A WAR veteran who kept a small lead tank he aimed pot shots at while in training has returned the rare relic to the Purbeck army base he pinched it from 71 years ago.

Lance Corporal George Martin, 88, used to fire an air rifle at the model of a Sherman tank to hone his shooting skills during World War Two, before going on to join a tank crew.

He decided to keep one of the six inch target tanks as a souvenir and took it away without telling anyone.

George, from Crondall, Hampshire, said: "The tank is about the size of an egg box but it has been an ornament on my sideboard for as long as I can remember.

"It is quite heavy and visitors who pick it up put it down straight away in case they drop it on their foot.

"I was worried that if I passed away it would just be thrown in the bin and that its story would be forgotten about."

George volunteered for the Royal Tank Regiment in 1944 at the age of 17 and trained at Bovington as a tank driver.

In order to simulate conditions on a firing range, a series of small lead Sherman tanks were laid out on a table top in a Nissen hut to take shots at.

George said: "I was training as a driver but with a five-man tank crew you had to learn each other's jobs and gunner was one of them.

"To start with you had to shoot at this small lead tank on a table with a pellet gun. It was to help get your aim and range right.

"When I saw one of these tanks I thought I would have one and just nicked it.

"I finished my training as a tank driver at the end of 1944 but I was still too young to go to Europe so they sent me to the Middle East and I took the little tank with me."

The model went with George to Cairo, the Suez, Alamein and travelled across the Sahara with him before he left the army in 1953.

David Willey, curator at the Tank Museum, said: "This lead tank is not an item we previously held in the collection and coming to us with such a good story - and the fact it's been cherished so long by its owner - makes this a very worthy addition to our collections."