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When war broke out I was, 19 years old. I was working in a telephone cable factory, in Leyton Essex near London. It was on a Sunday when Neville Chamberlain announced on the radio that Britain was at war with Germany. I was at home with my family, my mother and father understood what this went and the hardship, but I and my sister didn’t realise what was going to happen.

Within a few hours the sirens sounded and we went to find an air raid shelter. Within a few minutes the ‘all-clear’ sounded as it was a false alarm. The rest of the year was a ‘phoney-war’ as nothing dramatic happened. We prepared for war by working flat out at the factories, 24 hour days, and three shifts of eight hours.

September 1940, the bombing stared in earnest, London and other big cities were bombed, mostly at night. I was working in the cable factory when I wad my first experience of bombing, this was the first of many, and several times a week we took shelter.

January 1941, I was conscripted into the army, but I had six months deferment while they trained someone to take over my job at the factory. I was apprehensive, but was looking at it as an adventure as I had been in the scouts for many years. We had to meet at Andover station in Hampshire; I was one of about 60 or 70 new recruits, forming a squad. After 6 weeks training in the RAC (Royal Army Corp), we were posted to our different regiments. I had been trained as a tank gunner, and posted to Ripon in Yorkshire, somewhere I had never been before. The regiment I reported to was the 24th Lancers, RAC, a war-time regiment formed of people from the South of England. We trained for three and a half years all over Great Britain, in preparation for D-day.

June 6th was the day I went to war. We travelled across the English Channel in a convoy. The landing didn’t go completely to plan as some ships got separated and my tank landing ship couldn’t beach the tanks and other vehicles. If we had landed when we should have, earlier in the day, I’m sure that we may not have survived. The beach master directed us to the harbouring point, until the rest of the regiment had landed safely. That was on D-day, D+1 we assembled for the move in land to clear up some stragglers, of which we picked up two and handed to the intelligence corp. Next we rescued some Canadian troops who had been taken prisoner by Germans, which entailed us going across fields at speed in our tanks, machine-gunning at the enemy. This is the first time I fired my gun in anger at other troops. Most of the Canadians, of which there were several hundred, had been rescued.

Each day we were fighting other tanks and at night we harboured and camped. It had been a long day, we would stand by at dawn, which was about 3am, and from then on we had spasms of fighting throughout the day, which lasted till dusk, about 11pm. When we returned to harbour we had to refuel the tank, ammunition and food, after which we had roughly two hours sleep each night, this went on for a week or two when we had three days rest period. We had a change of clothes, mobile showers and cleaned the guns and tanks. One unfortunate incident, was when an anti-aircraft machine gun, was fired accidentally and another tank soldier was shot and killed.

We had small battles for a few days. During one of the battles, Epson in the area of Tessel Wood, our tank received a hit, which fortunately five of us scrambled out alive. We jumped in a big ditch, tank trapped, to escape; the driver was badly injured in the head and unconscious. The co-driver was burnt and lost his glasses but capable of walking. Fortunately the tank commander, radio operator and myself were reasonably safe. I was able to help the others back to our own lines. The regiments were re-shuffled for the big push to Caen in France, I was sent back to where we had landed. I was posted to Brussels to a holding unit, training new recruits on the tank guns and then as a courier, posted at 21st army group HQ.

While in Brussels I visited the old scout camp site, Uccle, nr Brussels. Travel was free so I could visit others who knew the time when I was there as a scout. They had very hard times when they were under occupation and used to forage for acorns to make coffee and coal for heating. I visited once with an orange I had been given and they had never seen an orange since the war had begun, for their young baby.

When the Germans surrendered I was in Germany where the occupation force was based, Bade Ouyhousen, for a few months, after that I was de-mobbed. We came home via Hull on a US liberty boat, the crossing was very rough. Back home I got a train back to Olympia in London. We were given suits to wear, hats and shoes.

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