Incredible bravery of Desert Rat WWII hero remembered after death aged 101
As Les Cherrington clambered out of his blazing tank, his hands, face and chest covered with severe burns, one arm partially severed he was shot in the back by a machine gun.
He fell into a trench, where he was left for dead, slowly bleeding until he was discovered the next day by a New Zealand soldier who assumed he had stumbled on a corpse.
“I was a very lucky man,” said Les.
Indeed he was. Not only was he the only member of his crew to survive the onslaught from a German field gun, he went on to live for another 77 years after recovering from his horrific injuries.
Mr Cherrington, who served as a tank gunner with the Staffordshire Yeomanry Queen’s Own Royal Regiment, has died at the age of 101.
He was 24 years old when his tank was one of six blown up by an anti-aircraft gun which had been lying in wait during the Tunisian campaign in 1943.
After spending a year in hospital, where he received life-saving skin grafts, and had his arm reattached, he would serve for a further four decades with the RAF Police, before finally retiring in 1983.
Norman Angell, who had helped organise Mr Cherrington’s 100th birthday in 2018, had known him for some years through the Shifnal branch of the Royal British Legion.
“He was a very private, modest man,” said Mr Angell. “He was mentally very alert, he didn’t live in the past, but he remembered the past. He could tell you who lived in which street in Shifnal 50 years ago.”
Mr Cherrington, who grew up in Albrighton, was 19 years old when he joined the Territorial Army in April 1938, much to his father’s disapproval.
At the time he was working at Baker’s Nurseries in Boningale, and was encouraged by his workmates to sign up.
