WHEN Paul Cheall decided to publish his father’s wartime diaries, he never expected to discover his first car still on the road after more than 75 years.

The Morris Ten, which predates the Second World War, belonged to his father, Bill, from Middlesbrough, who served with The Green Howards.

Mr Cheall said: “I had been editing dad’s memoirs for publication and built a website.

“Shortly before war was declared in 1939, he was on holiday with some pals and mentioned the car he was driving.

“I put a photograph of the car on the website and quickly received an email asking me if I had any more information.”

The email was from current owner Ian Binnie, from Oxfordshire.

Mr Cheall said: “I was really choked by this as I had no idea that the car still existed.”

He took up an invitation to visit the car and drove from his home in Norfolk to see it.

He said: “It was a memorable experience to see my father’s first car and to sit where he had sat back in 1936. Ian even let me have a drive in it.”

The publication of his father’s memoirs prompted a search for comrades or friends who come from Middlesbrough, Stockton and the surrounding areas.

Mr Cheall has published a book of his father’s memoirs, titled Fighting Through From Dunkirk to Hamburg.

It tells the story of an ordinary soldier in The Green Howards during the Second World War.

Mr Cheall Sr was evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940, serving in North Africa, before his regiment was ordered back to England to form the vanguard of the Normandy invasion in 1944.

He was wounded in the fierce fighting that followed the D-Day landings, and fell in love with his nurse after he was taken to hospital.

He earned seven medals and a wounded-in-action stripe before being discharged in 1946, running the family grocery business until he retired.

He died in 1999.

Mr Cheall will give a talk at The Green Howards museum in Richmond, North Yorkshire, at 7pm on Friday, July 17.

The book is on sale now.

Visit fightingthrough.co.uk.