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This story was submitted to the People’s War Website by a volunteer from Derby CSV Action Desk on behalf of Mr Ginger and has been added with his permission. He fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Once I had to come to Derby to pick up stores and I was walking down St Thomas’s Road with a friend on our way to a dance when we saw a very drunk soldier lying in the gutter. Knowing he would get into trouble if he was found in that state we picked him up intending to take him to the dance and try and sober him up. On our way we met 2 girls. ‘Hello, girls’ we said and hurriedly dropped the soldier back in the gutter. One of those girls became my wife and I came to live in Derby. 60 years on we are still married. (Comment from wife — I had a wonderful war with lots and lots of dancing!)

One of my most vivid memories was when I was in London at home on leave and I went to meet a friend. We stood on a bridge and watched a German plane firing at barrage balloons. He had brought down about three and then he suddenly burst into flames, he must have caught one of the wires.

Towards the end of the war I was training Indian troops in Ceylon to get off landing craft. I then was put in a flotilla and set sail for the Malacca Strait for the invasion of Malaya, but the Japanese surrendered before we landed and I finished up in Singapore looking after Japanese prisoners. The rule was that whatever the Japanese had to do we had to do it with them. So if they went at the double we were supposed to do so too. We got round this by making them run on ahead and then turn round and run back to where we were, so we walked and they ran but we finished up at the same place. I had a brother and brother-in-law who both worked and died on the Burma railway, I often thought about how they were treated compared with how we treated the Japanese.

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