Description

A shepherd boy from Buttermere called up for World War II and sent to the front line in France. Posted next to Egypt, he was taken prisoner at Tobruk and shipped to POW camps in occupied Italy from which he escaped three times. While on the run he was sheltered in a mountain village near Rome for several months and went back 40 years later to thank the village people for giving him sanctuary. He finally made it back to Cumberland to become the legendary huntsman of the Blencathra Hunt at Threlkeld, a widely recognised expert on the fells’ indigenous Herdwick sheep and, a legend in his own lifetime. Fell farmer Willie Tyson said: “If for nowt else, all this stuff wants recording as Johnny was a big part of our Fells’ cultural heritage, which has all but slipped away.”