Ron Levett's memories of joining up and training in the Royal Armoured Corps during World War II.

I soon found that living with a crew on a tank was a little like camping. There was a place for everything, and everything had to be kept in its place. We spent days and nights on the moors to the North of Bovington, carrying out exercises in all skills that we had learned.

There were usually four tanks together on the moors, so that crews could get used to acting as a troop and troop leaders could exercise commanding them. We learned the commands, which the commander used to control the crew. Commands to the driver were always preceded with the word 'Driver'. For instance, to turn right the command is 'Driver, right'.

Commands to the gunner were always preceded with the name of the weapon and the type of round to be fired. For example to engage a target to the right of the tank the order is '75, Shot action (this tells the loader to load with armour piercing,) traverse right, hornet (tank) in front'.

The command to fire the machine gun is 'Coax, same target, go on'. These commands must differentiate in this way so that the driver and gunner know to whom the order is addressed.

At night, the tarpaulin was laid out on the ground beside the tank; the bottom was pulled up and tied to the top of the hull to form a tent. We then laid our bedrolls side by side with the heads to the tank. Luckily the weather was good that spring, and we had very little rain.

We carried our own rations and took in turn to do the cooking. Unfortunately we had no proper cooking utensils, so we had to use our mess tins to cook in. When we got back to barracks it was a very difficult job cleaning these mess tins for inspection. They were very black and never were really up to standard again.

Ron Levett, 2001