Richard Hughes was an artillery officer with the British Army in World
War II. He was sent to Europe twice. The first assignment in 1940 was
short lived, as he joined the hopelessly ill equipped and overwhelmed
Allied forces in France. The superior German army pushed them back to
the English Channel at Dunkirk, and Hughes was one of some 300,000
troops miraculously rescued from the beach by a flotilla of small boats.
In 1944 he returned to France as apart of the Allied invasion, this time
as a Major commanding a battery of field guns. The contrast is apparent.
Now they were a well equipped, superbly trained and coldly efficient
force. With his field battery and associated infantry battalion, Hughes
fought numerous battles right through Europe to reach Hamburg, at the
final surrender of Germany in May, 1945.
In Sheldrake, Richard Hughes recalls many fascinating memories in his
personal account of those traumatic years.