Second World War
Baskeyfield joined the South Staffordshire Regiment and served with the 2nd Battalion's anti-tank platoon. The 2nd Battalion was part of 1st Airlanding Brigade, itself part of the 1st Airborne Division and Baskeyfield accompanied them to North Africa, from where they took part in Operation Ladbroke, the glider borne element of the Invasion of Sicily in 1943. The division then landed in Italy as part of Operation Slapstick and spent some weeks fighting their way through the country before sailing back to England.
Read more about this topic: John Baskeyfield
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“No spoon has yet destroyed a mouth, but the knife of war cuts portions that are hard to swallow. Perhaps the big mouths of the privileged are able to cope with them, but they dull the teeth of the little people and ruin their stomachs.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)