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During WWII, I was called to serve with all 3 Services of British Army, RAF and Navy.

From 1939 to 1945 I served with the 2nd Battalion of the Welsh Guards in the Army and saw action in Holland; Boulogne, France; Lake Trasimino, Italy; Ceylon (switching to Royal Navy after training as Air Liaison Officer with the RAF), Burma and Singapore for the Japanese surrender.

But between 1941 and 1942 I served with the RAF as Air Liaison Officer attached to 613 Squadron.

From 1943 until the end of the war I then served with the Royal Navy as O/C 4 Carrier Borne Air Liaison Section in Gibraltar; Malta; Greece; Alexandria, Egypt and in 1944 Trincomalee, Ceylon, Burma, Penang and Singapore for the final surrender of the Japanese in 1945.

I was born in London in 1916, during a German Zeppelin raid. My father, of Welsh Origin, was one of the officers who had transferred from the Royal Army Service Corps to join the Welsh Guards on its formation in 1915. It was therefore natural for me to join the Welsh Guards as a Reservist after getting my degree in law at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

I was due to start Army training at Pirbright Guard’s Camp in September 1939 as an officer on Supplementary Reserve. I remember being at the Military Tailors, Dege, in Conduit Street where the Regimental Adjutant was checking the fit of my uniform as a 2nd Lieutenant when war broke out.

The following day, as I walked down Birdcage Walk (struggling not to trip over my newly presented sword), the sirens started to announce the first air raid on London. Luckily this was a false alarm. At the Regimental HQ, I was ordered to report to the Tower of London to be trained to take over the duties of mounting guard over London. Six weeks later my platoon was mounting guard at Buckingham Palace!

Luckily, the platoon consisted of Welsh Guards Reservists who constituted the majority of the Welsh Police Force in peacetime. The first job for my platoon was to escort the crew of the first German submarine which had surrendered on the South coast of England. I was able to order them to march to the buses that took us up to a deserted cotton factory in North Lancashire. My sergeant told me on arrival that my German sounded like the Welsh orders which the Guardsmen expected.

From the Tower of London we spent four months patrolling the Ammunition Stores and Royal palaces of London. The officers on duty dined in the Officers’ Guardroom of St James’ Palace.

At the Tower, we were inspected by His Majesty George VI and the Reserves became the 2nd Battalion of the Welsh Guards (the First Battalion was already at war in France behind the Maginot line trying to keep the German Army out of France).

After the inspection the 2nd Battalion Welsh Guards was formed and moved out of London to a tented campsite at Theydon Bois where we trained. Meanwhile the German Army made preparations for storming the Maginot Line on the way to capturing France, whose Army capitulated quickly, overwhelmed by the speed with which Hitler’s tanks overran the country.