John Sheppard died on 26 February 2015, five months short of his 100th Birthday. Born in Hertfordshire on 6 August 1915, his first contact with Leicestershire was in 1917 when his father became farm bailiff of the Beaumanor Estate at Woodhouse. Having been schooled at home by his mother “so that he would not pick up the awful local accent”, on her death in 1926 the family returned to Hertfordshire and John was educated at Leighton Buzzard.

When the family returned, to Market Harborough, in 1932, he worked for the Haddon-Caxton Type Foundry and the Harborough Rubber Company. He also immediately joined 5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, aged 17. From that foundation he became one of that great generation who as a young man in the band of brothers of the Territorial Army made a gallant contribution to the war effort and who in later life continued to serve his fellow countrymen. In short he was one of those “ordinary men who did extraordinary things in extraordinary places extraordinarily well”.

When the Battalion was embodied in August 1939, John was a sergeant in the Mortar Platoon – equipped with two wooden mortars. In 1/5th Battalion in Norway in the Spring of 1940, he was a Platoon Sergeant Major (WO3) commanding the Mortar Platoon, comprising 16 men and two 3ʺ mortars. At the end of that ill-fated campaign, he did particularly fine work on 23 April. With the mortars out of action, he and his men strongly defended a threatened flank at Tretten (north of Lillehammer) until their small-arms ammunition ran out and the surrounding woods and buildings were on fire. Those unable to escape were captured, and John, among many others of the Battalion, spent the next five years as a prisoner of war of the Germans, in Poland and Bavaria. His conduct and leadership at Tretten led to the award of the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the nation’s second highest gallantry medal. The award was not gazetted until October 1945. When his Commanding Officer, the redoubtable Guy German (who was awarded the DSO for the same battle), was drafting the citation, he had no idea and so made no mention of the fact that John had knocked out two German tanks, using a Boyes anti-tank rifle he had never previously fired. It was not until 1999, as a result of correspondence in the Daily Telegraph, that it came to light that John had knocked out the first enemy tanks in the Second World War.

His opportunity further to take the fight to the King’s enemy having been severely constrained by involuntary incarceration, at the war’s end John eagerly joined the Regular element of the now Royal Leicestershire Regiment and proceeded to serve at the Depot and in 5th R Leicesters (TA) at Leicester, in Hong Kong with 1st Bn 1949-50, in Austria in 1st Royal Warwicks 1951-54, on troop ships in the Near East, and from 1955-62 on secondment in Nigeria (being was awarded the Nigeria Independence Medal in 1960), reaching the rank of WO2 (RQMS). He married Amy in 1958, who accompanied him to Nigeria where with little doubt she contracted the illness from which she died in 1996. At the end of his engagement in 1963 aged 48, he settled own into civilian life with Amy, living in Rothley and working for Herbert Morris in Loughborough. At Rothley he served on the Parish Council (being instrumental in the erection of a flagpole at the war memorial, and after a 3-year personal battle with the County and Charnwood Councils he secured a library for the village and several road safety improvements), was President of the local Royal British Legion and of the Conservative Club, Co-founder of the Allotment Holders’ Association, and a Trustee of the Harry Hames Cottage Home Trust.

His long association with the Regiment continued unabated. For many years he was a member of the General Committee of The Royal Tigers’ Association, and, after the death of Tommy Marston in 2002, took his place as Vice-Chairman until retirement in 2006. He regularly attended the Regimental Weekend and associated events. He was a Member (and sometime Vice-President) of the Hindoostan Dinner Club 1969-2009. In September 2003 he travelled to Norway where at Asmarka (the most southerly point reached by 1/5th Battalion in April 1940) he, the only British veteran present, was presented to HM King Harald V at the dedication of the memorial to those Norwegian and British soldiers who were killed there when the Allies first met the Germans on Norwegian soil on 20 April 1940. In July 2005 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War John and one other Tiger had the honour of lunching with HM The Queen at Buckingham Palace. In October 2006 John laid the Regimental wreath at the dedication of the Hohenzollern Redoubt Memorial in France. On 27 September 2014 at the dedication at the National Memorial Arboretum he, together with Harold Smalley, unveiled the Regiment’s memorial. His last ‘public’ appearance was on 1 November at Hugglestone at the commemoration of the enlistment in 1914 of “the First 50”.

This quiet-spoken, modest, gentle man made an immense and valued contribution to his Regiment and to the lives of many Servicemen and civilians. The achievements in the latter part of his life probably meant as much to him as the award of the DCM. He was certainly ‘twice a citizen’.