Before conscription into the army, James Taylor had joined the LDV, the Local Defence Volunteers, and his daughter Jo remembers him saying he spent time in Springfield Park behind Alder Hey Hospital guarding the railway line from the Liverpool docks.

The qualifications for the LDV included having fired a rifle which he would have done between 1923 and 1934 as a member of the OTC, Officer Training Corps, based at the Liverpool Collegiate School and then Liverpool University.

The photograph shows Jim in uniform complete with his LDV arm band posing with Pip in their garden at Hilda Road, West Derby.

In July 1940 the LDV was renamed the Home Guard and Jim's identity card, rather water damaged by the look of it, reveals that he had been promoted to corporal within the 5th Battalion, "A" Company, No. 1 Platoon, Section 2.

Jim enlisted on 17 October 1940 and was posted to the 58th Training Regiment R.A.C. - the Royal Armoured Corps. This information comes from his Service Record which has proved essential for confirming some of the movements that he could only hint about in his censored letters.

Another useful source is a book entitled "A History of the 44th Royal Tank Regiment" written by officers who served with the regiment during the war. Fortunately Jim annotated his copy so we have his own views on the "official" account together with additional details and personal experiences. Henceforth I shall refer to this book as the "Regimental History" when quoting from it. Extracts will be within quotation marks and Jim's annotations in italics.

In Spring 1941 the Regimental History states that "... the headquarters of 1st Army Tank Brigade was still south of London..." and Jim added "I joined the 44th here about the 13th April I suppose - was granted 72 hrs embarkation leave!"

Below is an index to the web pages of extracts from the letters that Jim was able to send back to Pip throughout WW2 beginning with his training in Dorset and Wiltshire.

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