Your Memories: When Jock got on his high horse

"WE were opposite Waverley Station when my friend Jock Gordon said, 'I've always wanted to ride with the Duke of Wellington'," laughs 83-year-old John Yeates.

"So we hoisted him on to the plinth and he pulled another one of our friends and me up with him."

That was back on August 14, 1945, when Mr Yeates was serving as a sailor on HMS Polaris which was docked in Port Edgar, South Queensferry.

Making their way by bus into the city that evening for some social time, Mr Yeates and his friends had no idea they would end up clambering on to one of the city's most prominent statues, proudly overlooking the east end of Princes Street.

"Jock rode with Wellington while our other friend was holding the horse's rear and I was on the bent leg, holding the rein," he laughs.

Mr Yeates, who lives in Worcester, has fond memories of the year he spent in Edinburgh, working on World War Two minesweeping tasks around Scotland, Norway and Iceland.

But he is the first to admit his antics with the Duke of Wellington nearly got him into very murky waters.

"It caused great amusement at the time, until a policeman got on the plinth and tried to remove Jock from the horse," he explains.

"Jock took off his sailor's hat and removed the policeman's hat, putting his on the policeman's head and the policeman's hat on his own.

"Next day we were on a charge for defaming the King's uniform."

It was only then that Jock who was from Edinburgh, revealed his father was a police sergeant in the Capital and that before the war had broken out, he himself had become a police cadet. "So we got away with it," Mr Yeates says. "Thankfully."

Mr Yeates has since lost contact with Jock Gordon but is hopeful he may still be alive and living in Edinburgh. Anyone with information should contact Catherine Salmond at the addresses below.