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I remember VE Day very clearly.

I was on service in the Far East. I had joined the East Yorkshire Regiment, but was posted to the 2nd Bn the Green Howards, who were fighting in Burma. In 1944 I was very lucky to draw leave, and went to Darjeeling. On my way back to my regiment, we stopped over at Chittagong. One morning someone came into the unit, asking for volunteers to drop supplies to the troops: as they were our units, of course I and another man volunteered.

We were told we would be transferred to an airfield: and later the same day we all heard on the radio that the war in Europe had ended. In the morning we went to an American airfield. Two planes there were loaded with stores for the troops in Burma. We flew several hours in our plane, with an American pilot, co-pilot who was the navigator, a wireless operator and we two soldiers. I’d never been on a plane before (we had got to the Far East by boat). Approaching the dropping zone, the wireless operator came back to tell us what to do. He would open the plane doors, one at a time, and the soldiers would push out the packages all piled up by the door. He showed us two ropes, and told us to tie it round ourselves, and then round a rail at the back of the plane. I asked him to tie my rope to the plane, but he said ‘I’m not going to do that, I’m not going to be responsible if anything goes wrong.’ So we tied our own ropes: we really needed them, for when the doors opened, and the plane banked round, it would have been easy to have fallen out. We made six or eight circuits until all the supplies were out.

Then we set off back to Chittagong. Half way back, the wireless operator said to me ‘Your President is on the wire’. He gave me his chair, and I sat there, thousands of feet above ground, listening to Churchill’s radio speech on the end of the war in Europe. I’ll never forget that.

After my leave, I went back to Burma until the end of the war. I spent my 22nd birthday in India, and came back home by boat. I was demobbed on 1 April, and returned to Beverley, my home town.

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