I was born on 26th July, 1920 at 37 Gordon Road, Dartford. Gordon Road was a gravelled road, sort of hard-packed flint and cobble, not tarmac'd at all. In the Summer a horse-drawn water-cart came round to lay the dust. When we were kids we used to run behind it and get all our legs wet and be chased off by the driver. We also had the muffin man coming round on Sundays with his board on his head selling crumpets and muffins and ringing his bell. At least once a year, I don't know where they came from, we had two Scotsmen come; all in full Highland gear, kilts and everything; and they used to walk all down Gordon Road playing the bagpipes, which was another big treat for the kids.

We had a sweetshop on the corner; that was at the bottom of the hill; and besides sweets my Mum sold hot cordials in the Winter evenings. All the local lads used to come in Friday nights and stand around drinking and gossiping. On Friday evenings we used to sell fish and chips which my eldest sister, Ada, used to fry on the gas-stove and serve out the kitchen window at the side.

In Summer we sold ice-cream. It was reckoned to be the best in Dartford. When I was a boy it was a highlight when the ice-man called. This used to be a canvas-covered lorry with ice-cubes, I suppose about 3 feet long by 15 inches by 15 inches, and he used to break them out with an ice-pick - this was to make ice-cream of course - and when he delivered we always had to have a chip off one of the corners and suck that, that was a big treat. I often used to churn the ice-cream. This was done in a straight-sided wooden barrel with a handle in the top. Inside was a galvanised drum with a paddle in it, and on the top of the galvanised drum was a gear-wheel like a crown-wheel which the handle fitted over, and the ingredients were put into the galvanised drum. Round the outside; between that and the wooden sides of the cask; was packed the broken ice. The lid was put on to the cask, the handle fitted, and I used to sit out in the garden winding this handle round. This obviously turned the container and also turned at a different speed the paddles inside - and that was the ice-cream.

On the corner of the street in front of the shop was a street gas-light and every day when it got dark the old lamplighter used to come round on his big sit-up-and-beg pushbike, with his long pole over his shoulder, and hook the hook into the chain on top of the lamp and pull it down and light the old lamp. He used to turn it off in the morning. Although we had gas downstairs we used to have candles to go to bed, in a candle-stick. I think the room I slept in must have been out the back somewhere because that didn't get any light from the street-lamps so we had a candle.

Mum apparently used to deliver most of the babies in Heath Lane. that was the slum area of Dartford at the time - I say 'slum area', it was the poor area, let's put it that way, because the inside of the homes, they were absolutely

spotless, brilliant, you know, lovely. All the poor people, anything wrong with their kids, they all used to come round to Mum, whether they'd cut their legs open, had a fever, anything, they all used to come round and see Mrs Sharp. Our family was very, very well-respected in Dartford, known all over Dartford - I say 'our family', I mean Mum and Dad. Even when I was quite grown-up, after the war even, if Mum walked down the town working-men would touch their hats or raise their hats to Mum, "Good morning," or, "Good afternoon, Mrs Sharp." Mum and Dad were really well-respected in Dartford, they were known all over the place.

Mum had a shop - well, had lots of shops - previous to this one and the last one was in Spring Vale. However, unemployment, and I suppose the General Strike in 1926 as well, ended the business. Mum told me because of all the unemployment and all the poor people, she used to let them have all their stuff on credit, their groceries and everything else, and of course they couldn't repay their debts. It got to the point where Mum often had to buy her own bread; that is, for us; on tick from Popple's the bakers. So that shop came to an end.

While we were there my little sister Betty died, a few months old. I remember her being in the kitchen with a kettle and a pipe from the kettle spout going into her pram. There was a cloth over the hood of the pram - the hood was up and the cloth was over it. That was to get steam in there because apparently she had pneumonia. There was no rushing off to hospital with kids, you did what you could afford, I suppose.

Dad, I can remember, moaning, because he used to hate it having to go to the Workhouse up West Hill to get Relief.

Dartford Workhouse

We had 1½d; three-ha'-pence I think it was, I'm not sure; at school. We got a ticket which entitled us to go down the soup-kitchen; which was in the Drill Hall near Dartford Park; and have a dinner down there. All I remember of

that horrible business was fish-pie - that's fish and potatoes mashed up - and water rice, and I used to hate it, I couldn't stand the taste of it. Of course, all the kids were poor. At Heath Street School (that was the first school I went to, with the playground backing on to our back garden, a 3 or 4 feet wide alleyway dividing the wall of the playground from our back garden) some of the kids had no shoes or slippers at all. I can remember once the teachers asking anyone who could afford a ha'penny or a penny to bring it in so the kids could have a pair of plimsolls to come to school in. We; and some of the others; had a bread-and-dripping; or something like that; sandwich passed through the school railings or over the wall at playtime for lunch.

Talking about that remind me that, as you know, I would not run errands for my Mum and would do anything; including lying through my teeth; to avoid it. Yet when the old lady who was the school caretaker was queer, I ran all her errands for a week, at the end of which she paid me with a slice of bread-and-dripping.

It was while we were at Gordon Road that Dad had his accident, I think it must have been at the beginning of the month because it used to be a superstition that at the beginning of the month the first thing you ever said was, "White rabbit!" and I can remember my sisters coming downstairs; I think it was Nell; and saying, "White rabbit!" on that beginning of the month. Anyway, he had his accident that day. He was climbing the ladder up to the top scaffold with his bag of tools on the end of his level and the level over his shoulder, sort of Dick Whittington-ified. So, he was going up the ladder with only one hand holding and the ladder was too short, not enough poked over the top scaffold. As his hand slid up the ladder, when he got to the top his hand went to take another grip of the ladder - and there was no ladder there, so down he went. He smashed up both his ankles. He wsa in hospital quite a while, I can't remember how long. I remember when he came out he was in a wicker Bath chair which the girls - and I and the other kids used to help - used to push him around in. He was in that for ages. It was ages - I think years - before the Union got him £500 compensation, before that the only money he had was the Union sick-pay.

Dad was a founder member of the Dartford Labour Party. He was also Treasurer of the AUBTW - that's the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers. Empire Day, when every kid in the school had to march in single file past a Union Jack that stood in a vase or something and salute it, was the signal for him to fulminate about the whole concept of 'Empire' (all the usual well-known arguments). May Day, however, was a different matter. The kids of all the members of the Working Men's Club in Lowfield Street assembled outside the WMC, and then we used to march around part of the town repetitively singing 'The Red Flag'. Then we went up to Dartford Heath where we sat on the grass and scoffed buns and lemonade.

I don't know of the buildings he worked on, I was too young, but I do know that he built the bridge arches that span the river under Prince's Road virtually single-handed. I don't know how that came about, but that's what I was told. I remember ever so plainly the local builders and brick-layer foremen coming round to our house in the evenings whenever they had a special sort of work to be done, getting him to tell them what was what off the drawings or to go to work and do this bit of special work - so he was well-known in the building-trade as a good tradesman.

I can't tell you much about my Granddad, except that I have been told that he would, after an argument in the pub, challenge the other chap to a rag-fight. This was done by each holding the corner of a handkerchief, or kerchief, and beating the living daylights out of each other. The loser was the first to let go. What a stupid thing! He got a bit funny in the head - when he got older, of course - and I was told that when he lived at Kent Road, when the coal used to be stashed outside, he swore that his next-door neighbour was taking shovelfuls of his coal away so he whitewashed all the face of his coal so he could see if he had. When he came to live with us - that was after his wife had died and he was getting a bit senile - he kept accusing me of pinching socks out of his drawer!

When the War started he used to go and stand right up with his ear alongside the wireless - because he was getting a bit deaf - to hear the news. This evening the news came came through that the Italians were being rounded-up in London. He shouted up the stairs to my Mum, "Em," (because he always called her Em for some reason), "Em," he said, "the Italians have surrounded London!"She said, "Don't be silly, Granddad, of course they haven't.""Yes they have," he said. "The Italians have surrounded London,"So she said, "Well, what do you think we've got to do about it?"He said, "We'll have to take to the hills."So Mum said, "Where do you think we're going to take to the hills?" and he said, "Out at Kingsdown!"

From 37 Gordon Road we moved to 14 Acacia Road - that's on the Council estate. That was a four-bedroomed Council house. My sisters, all of them, must have been out of service at that time because they were all definitely at home as I remember. We boys slept three in a bed, a big iron bedstead. Mum was still making our short trousers out of Army blankets and they didn't have any lining in, and we didn't wear underpants, no such thing as wearing underpants for poor kids! In the Winter, the rough seams inside used to chafe all our little thighs until they were red-raw and we used to come home from school, all these chapped thighs between our legs, Mum used to put Melrose on them. We wore nightgowns. They were made from old linen or calico; I know they were quite stiff material; sheets, and I can remember Dad spending evening after evening mending shoes - well, there were ten of us,

so he was busy night after night, almost. For the first time we had electric light and we had a bathroom with a cast-iron bath. There was a cold tap on it, but the hot water we filled with buckets from the gas boiler in the kitchen. Of course, now our finances were getting better, because, I suppose, work was getting a bit better.

From Acacia Road I went to the Wesleyan School. That had a playground underneath the road. I don't know if you can still see it, but it was below road level. There was a side one as well but most of the time the kids used to be down below, under the ground. I can remember going across the road to the Co-op which was dead opposite. When you had a penny you used to go over there and buy a penn'orth of broken biscuits, and, of course, on special occasions if you had three-ha'pence, you got a three-ha'penny cream horn, that was super.

As 9 and 10 year olds we used to go to the slaughterhouse in Lowfield Street on the way home from school to watch the animals being brutally killed, disembowelled and skinned. When the slaughterman got fed-up with us hanging around, if we didn't move quickly enough he would, with his big, long knife, puncture a stomach that lay in a barrow with all the other entrails, and flick some of the contents over us with the point. At other times one of us would be presented with a pig's bladder, which was very highly prized. This, though, only happened once in a blue moon. When we were teenagers (to use the modern term) we used to call there sometimes on a late afternoon and use the hanging carcasses as punch-bags. The father of one of the lads was an assistant there.

From the Wesleyan School I went to the West Central Secondary School. I'd passed the tests. I remember having tests but I didn't know anything about passing tests for the Grammar School but my class of kid sneered at the Grammar School kids and we used to call them names."Graammar-logs, grammar-logs,Tupenny-ha'penny goose-gogs."They used to wear red school caps and we all used to think they were terrible. I didn't want to go when I found out. Of course, when my Dad said to me, "Do you want to go to the Grammar School?" and I said,"No, definitely not," I think he was relieved in a way. I don't think he could face the expense; all the books and uniform and everything else you had to have; so I went to the West Central.

I hadn't been there very long when I got diphtheria and I was in Bow Arrow Hospital for sixteen weeks. That was a terrible place. Our towel and flannel used to hang on an iron railing just behind our pillow, and every morning you used to get them out to wash your face and both the towel and the flannel used to be crawling with earwigs, absolutely crawling, hundreds of them. The staff were a load of thieves. Mum used to send me parcels with cakes in that

she'd made, and fruit, and, you know, I never got a thing. All I got was an apple or an orange now and again. The rest of it I never saw the sight of at all. No-one was allowed to visit because it was diphtheria, an Isolation Ward, and as I say, I was in there for sixteen weeks, which is a bit traumatic for a kid, isn't it?

My Dad never knocked us about but we all lived in awe of him - not fear, but awe. I don't know whether it was because as a young man he'd had a whippet named Tush that had, obviously, died, or what the reason was, but he would never let us have any pets. No matter what pet we wanted he wouldn't let us have it. But one day I defied him and bought a pigeon, a homing pigeon, for sixpence; while he was at work, of course. I made - well, like a chicken run out of a sled turned on its side, some chicken-wire and bits of tin, and stuck this pigeon in it. He came home on his pushbike and went round to the shed to put his bike away. In he came, and I was trembling."Whose is that pigeon out there?" he said."That's mine," I said. There was a silence for a little while and then he said,"Well, you're not going to keep it in a thing like that. If you're going to keep a pigeon you're going to have a proper coop for it." So come the weekend, I helped him, he made a proper pigeon-coop. We finished up with - I believe it was - fifty; or getting on that way; pigeons after a long while. My sister Nina and my brother Frank were in on it too.

I left school at 14. After weeks of calling in at the local factories I was taken on at Vickers in 'The Wood', making bomb boxes. This meant nailing cleats on the sides of the boxes, screwing on the rope handles and then screwing the whole thing; sides; top and bottom; together and making the bomb box. For that we got paid 3d an hour and the total wage at the end of the week; that was after 2d was deducted for Natonal Insurance; was 11/7d. I used to keep 2/6 for myself and the rest was handed over to Mum. After the first week my right hand was just a mass of blisters, all broken, but some of the others, they were in a terrible state, all bleeding. We ran everywhere pulling a trolley, over to the sawmill to pick up the wood; sides and everything else, run back again and then start knocking these bomb boxes about. After a while, though, I got taken off bomb boxes and put on furniture. They used to get all the pieces of a bed from the sawmill, all the parts of a bedhead and the foot of the bed. We used to have to glue and dowel those all together and then hand-sand them to a mirror finish ready for French polishing. We did those, we did the same with Cossor wireless cabinets and all things like that. At 15 my rate went up to 4½d an hour.

Just after my 15th birthday, my Dad got me a job working with him on the buildings, that was for Crayford Council Direct Labour Scheme, doing council houses.

It was all lime mortar in those days, 9" solid walls using lime mortar and no cement. The quicklime used to come in by the cartload or the lorryload. That was shovelled into a large tank and water put on it and it all used to boil up and steam until it was slaked. The pargetting on the inside of chimney flues was a mixture of lime, sand and cows' manure. If you - as used to keep happening, especially if you were working at a height near your face - got a splash of this lime in your eyes it used to burn your eyes out and the only thing you had to do was to go up to your mate and he'd turn your eyelid over on a pencil and then lick your eyeball, but it was the quickest and best cure. I got 15/- a week then of which I had seven bob for myself and the rest handed over to Mum for housekeeping.

Of course, there were a lot of weeks on the dole between jobs and after a period of signing-on I got eight bob a week and that gradually rose to 10/7 a week. Of course, in those days there were no such things as holidays except the normal Bank Holidays and two days at Christmas, that was Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Good Friday we always had to work, and of course the so called holidays that we did have were unpaid.

There was no minimum week for inclement weather as came about after the War. We often worked soaked to the skin, it'd be running out the bottom of your trousers. If you got a pouring hard all day then you just had to carry on working like that until 5 o' clock otherwise you didn't get any money. The only times we stopped were when the General Foreman thought that the work was suffering. That's if the bricks were too wet so you couldn't keep the walls clean - the mortar used to squeeze out the water and mark all the bricks - so if he thought the work was going to suffer he'd blow up the

whistle, or if it was freezing too hard for the mortar to set properly then he stopped the work and we were sent home - unpaid, of course.

It was hard work in the Winter and when you got wet bricks in the Winter in no time at all they used to wear holes in the tips of your fingers and thumbs. Everybody was going round with the old, black, tarry insulation tape tied round their fingers. Still, it wasn't all grim, we did get some laughs as well.

Just before I was 18, I joined the Health and Strength League, and did weight-training in the evenings, mostly by myself. Frank would come occasionally but he was spending most of his time up at New Town (that's the are on the left going up East hill, a development of the town around 1900) with the girls. I've still got my certificate, dated 2-6-1938.

I volunteered for the RAF and went in on 6th August, 1940, when I was 20. We had two weeks drilling on the Prom, at Blackpool. I was billeted at 62 Crystal Road, Blackpool. The holidaying public was dropping off a bit (mind, there were still hundreds of people at Blackpool, they used to stand there and watch us and laugh at us when we went wrong with our drilling) and I suppose the boarding houses were losing a lot of custom so of course they took on us lads.

This old horror at 62 Crystal Road, she was a devil, she was. I'd had all my vaccinations, typhoid and bubonic plague injections and tetanus injections - you name it and we had it - and I got vaccination fever and lost a lot of weight, and diarrhoea. I got home for dinner late - one Sunday I think it was - and walked into the dining place and she started raving off. "Where the devil

have you been? I can't keep my dinner hot. How do you think I can keep your dinner hot? Everyone else is here on time." She was raving off like billy-o.

Anyway, she stuck this dinner, some Lancashire Hotpot stuff in front of me and I just looked at it and I just couldn't face it. I said, "I can't eat it." Oh, off she went again, you would think she wasn't getting paid for it, and she was raving off like a madwoman about this dinner. The old obstinate streak set in and I said, "I'm not eating it," and she kept on and the finish of it was when she snatched it away and took it back out.

There was a couple - with a kid or two kids, I'm not sure - who were holidaymakers and they were on another table. They got up and they came across and shoved a pile of silver in front of me and said, "Here you are, lad, treat yourself," and they walked straight to where the old girl was and said they wanted their bill. She wanted to know what they were leaving for. I can remember him saying, "We're not going to stay in a place like this when you can carry on like that to a young lad who's very soon going to be fighting for his country." It was a big boost to me - that was lovely.

I was at Blackpool for two weeks and then we got posted to Grantham, to the RAF College at Cranwell. Funnily, in the foyer at Cranwell there was an oil-painting of Goering and it was still there all through the war as far as I know.

There we were taught the Lewis gun and then we were stuck on a gun-post. That was a circular, turfed embankment with a wooden post in the middle with a Lewis gun stuck on top. We were supposed to do two hours on duty on the gun-post and four hours off, but we did our own rota so what we did was two hours on and two hours off - that was through twenty-four hours - so that we could have a day off when our turn came round.

This meant that we used to sleep in our clothes - we used to take our boots off - but by the time you got to sleep someone was shaking your shoulder, you'd got to get up again and go out. It was a bitter cold Winter and you know how flat Lincolnshire is. The wind used to come howling across that blasted plain, right across the aerodrome, and the snow used to be horrible. I was there for a year, I didn't get home for a whole year, stuck on my own.

I used up some of my nine lives at Cranwell. One time was when a sergeant had us all in a Nissen hut where there was a table on which stood a Bren gun on its tripod, around which we all gathered. Also on the table was a pile of blank ammo, which looked the same as the live but had a paint mark on the casing.

First he took off the casing containing the live ammo, and showed how to strip the gun, then in order to show how the gun worked and how to deal with a stoppage he emptied the magazine on to the table and loaded up with some of the blanks. The two heaps were now side by side and one of the live rounds must have rolled into the blanks, because suddenly one of the lads who was standing at his side said, "That was a live one, Sergeant!"

Instead of taking it out to check he answered, "I know what I'm doing, Rudd. Be quiet and learn something". He put the magazine in the gun and started to demonstrate pulling the trigger and ejecting the shells. I was standing in front of the muzzle which was pointing at my midriff, and for some unknown reason I moved about six inches to one side just before he pulled the trigger again. That's when he shot a neat hole through the side of the hut. He went pale, but I can't remember him apologising.

On another occasion we were being instructed about the different sorts of mines, in particular an Anti-Personnel Mine that had a delayed action. You stepped on it and as you moved off, swinging your rear foot over, it shot a six-inch nail upwards into your crotch - it had rather a rude nickname! We were being shown how the firing-pin came up to hit the detonator. Being curious, I wanted to see how it worked and so I picked this mine up and peered inside. The firing-pin shot out and punched me on the right eyebrow - I carried the mark there for years.

While I was there I'd had a gutful of the RAF, then a circular came round that they wanted people to volunteer to go down the mines, it was an option, you could get out of the RAF if you went down the mines as a 'Bevin Boy'. Well, I and four or five others volunteered like a shot but they never let us go, so that was that.

All I knew about motor-bikes at this time was from when Ted and Stella were courting. Ted used to come round and leave his bike at the side of the house.

I used to sit on it and when I was sure they were far enough away I'd start it up and take it off its stand.

Well, one day they asked, "Can anybody ride a motor-bike?" I'd ridden a 1914 Douglas in the old brickfield off Sycamore Road - with a gramophone-handle gear-lever sticking up out of the tank, no clutch - but; anything for a change; I said, "Yes, I can," along with some others. We had to report to the M.T. yard where they had a 500c.c. B.S.A. Well, I could start it up, and we had to weave round these cones and I managed that all right, and we were the first ones in the Armoured Flight they were starting with an American car called a Terraplane.

The bloke in charge of the M.T. yard took a real shine to me, treated me like his son, and asked me to help in the yard. I used to do the maintenance on all the vehicles there, a real mixture acquired haphazardly. Among these motor-bikes was a Rudge Rapide all in pieces around the walls and shelves and I thought, "Why not put it together for another motor-cycle?" He went on leave and I was in the M.T. yard all by myself, a dead cushy number that was, filling in forms, recording the petrol that was used. While he was away I put this thing together, somehow. He came back off leave and I told him I'd put it together - I was so proud.

"You what?" he said - and he was fond of me. He blew his top. "Right, you've assembled it, now you test-ride it." I started it up, put it into gear and drove out of the M.T. yard. I went through Cranwell, all these people walking around, and got out into the country-side. Well, I don't know how I didn't get killed, or kill anyone else. The brakes wouldn't work - I obviously hadn't adjusted them - and the carburetion was too weak: I'd open it up and go faster for a bit then it would slow right down, and when I tried to slow down I'd hit a point where all of a sudden it would get faster again. I was frightened to death but I got back without harming myself. Thinking back, I reckon he was going to smuggle it home bit by bit, that's why he was so irate. He forgave me, but he was never so nice again.

Then I went on a motor-cycle course for a Dispatch Rider. The motor-cycle course was good because we used to drive all over the Pennines through rivers and brooks and across fields and up mountains and down the other side. That was terrific, that was lovely - didn't last long enough, though.

When I came back I used to have to escort the crashed aeroplanes from a satellite airfield called Fulbeck. The pilots used to do a lot of night-flying training and they used to keep crashing their 'planes, landing in at night. If it was towable I used to have to go out and escort this thing in, with the wings taking up all the road, of course there wasn't all the traffic on the roads. Some horrible sights there, there were.

You'd get there and there was just this pile of plywood and a horrible stink and lumps of meat hanging on bits and pieces. There was one where the thing had crashed and the pilot had slumped forward when he'd crashed and his leg had broken, his shin-bone had come up through his knee and speared him right through the chest. There was this great white bone sticking from his knee in his chest, like he was knitted up.

I also did a spell with the MO assisting him, mainly dealing with burnt and cut pilots. I had to give them saline washes to lift off the scabs and put on - I think it was Acriflavine. I was there for weeks - maybe even months.

One of the things I had to do was be a bonfire guard. For two or three miles around the College they built whacking-great bonfires with forty-gallon drums of oil - old sump-oil and everything else - standing nearby. The idea was if the aerodrome or the college was under attack, from bombs or anything else, I had to jump on the motor-bike and go flying round these bonfires and set them all alight so that it would create a diversion - they'd see all this stuff alight and think that was where they had to carry on bombing. 'How we'd win', when all we'd got was a box of matches and no paper!

One night, I don't know how it was, but the College caught fire. I was on this bonfire-business duty and of course I had to report to the Wing-Commander. He said - and there was a fire-engine there, or some fire-engines there - "I want you to go to the fire-station at Boston and tell them that they're not needed, it's under control." Why the hell couldn't he pick up the 'phone and 'phone them up? Well, I didn't know how to get to Boston, and I set off, all I had was my battledress on, not wrapped up or anything, that was another Winter's night.

I drove through these lanes to where I thought Boston was, finally found it, went through this deserted town and found the fire--brigade and gave them the message. The fire-officer looked at me as if I was out of my tiny mind and I came back and, well, why I didn't die of pneumonia I don't know. I was shaking from head to foot, absolutely shaking, and I went back to this place where I had to be on guard, it was like a shed, it was a storeroom actually, and I opened up the cupboard and I put sixteen blankets - I can remember counting them - sixteen blankets over me and I lay there until I got warm. That was how their stupid minds worked.

After the Germans captured Crete the Army said that they couldn't defend RAF airfields any more, the R.A.F would have to defend their own airfields, so that's when the RAF. Regiment was created. So we were, without so much as by-your-leave, suddenly out of the RAF and into the RAF Regiment. Well, we didn't have proper armoured cars, we had a few motor-bikes, one American

saloon car and a big Leyland vehicle that had all been armour-plated; that was called an Armadillo, whacking-great thirty-tonner it was; and lorries with a flat back with a concrete pillbox put on and a gun stuck in the middle of that. That was the armoured car that we were going to defend Britain with!

But gradually things got better, we got proper armoured cars eventually, Morrises at first, then Humbers. I got taken off the Dispatch Riding and put in charge of a car, Car-Commander. I was in 'A'-Troop, that was the first Troop obviously, and I was in the scout-car, which meant I was in front of everybody else.

Then I went on a water-driving course, that's where you had to learn how to waterproof all your engine. One of the things you had to use a lot was stuff called Trinidite Pressure Putty. Of course, all the electrics had to be sealed and the exhaust pipe had to have a pipe put on the end and put straight up in the air so that it would exhaust in the air. When it was all finished you had to get in this lorry and drive it through a sort of swimming-bath down a ramp. The water'd be up to your chest. You had to drive it through and God help you if you hadn't waterproofed it because you had to be towed out. I passed that all right.

Then I went on a signals course. That was to learn semaphore with flags, Aldis lamp and sending and receiving Morse Code. That was a horrible place - was it Wheaton? I'm not sure. We used to go on parade in the morning, then go trooping off to this hut and stick these earphones on and all morning you'd get 'bip bip bip beep bip beep beep bip beep", right through your head and you're trying to write it down, it was horrible, it was. I didn't like that at all, but that was where I had my 'mutiny'.

I think it was about a three-week course and it came to the last week. We went on parade and these two sergeants that used to take us said that everyone had to pay a shilling for the Sports Fund. The corporal in charge of each hut was responsible for collecting it off his hut. Well, there were about thirty in each hut so it was quite a few-odd quid they were going to collect. I got back and I thought to myself, "What Sports Fund? We don't have any sports while we're here. It's a wrangle, they're collecting it for themselves. Time they'd collected it and got it in their pockets we'll be sent back to our Units and they're going to have that in their pockets."

So I said to all the blokes in our hut, I told them what I thought: it was a fiddle, and if any of them wanted to pay their shilling they're welcome to do it but I wasn't going to collect it. So of course, if I wasn't going to collect it no-one was going to pay it, and I'm the Joe who's going to take the rap, aren't I? Of course they're not going to pay off their own bat, are they?

The next morning after parade I got a chance to speak to this sergeant in front of all the crowd so I said, "What's this shilling for?" and he told me it was for the sports. I said, "But we don't have any sports."

"Ah," he said, "the permanent staff on the station, you've seen them out there playing football." I said, "Yeah, but that's not us. Why should we pay for them?" He said, "Well, someone's got to pay for it, everyone on the station has to pay." So I said, "I'm not paying, and I'm not collecting the hut." He said, "You'll pay it," and threatened me with one thing and another.

I stuck it out until it was getting near the time to go, I suppose halfway through the week, everybody else had paid, I hadn't collected mine and paid, so we came on parade again and they said again about paying this money. So I said again about the sports. He said, "But it's not only the sports, there's the shoe-repairer on the station, you have to pay for your shoe repairs, and there's the barber." I said, "When you go to the barber you pay him. I don't know about the shoe-repairer, but we don't come here and have our shoes repaired." He kept on trying to find things we had to pay for and I just wouldn't accept it. So he said, "Right, we'll see about this," and we went off and finished that day.

Next morning we were all in bed, all bedlam broke loose. These sergeants came flying in, shouting out to everybody, "Get up and get out of it! Where's Corporal Sharp? I want to see your feet on the floor!" Well, I woke up and heard this hullabaloo going on and we finally came to our senses and he said, "Right, you're all on a charge." So I said, "What for?" He said, "Because reveille's gone and you're not up." So I thought to myself, "Well, this is the first time this has happened." If we didn't want to get up at reveille we used to say to one of the others, "Go and see what's for breakfast, and if it's

sausages again fetch me back a cup of tea!" and you'd have a little bit of a lie-in.

Anyway we were all on a charge because we weren't up for reveille. So I got up and the first opportunity I got I walked all round that station and I looked at every notice-board in every hut and every notice-board on the 'public' roads round the station and no mention did I see on Standing Orders that when reveille went you had to get up. It just said, 'Reveille at 6.30' or 7 o'clock, or whatever it was. So I thought to myself, "Sod 'em."

That same morning we went on parade and he said, "Now, on Sunday all Corporal Sharp's hut will report to the Church and take all the chairs and put out all the chairs and when the service is over you'll put all the chairs back again." I said, "But you can't do that, Sergeant, you can't put us on fatigues if we've not been charged." He said, "I told you this morning you were on a charge." I said, . . ."Yeah, and if you go on a charge you have to go before the C.O. and he gives the punishment. You can't dish out punishment."

"You'll report at the Church." "Well," I said, "I'm not reporting to the Church. If I'm going on a charge . . . "You're disobeying an order," he said, "and that's a court-martial."

"Oh, well," I said, "if it's a court-martial I shall be court-martialled, but I'm not going to be punished when I've not been found guilty of anything. I've not done anything wrong."

So Sunday morning all the hut went trooping up to the Church to do all their fatigues with these chairs - I didn't go, and I never heard anything more about it.

Come the day before we had to go back to our Units, I was walking up past some huts, these two sergeants came walking the opposite way and they looked at me and they said, "You're going back to your Unit tomorrow, are you?" and I said, "Yeah," and they said, "Bloody good job to get rid of you."

They were as wild as hell, they weren't laughing. I can laugh about it now but it was dead serious at the time, a bit frightening really. I didn't want to end up in the glasshouse, did I? As they say, you get obstinate and you don't move, do you?

I hated every minute of it, especially after we got an officer, Croft his name was, he came from Sevenoaks, he worked in a bank. I don't know what he did in a bank, but I despised that bloke and he knew I was just about as intelligent as he was, if not more so in some ways. He knew I despised him and he hated the sight of me.

I swear that on at least two occasions he tried to get me killed, or injured. If I was injured I'd be posted out somewhere else to another Unit, time I came out of hospital.

The first time, we went out on manoeuvres, when, as I say, he tried to get me killed. For some reason or other - I was an armoured car commander on the first car in the crowd - he took me off the car, stuck me on a motor-bike and stuck the Dispatch Rider in my place on the car. I thought to myself, "Oh-oh, what's he up to now, then?" I was suspicious of him.

Anyway, we started off. I'm not sure where we were at but it was all twisty lanes we were going through. We'd gone out for a little while and he suddenly stopped everybody, called me up to him and told me to go back - I can't remember what I had to go back for but I had to go back for something - and then he said, "Go back and then come back here as quick as you can."

So I went back to where I had to go - whether I had to go back to the Camp or report to somebody I can't remember. I know I had to go back. Anyway, I did what I had to do - reported, say - jumped on the motor-bike, came flying round these lanes again - because, as I say, there was no traffic on the roads - and got past where we'd stopped. He'd gone on a bit.

I came round this blind bend - and I was really travelling - and he was stopped right round this blind bend, and he hadn't just stopped there accidentally. There was absolutely no reason for him to stop there. He was intelligent enough to know that where he'd stopped he would not be seen until whoever came round the corner was on top of him. He was even standing in the cockpit looking back to the corner waiting for me.

So of course I slammed on the brakes but, because the 'bike was lying right over, the back wheel locked and the back wheel came round and stared me in the face. I stood up on the pedals - it was the same as dirt-track riders are when the back wheel comes round and your front wheel turns the other way - and I just went hurtling along this road off this corner towards him. Luckily I missed him, I don't know how, it was more by luck than judgement, but that was the first time, and I reckon he did it on purpose.

The second time, we went out on manoeuvres and I think it was the South Downs, North Downs, it was some Downs anyway, There was this hill and a track went round the side of the hill, sort of circular round the side with a drop on the left-hand side and it was quite steep, going up ever so steeply.

He took everybody out of my car -everybody, well he took the gunner and the driver out of my car - told me to get in the driving seat and drive up this track. He'd reconnoitred the place before, that was one of the things he did, he always used to go out and do his reconnoitring so that he was au fait with

the terrain and everything else and used to try to make the rest of us look silly - well, me especially, because I was the map-reader.

So, he told me to drive up this track to the top of this hill, going round this track that circled the hill. Well, I jumped in, pointed the nose at the track and started off - well, I hit this hill, you know what an armoured car's like, you've only got a little slot to see through. That's bad enough, but in armoured cars normally the car commander tells the driver exactly where he's got to go: left; right; hard left; reverse: all that business. So, I'm on my own looking through this slot. I hit the hill, of course up comes the bonnet of the armoured car and I couldn't see the track anymore. That just disappeared. All I could see was the bonnet. I just couldn't see a thing, just the top of the bonnet of this armoured car.

It hit me then what he'd done it for. I think he was hoping I was going to go over the side, and of course the car would roll down and the car would be all right, but I wouldn't have been, all grenade boxes and ammunition boxes flying around inside. But anyway, I hung on for grim death and finally got to the top of the hill where I could see - so he was done in the eye. But he did that on purpose - I'd swear my life away he did it. Of course, everybody else, they went up in the normal armoured car, three to a car with a car commander - including him.

We had a laugh sometimes. There was one officer and he was a swine - not Croft, another one - he was a swine, he was. He wasn't in charge of our Flight, he was in charge of another Flight, same squadron, and he used to get them blanco-ing, blanco-ing, blanco-ing, he wanted his Flight turned out like Coldstream Guards or something.

Every time they came on parade he used to send them back - they weren't good enough - and they had to blanco their kit and clean their brasses and get out on parade the next morning. He had some rough 'uns in his Flight.

One day we were down at what used to be a very small holiday camp, there were little chalets around so we were inside. The floors were concrete in these chalets. He'd sent them back, they had to blanco again that night and he was going to inspect them in the morning - inspect their beds, see that the bottoms of their shoes were polished and everything else. One of these blokes had had enough of him.

He got his iron bed, he got some buttons, greatcoat tunic buttons, plastic buttons, and he put them under the four bed legs so they stood on these plastic buttons so the bed was insulated. Then he stuck a plug in the socket alongside the bed and took one wire from the plug and wound it round the iron bed and the other one he put on the floor and put something over the top so that the earth was on the concrete floor and the live was on the bed.

They laid out all their kit and the officer came round to inspect their kit in the morning. Of course, the first thing he did was touch this bed. He's supposed to have danced a jig hanging on to this bed - they were only 110 volts - he did a jig on this bed. Anyway, the bloke got sent to the glasshouse - I forget for how long - but he reckoned it was worth it.

There was a sergeant, Sergeant Stallard his name was, he was another swine, they were all ignorant pigs they were, and he was hated for what he was. We were on manoeuvres once and we pulled up - this was on the North Downs somewhere - in this field for dinner, have our sandwiches. Before we set out we were issued with hard rations and that included either a tin of Maconochie's Soup or a soup tablet. He told a couple of lads in his Flight to hot his soup up for him in his mess-tin.

They took his mess-tin and his soup and put it in, then went scrounging round and they got all the rabbit droppings and bird droppings they could find and stuck them in his soup. They mixed it all up, heated it up and took it to him. He scoffed the lot. We all had our dinner and afterwards they said to him, "How did you like your soup, Sergeant?" and he said, "Cor, it was shit-hot!"

Maconochie's also made tinned stew that we all got poisoned with once. We were living under canvas at the time, fifteen men to one round bell tent, one panel per man and his kit, with all feet to the centre pole. The wall of the tent was about 2 feet to 2 feet 6 inches high and was rolled and tied up during the day, to air the inside. But at night after it had been let down, one of the panels could be tied back as an entrance.

We'd been on manoeuvres during the day and had had this stew when we got back, I awoke during the night with a noise from my stomach like someone was emptying a bath. Perhaps it was more sensation than actual noise really. I got to my feet and oh god, how I managed to get my trousers on I do not know. I was a fool to hang about that long. The toilets were right across the other side of the field up a shortish but fairly steep slope. The toilets by the way were á la building site but more communal in that four of you could sit side by side and hold hands.

To cut a long story short I finished up crawling on my hands and knees up this slope in agony as it was the only way I could progress without losing control. All around I could hear blokes moaning and on the way I was passed by a chap coming down. Luckily there was a space on the pole and I squatted. Oh, blessed relief. I sat there through all the comings and goings, the meanings and the curses, until I finally made my way back to the tent passing on the way down the same bloke who was coming up for the second time and I laid down again.

Then someone across the other side scrabbled to his feet and started to pick his way in the dark across the radiating legs to the entrance, he managed this all right but blew it directly he lifted one leg over the tent wall. Luckily the mess was outside. Then another chap did the same thing. He negotiated the legs. He negotiated the wall. He got outside and tripped over a guy-rope. He blew it as well.

That's when I started to get the giggles and couldn't stop. The cries of, "It's nothing to laugh at, Sharpy," woke someone else who had been sleeping soundly; he had been sleeping too soundly because he only had time to say, "Bloody hell!" or words to that effect when there was a noise like tearing calico and this awful stink. He was turfed out with his palliasse and blanket and we settled down for what was left of the night..The next morning we were due to move somewhere else, and here, to give them their due, the officers showed their fitness to be leaders of men. They actually found a space that wasn't fouled where two hundred men could be paraded. I stood there on that parade and two blokes in front of me had large wet patches all over the seats of their trousers where they had evidently held them under the stand-pipe and tried to wash off their accidents, as one only had one pair of trousers, but I could smell them even from where I stood.

That was one of the few times that I have stood on a CO's parade with my chest aching with suppressed laughter. I'm glad that I wasn't on the rear-guard detail. I didn't fancy striking the tents and clearing up that mess.

Once we were on manoeuvres from - I believe - Lympne with the Home Guard, 'attacking' their defensive position. In our squadron we had six armoured cars, 30-cwts. for the rifle crowd, 2-pounder anti-personnel guns and a jeep for the officer. We got orders to rendezvous at a certain map reference. I was in the 'A'-Troop scout car so I've got to read the map. Normally I'd stand up in the turret, but thought that I didn't want any of the Home Guard popping up and going "Bang" at me, so I decided to be careful, crouching down and just sticking my head up occasionally.

Well, I missed a right-turn on the coast road - and didn't know it; there's no topography on the Marshes and very few churches you can see as you bob up and down. Anyway, we finished up at Dungeness Lighthouse, and that's a dead end!

So I had to take the driver on the shingle round the lighthouse and back along the coast-road - past the rest of the Troop. The CO was being driven along, acting like Montgomery, with his map. He looked at me, his jaw

dropped open, he looked at his map, he looked at me, he looked back at his map as we sailed past! And later, nobody, but nobody said a word!

We had a chap from the Welsh Guards: 'The Army Knows It All'. He brought with him a squad of his Army blokes to hold manoeuvres against the RAF They were going to show us how good they were - we showed them up! At night I was walking past some gorse bushes when a bloke stuck a rifle in my back and I was 'taken prisoner'. "Hands up!" he said. I remembered my basic training. It's very silly to stick a rifle in someone's back: they can dislodge the rifle by turning round, quicker than the captor can fire. So that's what I did and got up the rifle so the tables were turned! I finished up with his rifle and walked off and left him. I put it in the RAF Armoury. Our C.O. was cock-a-hoop. He was even grinning at the salute the next morning!

The last part of the manoeuvres was a demonstration with armoured and support cars - how not to do it and then how to do it. My mate Ron Swift from Birkenhead was the gunner in the turret and he was shouting out all the Stalinist, Communist slogans; 'Joe for King'; 'Up with Communism'. Within two to three weeks he was posted, on his own, to Burma. MI6 were obviously looking out, even then! I wrote to him and I know he survived the war.

On 27th July 1944 we went to the Assembly Area at Fareham and got issued with a 24-hour ration pack, vomit bags, Mae Wests, a cooker, etc. On 28th July we woke up at two o' clock in the morning and had to drive to Gosport . Then we loaded up on the L.S.T.s - that's the Landing Ship Tanks - and we moved off in the evening. That was horrible down in the guts of that ship, it was like a hot-house. On 29th July we lay off the beaches all day, hundreds of ships, as far as the eye could see. We landed at Graye-sur-Mer at half past eleven at night and moved to the Transit Area.

Because I knew more German than I know now, I had been sent to Military Intelligence in London on a one-week course to learn how to assess and pass over German papers and documents. So I had to go to the German H.Q. on any airfield that we came to and go through the papers and sort out any that were Confidential and Top Secret.

The next day we moved to Carpiquet aerodrome, that's near Caen. Caen at that time hadn't been taken. Caen should have been taken almost straightaway but the bridgehead had got blocked there. We were at Carpiquet, that was a very small aerodrome. The battle was going on about two miles down the road. We dug ourselves in - the night before we'd slept alongside the cars, just slept out in the open alongside the cars.

On 1st August we moved to Cristot - that's an airstrip - then on 6th August we went back to Carpiquet. On 10th August we moved to a quarry at Haut-Mesnil - that's on the Falaise road. That was under 88mm fire and this quarry was a flying-bomb storage. There were big caves, caverns cut into the sides of the quarry which is where we got under quickly with the cars. I found some papers there and handed them in, they were marked 'Secret' and 'Confidential', they were German papers. On 11th August we went back to Carpiquet. We had a letter of appreciation from Chapman, whoever he was, to Garrett; that was our Commander; about these papers.

On 19th August we moved to Ellon and on 20th August back to Pierrepont, at the neck of the Palaise pocket. On 21st August we went to Opportune, outside Flers, then back to Pierrepont. On 26th August we went back to Ellon.

28/8; we did 151 miles to Champigny-la-Futelaye.29/8: moved to Jumelles.31/8: did 83 miles to Beauvais

That's over the Seine. These were all aerodromes that Jerry had just left, a few pockets knocking around. I found a P38 revolver. I found a tank with some blue stuff in it, like blue petrol, and handed it in - well, told the bosses where it was. They were very interested in that apparently. I'm not sure whether they said it was a new kind of fuel or something for the V1s - I can't remember.

3/9: moved to Méricourt. Brussels liberated.'

Then for some reason I got taken off the car and put on a Harley--Davidson from the dispatch rider.

7/9 we did 107 miles to Melsbroek, 43 miles inside Belgium, ,8 miles past Brussels.2/9: moved to Diest, recce-ing and one thing and another.

That was when we were in a weird house sort of place and one of our blokes who'd found a revolver - like me - went and shot himself. I saw him on his back and his face deathly-white, he was twitching and shaking all over as if he was in an epileptic fit and I wondered what the devil was happening. Then he died - anyway, he'd shot himself and I had to go as witness on the inquiry.

15/9: moved to Bourg Leopold at midnight. 16/9: we joined up with the Guards.

I think it was the 11th Armoured Brigade, that was when the 'Bridge Too Far' business was on, Nijmegen and the other one.

The plan is to take Eindhoven. We move up with the Guards Armoured Division, recce the aerodrome, then the paratroops are going to be dropped on Sunday to secure the bridges and the aim is to thrust forward and encircle 100 000 Jerries. We've got the important job as the 'drome is the key to the whole plan. Looks like the real thing this time.

I'm on the motor-bike as we moved up with the Guards to the Dutch frontier near the canal. We pulled into a sand-pit as an Assembly Area with the 11th Guards. Croft had us dig his slit-trench and then put his tent over it - his tent! - so if we came under fire he could roll off his campbed straight into his trench! We all had to dig our slit--trenches.

Then that night all hell broke loose and we were under mortar- and shell-fire, Moaning Minnies screaming over, cars were getting knocked out, tanks and everything else, blokes moaning. We all dived for our slit-trenches. One bloke from another armoured car decided he would be better off in his car rather than in the trench but having got in he then decided it was a bit lonely and he needed company. So he opened the door and called out, "Len", just as bang, a shell came over and he slammed the door shut. He kept trying but every time he thought it was safe and he spoke over came a shell and he slammed the door shut! "Len," bang. "Len", bang'. "Len", bang.

The Jerry counter-attacked in the night - apparently across the canal - and got into a factory 200 yards away. I think it was the Durham Light Infantry cleared them out before the morning. We were soaked to the skin, I lay in my slit-trench trembling all over, shaking all over and praying - to stop shaking. Now I can laugh about the bloke in the armoured car, but it was really terrifying at the time.

18/9: a barrage opened up 15 yards behind us and the Airborne went over, a crowd went over the top of us, the Typhoons and the Mustangs, the Spits, and the Thunderbolts all went over.

You could see them all going down dive-bombing, firing rockets and strafing and then we started our mad dash over the canal into Holland. There were four lines of traffic belting along just as fast as we could go. We hadn't got very far when some Junkers 88s came over and bombed the concentration area where we'd been ten or fifteen minutes before.

I was stuck behind the tanks because I was leading - the tanks went first, the Guards Armoured was first, I was next and all our squadron was after me. So, I reckon I was the first ground RAF bloke who ever went into Holland. At night we dug in alongside the road. Then we set off for Eindhoven at the crack of dawn.

That was a stinking hot Summer and we were going up this road, track or cross-country, I don't know what it was, but the red, brick-red dust, clay dust was coming up like a choking fog. I had to take my goggles off because I couldn't keep them clean. When we got to Eindhoven we stopped in the town, all the people were cheering and running round and kissing everybody, all the girls. A couple of young girls came up and said, "Black Peter!" and stood alongside me on my motor-bike while their father or whoever it was took a photograph. I'd love to see that because I was in a hell of a state. My face was all plastered with this stuff. It was all dry, my skin was splitting, cracked and splitting.

We peeled off from the Guards and got on to the airfield and did a quick recce. That's when I nearly deserted because all the officers cleared off. They were scouting round the town - I don't know if it was after loot or what - but we were left on our own. All the while we were getting these rumours coming in, we could hear rifle fire going on, it was coming from the town, 'Jerry had got in the town,' and rumours were piling in thick and fast.

I thought to myself, "Blow this, I'm not going to stand here," so I got all the Flight together, got all our guns off the cars, and I was going to march them all across country, back where we came from. Luckily enough, our officer turned up otherwise I'd have been court-martialled for desertion.

We did a recce the next day. By the 20th September I hadn't had any sleep for three nights and I had the boots off for the first time in four days.

I got sent back to Melsbroek and couldn't get back again on the same day - and was billetted with some very nice people, I said I'd write to them after the war but never did. I came back on the old Harley after breakfast on 23rd September up the road which was called Club Route - each route had a card insignia and this was Club Route.

78 miles of vehicles nose-to-tail, sometimes two abreast. I had a job to get through, parts I had to leave the road and go over the fields. I got back and turned the Harley over to the D-R.

There were counter-attacks and so on - you know what goes on in war. On one of the recces in Holland with 'A'-Troop I used up yet another of my nine lives. I was in front in the scout car. I was just coming up to a bend in the road, more of a track really, when a bloke jumped out of a ditch and started waving his arms and shouting.

By the time I'd told the driver to slow down we were almost on the bend, and around it I could just see a tank all ablaze. I thought that that was what I was being warned about, it being in the way, so told the driver to carry on. We'd just squeezed past the tank when it happened. We wore berets and I had my goggles pushed up onto my forehead over the front band of my beret.

Suddenly there was this terrific gust of wind across my face that caught my goggles and hat and blew them onto the back of my head, where I instinctively caught them with my hand. Then I heard a loud bang that seemed to come from a copse over the fields to the right. I yelled out, "Stop!

Reverse! Stop!" as fast as the driver could comply, and stopped, sheltered by the tank. There I had to radio the other two cars to go back, explain to my driver and tell him that when I said, "Go!" he would have to reverse as fast as he could until he was back round the corner, which is what we did.

I reckon that a little bit nearer and that shell would have gone on with my head impaled on it. I should have put down a couple of smoke canisters, but I didn't think about it.

29th September: moved up to the airfield at Grave, that's 46 miles up the corridor.30/9: went on to Oss. We recced Heesch-Oss - all O.K2/9:

That was when a jet came over dropping these anti-personnel bombs. Horrible things - you see them falling out and you're thinking how they're all going to burst; I had my flak suit on. Then there was a rumour - that was Friday 6th October -

Jerry paratroops dropped south of Nijmegen so we had to be up all night. 50 A-P bombs were dropped on the strip.

Then a twin-engined jet got shot down and landed in a small lake. The powers-that-be wanted it salvaged to find out all about it - of course, you can guess who had to go and get in this lake, can't you, with that Crofty around! I had to go up there, trouser waders on, and I was up to my waist in water, bending down; while they were pumping out; and finding bits of this 'plane, jagged edges cutting my hands, but by five o' clock we'd got one engine out. Next day I was back on the salvaging, thigh-deep in water, mud and oil.

Got the cowling out but reckon the other engine must be down about 10 feet from the surface.

I was told that a picture of me was in the Flight magazine, whether that's true or not I don't know, and they were supposed to have found out a lot about these jet engines.

16/8: moved back to Eindhoven.29/8: went to Hertogenbosch with some Intelligence officers. The town still under shell- and mortar-fire, snipers about.1/11: went to Tilburg, again with the Intelligence officers. Philip's works and the airfield on the Breda road.Thursday 2nd November: got 7 days' leave in Brussels.25th December: had to take a crowd up to Veghel. I was the duty guard officer.

I went up there and I was half-canned, still, I suppose I sobered up by the time I got there.

26/12: went to the flicks this afternoon but slept right through the film. Only one in the billet tonight, I'm just too tired to go out.1st January 1945 New Year's Day: half past nine at Eindhoven we were bombed, machine-gunned and cannoned for about thirty minutes by Fokke-Wulf 190s and Me109s and jet jobs and they were coming over just over the house tops....

When I ran out of our billet this 'plane was coming over and there was the bloke looking at me. Luckily - I've thought about it since - obviously he was too low, if he'd have dipped his nose down to fire his guns he would have crashed into the ground - but it was scary! They shot up the airfield, bashed out all the 'planes there. One of our gunners on the cars, he claimed one, he shot one, and my gunner claimed one, shot down. Everybody was firing with small-arms fire -the Bofors guns couldn't come down low enough. After they'd gone it was a bit hairy. All the 'planes were replaced inside a couple of hours so Jerry didn't get far, it was a last-minute bash, I suppose.

On 2nd January I had to guard a German pilot who'd been captured after he'd been shot down - he was only 20 - so I sat there with him, practised out the little bit of German that I knew and gave him fags .

3/2 - 4/2: recalled from the baths in Eindhoven to go out to a crash near Roermond - that's a front-line town on the Maas held by Jerry. Crash located at Nunhem; village held by Canadian paratroopers; in the middle of a ploughed field. Fixed ourselves up in an empty farm, located our slit trenches and allocated troops, then mounted guard. All the boys trigger-happy and it was a ticklish business changing guards. However, I got the night over and started cooking breakfast and dinner. I got four hours kip in the afternoon of Sunday. Ray cooked the tea while Harry, Moosh, Fed and Ken go to the burial of the crew. Flight-Sergeant Leppard came down, Crofty went back. I decided that the guard will stay in the truck through-out the night and the boys are thankful as they are all in a bad way. Jerry brings up a railway gun and everybody has a bang. Both sides' shells are passing over the farm. 'Plane catches fire and brings mortars down. All quietened off at one o' clock in the morning. I cooked breakfast and the dinner,called the guard off at two o' clock in the afternoon.

5/2: half the roads back are closed as the thaw has made all the cobbles heave up and sink, 12 to 18 inches in places, and all the surfaces are breaking up. Learn that the airfield's drainage system's supposed to have been sabotaged by the Germans by blocking up the pipes and they're nearly all unusable. Will have to be abandoned if not repaired quickly.15/2: moved from the billets to a school on the edge of town and the pilots who were flooded out at the 'drome move into our billets.'

'A'-Troop - that was my troop - went into Germany. We crossed the Rhine by pontoon bridge at Xanten and then went through Wesel before striking inland to Forst-Wesel, that's just inside Germany.

1/4: march an English-speaking German with no identity papers to Intelligence. By now our squadron has got 17 hens, 1 pig and 1 deer by tonight. The deer was slaughtered this evening and I had my first taste of venison.

Then there were days of doing escort duty, escorting 'A'-Wing up.

10/4: rejoin squadron outside Rheine.11/4: up sticks again to join Tactical Air Force - Main at Ambergen.12/4: up sticks again to join 122 Wing at Hopsten doing the 'drome area patrols six to nine at night.14/4: took two officers from 5357 up to recce of Vechta airfield. That was 209 miles, got back at ten o' clock.16/4: take 5357 to recce aerodrome at Ahlhorn - that was ten or fifteen minutes after it was taken, got back at half past nine.27/4: 150 miles to Fassberg aerodrome. Got past Celle when trouble started with the transport. Got within half a mile of camp when the articulated got ditched at 2300 hours. Guess who had to stay with him all night! With Mr.

Croft as my officer! Because there were snipers along the route W.D.O. - I don't know who that was - wouldn't allow any transport out of the camp after half past eleven so I sat in the car and was absolutely dead from the waist down. Only had two sandwiches and nothing to drink since half past four in the morning. 28/4: Motor Transport Officer arrived at about eight o' clock in the morning. We worked on the bogged lorry until half past ten and then I was told to go back to camp, get something to eat. I was just about starved and had some eggs and bacon in the Officers' Mess.29/4: had to go to Celle and bring in the 'B'- echelon. 2/5: Italian front caves in and surrenders. Convoy after convoy of Jerry lorries driven by Jerries with only a D-R escort passing through. One general with his wife or girlfriend along-side of him. 4/5: had to go out after some armed Russians. They were prisoners-of-war, probably slave-labour, who were on an organised loot of the German farms.

Surrender on Montgomery's Front: North Holland, Denmark, Frisian Islands, etc. Pistols going off all over the place.7/5: Germany unconditionally surrenders at Reims.8/5: VE Day announced by Churchill. I must be the only sober person in the camp.12/5: moved to Flensburg about 5 kilometres from the Danish border.

That was about eight miles in advance of the Army.

Thousands of Jerries in the towns. All the officers saluted me. There were armed German sentries on guard in some places and on the aerodrome there was still slave-labour being carried out.

That's all I've got in my diary, but from there we moved to the Isle of Sylt which is just off the coast, you get to it by a causeway, and from there I was finally demobbed on 12th August 1945. For all that I had a reference, they had to put a reference in your demob, book to help you get a job, I suppose. Mine said:

'Corporal Sharp has always completed his duties with the utmost efficiency. He is a qualified driver having passed a water-driving course and a motor-cycle course, and obtained the highest awards on a wireless course. He has good powers of command.' That is just the thing to get you a first-class job, isn't it?

So I came home. The family had moved by then to Sycamore Road. I came home and for a few years I was again very, very, very, very lonely and despondent and unhappy because my mates were either still in the Services (because I came out on a Class B which was the first release, being a builder), they'd got married, moved away or had been killed and I just used to go out in the evening, wander around the town, and didn't know anybody. I was a stranger in a strange town and all by myself and I was .... ugh, horrible it was, horrible.

For a time just after the war, 1946 - 1947 I ran a boys' club, a physical culture club at Summerhill hall off Oakfield Lane once a week in the evenings. I provided two barbells and weights, a chest expander, two sets of dumbells and one set of cantilevered dumbells. The club was free. We did weight and floor exercises, gym exercises. At about this time cycling was the growing craze and all the boys bought racing bikes. I turned up one week and they all said that they were going to leave to take up cycling. The next day I went back to collect all my equipment and it was all gone, all pinched.

Because I came out on a Class B release I was under the direction of the Ministry of Labour which meant that you had to go where they sent you; you couldn't go and work for anybody you liked. They sent me to work for a firm named Wallis at Gravesend on a school.

Bob Dick had been discharged in the meantime and we heard about a job that was going to pay - I think - 1/6 an hour, which was ooh, lovely money, so we turned the job in. We went to see this firm to get a start and he couldn't start us without a Green Card. So down the Labour Exchange we went to get a Green Card.

The Employment Officer said, "You're not going to get a Green Card. You'll go where you're sent. Those are the terms you came out of the Services under - under Class B you've got to go where you're sent."

So we said, "Where?" and he said, "Well, you're going back to Wallis's at Gravesend." So we walked out.

After we'd had a think about it and the old stubborness set in - you know, 'He's not telling me where I can go after these last five years-odd' - we went back again the next day and said, "We're going to work for ourselves."

Of course, he was put out. There was none of this like you've got now where every other Tom, Dick and Harry is self-employed, it was almost unheard-of. "How can you work for yourselves?" "There's nothing to stop us working for ourselves." He said, "Well, how are you going to get material?" because everything material then, you had to have a licence to get. So I said, "It's nothing to do with you where we get material from - all we're telling you, we're going to work for ourselves." . What we'd done, we'd gone to see this builder that was offering us 1/6 and said to him, "Right, we're going to be self-employed but we'll come and work for you and you'll pay us the rate that you'd pay us anyway and do the stamps," so it was a fiddle.

The Employment Officer cleared off - I suppose he went back and had a chat with his colleagues - then he came back and he said, "You're crafty beggars you are, aren't you?" and he gave us a Green Card to work where we wanted to work, so that was all right.

One evening I was walking round the town, I was coming back home fed-up and I saw a couple of chaps who I went to school with. They stopped and said, "Hullo, where're you going?" I said, "Home, no-one here I know." "Oh, we're going to the dancing classes," they said. "Come with us."

So I went with them to Sutton Hall on East Hill to dancing classes. It's there where I met your Mum. I used to go there once a week. Then we got married in 1950, six days after Mum's 21st birthday and when I was 29.

The first 'bike that I had was in 1940 and was a 350 Cotton, then a 500 single-cylinder Triumph - a 500 Triumph Speed Twin - and then the Sunbeam. I used to take the two motor-cycling magazines and read about the new Sunbeam that B.S.A. were developing. I believe that the designer's name was H. Pepper. As each article appeared I learned all about the design until they built the first prototype. This was road-tested by Graham Walker, the magazine's editor and father of Murray. The last words of that article were '90 on the clock and more to come.' Anyway, although production hadn't started I put in an order for one.

Well, I waited and waited, then finally I read that the first ones were going to come on the market. I constantly 'phoned the agents at Tonbridge, but they hadn't had their quota yet. Then General Montgomery opened the Motorcycle Show at Earls Court and was presented with a Sunbeam. I don't suppose he could even ride one. I was so disgusted that I wrote a stinking letter to Lord Docker who was Chairman of B.S.A. I never had a reply, but I finally got an S8 in - I think - October 1949 at a cost of £230, and sold it in May 1950 for £180 and after getting married we had £30 in the bank.

Later on we owned a 16H Norton with a Swallow sidecar, and then a Red Hunter Ariel for which I made a sidecar from bits of aluminium sheet and two metal prams which I salvaged from a tip; no springing, just bolted straight on to an old chassis that I cadged after seeing it on a rubbish heap at the bottom of someone's garden. I remember taking a corner at about 40 mph on the Cotton, it slid away from me and I finished up with one handlebar halfway down my throat and minus four front teeth!

We had a honeymoon but that was some time after the wedding. Edie and Bill took us down to a bed-and-breakfast place in Bournemouth where they had stayed before. The first evening we had a salad tea and, of course, I was ever so nervous, because I'd never stayed in someone else's home before.

The salad was in a lovely glass bowl on a stand with glass salad servers. I didn't know there were drain holes in the bottom of the bowl and so when I had my salad and put the bowl down on the tablecloth, of course the cloth got all wet. So I picked it up to see what was going on and the servers fell out and the fork broke. "I'm going home now," I said, but the landlady was very kind about it.

We searched everywhere but we couldn't find all the pieces. I eventually found the missing tine at the bottom of my cup of tea. We spent the rest of our holiday - and it wasn't much of a holiday - searching through all the shops looking for another pair of these salad servers, but we couldn't find any. At the time I had trouble with my ears and had glycerine-and-phenol drops for them, which I'd taken away with me. Well, when I woke up in the morning, there was this big oily stain on the pillow. We bought some lighter fuel to try to clean it up, but it only spread it even further. Meanwhile, I'd put the cotton-wool plugs into the waste-paper basket which was lined with gaily-coloured wallpaper - and when we came to empty it, all up the sides was this oily stain!

Your Mum's gran had died and her Mum let her know when the funeral was, so we had to go home a couple of days early - it's the oldest excuse in the book if you don't like where you're staying, so what the landlady thought I don't know.

Anyway, we still hadn't found these salad servers, so I raked through my pockets, and all I'd got was a £5 note and some change. We raked around and made the change up to 10/-; all threepenny-bits, sixpences and pennies; and I went to say goodbye and gave her this handful of change to pay for the salad servers, It was only on the way home that I found a sixpence in my pocket, so she only got 9/6, she must have thought we'd run out of money.

We lived for six months with my sister Edith, but that finally became intolerable, so we had our furniture put into store and only kept back a dust-pan, broom, and what pans we needed for our dinner. These we tied on to our pushbikes and cycled from South Darenth to Bayley Road where we were going to live with Nell.

It was as we were going up Trollingdown that I, feeling really desolated, looked back at Mum and got a really big smile. That did wonders for me. We stayed with Nell until we got two furnished rooms at Shenley Road with a chap who lived there on his own, provided Mum did the cleaning of the house. We didn't stay there long, he was a dirty devil. The final straw came

when he left a squirrel that he'd skinned lying on the wooden draining board for Mum to dispose of and clean up the mess.

Nell said that she could only take me in (for reasons that I can't remember exactly) so Mum went back home and we only saw each other in the evenings and at weekends. Then Mum's parents asked Miss Fleet if she could do anything for us, and as soon as St. Albans Road became vacant we moved there. That was one room that opened onto the pavement with a bedroom above, and a lean-to on the back which was the kitchen. The loo was down the bottom of the garden. From there of course we went to Lanes End when Mum's parents moved to Sutton Lodge.I worked on all different firms, different places, I finished up, as you know, on Brewster's. Then I got made up to General Foreman. I was in charge of the building of the Public Library at Hartley and the school meals canteen at Oakfield Lane, and then finally got made redundant. And that's when, after how many weeks I don't know writing letters trying to get a job - I was determined I wasn't going back on the scaffold again - I set up with Brian and we started working for ourselves.

The only so-called monuments I can show you or tell you about are Frank's house; which I obviously built single-handed with Frank as labourer; Brambledowne; which I built single-handed with Mum and you lot as labourers; and a large, flat-roofed house with loads of retaining walls all built out of second-hand bricks at Pescott Avenue, that's on the left of Pescott Avenue as you go down; with Brian as labourer.

While I was working for one firm I was brickie foreman and we built all the bungalows in a road in Temple Hill. When we were nearly finished the Council man came along, the Clerk of the Works came along and said, "You're going to be honoured. We're going to name this road after you." I looked at him expecting a joke. "No, that's right," he said. "We're going to call it Sharp's Way." And they did, they called it Sharp's Way and I thought, "Oh, they've named it after Sharp's Saw Mills," but since then I've thought about it and Henderson Drive, the ganger in charge of building Henderson Drive, the actual road, was Bobbie Henderson, a school-mate of mine, and I thought, "Well, there's nobody famous in Dartford called Henderson." None of the roads on Temple Hill that I know of have got any Dartford connotations, like personality connotations, except Trevithick Drive, so perhaps there was something in it, perhaps they did name it after me, but I couldn't swear it.