.

He adds: “We’ve got a settled life and we enjoy it.

“Going out to the back door and looking over The Stang on a morning makes you think it’s nice to be alive.”