Service Record

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"I was born in Poplar East London on the 21st November 1923."

"I started at school in Poplar until I was about five or six years old then we moved to Barking in Essex. I left school in 1938 and joined a firm in the City of London as an apprentice locksmith. I continued this apprenticeship until I joined the army in 1942. When I joined the army I still had about another two years to complete on my apprenticeship. I had registered ready for call up but circumstances compelled me to volunteer because I had a notice of being drafted into the Navy, which wasn't my first choice, so I volunteered for the Army. When I joined I was just over seventeen and underage so I gave a false age and said I'm eighteen and was accepted.

"When I joined the army I was first sent to Glasgow in Scotland for my initial training. This was basic infantry training and technical training to find out what I was capable of. After the results of my tests I was posted to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, which wasn't my first choice. This didn't appeal to me at all, it wasn't really my vocation. I think that at that time it was an adventure and all my friends were taking part in the war and I didn't want to be in the backwoods of it. With the REME I had been posted to Rolls Royce at Derby manufacturing gun sites and other artillery pieces. I kept volunteering for other branches of the army, for the airborne, gliders and Commandos solely to get out of what I was doing. It wasn’t bad at Derby, it was a very good job, and I could have stayed there for the duration of the war. But it would have been a pretty boring war and I wanted to see some action. I think they got rather fed up with me, they could sort of see the way I wanted to go and in the end they gave in, and I was posted to my original choice, which was the Tank Corps."

"My reason for wanting to join the tanks was that my father was a tank man in the First World War. I was sent for training to Catterick Camp in Yorkshire, where we were trained in gunnery, driving, wireless operation, scout work and it was very good training and lasted about 16 months. After I'd finished my training at Catterick I was selected for the Middle East and we sailed for Sicily. The Sicily campaign had finished but the plans were for a landing on the mainland of Italy at Salerno."

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