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I was born in reading in 1926 and during the early part of the war there was a considerable increase in the local population due to evacuees from London. Our school was suddenly invaded by extra children and as we had a spare room at home we were allocated a teacher to live with us.
After leaving school at 16, I started work in the town and had to take my turn with fire
watching duties. I soon found out that as an alternative to this I could volunteer for Home Guard duties. This I did and for several months I had to go for training at the Royal Berks Regimental Training Depot This was certainly a new experience for me! Every week we were instructed by a veteran Regimental Sergeant-major and I soon learnt that a mistaken order, or to fall out of step, would entail a most unpleasant experience.
Eventually I was passed out and posted to a local platoon of the Home Guard. This entailed attending every Sunday morning at a temporary building on the outskirts of a large sewerage farm, needless to say the air was quite unpleasant but thankfully, after a few minutes, you got used to it! I was the only teenager in the platoon all the rest being veterans of world war I and even before that! My duties were to be a dispatch rider and I was instructed in the art of map reading. So, once a month we had to defend an attack from an adjacent unit and I soon learnt that it was very easy to slip off the narrow paths into the deep ditches on my old bicycle.
Apart from all this excitement, we also had the job of guarding an ammunition store once a week. This we did overnight and had to do two hours of sentry duty sometime during the night Most of the intervening time was spent on hearing some incredible stories of life in the trenches! At the age of 18 however, I received my call up papers and I was overwhelmed by the good wishes of all my home guard comrades.
My first six weeks in the army was at Colchester and was with the Somerset Light Infantry. After being in the home guard this was no problem except that we were expected to march much quicker! From there I was sent to the Royal Signals at Scarborough and for nine months was billeted in the Esplanade Hotel, right on the sea front, as we trained as wireless operators. Each morning from 8 — 9 am we carried out PT in shorts and singlets, something that certainly woke you up when a cold easterly wind was blowing off the sea!
Eventually we finished our training but by then the war was coming to an end and we were given some leave before our whole section was posted to New Delhi, India. During the two and a half years spent there we were to witness the independence and all the problems that went with it Because of this our de-mob took place some considerable time after the original date.

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