About the contributor

I am the son of Herbert Ralph Harding, of the 44th Royal Tank Regiment, B Squadron, that fought in North Africa after shipping out in the SS Sobieski. He was with the regiment until being invalided out just before the battles of El Alamein. He died of cancer in 1970.

I was 26 when he died. He had told me, but only once, of several harrowing parts of his service when I was only 10 probably to get them out of his mind . My mother said he was changed by the war, but remained very kind to others and supported his family all his life. He was one of ten brothers and sisters.

My father was invalided out with shell shock(battle trauma) after about one year of action against Rommel. Like many fathers of those days my younger years were affected by his nightmares of the terrible service actions he endured. At school we sons of service fathers all talked of them having bad 'nerves'.

Born early in 1944 my only direct experience of the war as an infant was the bombing in south London. I had a recurring nightmare of a man with a gun in a tree and dogs barking and running into a shop doorway. I had this nightmare often until I told my parents aged four or five. They interpreted it as my being in a 'pram' in an air raid, hearing the Ack Ack guns as dogs barking and having to avoid the falling shrapnel by being pushed into a shop doorway.