AS a soldier with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Roy Grose's job was to drive any vehicle and carry anything the army needed.

But whenever a few soldiers had a couple of hours respite during the invasion, it was show time.

Roy had a portable cinema stowed away in the back of his 15 cwt Bedford truck.

"We had two projectors, a generator, a screen that opened out to full size, speakers, everything," he said.

"We had a stores wagon full of films and of course we showed the latest newsreels. Some of the guys would see themselves coming ashore on the Normandy beaches and they would love that."

Roy had trained as a projectionist at the National Cinema in Chatham High Street before being called up at the age of 18.

After being drafted into the RAOC he was trained to drive almost every type of military vehicle from a motorbike to a tank. He also became an ammunition examiner, skilled at checking shells and bullets to make sure they were in good order and not past their sell by date.

"When it came close to the invasion we were given assault training on Dungeness beach," he said. "Basically we waded out to an old truck, leaped out of it, ran up the beach and captured Dungeness, all in half a day."

Immediately prior to the invasion he was sent to Fairford air base in Gloucestershire where he checked ammunition and showed films for the airborne troops who spearheaded the Invasion.

"I remember one film, ‘Five Graves to Cairo', which we played over and over again," he said. "When the two stars kissed the whole place was in uproar.

"How those men travelled in gliders beats me," he said. "They were nothing more than cardboard boxes."

Once across the Channel in Normandy he and his team were called on to do just about any job that needed doing. This included burying recently killed soldiers in shallow graves, for the Pioneer Corps to find later on.

"The mobile cinema was terrific for morale," said Roy. "We would get local cinemas working wherever possible, but otherwise we would look for a gently sloping field and set up an outdoor cinema."

Roy took his mobile cinema up through France, entering Caen the day after it was bombed. "You would have thought an earthquake had hit it," he said. 

They later moved into Belgium and Holland before crossing the Rhine into Germany. After the surrender he was part of a small force that went to Denmark to supervise the capitulation of German forces there.

After the surrender he served in Berlin and Hamburg where in 1947 he met his wife Herta. The couple continue to live in Chatham.