102 year old war hero says he's the "luckiest man alive"

BBC News

03-05-2025

"We were standing there like lemons"
A 102 year old says war veteran who survived two and a half years as a Prisoner of War says he's the luckiest man that ever lived.Malcolm Howard from Norwich was captured by the Germans in 1942 while taking part in Operation Torch - the British and American invasion of North Africa. He was just 19 years old.While serving with the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment he landed close to Algiers in what was then the biggest amphibious operation ever seen. According to Malcolm it was also the "worst managed operation even seen"."We ended up on this bare hill with no cover and we were standing there like lemons. The Germans opened fire and all hell broke loose," he said.
"My mother died when I was six, but they tried to keep it from me"
Malcolm spent the first few years of his life in London where his father ran a barbershop. His mother died of cancer in 1929 when he was just six years old."They tried to keep it from me, they told me she'd gone away. I didn't know any more than that for some time," said Malcolm. It hit my father hard, and almost overnight he just fell apart. He sold up, got rid of everything. I grew up very fast because I knew my father was dying. I could see it".Malcolm's father was badly gassed in the first world war and his legs and stomach had shrapnel in them, but Malcolm thinks his father's broken heart was the reason he lost his will to live some five years after his mother's passing. After his father's death 11-year-old Malcolm went to live in Great Yarmouth in Norfolk where he was brought up by his Auntie and grandmother. "My grandmother was tyrannical. It was a very unhappy time which is why I joined the army as soon as I could get out of there, he said.
"The prison used to be a zoo and it smelled like it"
He signed up with the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment and after training in Bury St Edmunds and Scotland he found himself in the allied landings of North Africa, codenamed Operation Torch. Nearly 600 British troops lost their lives and Malcom was captured after marching into Tunisia."The weirdest thing happened. The German officer ordered us to lay down on the grass. Then they covered us with blankets. I thought I don't like the sound of this one bit. Then in perfect English he said to us, sorry chaps, I'm handing you over to the Italians," recalled Malcolm.The prisoners were marched to the tip of Tunisia to their first prison. "It was where they used to keep animals. It was a zoo and it smelled like it. The food in the Italian prison camps was abominable. Breakfast was bread roll and a sliver of cheese which would last you to your evening meal of pumpkin soup. We used to count the pieces of pumpkin and there would be four or five if you were lucky. It was basically water," said Malcolm.
"We marched for 900 miles - exhausted and starving"
Towards the end of the war Malcom found himself in another prison camp on the Hungarian border which was accidently destroyed in a US bombing raid of nearby factories. He was marched to what he was told would be another prison camp 40 miles away, but there was no other prison camp. The march went on for 900 miles right across Austria."We just kept going and going - to nowhere really. We were in a hell of a state, exhausted and starving. We were found by a US army unit in Bavaria and our German guards fled."Malcolm was flown to a military hospital - his body riddled with fleas and lice."VE Day passed me by really, I was recuperating in hospital. I pretty much came through the war with out a scratch," he said.
His wife Gwen died in 2004, but at 102 years old Malcolm still lives independently, doing his own washing and cooking, and pressing his white shirts which he wears every day with a jacket and tie. It's been a full life tinged with deep sadness, but he counts himself to be the "the luckiest man that ever lived".