"We used to go out in the evening performance and we had some distinguished people in the audience. There was some Royal Family, we met them one night, and old Churchill came there another time, and we shook his hand. Anyway, we got right up to the semi-finals, and we laid off the drink while we were there, we played the game. But one night we went out because we wanted to make a presentation to our old staff sergeant, our trainer, he was an old regular. He trained the Egyptian Army before the war and they became champions of the Middle East. So we took him out down the Elephant and Castle, the Old Kent Road area, and we chipped in and bought him a cigarette case, and we made the presentation to him in the pub but we had a few beers, but next night when we got on the rope again we met a team of army butchers from Aldershot, and I’m afraid they beat us. But we got a medal for it and I treasure that medal because there’s only twelve of us in the whole army got that one. It was more important than the campaign medal."

"Before returning from Germany the old staff sergeant asked me if I’d like to sign on as a regular. He said there’d be some good promotion going, there’d be plenty of vacancies. So I thought it over and I was enjoying myself, so I thought -  I’ll sign on just for a year and see how it goes, so I duly signed on for a year, and we went out still messing about there with sports, went down to the Siegfried Line exploding minefields with the old flail tanks."

"And it went well. I went on a course at Gottinghen where the army had taken over a German college there, and I went on an engineering course. I thought that might improve my prospects. It was an engine course because we were getting British Rolls Royce Merlin engines in Comet tanks. So things were looking up but I was getting letters from home, from my firm who wanted me back again, so I didn’t know what to do. I was getting a bit despondent in some ways, I was losing all my old mates. They were all going and these young fellow were coming out and taking their place so I just couldn’t gel with them. So after a bit of heart-searching I decided to call it a day, and I went in and told them I was leaving, so they shipped me back to England and after my year was up I duly got my civvy suit and returned home."

"Took me a bit of time to settle down but I did start wearing my old pin-striped suit again, wasn’t as new as it was at the beginning but it was there. Things settled down and I went back to the old firm in the City again, back on the old locksmith job. Everything turned out all right in the end."