Malcolm spent the first few years of his life in London where his father ran a barbershop. His mother died of cancer in 1929 when he was just six years old.
“They tried to keep it from me, they told me she’d gone away. I didn’t know any more than that for some time,” said Malcolm. It hit my father hard, and almost overnight he just fell apart. He sold up, got rid of everything. I grew up very fast because I knew my father was dying. I could see it”.
Malcolm’s father was badly gassed in the first world war and his legs and stomach had shrapnel in them, but Malcolm thinks his father’s broken heart was the reason he lost his will to live some five years after his mother’s passing.
After his father’s death 11-year-old Malcolm went to live in Great Yarmouth in Norfolk where he was brought up by his Auntie and grandmother. “My grandmother was tyrannical. It was a very unhappy time which is why I joined the army as soon as I could get out of there, he said.