Alan Eric FRENCH

FRENCH, Alan Eric

Service Number: QX58049
Enlisted: 24 November 1943
Last Rank: Gunner
Last Unit: 2 Field Regiment AMF
Born: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 5 November 1925
Home Town: Brisbane, Brisbane, Queensland
Schooling: East Brisbane and Hawthorne State School, Queensland, Australia
Occupation: Signwriter
Died: Natural Causes, Burpengary, Queensland, Australia, 24 August 2019, aged 93 years
Cemetery: Lutwyche Cemetery, Brisbane, Qld
Portion GP2 Section 57 Grave 2 Memorial in Queensland Garden of Remembrance Wall 77 position K
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World War 2 Service

24 Nov 1943: Enlisted Australian Military Forces (WW2) , Gunner, QX58049
6 Jan 1947: Discharged Australian Military Forces (WW2) , Gunner, QX58049, 2 Field Regiment AMF

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Biography contributed

Dad told me before he died that he joined the army to be like his father (Eric French fought at Villiers Bretonneux in 1918). Eric however did not want his son to be an infantry man.  He would only sign the permission slip (Alan was under age at 18 and not yet 19) unless Alan agreed to be a gunner.  That is because Eric remembered the carnage of war in 1918 climbing out of trenches to fight the enemy.  He wanted his son to be on the big guns.  It was General Monash who developed the better way of fighting by using planes first, then the guns and then the men, in order to save lives.  Dad told me he fought against the Japanese battalion that fought the Chinese in Nanking in 1939 where there was blood running in the streets. He said they were a particularly brutal enemy in jungle warfare.  Of course the jungle warfare was nothing like the trench warfare of WW1. So Eric's protection of his son was somewhat misdirected, but none the less caring.

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