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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Claire White of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Scotland on behalf of James Thomson and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I joined the TA in 1939 aged 20. There was an influx to the TA at this time. Our generation thought we'd show Hitler our might.

On 6th June 1942 I was taken prisoner in the Western Desert. Four of us were travelling to an observation post in an armoured car, as we did every day. A German armoured car sneaked up behind us and blew off the front of our car.

The four of us were taken prionser and marched to a German unit where we met with others who had been taken captive. One Captain said 'I'm not going to a prison camp!' and at the first opportunity recommended we 'Run!'. Four of us did run away and we were shot at by Germans. I was the only escapee to survive.

We eventually ended up in Italy in the hold of a ship en route to Germany. We travelled from Tripoli to Naples. Two of the three ships making this journey were sunk by the Royal Navy. Again, I was lucky to be on the boat which survived unscathed.

I spent one uneventful year in a prison camp in Italy. The Germans then loaded us 60 at a time into cattle trucks bound for Germany. We embarked on a 6-day journey without fresh air or supplies. We survived on scraps of food left over from our prison camp boxes.

In Germany a group of us were sent to work in a flour mill. My job was to bag flour and label it; white flour for the upper echelons of German society and black flour for the common people. On occasion I deliberately mixed up the flour labels and I was sent to a copper mine as punishment.

After working in the copper mine for a couple of days I was marched into the manager's office. He complained that I was causing him a lot of bother. We were unruly prisoners who were always arguing with him, so he sent in the troops to teach us a lesson. They threatened to shoot us if we moved in a siege that lasted eight hours. For the first time during the war I felt frightened. Eventually we complied with what we had been asked to do eight hours earlier, but we were still denied adequate rations.

After I had served for two years in the copper mine the war ended. We made our way home in drips and drabs and I travelled back to Haywards Heath via Brussels. It felt wonderful to touch UK soil again.

In England we were re-clothed and given railway passes to return home. When I arrived at Aberdeen station my mother walked straight past me. She didn't recognise the boy that had left her weighing 13.5 stones. He now weighed just 8 stones, but she soon remedied that with some good home cooking.

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