“AN idiot called Hitler” was the simple response by 97-year-old Farnham veteran Bill Applebee when asked why he decided to volunteer for military service on the eve of the Second World War.

A straightforward answer to a straightforward question, and for ‘Apps’ – as he was once known in his Army days – and his mates, that was how it was in 1939 when faced with the rise of fascism and a direct threat to their way of life.

Two decades before his own wartime experiences, Bill’s father had witnessed at first hand the brutality of the First World War – injured, patched up and sent back to the trenches, to be later captured and end his war as a POW working in the German salt mines, only to discover some decades later that he still had a bullet lodged in his neck.

But his father’s time in the forces only served to inspire Bill who, along with his friends, was keen to volunteer rather than wait for the call-up as they wanted to “do their bit” to help.

And so it was that Bill, aged just 18, joined the Territorial Army two days before war was declared in September 1939, soon becoming part of the wartime army as a member of 42nd (7th East Surrey) Royal Tank Regiment.

Over the years, Bill would go on to follow the Eighth Army into action in north Africa and Italy, supporting the Allied advance from Algiers to El Alamein and later from Sicily to Rome, picking up his own shrapnel wound along the way before celebrating VE Day basking in the Meditteranean sun.

Now approaching the 80th anniversary of his fateful decision to sign up, Bill, who now lives in Bucks Horn Oak with his wife Jean, daughter Anne and her family, will this month publish a book – App’s War – recounting his life in the Army.

In the 532-page tome, Bill recounts how compulsory speed typing lessons at Battersea Middle School and a timely bout of Chinese measles spared him a life on the front lines, how he learned to drive in three-ton lorries and a 1930s tank, and how he rose to the rank of sergeant by the age of just 22.

He tells the story of the early training days, learning parade manoeuvres on the village green while waiting for equipment and uniforms, and takes the reader through daily life in the army; living in barracks, bell tents and Nissan Huts, travelling on troop ships threatened by the German ‘wolfpacks’ and in vast army lorry convoys.

Also covered is the night Bill stood guard after his regiment’s first battle in north Africa, as well as his vivid recollections of walking the streets of Monte Cassino the day after one of the bloodiest battles of the war had come to an end, and the night he was forced to sleep – “sleep!” – in a Rome ‘knocking shop’ soon after the city was liberated from the Nazis.

App’s War also reproduces several rare watercolour landscapes by war artist Edward Manning, presented to men who had served in the campaigns, or to their next of kin if they had made the ultimate sacrifice. These capture key battlegrounds of the Italian campaign – from the beaches at Salerno to the devastated landscape of Cassino.

Finally, Bill’s book boasts reams of detailed tank battle reports covering every action of the 42nd Royal Tank Regiment during the war, many of which he wrote himself while on wartime service – leading Bill to half-joke that he began writing his book “in 1940”.

After the war, Bill met his future wife Jean while on holiday in Italy, when the lights of a cave system failed and he was told to hold the hand of the person behind him. The couple married just a few months later, and went on to have four children together.

Bill also set up his own roofing company post-war, and was well known in the Farnham area for his company’s high-quality workmanship and punctuality.

To order a copy of App’s War, e-mail [email protected].