Ex-war prisoner and Arnhem veteran Gerorge Parry dies

A veteran of the ill-fated Battle of Arnhem in 1944 has died at his Staffordshire home aged 95, following a long illness.

George Parry was one of 6,000 Allied troops taken prisoner in the attempt to seize the bridge at the town in northern Holland, a mission depicted in the film, A Bridge Too Far.

Mr Parry, a corporal in the South Staffordshire Regiment, was marched into captivity next to an officer, Lieutenant Jack Reynolds, who famously gave a defiant two-fingered salute to a German cameraman.

Years later Mr Parry recalled: "I remember Lieutenant Reynolds kept making the two-fingered salute and I thought, if he keeps on we are all going to stop a bullet."

The prisoners were taken to camps in Germany and later to Czechoslovakia where they remained until the end of the war in 1945. Mr Parry, of Albert Street, Cannock, was also a survivor of the botched glider-borne invasion of Sicily in July 1943.

Sixty-five gliders were released early by the towing aircraft and crashed into the sea, drowning about 250 men. His glider made it safely to land. His daughter Joanne

Martin said today: "He was very lucky to have survived, especially as he was in gliders."

After the war Mr Parry and his wife Joyce raised five children and had 10 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

He worked until his retirement as a storekeeper at Joseph Lucas, Cannock.

In recent years he had been seen at many regimental events of the 3rd Battalion, The Mercian Regiment (Staffords). He and his wife donated a bench at the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas which was dedicated at a special ceremony last month.

The funeral is to take place at St. Luke's Church, Cannock at 12.15pm on Tuesday, January 3.