Good morning nurse Joy

"Sure Grandpa if it is not to hard for you,"

"It was September 1914 and war had just broken out, in fact I can still remember the day as my whole family was sitting round the wireless waiting for the daily news. When instead of the news the prime minister of England gave a special broadcast to the nation. I cannot hardly remember the announcement he gave but I can remember mum running out the room crying. As she knew that my dad would be called up for the war and also could I being nearly twentie. My dad rushed into the kitchen following after her, I stood up and turned to my youngest brother Andrew, who had know idea what was going and decided to cry. I grabbed hold of him and told him not worry not being sure myself if would be or not. I ran into the streets to see a lot of people standing in street not sure what.

"Come on tom, lets go the pub," said my dad.

We got to the local pub to see it absolutely packed with men all talking about war and whether to register or not. Then all of a sudden my dad jumped up on to the nearest table and proclaimed that every man should in role, fight for the king and that their country needs them. The whole pub started chanting his name "Martin, martin, Martin!" even I thought this great and started chanting myself. But then realising I would have to enrol myself, I regretted being there.

A week later, having registered the bus came to our house but before we got on the bus a said good bye to my crying mother and promised to her that I would be back. I said goodbye to Andrew who still had no idea what was happening to us. I told him that I was going on long holiday not knowing how long I would be. My dad too said goodbye to them. I stepped onto the bus to see all my mates sitting at the back as walked towards them they all chanted "Tom!" All having no idea what we all getting our selves into we were all cheering and singing songs about killing Germans. The journey to the training camp took about three or four hours to get there so I rested on the coach. We got there all still all very tired. As I stepped of the coach the general shouted "get in line you miserable scum!" he screamed. Almost immediately the whole group bundled got into line, ready to do what we were told. The training went on for three weeks; in those weeks I trained to the best of my ability and got to know the group of twelve really well. There was Mike a close friend I had known for practically the whole of my life, John another close friend, David my next door neighbour, Martin my father, Mark a local farmer, Richard the village butcher, Samuel was the son of mark who was also my age, Bryan the bank manager, no one even knew who this guy was until he joined the group, nice bloke shame he is a bank manager though, Smith the village blacksmith, he spent four years of his life in the army, Chris the local mechanic knows every part of a car , he does not stop speaking about his cars and the workshop, Shaun the village bar tender, he is worried about his bar as his wife is running it and last but not least Bob the village copper bit of unfortunate name good with a gun. Any way these twelve blokes became my best friends for the duration I spent with them. After three weeks of intensive training the team joined with another team. The group decided to call ourselves the "Hell fish" this gave the group a lot of confidence many of them thinking they were invincible. Us, the hell fish were put on a bus to Dover (this is were the war began for as I was feeling very nervous). As we pulled up to the road to the port there were hundreds of thousands men waiting to board boats to cross the channel. Mike stood up "f**k**g hell, I weren't expecting this many people, we'll be here for hours!" shouted mike.

He was right, the hell fish boarded the little boat and set off for France the sea was very rough and most of threw up. As we got to nearer to Calais the sea calmed down and we had an easy journey to the beach. The whole of the British army assembled into there groups and told were to go