Remembrance Day

The 87-year-old, who paid his respects to fallen comrades outside Hounslow's Holy Trinity Church on Sunday, was a fresh-faced page boy when he was called up to the Royal Dragoon Guards as a surgeon's assistant in 1941.

He spent the next three years dodging bullets while carrying fallen comrades, often with agonising wounds, to safety.

But his worst memories are of marching through India, where he saw dozens of British soldiers who had been hung up on trees and bayoneted through the chest by retreating Japanese troops.

"We witnessed a lot of atrocities by the Japanese soldiers and I will never forget seeing some of our chaps crucified," said the great-grandfather.

"For many years, I had nightmares about what I'd seen but now it's made me even more determined to enjoy every day.

"I always go to the remembrance services because it's important to remember those chaps who never came home."

Mr Reggiori was never seriously injured during the war but remembers having to pick shrapnel from his body following a number of serious bomb blasts.

The closest he came to death was when he was laid low with malaria shortly after arriving in India, but there were many hardships to follow.

He remembers resting beside scorpions in the humidity of the Burmese jungle and sleeping in several inches of water during India's monsoon season, while living off 'bully beef'.

He was understandably relieved to get seven days' leave in Calcutta, where he spent £40 - a huge amount in those days - painting the town red.

His war ended in Germany, where he worked for six months at a hospital in Gelsenkirchen and met his late wife Anna.

He returned home to Chepstow Road, Paddington, where he worked in his local post office and later at St Mary's Hospital, before moving to Hounslow in the early 90s.