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In 1943 I was in Cardington, Shropshire. I was 18 and hating my first days of National Service in the RAF. Then I remembered something unusual I had in my side pack.
Four years earlier I had tried to learn to play the piano. Mr Thornton, church organist and my piano teacher, found that I was hopeless. So we would just chat. Among his stories he told me that in his youth he used to go for bike rides with Sir Edward Elgar.
One day, fiddling about at home on our piano, I (who had never even thought about composition) found that I had composed a tune. It sounded like a military march. I showed it to Mr Thornton. He made nice noises, arranged it for me and gave me the manuscript.
Later I gave it a name: ‘Sicilian Victory’. Sicily had just fallen to the Allies. I was so proud of it that I packed it and kept it with me when I went to Cardington that October. In the middle of my desperate loneliness I remembered it. Not only remembered it, but showed it to the Station Bandmaster. He said that he liked and he actually wanted to use it. I boasted insufferably to all around me but no-one was impressed.
Then, one Sunday morning, over the noise of the radio and the arguments, I heard the sound of ‘Sicilian Victory’ coming from nearby. I raced out to the gates to see the Station Band, in full fig, marching towards me and playing my tune. The sound bouncing off the rows of shops and the sunshine flashing on the silver and brass of trumpets, euphoniums, flutes and drums sent my head whirling and, suddenly, all my homesickness was gone.
A month later, in Skegness, there was no band but there was a cinema, with a cinema organ. I showed the march to the organist and the following week, before the curtain went up on ‘Casablanca’, he played it. With drums, cymbals, dodgy tempo and all. I could have danced.

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