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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard and behalf of William George Lofts and has been added to the site with his permission…

I was 17 when the war started and gave a false age so that I could join the Gunners in 1939. I was stationed at Gosport, as I was too young to go to France. I trained with thirty - two other men, none of whom I have ever met up with since.

We used to watch the Fleet Air Arm taking off regularly and it was many years later that I found out that every one of those lads had lost their lives.

I was posted to India in 1941; then on to Arakan region of Burma. Ferocious battles were fought in Kohima, in 1944 . Suffice to say I lost so very many comrades.

I remember losing two of my mates on a gun they were manning, a few moments before I had been on the gun myself, I was asked to go and do another job so another lad took my place, moments later the gun was hit, blowing it and the two men up.

Whilst I was in Burma I recall a nun coming up to me and giving me a wooden cross, it actually had a swastika on it so I presume it must have belonged to a German soldier. As she gave it me she said, ‘Soldier you will go home’ and I was one of the lucky ones that did. I kept the cross.

We did have moments of fun though, whilst in India we played a prank and changed all the bullocks and carts round the wrong way so they ended up going miles out of there way. And that first Christmas out there in 1942 the sergeant said he would show us how to fight like a matador, so he took up the stance with a coat or something in front of this bullock, next thing it charged, goring him so badly that he had to be sent home, so that was the end of the war for him.

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