George Smith may have celebrated his 100th birthday on Friday, but he can still vividly remember his 38 missions as the flight engineer and co-pilot of a Halifax bomber during the Second World War.

“It was okay as long as you didn’t get hit,” he recalled at his home on the Isle of Sheppey.

“We got hit once, in the tail end. That’s better than getting hit in the front end.

“It was during the day and we were on our way to a mission. But the aircraft seemed okay, so we carried on.”

On another occasion, one of the plane’s four engines failed as it was returning to base.

“It just packed up on us,” said George. “But we still had three so there was no problem. We just carried on.

“Today you’d think ‘what a noise’ but those engines made a terrific sound. As an engineer I had to do everything because my training taught me all about the aircraft.

"For take-off, I was the one who pushed the throttles forward.”

George, or Smithy as his friends call him, can certainly look back on a full life.

Despite having a very English name, he was born in France and lived there until he was 15.

His father worked at the British Embassy in Paris as a chauffeur and an interpreter speaking French, English and German. It was while posted to France during the First World War that he met and married George’s French mother.

The pair were living in the same small village of Warloy-Baillon in the Somme 10 miles from the front line.

George went to school with the village children, speaking fluent French. But as Hitler began to threaten France in the run-up to the Second World War, George’s father decided it was time to return to the relative safety of England and ended up organising child evacuations from London to the country.

He also found a job for young George as an engineer, learning to repair lorries. Aged 20, George applied to join the Royal Air Force as an engineer.

He said: “I didn’t want to be a pilot. I thought being the flight engineer would be fine. But I didn’t realise that in the RAF the flight engineer was also the co-pilot. I had to help the pilot take off and he wanted me to do the landing as well. But I said ‘Nothing doing’. I wasn’t having that.”

After training in Torquay, George was assigned to 51 Squadron in Yorkshire and took part in 38 bombing raids over Germany including a secret mission to blow up an island used as a munitions store.

Before he could reach 50 missions he was despatched to Canada to put together another squadron but, shortly afterwards, the Americans dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and the war ended.

George returned to London and set up his own black cab taxi firm, taking 'the knowledge' so he could drive, but spending most of his time in the workshop servicing his fleet of seven.

He said: “I had the odd film star in the back of my cab. If you waited outside the Dorchester where they stayed you were bound to pick one up.”

One of his most famous fares was Prince Philip and his best man just days before marrying the future Queen Elizabeth II.

George met his late wife, English school teacher Mignon, while she was teaching in Hamburg, Germany.

George was still in the RAF and had been posted there to train people to fly gliders.

The pair retired to Sheppey and snapped up a bungalow in Queenborough Drive, Minster, for £32,000.

For relaxation, George bought himself a boat and the two sailed to the south of France where they spent their summers. He only quit sailing when he reached his 90s. “It became a bit tricky,” he admitted.

He says his wish when he dies is to return to the French village where he grew up to rejoin his parents and his wife. He said: “My parents are there and so is my wife.”

It will mark the full circle of an amazing life.