Private Roy Harding of 1st Battalion, the Queen's Royal Regiment, remembers a desperate search for firewood while stationed in Maidstone.
Roy Harding
Private Roy Harding

There was something on in the town in Maidstone so we decided we would have a weekend in Maidstone. Well it was so cold and we weren’t allowed any coal or coke so you went scrounging. Well during the Saturday afternoon one of the chaps came in with a pile of wood and we said "Where did you get that?", and he said "Don’t worry about it”, and we got this fire going and it was lovely. In the next billet it was empty and one of the sergeants not in our Company, C Company, he had a motorbike, he used to go home on this motorbike, well one Sunday he came home on this Sunday we stayed there and we heard an almighty crash and apparently he had drove into this billet room and of course what’s happened the floor boards were missing weren’t they. We had burnt them. So nobody ever owned up to it and then we practiced for the march in Guildford.