"Allan Gordon Orpin, the youngest of four children, was born in Walthamstow on January 17 1926. One Sunday in September 1939, immediately after the declaration of war, the air-raid siren sounded. Young Allan was a choirboy in church at the time. The whole congregation panicked and rushed down to shelter in the crypt. It was a false alarm. He left school at 13 and began working 12-hour days as a signwriter. At home during the Blitz he heard the whistle of bombs falling, and everyone in the family put their heads under the kitchen table. One day, when an incendiary bomb fell by their front gate, his mother ran out and extinguished the flames by throwing sand on it. An ARP Warden appeared with a stirrup pump and sprayed the device with water, which set it alight once more. Allan’s mother, furious, shouted: “I put the fire out. You’ve started it again. Push off and find your own bloody bomb!” Orpin did not want to be a “Bevin Boy” and work in the coal mines, and he enlisted in the Army at the Romford recruiting office. In October 1943 he was just under 18 when he was sent to No 1 Infantry Training Centre at Warley Barracks, Brentwood, Essex, to begin his basic training. He had been “trade tested” and demonstrated an aptitude for mechanics, so he was posted to the Royal Armoured Corps (RAC) Training Centre at Bovington in Dorset, where he trained as a Jeep driver and mechanic. Having responded to a request for volunteers for airborne forces, he was posted to HQ Squadron 6th AARR at Larkhill, Wiltshire. He received an extra half-crown pay a day." Allan Orpin, Jeep driver who braved hair-raising D-Day glider landings and Rhine crossing – obituary (msn.com)
