At the engineers’ depot at Longmoor in Hampshire, he was taught how to clear German booby traps. “We had minefields and detonators. The only thing is with mines – be careful. They’re very delicate.” He says that young soldiers can be daredevils, though he is unsure the descriptor applied to him. “Not really. I think I dodged whatever I could.”
It is a modest characterisation of a man who, with his band of brothers, played a crucial role in liberating Western Europe. As the invasion of Normandy, codename: Operation Overlord, was launched on 6 June 1944, Parker was waiting on the Isle of Wight “ready to go”.
Finally, once a storm in the Channel had cleared, at the end of June, he was on his way. He jumped over the side of his ship and into the water lapping over Sword Beach. “It was noisy,” he says. “But you didn’t notice those sorts of things – you had a job to do. Wherever you looked, there were ships on the side of you.” He was weighed down with all the equipment on his back, including two hand grenades and 200 rounds of ammunition.
“Fortunately, there was only about three inches of water when we eventually got down. It didn’t get into my boots anyway. Then you just dug in,” – making both a defensive position and a machine gun post, half a mile inland.
On whether he always had confidence that we would win the war, he is resolute. “Oh, yes, yes, of course. No doubt.” Then I ask if he was frightened. “I don’t think I had time to be scared – taking care of yourself was enough.”
As the Allies were slowly advancing across the Continent, Parker was repairing the equipment of the stream of soldiers arriving on the French coast on a daily basis. “Lots of light landing craft were getting stuck. You’d go down there and they’d not turned their petrol on,” he says with a chuckle. Meanwhile, he had to wake up at 4.30am to be on the lookout for any German paratroopers. “I think it was probably about four weeks [that] we were in Normandy. We were bathing in a biscuit tin.”
After being given the green light to head east, Parker travelled for three days – sleeping under his three-ton lorry – before ending up in Antwerp. But for someone who disliked army life, it is perhaps unsurprising that it is the fortnight’s rest in another Belgian city, Ostend, that he recalls most fondly.
“We were deloused with the white powder by the Canadian delousing department. And we had a bit of luck because the local people turned over their public baths to the British troops, so we had a nice hot bath the next day and all clean clothes.”
It was only after he returned home that he learnt of the death of his childhood friend, Roy Head, from Worthing Boys Club, who “joined up the same as I did, but he was killed in Normandy”.
Parker remained serving in Germany after Victory in Europe (VE) Day, returning home to Worthing, and his hairdresser wife Joyce, aged 23.
He went on to get a job at Barclays Bank – which he kept until retirement aged 60 – and to have a daughter, Shirley, who is now in her late seventies and who has given him three grandchildren.
Following Joyce’s death in 2021, and his struggles with ischemic heart disease, he visited Care for Veterans for a few days of respite care, but has since become a permanent resident.
