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We sailed from Liverpool. I was a tank driver and I went to Egypt - from there went up to the western desert, all the way through to Austria. But as soon as I reached Austria I was sent home. I got back to England V J Day. I was over there, just over six years and often think was it all worth it?

I was on four tanks in total but wasn’t always on the line all the time. I was Crew Commander, Wireless Operator and Gunner. Like I said before, by the time we reached Austria the war was nearly over and we returned home to England by train.

By the time I got to Plymouth I started to wonder what was going on. Everybody was out enjoying themselves, singing and dancing I remember saying, ‘What’s going on here’ And someone replied ‘Are you going to join in’ I just said ‘No! I’m going home.’ It was rather a hectic time. We lost a lot of men, a lot of pals. I always said I wouldn’t get married, because you didn’t think you were ever going to survive. We did manage to have some fun, and I stayed in the army for a time, about twelve months. I was at Catterick then and joined up at Bovingdon. But I never got to return on leave, the reason being, we had to fly back and it took seven hours to get home when they sent us on leave.

When the war did finish - we had good football teams, hockey and cricket teams and we used to play each other. I haven’t got any survivors from the war. They are all gone. It was a long time ago now…

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