Cahill

Bernard 'Barney' Cahill was born in 1911 in Liverpool. He joined the regiment at Renshaw Hall in Liverpool and, when a service no ending in '13' came up, there was a bit of a scuffle as nobody wanted it. Bernard wasn't superstitious and stepped up to take it.

Before Normandy he spent a lot of time in Caithness and he and his comrades were drafted in to help search for Rudolf Hess. *The Hess thing was they were turned out to search the moorlands for him as the report was he bailed out over Scotland. As it turned out, Hess was miles away from them.

He remembers two men - Billy Upton and Billy Eastham - one was from Glasgow. One of them was invalided out of the army with stomach ulcers prior to going overseas. When he joined KOSB he did the trade courses and was found to be quite good at Signals, morse code etc. He told me he was sent on a Signals course in the battalion. There was him and another bloke who kept getting the high scores. It came to a head when my dad was supposed to decipher a morse code message that ended in the word CAMPAIGN but my dad wrote CHAMPAGNE and so did the other fella sitting next to him. They split them up and found the other bloke had been copying my dad. I often wondered why they sent him on so many courses, even sending him back home to do them and then rejoin the regiment later on.

He travelled to Normandy on a ship called The Malayan Prince with HMS Warspite providing cover during the landings.

He landed on Queen Sector of Sword beach then fought their way to Caen over the next couple of weeks. He was part of Signals platoon and his officer was called Rose - nicknamed 'Pinky'.

Bernard said he 'crossed every river but the Elbe on the way to Germany.

It appears my dad was so good at Signals they rebadged him to the Signals Regiment and he stayed with KOSB. He was injured with a dog bite whilst on patrol. Apparently the Germans would send dogs into the bushes to flush out patrols and one burst through the hedge and took a chunk out of his thigh. He wrote home to his sister about it saying the dog had died of lead poisoning and my aunty was worried that he had lead in him - the section ran in all directions after my dad yelped. The sgt stayed and shot it, hence the lead poisoning! After being hospitalised over the dog bite he was desperate to get back to 'the Jocks' so discharged himself to RTU so they didn't put him in the service battalions as he said you could end up anywhere once you went in there.

One day, after completing another course, he was travelling back to battalion via train and passing through Belgium when the train stopped and people were singing happy l'guerre finie and popping corks! The war was over.

My dad said that they were stationed in Cologne, Germany, guarding POWs who were building tennis courts when they were waiting to go home. I don't know if this rings a bell with anyone.

Bernard was discharged from the Army in April 1946 at the rank of Lance Corporal and finished his time with the Royal Signals regiment.

Outside of the regiment, Bernard was apparently a very good footballer.

Bernard died in 1994 at the age of 83. Information provided by Bernard's son, James.