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I was in the Royal Engineers in Burma and Malaya and I finished up in Singapore. I was offered the opportunity to go to Australia on leave, because we’d never had any leave, but we were so fed up that we all wanted to come home, and home we came.
In Keighley, from what I understand, there always used to be Army people, and this particular time it was a tank regiment. Invariably the kids used to pick these shells up, because they were all over the street, and take them to school. But me brother being an apprentice fitter, they were making cigarette lighters at the time, so he picked two or three up and gave them to his mates at work. They prepared to get into them — they unscrewed the cap, but it was empty, because the cordite was down the side, and he put it in the vice, sawed it and it exploded and blinded him.

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