A SURPRISE ceremony has been held for a ‘remarkable’ Second World War veteran from New Quay.

John Hall Jones, 96, who formerly lived at Nanternis, fought in the Eighth Army with the Desert Rats.

Now living at Llansaint, Mr Jones said: “This all came as a complete surprise to me. My grandchildren brought me in the car and I thought I was going to Carmarthen to look in the shops and I turned up here.”

The event at County Hall, Carmarthen, was attended by members of Mr Jones’s family, some of whom had travelled all the way from Belgium.

He was born in Penrhiwtyn, Neath, in 1921 his family later moving to Llangennech.

In 1937 was sent to London to work for a German firm as an apprentice toolmaker.

Called up at the outbreak of war, Mr Jones entered the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

After training he was transferred to the Signal Corps, and was attached to the North Somerset Yeomanry.

He was posted to the Middle East in July 1941, only for the ship he was on to be torpedoed.

“After the torpedo hit, we were slung from one end of the cabin to the other, and there were 30 of us all piled on top of one another,” he recalled.

“I will never forget the silence of that room. Then one man said: ‘I think we’ve been hit, chaps’, at which we all laughed.”

The ship that picked him up was en route to Canada, so he was there for three months until a boat back to North Africa could be found. Mr Jones was billeted with a Canadian family, and they still exchange letters and phone calls to this day.

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