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I was born in Coryton on 14 July 1916. I was one of 12, having 11 brothers and a sister. During the war my family moved to Great Wakering but my mother died and my wife moved to Wakering to take care of my family, those of my brothers and sister, who were still at school. She wanted to move back to Southend. It took until just before I was demobbed, in February 1947, that my wife had a letter to say that she had been allocated a 3 bedroomed flat in Southend.

I enlisted in the Essex Regiment and, like most other local people, did my training at Warley Barracks in Brentwood. We spent weeks travelling on trains and boats before we started our wartime activities.

I was taken prisoner in July 1942. We were at El Alamein and I saw all my mates being taken prisoner. I only had an anti-tank shell rifle to attack a tank, which fired on me with 88 millimetre shells. I was very badly injured and had 30 scars down my right hand side. My chest muscles were blown away and I could not see for a fortnight due to the bandages. I’m so proud that I was mentioned in dispatches for this.

We were taken over to Tobruk. In the hospital ship Mussolini’s daughter came to give parcels of fruit and sweets to the injured. She put some on my bed but she was told I was a prisoner so they were taken away again. From there we were taken to hospital in Naples and then on to Northern Italy and a hospital in Milan. It was here that I had the first of my operations. I had shrapnel in my nose. The doctor was a great plastic surgeon and came to see me before the operation to explain the procedures. Afterwards he came again to see how we were. He was marvellous.

I can remember that Gilli the Italian opera singer came to the hospital to sing and entertain the troops. We had little flats with balconies. The next door flatlet held some Greek pow’s and we were all out on the little balconies. He paraded in the courtyard with his old cloak thrown over his shoulders. We all waved to him and he waved back and smiled at us until he was told that we were prisoners of war. Then he stopped.

We were interned on the Lombardy Plains. When the Iti’s capitulated we thought that we would be sent home, but the Germans arrived instead and we were sent to Austria. We had to work to pay for our keep. A month before the end of the war we were moved into the main hospital wing. There had been rumours that the war was about to end. We were called out to roll call and heard Churchill’s speech over the tannoy. Then the yanks came. Their tanks were all around the camp.

I can remember that the sky was white — pure white — where for half an hour thousands of food supplies were dropped by parachute. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life.

I was then taken home and sent to Stoke Mandeville hospital where I spent the next two years. The doctors there knew the Italian doctor who had operated on me in Milan and he came over to see me — but I wasn’t there on that day. My English doctors said what a good job he done on my injuries. I had to have 3 more operations on my scars.

As mentioned before I was not demobbed until February 1947 when I went back to my wife in Southend.

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