In March 1952 Tom Stevens sailed from Southampton aboard the troopship Dilwara, one of the last generations of British soldiers to serve in the West Indies. How did I get here?, he asks. Tom s candid memoir describes his wartime childhood, disrupted by evacuation, the Swansea blitz, patchy schooling, his father s absence at war and his parents separation. He evokes with an engaging honesty the life of an infantryman in the garrison of Jamaica, the pleasures of tropical service and the temptations faced by a young man in uniform. Vividly recalled, Tom s memoir reveals how a young Welshman grew...