I'm not sure, but I believe Sgt Jack Parfitt joined 47 Regt in Crookham as the Admin Office chief clerk, and moved to Dortmund with the regiment. Not married, he lived on camp in the Sergeants quarters, but was rumored to have a girlfriend somewhere. I remember him as a fairly jovial character with a ready smile.

In 1963 I seem to remember he went on leave, and then came back for a short while looking as if his health had suffered. He then disappeared again, and I think some of us assumed he was on some kind of compassionate leave.

A few weeks later S/Sgt 'Timber' Wood informed me that I was to be trained as the Guard of Honour NCO in the noble art of funeral firing party, accompanied by seven Craftsmen and Privates. Sgt Parfitt had died, apparently of heart failure, and was to be interred in a local cemetery. Somebody's idea of 'local' turned out to be a bit of a stretch.

'Timber' Wood must have spent long hours at night reading the military manual on funeral firing parties, because the next day our assembled party started practising the moves under his guidance with the handbook at the ready. For a week we spent two hours each day practising, and I believe it was on 2nd October that we piled into a 3-ton Bedford for a long, cold miserable journey to Hanover. We had planned to leave our greatcoats in the truck and march into the cemetery, since under our greatcoats we were dressed in best battledress as if on parade, but it was so cold we debated leaving our greatcoats on, which would have looked less impressive than the battledress. The problem was that two of the ORs had forgotten to bring their gloves, so would have been incorrectly dressed. We left our greatcoats off.

At 1:00 pm the Chaplain and burial party arrived with the only guest, Jack's sister, a tall, slim woman dressed in black with a black veil.

As we marched briskly into our positions the temperature dropped, the sky went very dark, the wind picked up and it started to sleet. Heavily. A typical October blizzard had arrived. We could hardly see anything, and large flakes started settling on our rifles and uniforms. The service started, we fired three seven-round salutes, then more service and then another three salutes, the second of which was marred slightly by somebody's finger slipping off the trigger, which was a shame because otherwise all nine shots had gone off in unison every time. By now we were nearly frozen to our rifles.

The burial 'with full military honours' was all over in about 15 minutes, then we waited for a truck that never came and after a while we marched, or rather shambled, through the snow to the nearest Gasthaus and warmth about a kilometer away. Timber had to make a telephone call to let somebody know where to pick us up. For some reason this took several hours, and it was dark when another 3-Tonner finally arrived. Timber hadn't had any money with him so a couple of us loaned him some funds, however there wasn't enough for a meal and we only ate snacks and drank coffee and one beer for several hours. The owner seemed quite pleased with even this meager custom, because apart from the ten of us the place was deserted. At least we had been warm, but the three hour ride back to Dortmund through a windy snowstorm with only a flapping canvas between us and the elements was darned uncomfortable.

Sorry guys, but I can't remember any of the names in our Guard of Honour.

Jack is buried in the Hanover War Cemetery, which has Commonwealth graves brought in mostly from prisoner of war camp cemeteries and other isolated locations. There are 2,403 graves from WWII, and Jack's is one of an additional 69 non-war graves. The cemetery is known locally as the 'Limmer' cemetery, adjacent to the bigger post-war German Military Cemetery.

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