In June 2010, after reading Jimmy Howe’s account, Mick Bell got in touch to advise that his late father, Corporal Billy Bell, also known as “Dingle”, was a boyhood friend of Jimmy Howe in County Durham and, like him, joined The Royal Scots in 1937. Like Jimmy, his father was a musician and played alto saxophone alongside him in the 1st Battalion’s band . They served together and were captured together at Le Paradis. Jimmy went to a camp in Germany and was repatriated as an escort to severely wounded prisoners in about 1942, but his father stayed in Stalag XXA at Torun, Poland until 1945. During his term of imprisonment he worked mainly on farms and was a member of the camp concert party. In early 1945 the prisoners were forced to march westwards to escape the advancing Russian army (the infamous Death March) – his father, along with a couple of others escaped and hid out until the Russians came (he described seeing waves of Cossacks on horseback charging towards them). At first, he feared being shot, as the Russians thought that he and the others were Italian troops, but he convinced them that they were British. He was sent back through Russia on a tortuous journey, which culminated in Odessa, on the Black Sea, from where a troop ship returned them to the UK.
He went on to serve until 1948, and remained close friends with Jimmy until his death. He and his wife stayed regularly with Jimmy and Avis, attending many of the annual concerts Jimmy organised at Croydon and visiting him when the Scots Guards were on ceremonial at Edinburgh Castle

Mick took his father back to Le Paradis on one occasion in around 1987/8 and he was truly overcome. As he walked along the lines of graves, he remarked “I carried him in”, “I buried him”, “I treated him”.

While they were in the area, they visited another bandsman, Ginger Patchett, who escaped after being captured in 1940. Ginger went back to the village where the battalion had been stationed during the “Phoney War”, moved into the home the French girlfriend he had acquired at the time and stayed there until the area was liberated in 1944.

After the war he was when being debriefed by a British officer in Brussels he was asked why he did not join the Resistance? Ginger’s reply was that the Resistance did not have a space for a ginger-haired Cockney trumpet player. After being discharged he returned to France, married his girlfriend and lived in Lille until his death.