TOM Waters is 89, but his memories of Afghanistan are as vivid as ever. He describes the inhospitable terrain being as close as hell as you can get.

"If British troops have to fight in these conditions they will find it bloody terrible because I reckon it is one of the most dreadful places on earth," said Tom.

"But our boys are well trained and have good equipment so that is going to be very much in their favour.

"I must be one of the last ex-soldiers who served in the dust, dirt, flies, fleas and extremes of heat and cold in the Afghan border country.

"I shall never forget what life was like on the North West frontier in the time before the last world war and will always have the memories with me."

Tom, who lives in Stratton St Margaret, served in the Army between 1932 and 1954, the first 10 years with the Royal Ulster Rifles Infantry before transferring to the Army Physical Training Corps.

He saw action in the Palestine campaign, and after a few months' break in England was sent to Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan but then part of India, early in 1939 to join his battalion on the nearby North West frontier.

"This was very mountainous country and the tribes who lived there were always fighting each other.

"Our job was two or three times a week to open the road through the Khyber Pass, which was the main route into Afghanistan from India.

"I was living in a dugout and my bed was just three planks of wood spread across two trestles.

"I was a corporal and a section commander. I headed a team which had to run up the mountainside ahead of the main column of soldiers so we could cover them from attacks with our Lewis gun. There were about 10 of us and we had to do this every time we came to a ridge. When the rear of the column had finally passed we joined up with them and carried on."

Tom recalled that many tribesmen used home-made guns or old-fashioned muskets which had been taken many years before from a British Army which had been defeated after it invaded Afghanistan.

He said: "We came under fire for a lot of the time. The tribesmen were rough and ready and some of them were very brave fighters, but the main problem was seeing them because they could easily disappear into the mountainous background."

Tom remembers vividly the scorching days and freezing nights of the North West frontier.

"At times you could be eaten alive with fleas and flies which were everywhere."

Tom spent nine months on the frontier and said he would advise British servicemen never to trust the local people.

"They are very dangerous. There is no such thing as loyalty among them and they don't even trust each other and could be a formidable foe. The last thing anyone wanted was to be taken prisoner."

But Tom revealed that the British military was also a very hard taskmaster.

"Sometimes when the local people fired into our camp we could identify which village the shots were coming from. When this happened we would then warn the villagers that 'punitive measures' would be taken against them and this would happen quite often.

"Later on an airplane would fly over and drop bombs on the village. If the people had not got out then they were killed."

Tom, who is now disabled, could not attend a Remembrance Day service or parade in Swindon. He remembered his fallen comrades by watching the ceremony at the London Cenotaph on television.