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In 1938, Munich Crisis year, I’d registered with the first batch of Peace Time Conscripts in England. They called us Militiamen (it sounded better than conscripts). On September 1939 war broke out. I was called up in early November and rushed into the Territorial Field Medical unit who were soon to leave for France early in January. Going from shop counter to bleak, frozen Northern France was quite a shock. I survived that and evacuation on the HMS Destroyer Vivacious from Dunkirk on June 1st. We had a brief rest then down to Plymouth to await the threatened invasion. We were bombed several times as France’s largest submarine, the Surcouffe, was anchored in Sound.

In March 1942 we embarked for the Far East and arrived in Bombay in May. After a few weeks’ acclimatization and training we left for Chittagong (East Bengal) and the headquarters of fifteen corps who were attacking the Japanese in the Arakan. We learned our first aid the hard way, there were several hundred sick and wounded every week of the bitter fighting. Our division was withdrawn after a year as we were worn out. After three and a half years in the Far East we left Bombay for Southampton. We arrived as strangers in a world where the main party (victory in Europe) was over, still very much a forgotten army.

As told to the staff at Chesterfield Library

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