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I was “called up” on 1st February 1940 and joined the Army Service corps, eventually driving lorries supplying armoured divisions.

Initially we left Woodville Station and arrived at Herne Bay, where in the snow we marched to a hall and slept on the floor.

We were eventually billeted in houses with no running water and we had to wait until the end of the day to make use of public conveniences to get a wash. Breakfast consisted of porridge and fish and no utensils to eat it with.

From Herne Bay we went further down the coast to Westgate, where having been called back after a couple of days from our first leave, we were as a group of four recruits give a Bren gun, a rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and taken to the coastline at night and told “if you see anything coming in from the coast — if it moves shoot it”.

None of us had ever used guns or received any training in their use. Who knows what we would have done if the enemy had decided to attack or invade our stretch of coastline?

Belgium had just fallen, so the powers that be were understandably nervous if unprepared to say the least!

My next posting was Aldershot where we were bombed one Saturday afternoon by a German bomber. The bomb hit the mess tent where two of our company were preparing food — one soldier was killed and one injured. Had the attack occurred several minutes later, the casualties could have been horrendous with everyone assembled inside for tea.

From Aldershot, we were given lorries and drove up to Kirklington, near Ripon in North Yorkshire, where our job was to fill the verges with ammunition.

From here we were posted from a company with vehicles to a company without vehicles in Weybridge, where during an exercise in a wood I had to pretend I was on a motorbike at the rear of the column of men. I t was during this exercise that I inadvertently “fell out” with the then unknown Commanding Officer — “a guy in a white mackintosh” by openly discussing our positions with him. He later turned out to be a Colonel in charge of the exercise.

I was now posted driving lorries full of ammunition to the docks in the east end of London (West ham). The ammunition was of a new American type and very powerful. London dock workers apparently went on strike “for extra danger money” to handle this cargo.

Just after the initial D-Day landings I was sent to Arrowmanches, on the French coast. What could be described as a pleasant sea trip in terms of scenery changed as we neared the French coast with the reality of war entering our view i.e. floating bodies and burning ships. We travelled on American liberty ships and transferred to landing craft.

As we drove and moved off the coast inland, you could see line upon line of lorries ahead of you as far as the eye could see, in fact you could have walked along the tops of them for miles.

As we moved towards Bayeaux and Caen we came across a field of discarded German munitions which needed to be cleared. As a Sergeant I was one of two volunteers to clear and make safe this area. Fortunately for my comrades and myself it was not “booby trapped”!

As we moved through Caen and then into the Falaise Gap following a Guards Armoured Division and supplying them with food, ammunition, clothing and medical supplies, operating conditions deteriorated to the point where terrible sights were common place to include burnt out tanks and lorries with their dead crew and driving over the bodies of dead soldiers and horses.

From here I went via Eindhoven, Nimijen and Wessell to cross the Rhine into Germany. It was at Wessell that we were involved in supplying numerous searchlights that General Montgomery used to assist the night time building of the pontoon bridge across the Rhine by shining them up on to the cloudy sky to reflect down and provide enough light to work at nights. This become known as “Monty’s Moonlight”.

I eventually ended up in war torn Berlin, the capital of the German Reich, visiting the then ruined monuments of the Brandenberg Gate and the Reichstag and supplying Berlin with coat from Essen.

On 25th February 1946 I was discharged from the Army with £90 gratuity and on 15th May 1946 I was ”mentioned in dispatches”.

Thus 6 years of my life had passed into history!

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