Last updated 13:40, Thursday, 27 March 2008

Whenever he looked back on his life, Alf Gardner was a master of understatement. During his years as an ambulance man and paramedic, he once rescued a drainage worker from a sewer, even though he had been told it was too dangerous. He simply said it was all in a day’s work.

Volunteer: Alf Gardner worked with Down’s Syndrome children and as a driver for Age Concern

Years beforehand, he had been a paratrooper, dropped into Normandy in advance of the D-Day landings and, after being alone on the run for 15 days, he ‘ran into’ a German patrol and was captured – by men of the 21st Panzers, a crack tank regiment!

These were just two incidents from the varied and colourful life of Carlisle man William Alfred Gardner who was 83 when he died.

He was always known as Alf, except in the ambulance service, where he was always called Fred. The reason was simple – one of his colleagues had the same name.

Born in Currock and educated locally, he was always determined to join the army and when he was 15 he tried. However, the recruiting officers realised that he was too young and called his mother who arrived and took him home. Two years later, however, he was a very enthusiastic conscript and became a paratrooper, with the 13th Paratroop Battalion of the Army Air Corps.

Dropped into Normandy from a modified Stirling bomber, flying at 600ft, he and his comrades had to remove the forests of poles and posts that the Germans had erected to prevent troop-carrying gliders from landing and this they largely accomplished, working in the dark and in water.

The conditions meant that the paras split up and Alf found himself on his own, hiding in barns and existing on whatever he could find.

Inevitably, he was captured and became a prisoner-of-war in several camps, ending up in Stalag 4b in Germany.

He was liberated by the arrival of Soviet Red Army troops but, like almost everyone else, he didn’t much like the Russians and so off he went to the west, to be picked up by the advancing Americans.

After a spell back home, he was posted to Palestine and there, in the desert, everyone had to shake boots and sleeping bags – to make sure they were free from snakes.

Once out of uniform and back in Carlisle, he went to work for a transport firm and drove a truck around the farms, collecting eggs and chickens but after a short time he joined the RAC road assistance service, riding one of the familiar motor cycles with side-car.

In 1968 he joined the ambulance service in Carlisle and served with it until he retired, 21 years later. During this time he did many things, including delivering 11 babies in his ambulance and becoming the first local paramedic to assist on a Air Ambulance flight, from Carlisle to Plymouth.

Then there was the drainage worker rescue, where he was urged to wait but knew that if he did so the man might not have survived. So, typically, Alf climbed down into the shaft and pulled the man out.

However, when the man and his wife celebrated their silver wedding anniversary he tracked his rescuer down and Mr and Mrs Alf Gardner were guests of honour.

During his ambulance-driving years, Alf often helped with work for Down’s Syndrome children and after he retired became a volunteer driver with Age Concern – until he reached the age of 70 when regulations stated that he had to give up the job.

In later years he had attended PoW reunions, including one in France, 60 years on from D-Day.

He was married for 58 years, to Eleanor Jean Horseman, the wartime WAAF whom he met in the Malt Shovel pub in Carlisle.

She died two years ago and he leaves their daughter, granddaughter and grandson.

His funeral takes place today at Carlisle Crematorium, with Kennedy and Ferguson, Carlisle, making the arrangements.