OLD and young alike will gather at Lord Street Monument on Sunday to pay their solemn respects to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country in war.

Among those paying tribute will be 83-year-old John Tomlinson who will lay the wreath on behalf of The Southport Party – of which he is a member.

He has vivid memories of a conflict that he first became involved in as a 16-year-old.
It was in 1941, living in Cleveleys Road, and educated at Churchtown School, that Mr Tomlinson signed up to Crossens Home Guard.
“We mainly guarded the sewerage works off the Coastal Road,” recalled Mr Tomlinson, who lives in Tithebarn Road with his wife, Beryl.

It was on turning 18 that Mr Tomlinson’s real wartime adventures began – earning him not only United Kingdom military medals but decoration from the French and Russian allies.
He joined the Royal Navy and was a gunner on the extremely hazardous Arctic convoys between Great Britain and the northern ports of the Soviet Union, which played a crucial role in supplying the wartime ally undergoing a German onslaught.

In September 1943, Mr Tomlinson took to the seas in HMS Ashanti, a Tribal-class destroyer with a crew of 200, which guarded the merchant ships sailing to Soviet ports.
The convoys were menaced by both German U-boats and battleship cruisers.

After Christmas 1943 was celebrated with a meal of corned beef and boiled potatoes, Boxing Day saw the famous Battle of North Cape in which the fearsome 31,500 tonne German battlecruiser Scharnhorst was sunk.

But the victory was not without losses, and Mr Tomlinson remembers with poignancy how he learned of the death of comrades in the firefight.
“The ship we pulled alongside in the Russian port of Murmansk, the Norfolk, was hit and a number killed.
“We were carrying their mail home for them, as we would be back first – that could have been the last letter some of the men would write.”

In May 1944, the crew of the Ashanti sprang to action stations when the enemy was picked up on radar a few miles off the French coast.
“We hit one of the enemy destroyers and running it aground we got in close and used the small ack ack guns to finish her off,” said Mr Tomlinson.
“We turned out to sea but with the commotion and doing 25 knots we collided with one of our sister ships – nearly cutting off the bows.
“After a quick count to see if anyone had gone overboard, we headed for home.
“The following night the Athabaskan (a fellow Tribal-class destroyer) was sunk by an E-Boat (a small, fast torpedo German boat) – they had to have their revenge.”

A bout of illness prevented Mr Tomlinson taking part in the D-Day operations on the beaches of Normandy in June, 1944.
“I developed yellow jaundice and finished up in The Promenade Hospital for five weeks,” he told LookBack.
“The Ashanti seemed to be in the thick of it.
“They sank another German destroyer and finished up with three casualties – and there was me laid in bed, nice and warm.”

After demobilisation, Mr Tomlinson married Beryl in 1948.
He took on the family painting and decorating business with his younger brother Walter, and has one son, Dennis, and a granddaughter, Sarah-Marie.
Mr Tomlinson will never forget his wartime experiences, and is an active member of Southport Royal Naval Association.
And is pleased that younger generations are still pausing to remember the sacrifices of their forebears.
He said: “Last year I was coming out of one of our Trafalgar nights at the Scarisbrick Hotel and four girls stopped me.
“They asked me about my medals and one said her granddad had been telling her about the war – the interest is still there.”

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit