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This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Colin Payne, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was 15 when it happened. It was a blitz on Coventry and I armed myself with a bucket of sand, a spade and a dustbin lid. I was putting out incendiary bombs and at the same time shrapnel was falling all around.

I put my age up to join the army in ’42. I went abroad to East Africa to train for Burma. I went to a place called Larkhill, about 100 miles from Nairobi where we took over a park and grounds.

The major said ‘who can ride a motorbike?’ and daft as hell, I said yes. I delivered a dispatch. In the barracks there was a barrier and I didn’t want to stop so I dipped my head and went under the bar. It took me all day. On the way back, I met a male lion, I got the bike started quick and he hopped it. That’s how I learnt to ride a motorbike.

From Cairo to Haifa the whole camp moved. And I was at the tail end picking up stragglers. On the way up we had an 18lb anti-tank gun on a lorry and the tyre split so we lassoed it and pulled the rope over the lorry so the wheel was off the floor but occasionally it hit the ground on bumps.

When we came near Haifa there was a jaffa row. We picked them and squeezed the juice into bottles.

The next day we were all in hospital for dysentery.

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