My father the D-Day hero, by KIRSTY WARK: He would never talk about the war, but my brother and I pieced together the incredible story behind his Military Cross By Kirsty Wark Published: 06:56 EDT, 5 June 2024 | Updated: 08:45 EDT, 5 June 2024 e-mail 22 View comments The broadcaster recalls her late father Jimmy's heroic actions in the Second World War and tells how he later went on to serve in British Intelligence...
I was always close to my father James. But like so many of his fellow servicemen and women – however much we asked – he never really talked about the war, despite being an entertaining raconteur. Perhaps it was just too traumatic for him, or too self-regarding.
But with the help of his military citation, my brother Allan and I tried to piece together the story behind his being awarded the military cross in the weeks after D- Day. Dad, or Jimmy as he was called by Mum and their friends, (but always James by my granny), joined up in 1942 at the age of 19, at the end of his first year at Glasgow University where he was studying history. The following year, he was commissioned into the Highland Light Infantry – the regiment that both his father and uncle had first served in during the First World War , and been decorated for their courage.
'Why did Dad – who was a gregarious, sociable man but also quite solitary at times, for instance going fishing alone every weekend – never talk about his war,' Kirsty Wark writes Kirsty's father Jimmy was awarded the mil.
