As the military bands play, armed forces march and bright red poppies adorn war memorials across Britain tomorrow on Remembrance Sunday, old soldier Ron Thornell has a very special birthday to celebrate – his 90th.

And, sometime during that day, he will doubtless cast his mind back to the last great global conflict. For Ron is one of a rare breed of men. He's one of the oldest surviving conscripts of World War II.

The war was just a day old when Ron Thornell, then aged 20, caught a train out of Bristol for Winchester.

The printer and box-maker, born in Stapleton Road, was rapidly clad in uniform and made an official infantryman with the 4th Dorsets Territorial Battalion within 24 hours of the hostilities being declared between Britain and Germany.

"I had never even held a rifle before," he says, recalling how he was issued with a 303 Lee Enfield. "I'd been working in town, in Nelson Street, for a firm called Allen and Davis. But we were the first in as conscripts in the whole of the country."

It was September 1939 and another six-and-a-half years of Ron's life would elapse before he saw Civvy Street again.

That initial enlistment was followed by a considerable amount of moving around. Ten weeks of his training, for example, was carried out along the promenade at Weymouth, where his unit was accommodated in the empty houses on the seafront.

It wasn't long before the army rumbled the fact that Ron possessed something many of his generation did not – a driving licence.

He'd actually first driven on his uncle's farm as an 11 year old (he still drives to this day) but at this critical time his road skills were of great use for the motor transport units.

After overcoming a bout of pneumonia, Ron returned to his unit and a posting to what, at the time, was one of the hottest spots of the war, the Kent coast.

There, his unit oversaw the construction of all the coastal defences at Dover Castle, Sandwich, Ramsgate and Bexhill-on-Sea. They did eight-months stint at each, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And for good reason it was dubbed "Hellfire Corner". Its proximity to occupied France meant Ron and his unit were given a hard time as they saw the Battle of Britain unfold in the skies above.

"We were dive-bombed, bombed, machine-gunned and, even, shelled on from France," he says.

The war rolled on and Ron assumed the role of a driver and bodyguard to the unit's Captain Dickie Dawson.

By the end of June 1944, Hellfire Corner was a thing of the past. Lance Corporal Thornell had crossed the English Channel and was in Normandy. One of his chief responsibilities was to ensure the front-line troops had everything they needed – food, ammunition, water, fuel.

"It was a bit tricky," Ron recalls, "We were ambushed a few times."

The Allied troops pushed on and Ron was there as they rolled into Belgium and, ultimately, Holland.

"Here we were, the leading battalion of 21st Armoured Guard in the Battle for Arnhem. That was fierce fighting."

Finally, there was the Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the River Rhine before he was sent back to Holland at the end of the conflict. But his days of military service were far from over – he did not return home to Bristol until 1946.

"I had a family I hadn't seen for years. In fact, I came home to find my younger brother was also now in the army – he'd been called up for National Service, so I didn't see him properly for eight-and-a-half years."

Two years later, though, Ron married Doris. He was working for another packaging firm, DRG in Fishponds by then. She worked for Wills tobacco factory.

"When we got married, she was sacked. You couldn't work there if you were a married woman," he explains.

Sadly, Doris died on Valentine's Day this year. So when tomorrow comes and again, when the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month arrives on Tuesday, what, I ask, will Ron Thornell be thinking?

The answer is that he doesn't like to muse on those six-and-a-half years' service very often.

"It's too far back," he declares, though he's well aware that he's one of a special group of men.

"There cannot be many of us left out of those original conscripts, we must all be in our nineties – and there certainly cannot be many in Bristol.

"There were no conscripts before us, we were the very first batch."

Push former Lance Corporal Ron Thornell a little further and he will tell you he saw "terrible things".

There is one image in particular that he cannot forget. It involves the discovery of a couple of dead German soldiers. Without going into too much grisly detail, it is best just to say that neither had recently died.

Ron and his unit afforded them the dignity of laying them to rest.

The incident would have a profound and lasting effect, he tells me, explaining: "That day, I said to myself – 'If there is a God, then he has got a lot to answer for'. I have never been very religious since that day."