14417387 Pte John Jarvis Bosley was born on February 6, 1925 in Westbury, Wiltshire.

At the outbreak of the war in 1939, he was a schoolboy living in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

Prior to the joining The Parachute Regiment John had served in a young soldiers’ training Regiment in the Royal Artillery. He as learning all about vehicle anatomy and components, he had also learned to drive a motor vehicle, ride a motor cycle, operate a wireless set, fire a 25 pounder gun, and to operate in Morse Code.

Being keen on airplanes John applied to join the Para’s and soon he found himself doing the tough course at Hardwick Hall, where "they weed out the men from the boys".

After successfully completed the Hardwick Hall course he was sent to Ringway Airport near Manchester for parachute training. He was billeted in a small camp about a mile from the airport, consisting entirely of Nissen hutted. He was put in a squad of men with a Corporal “Nobby” Clarke of the Royal Air Force as their parachute instructor.

The first week was taken up by watching films of parachuting, ground training, learning to fall on thick mats, swinging in a harness, exiting from high up fuselages of aircraft in a hangar then onto the fan from the roof of the hangar and finally air experience in old Whitley bombers.

Then they went to Tatton Park and were issued with a parachute. John was put in a stick of four and waited his turn to enter a small cage slung under a barrage balloon. There was a big round hole in the floor of the cage and very little else to sit on:

• Up to about 800 feet swaying a little, scared stiff, John jumped.
• Next day another balloon jump
• On the third day John was put in a stick of ten men at the airport. They boarded a Whitley bomber and took off.
• Over the following days, he perfected the exit and the landings.
• On the penultimate day there was a night jump from the balloon at Tatton Park, which, in the black out, was pretty terrifying.
• Then two Dakota jumps, which he found a lot better than the Whitley,
• and the final jump with a kit bag attached on his right leg.

They were now trained parachutists and awarded with their parachute wings by the Station Commander with an extra two shillings a day on their pay. This made them feel very rich and a target for the girls. John was posted to the 11th Parachute Battalion and went to a small Leicestershire village of Great Glen.

After being interviewed by the Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel R.M.C. Thomas, John was placed in the Intelligence Section.

After a while the battalion was moved to Welby Lane Camp at Melton Mowbray.

One of the men in his section he had met during his parachute training at Ringway. He was a German Jew called Gustav ‘Gus’ Sander, a very well-educated lad whose father had managed to get his family out of Germany just prior to the outbreak of War in 1939. Gus and John became very good friends. Many exercises followed and also German uniform recognition, checking maps and examining German weapons.

Early on June 6th, 1944 the Battalion was ordered on parade and told that the 6th Airborne Division had landed in Normandy. This caused a stir as the men of the 11th regarded that their Division was much more experienced and would have been better for the job.

After being ready to depart for a military operation many times, the time had finally come. The Battalion was told that the 1st Airborne Division and the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade was to be dropped in Holland to capture a bridge over the River Rhine. The Battalion was confined to camp and briefed again, which was very limited. Everybody thought that this operation would be cancelled again and did not take it too seriously.

However, when on Sunday September 17, 1944, they were paraded again and told that the first lift had gone, they realised that they at last were going into action.

They were also told that there would be a Church Service that evening if anyone wished to attend. John attended the Service in a small hut in the barracks. The Service was conducted by the 11th Battalion Padre, Reverend Henry Irwin, but only twelve men attended. There were hymns, prayers, the 23rd Psalm and a Sermon. During the Sermon the Padre quoted from the 23rd Psalm. These words have stayed with John ever since and it made him think….

The next day, Monday September 18, after breakfast, the Battalion boarded the lorries on the parade ground to be taken to the airfield.

As they left the gates of the camp at about 06:30 hours crowds of Melton townsfolk, girlfriends and wives were seeing them off and waving farewell.

At Saltby airfield there were hundreds of American Dakota aircraft standing all in line. John and his stick sat under the wing of their allotted aircraft drinking tea. Drinking tea was a great mistake, as there were no loos in the Dakotas. They finally took off and were going to battle.

The flight to Holland was quite uneventful until about twenty minutes before they reached the drop zone. Suddenly the aircraft started to rock and weave and John heard explosions close by above the noise of the engines. He had great difficulty reaching the door with the kit bag on his right leg, but the Royal Air Force dispatcher sent him out before he had time to think twice.

John hit the ground heavily and started to head for the rendezvous point. He heard lots of bullets whizzing close by his head. John found his intelligence officer and Gus Sander, interrogating a large group of German soldiers, dressed in camouflage smocks. John stayed on guard with Gus, who was speaking to the prisoners in German and found that they were Waffen SS men.

On that moment the 11^th Battalion's role changed and they were to proceed to the Arnhem Bridge as quickly as possible. After numerous stops and starts they finally got right down into Arnhem at midnight.

Around 04.00 hours on Tuesday morning 19^th September the 11^the Battalion moved off again in columns each side of the road; slowly as the firing increased. As daylight broke all hell let loose. About mid-day John was ordered by an Non Commissioned Officer to board a jeep outside, expecting to go to the Bridge. To his surprise instead of heading towards the Bridge, he headed back in the direction he had come from. They came to a halt in relative peace and quiet by a railway bridge in open country.

The peace was soon shattered suddenly when a large group of German ME 109’s aircraft appeared overhead strafing the area with bullets. John and his mates all scattered in different directions.

When all became quiet again John looked around; he was alone, miles out into enemy country.

He made his way to a small town which turned out to be Oosterbeek where he found some of the 1st Airborne Division dug in around a small church. The next day John was sent out on patrol with a party from mixed units searching for tanks. The rest of the day was spent dug in around the church. The following day John was picked up by Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant (RQMS) Dave Morris of the 11^th Battalion. With others from the unit they fortified a house in Weverstraat, just on the Arnhem side of the church. John and his comrades held this house all day against a great deal of shelling and mortaring. RQMS Morris put John on guard for most of the night in the attic, keeping a lookout for the Germans.

The following morning John’s own Sergeant ‘Rocky’ Knight came to the house and ordered John to go with him. Sergeant Knight took along several others from John’s unit including Private Harry Liston. They patrolled and searched an area towards the railway line to Nijmegen, attracting a lot of enemy fire. In the afternoon ‘Rocky’ Knight again took them out on patrol to an area a few hundred yards west of the church. John was not told what the purpose of their patrol was, but as they were going through some woods they came under a terrific barrage of mortar bombs.

John felt a blow to his right leg. He sat down, rolled up his right trouser leg and saw a neat round hole in the left side of his right calf; blood was pouring out at a fast rate. Harry Liston saw John’s plight, came over to him and put a huge shell dressing around the wound in an effort to stem the flow of blood. John also felt very damp and sticky under his left arm pit and put his right hand into his smock. John withdrew his hand and found it covered in blood. He staggered back to the church feeling very shaky and dazed. He asked a couple chaps to have a look at his back. Although his shirt, vest and blouse were very bloodstained, one of the chaps said it was only a scratch and put a field dressing on it.

John found his way to a nearby house still under heavy shelling and there he saw Major Lonsdale heavily bandaged who said: “You better go next door Son”, which John did. He found it to be the Regimental Aid Post in the church vicarage, which was overflowing with wounded men. John found a place in a corridor where he was thankful to lie down and placed his right leg in the air to stop the bleeding.

The next morning John found he could not bend his knee. On investigating it he found a lump of shrapnel about two inches long embedded behind the back of his knee cap. The Doctor and orderlies were still very busy, so John set about extracting the piece of shrapnel himself.

Next day water had run out, so the Doctor asked for a volunteer to try to get to a pump in the garden. John was dying for a drink and very hungry; no food since Monday, so he volunteered. In an outhouse John found a walking stick and managed to get to the pump with a bucket. The effort completely exhausted him and he passed out.

The next morning John was taken prisoner by the Germans. After being marched to Arnhem, he was brought to Apeldoorn and was taken under guard to a nearby hospital where his wounds were checked and dressed.

In early April 1945, after having been held captive in three different prisoner of war camps, John and all the inmates of the prisoner of war camp were ordered to pack up and evacuate the camp. They were going to Southern Bavaria to be held as hostages.

Since John was unable to march he hid in the camp hospital. After the men had been marched away, he came out, found four others and hid in a coal mine shaft. Four days later the Yanks arrived and John was free. He was down to 8 stone (normally 12½), full of ulcers and boils, very weak, but still alive.

A week later John was home on double rations. Immediately after the war John did a tour in Palestine.

After being discharged from the army John joined the police and later became a Police sergeant.

He died on October 3, 2022, at the age of 97.