IT WAS at the town of Cleve, near the Dutch - German border, that Bill Wray almost came to grief.

Bill, from Eastry, was a fitter with the 94^th Field Regiment Royal Artillery. His job was to ride up and down the convoy on his motorbike and take care of any mechanical problems.

The arrival of 468 Battery off the Normandy coast was met with a hostile response, not from the Germans, but from the sea. For three days they were battened down below decks as the storm raged.

Then one of the ships in the convoy hit a mine. "As we came ashore all we could see was dead bodies from that ship," he said.

After de-waterproofing the guns and the Morris Quads that pulled them, the battery went into action.

"Once we got through Caen, which was devastated, it was fighting all the way," said Bill. "We went through the Fallaise Gap which was a slaughterhouse for the Germans. What made matters worse was that they were using horse artillery. There were dead horses everywhere." 

On the long haul towards Nijmegan as part of the Market Garden operation, lack of sleep became a factor. "During one halt I suddenly found myself in a ditch beside the road, said Bill. "I had fallen asleep on my motorbike."

At Cleve, which had been flattened, Bill and some of his comrades spotted a Ford Pilot car on a patch of green in a housing complex.

"As we were trying to get in I heard a drone and knew instantly it was an enemy aeroplane," he said. "I saw something black fall away from it which could only be a bomb.

"I shouted: ‘Take cover,' and dashed to one of the houses where I knew there would be a cellar to shelter in. I got to the top of the cellar staircase.

"Next thing I knew I was lying on the concrete at the bottom. I was okay, just knocked-out.

"The sight I saw when I got back up will never leave me. Two of my comrades were lying there. One had lost two legs and an arm, and the other had lost an arm and part of a leg.

"One said to me: ‘Corp, how am I going to support my wife and two kids?' 

"Neither survived. They are buried in the war cemetery in the Reichwald Forest. 

"Memories like that never leave you. They become more intense as you get older. You look at the headstone and realise that these chaps were just 19 and 20. You have got old but they never had the chance."

After the armistice Bill's battery was sent to Selle, on the outskirts of Belsen. They entered the camp briefly but were quickly told to get out.

"Germans were sent in to deal with the corpses," he said. "Some inmates came out of the camp. They were a ghastly sight, starved and confused.

"There was a baker's shop in the town and Germans were queuing up for bread.

"So I ordered them out and made the shopkeepers give the bread to the people from the camps."

At last Bill was demobbed and came home to his wife, Grace, and two children. After working as a farm labourer, and then a fitter in Snowdown colliery, he was offered work in the London Docks.