A WYEDEAN veteran who witnessed the devastation after nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is today (Friday) due to attend a national memorial service marking VJ Day.

One-hundred year-old John Eskdale, of Aylburton, was joining other veterans and Their Majesties the King and Queen at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire organised by the British Legion.

Memorial events are also planned today in the Wyedean area

Mr Eskdale says the two nuclear bombs dropped on the two Japanese cities in early August 1945 probably saved his life and prevented “a bloodbath”.

He was in Australia preparing to be transferred to Japan when news broke of the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945.

He said: “We were just glad the war was over. We were preparing to move up into Japan.

“Those bombs saved our lives. Without them, it would’ve been a bloodbath.”

A few months after the bombs were dropped, John was in Japan escorting naval photographers who were capturing the aftermath in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

“There was absolutely nothing there. It was all virtually flat, burnt out, and everybody was wearing face masks. Nagasaki was gone, rased to the ground.”

John didn’t return home until he was invalided out of the Marines in 1947.

A long-time member of the British Legion in Lydney and the HMS Charybdis Association, he added: “It is so important people remember those who gave so much and weren’t able to come home.”

The former marine said the sinking of a warship he was on as a teenager in the Second World War was “the worst time of my life”.

The then 18-year-old was one of about 100 survivors after HMS Charybdis was sunk off the Channel Islands by German torpedo boats on October 23, 1943, with the loss of hundreds of lives.

One of only two survivors still alive, he said: “We looked up to the bridge to get some orders, but the bridge wasn’t there. It had gone. We’d been split in two and down we went.

“Us on the stern went down in seven minutes.bIt was the worst time in my life.

“I was in the water for five hours before I got hold of a Carley float (life raft).

“There were people in there with me, and we saw one of the destroyers starting to look for us.

“We were waving and shouting, but then it turned away from us. It was heartbreaking.”

When the destroyer did another sweep, they were finally able to grab on to the netting to try to pull themselves aboard.

He said: “They couldn’t stop in case there were submarines around. You had to grab the netting and climb up, but I was absolutely exhausted.

“Two sailors came down to pull me up. I was covered in oil and it took months to get it all out of my system.”

Every year he travels to Guernsey to attend the memorial service dedicated to the more than 400 men who lost their lives at sea that day, and is planning to attend the next service there next month, shortly after he turns 101.

Following John’s recovery from the sinking, he was assigned to 30 Assault Unit Commando, headed up by future James Bond author Ian Fleming.

The unit was part of naval intelligence and was based in a sealed-off military area around the points of the South Coast earmarked for the D-Day embarkation points.

Fortunately for John, he was sent off to try and get parts for an unserviceable vehicle, and after driving all night he fell asleep at the wheel and hit a telegraph pole.

He remembers: “This pole went across the telephone wires and rang all the telephones in the village.

“By the time I got back to the depot everyone had gone, and that’s how I missed D-Day.”