‘We haven’t learned our lessons about war’ says 105-year-old veteran

He fought alongside Field Marshall Montgomery against “Desert Fox” Erwin Rommel in North Africa, and stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day… so Tony Johnson knows first hand about the horrors of war.

Yet the former Army sergeant never spoke of his exploits in Egypt, Italy and France, despite being awarded France’s top bravery medal, the Legion of Honour.

But at the grand old age of 105 he has decided that now is the time to tell his story, in the hope that the current and future generations can learn that war rarely solves anything and should be avoided at all costs.

Great-grandfather Tony said he has been horrified to see new wars being fought on European and Middle Eastern soil again, with neither conflict showing any sign of ending soon.

He was born in 1919, less than a year after the Great War which was supposed to end all wars, and just four months after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles which ultimately ensured it wouldn’t.

He now wants the sacrifice of his comrades and those who have laid down their lives since then to be remembered and honoured.

On the eve of Remembrance Day tomorrow, Tony says: “I’ve been through war. It’s a terrible thing and we must strive all we can to avoid it.”

Speaking from his home in Worsley, near Salford, he adds: “Even today it seems the lessons have not been learned. Younger generations should try to remember those who have sadly been lost in wars because they paid the ultimate price.

“That, hopefully, should also teach the futility of conflict and the need to avoid it if at all possible.”

He has two sons, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild with wife Myra, who died in 2021. They had been married for 69 years.

Tony experienced his baptism of fire on the sandy plains of El Alamein in Egypt in 1942, when the British Eight Army embarked on its second, and ultimately successful, attempt to route Rommel’s Afrika Korps out of Egypt into Tunisia.

He can still vividly recall the suffering which soldiers on both sides faced, brutal injuries and illness which eventually saw him hospitalised.

Recalling events which happened more than 80 years ago, he said: “It was a hard place, full of disease and hardship. I would later get a case of jaundice which put my in hospital in Alexandria for four weeks.

But before then, there was fighting to be done.

“I was a frontline infantry soldier with the Green Howards in the southern part of the frontline bordering on the Qattara Depression, and it’s fair to say we were at the sharp end as we faced elements of the Elite Italian ‘Folgore’ Division,” he said.

“In the fog of war there is mainly confusion. There was sand everywhere; it was churned up by moving vehicles and by exploding artillery.

“We fired from slit trenches, and sometimes it was impossible to tell if we actually hit our targets, but we kept going.’

One skirmish blurred into the next.

But some memories remain crystallised through time. 

One of those was an incident in the desert, as Tony’s unit moved to another frontline position.

“We were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sand and we were navigating using compass bearings,” he said.

“Suddenly we came upon the remains of a German Messerschmitt fighter plane. It was riddled with bullets and had obviously been shot down during a dogfight with the RAF.

“I looked inside and there was the pilot, also riddled with bullets.

“But what I remember most was thinking: ‘he is as young as me, and now he will never go home. ‘

“In war you see things you don’t want to see and which you can never unsee. I will never forget that young German, who we couldn’t even take the time to bury.”

It was in el Alamein that he unexpectedly bumped into General Bernard Montgomery

“We had begun to get shelled from our own side, so I and two other lads clambered down a high point on a hill to try and get safely away. We ran straight into a jeep containing three officers observing the situation,

“Lo and behold the one standing up looking through binoculars was Monty.

“He shouted at us ‘where are you going?’

“When I told him what had happened he silently pointed the way back to our unit.

“Soon after that, the artillery barrage stopped – presumably because Monty intervened.”

Victory at el Alamein was the turning point in the North African campaign, eliminating the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the Middle East.

After recovering from a serious bout of jaundice he was promoted to Sergeant with the Durham Light Infantry and sent to Palestine and Syria to train with a brand new unit: the 36th Beach Landing group.

Its job was to facilitate the amphibious landings to come.

The first landing was Salerno, Italy.

“I thought El Alamein was hard but Salerno was brutal“, said Tony.

“I was forced to watch first wave troops getting cut to pieces on those beaches by withering German artillery, mortar and machine gun fire from the high ground cliffs where they held extremely strategic positions.

“When I and the rest of No.36 Beach Group arrived to start bringing up vehicles and supplies to the troops, there was death and destruction still all around us. It was the worst carnage I had ever seen.”

In 1944 Tony took part on the Normandy landings, where he directed the flow of munitions, supplies, vehicles, men and machines as they poured off Landing Craft from supply ships on to Gold Beach, before mounting an armoured Bren Carrier and helping to liberate Caen and Boulogne.

He was later awarded a French Legion of Honour for his efforts.

After the war Tony became a quantity surveyor for WF Fearnley, builders for Lancashire County Council and general government contracts.

Tony is just one of the hundreds of veterans originally interviewed by Gary Bridson-Daley,

It is an odyssey which has resulted into two books bristling with first-hand accounts as he criss-crossed Britain to interview more than 150 wartime survivors.

Most of those interviewed in the ‘Debt of Gratitude” project have never before been invited to tell their story publicly. Some had kept their wartime experiences even from their family and loved ones.

“I wanted to capture these vitally important narratives and historical testimonies before they are lost forever’, ” said Gary, 55, from his home Salford last night.

“I have been honoured to interview veterans from all services, backgrounds and cultures over the past ten years , and I believe their stories should be kept for posterity and future generations.”