Goodbye Pete.
You don’t know Pete Herbert but he died last Tuesday. He was a “one off” – one of those characters that probably made his family’s life hell but entertained the rest of us for many years.
He was a paratrooper in the war and was part of the D-Day operation where he was dropped in Germany and saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war. On the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day he went on a “Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye tour” when he was eighty five, where he was going to meet up with old comrades. The trip was only supposed to take a weekend. After three weeks I met his daughter who said that she hadn’t heard from her father and she was worried. Five weeks later someone told her that there were lights on in her father’s bungalow and she went there extremely worried that someone had broken in but there was her father large as life. She did her nut and asked him where he had been. Apparently he met some Canadians and they went through France, Belgium and Germany. All Pete could say was “help me tek me boots off, lass!”
He was very active until three months ago and died the day before his ninetieth birthday. All of a sudden he became extremely unwell and lost a lot of weight quickly going down to six stones in a month which was disaster for someone over six feet. He had a very aggressive liver cancer and it was so far advanced that he couldn’t be treated.
Pete’s doctor was the same doctor that took me twenty five years to train and then he went and retired on me. Pete told his daughter that he had left something in his will for him and she had to phone him up and follow the script he had written. She duly phoned the doctor. “I am phoning to let you know that my father has died” Dr. Lowe replied that he was sorry to hear that. “He has left you something in his will” she went on. “Well that’s intriguing” retorted the good doctor “What is it?” his mind running riot by now. “He’s left you his bones!” Doctor Lowe was speechless for about a minute. “What! He’s left me his skeleton?!!!!” “No” he’s left you the bones that he used to play like castanets.”
His daughter Linda said that her father caused chaos and mayhem wherever he went while he was alive and continued to do so after he had gone. He told her that when he died and she went to look at him he was going to have the biggest smile on his face that he had ever had and she had to work out what he was smiling at! . She said when she went to see him “the old bugger did have the biggest smile on his face.” They don’t make ‘em like Pete anymore.
