Ron Ford - Remembered By Fred Hirst

There has recently been an excellent project to commemorate casualties of the First World War. It tells true stories of the forgotten names on stone war memorials, and tries to find some tangible memory which turns them back into life, however brief and incomplete it may be.  

Ronnie Ford had a life that was itself brief and incomplete.  To all intents and purposes, he is one of the forgotten. I would like him to be remembered.  He was a brave and true man.  A good friend when I needed it.  He could have sat the war out with no risk to himself but instead…well perhaps I had better start at the beginning.

I met Ron in an Italian Prisoner of War Camp during January 1943.  I had been captured in Tunisia and transported to Italy. He was already resident in the hut to which I was allocated.  Ron had been in the 1st Parachute Battalion.  Like me, he was from Yorkshire and shared a tremendous interest in cricket.  At first we chatted about how we had been captured and the battles we had seen.  Gradually we settled down and conversation was centred on home, food and the incidents of camp life. 

Ron was 4 years older than me.  He had been married but had problems in that part of his life, which it would not now be fair to dwell upon.  He was originally in a Scottish Regiment, I think the Royal Scots Fusiliers and was extremely proud of it.  He then volunteered to join the Parachute Regiment, serving as infantry support in Tunisia.  He told me many stories of the training required to become a paratrooper, mostly at Ringway (now Manchester Airport) and Tatton Park.  You must remember that airborne troops were a new innovation then (most people thought you were a lunatic to jump out of a plane in a parachute with full kit).  Anyway, Ron was fully determined to reach Allied lines.  He had already lost a brother, killed in Tunisia.

We both found it hard to accept life in captivity. The hope was that once the Allies invaded, the Italians would surrender.  Of course, this still leave us to contend with the occupying Germans.  We heard that volunteers were required to live as labourers on a farm some miles away and we decided to volunteer. Instinct suggested that we would be well placed to scarper if the Italians did pack it in.

When the Italians did surrender, our chance came. We collected our belongings and moved out of the farm.   The original plan was to head south, avoiding towns, travelling at night and laying up by day. That was the theory. We had thought that walking after dark would be quickest because we couldn’t be seen and fewer people would be about.  We soon found ourselves stumbling into dark undergrowth, oblivious of our direction.  We also realized that the Germans were imposing curfews. Anyway, we pressed on, only calling at isolated farms and clearing off fast if it we became suspicious.

We got as far as Terni.  Germans were everywhere.  Two Spaniards from the French Foreign Legion had joined us.  Looking back on it, I suppose that the remnants of our uniforms made it look pretty obvious we were escaped POWs.  Unfortunately, we then stumbled into an area still loyal to the fascists and were abruptly confronted by two locals with shotguns. They handed us over to the Germans.

So pretty soon, we were in a cattle truck, en route to a prison camp in Germany.  It was 3am on the 5^th November 1943.  I was dozing off, when I heard a voice: -

 “Don’t worry lads, we will be out of this in no time”

I could see in the gloom, one of the occupants of the wagon was waving a short bayonet in the air.  He, like Ron and me, had been an escapee. He managed to prise away the door lock. The train was moving, in darkness, at about 25 mph.

It was here that Ron’s experience as a paratrooper came into its own.  He told me what to do when we jumped… Face the direction in which the train was going.  Bend my knees as I land.  Roll over onto my left shoulder.  I have been thinking about this for sixty years now and it still doesn’t seem safe. Out we went.

This time the plan was to head east, into the Appenines.  It was a mountainous area, more sparsely populated, and the farming settlements we encountered were less likely to be active fascist.  Early on, we ran into another British soldier called Dave.  By coincidence, he was a Yorkshireman and, naturally enough, he joined our party. The three of us were on the run for 8 weeks, mainly over mountainous terrain.  It was rough going and, by Christmas, I knew I was too ill to continue.  A family had offered shelter and I told Ron and Dave they would have to go on without me. 

Ron got back within a month.  You wouldn’t have bet against him doing it, if you’d known him. He wrote to my mother on the 11^th February 1944. For obvious reasons, he was not allowed to say exactly where I was for obvious reasons.  He was also careful not to upset my mother by telling her we split up because I was unfit to continue.

The Germans eventually recaptured me again in Italy. It was not until May 1945 that I got home.  I’d always said that when we got home, there’d be a slap up meal for the two of us in Leeds. Once I was back in Doncaster, my thoughts soon turned to a big night out and I wrote him an invitation.

It was Ron’s mother who replied, only to tell me that he son had been killed in action with Parachute Regiment on the 4^th January 1945, during the Ardennes offensive.  Ron Ford is buried in Hotton Cemetery.  He was 25 years of age.