Tom Parkinson in his uniform

TOM Parkinson spent 100 years living in Kentish Town – and well into his retirement he sat down with pen and paper and decided he had a story to tell.

The centenarian, who passed away in June, sat down and reflected on memories – often painful – which laid bare the experiences he had gone through fighting in the North Africa campaign and the invasion of Italy during World War Two.

The result is a stunning, day-by-day memoir which tells the story of a despatch rider aged 20 who had never gone further than Southend before, helping to defeat Nazi Germany. His recollections have been published on a veterans’ website. The Italy Star Association, and reveal how he experienced the unimaginable before returning home to spend the rest of his days working as a public servant and raising a family.

Tom was born in 1923 in St Silas Street, Kentish Town and never lived in another postcode. Tom’s father Henry had stables in Queen’s Crescent and delivered groceries to shops from the Covent Garden vegetable market.

Schooling took place in an unlikely location: in the 1920s, a school on Parliament Hill Fields operated, aimed at giving youngsters fresh air and hearty food. After attending this unique primary, Tom joined Haverstock School.

Teachers would let him leave early each day to light the fire in the oven; they were aware his mother was a widow and was working as a cleaner. His experience in Italy had left a long legacy and he had been reluctant to talk about some of the awful reality he had seen on the fronts at Anzio and Cassino. But then he decided to put it all down in his memoir.

“Every man takes his position ready for landing, all the transport is down below so I make my way down. What a noise! All the lorries with their engines ticking over fast, smoke from their exhausts like nothing on earth,” he wrote.

“I get a clear view. We are in the harbour of Anzio. As the ramp reaches the dockside and down, I am off, no time to look round to see who’s coming behind. I drive fast alongside the docks and turn left to a road out of Anzio.

“After a few miles, I am getting a little worried, then I see signs which say Drive Slowly Dusts Brings Shells. I am getting near the Front. All of a sudden two Military Police stop me by waving me down. ‘Go any further son,’ one says, ‘and you will be a prisoner of war.’ The Germans are just up the road, they tell me.”

After being demobbed, Tom worked as a driver for St Pancras Council, a job that lasted until his retirement. He met Olive, who grew up in Lismore Circus, in a pub on Haverstock Hill and they married in 1955.

They had two children – Jeffrey and Viv – and settled in Kentish Town.

At Camden Council, he became a respected trade union steward, always seeking to find common ground between workers and management, and reach compromises based on fairness. On retiring aged 58, Tom took on chauffeuring jobs and signed up for night school classes, including learning Italian.

He returned to the village he was posted to when he was in his 60s, and recalled how he had been told to move out without having the chance to say goodbye to friends. He had grown close to a family who had daughters his age, and when he went back, he was approached in the village square by a woman who recognised him from 1945.

Back in Camden, he loved singing and dancing and walking to Kenwood to enjoy the artworks. An avid reader, his favourite authors were Charles Dickens and Samuel Pepys.

You can read his recollections on the Italy Star Association website: www.italy­starassociation.org.uk/