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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home guard on behalf of Frank Callow and has been added to the site with his permission.

I joined at Christnmas 1942 at Lincoln. I was nineteen years old and it was my birthday. After about eight weeks initial training I was sent to Eagles Cliff near Yarmentees near Newcastle. Eventually I was put on a draft to the Far East around 1943 on the troopship Strathstarmerva. I served approximately three months in South Africa at Clairwood transit camp in Durban, eventually going to Bombay, India.

After being in Deolalli for about three months, I was posted to 7th Battalion York and Lancaster and was posted to Pershawer and eventually to Rasmac on the Khyber Pass on the North West Frontier. There after three to four months I went to a place called Sultans Battery, somewhere near Banglador, Southern India. Eventually I went into Burma to Johat. Then down the road on the road to Rangoon in the 5th Indian division.

One occasion that comes to mind was when I was on a 15cwt Bedford lorry with ammunition going to ‘A’ company who were having a bad time. I was suffering with dysentery. On the lorry were three of us and an Indian driver, when we came under fire. He had a sten gun in a clip on his lorry, all wrapped up in a field dressing to keep the dust off and I was screaming at him whilst he was unwinding the dressing off his sten gun and I’d rather end there.

It all happened in seconds. The bushes were on fire and I’m afraid I found myself all on my own to where I though our positions were and the hailstones were as big as marbles and nobody could see, thank God.

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