Alan Pantall in Balclutha last week. Photo by Craig Baxter.
Alan Pantall doesn't go to Anzac Day services.
"I've never been in the parades. I don't like being involved
in all that," the 89-year-old World War 2 veteran says.
"I was very young back then. I've no bad memories. I just
never really gave it any thought over the years. I feel sorry
for the poor blokes who got killed. That was terrible. But it
was just the sort of thing that happened."
Mr Pantell was just 17 when he left Hereford, England, to
enlist in the British Eighth Army in January, 1939, and was
soon seeing action.
"It was a wonderful thing, in a sense. You went to war with
all the lads in your village. They were like your bosom
friends. If someone went home on leave, he'd visit everyone's
father and mother and tell them how you were."
But, far away from home, the reality of war was stark.
"It was bloody awful. I was a spotter in the artillery. I had
a telephone and a map and I would work out how far the target
was from the guns and give them the data to put into the
guns. It was usually about five miles [8km] back."
His worst experience was the Battle of Monte Cassino, in
Italy, from January to May, 1944.
"The Germans seemed to have a power over us. We believed
German officers were in the [Monte Cassino] cathedral," he
recalled.
"The closest I ever came [to being killed] was when I was
coming down from the hill on to the flat and there was a huge
German machine-gun thing in front of me and it fired at me,
but I didn't get touched.
Fighting with New Zealand troops in the Italian Campaign
influenced his life after the war.
"They were fine chaps and we always got on well together.
They'd tell us all about their country and I always wanted to
come here. I thought New Zealand was a really lovely
country," he said.
"When the time came to be demobbed you could choose any
Commonwealth country that had fought in the war. It didn't
cost me anything, The Government paid for it all."
He moved to Christchurch and studied agriculture at Lincoln
University.
"There was a chap doing my course who was a Maori captain at
Cassino. His legs were chopped up by [fire from] a
machine-gun there. He had to walk on his knees to get back
alive."
Mr Pantall and his wife, Zoe, who met on VE Day, on May 8,
1945, moved to Balclutha in 1964 and have lived there ever
since.
nigel.benson@odt.co.nz
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