Demarne was born in Poplar, London, the eldest of three sons and two daughters of a City clerk; when his father lost his job through illness, the family's living standards suffered: "Sometimes we sat in the dark, for there was no penny for the gas.

Most distinctly, he remembered the Zeppelin raids on London in 1915 and witnessing the downing of the Schütte-Lanz SL11 (1916) for which William Leefe Robinson was awarded the Victoria Cross.

Some detached and flew along the waterfront from North Woolwich to the tidal basin, bombed the big factories along the River Thames".

[2] Remembering those days 60 years later, Demarne recalled "In the first week of the Blitz I thought London wouldn't be able to stand up to it.

There were huge craters and gas flames blazing high in the air and tangled telephone cables everywhere but every night the emergency services got to work and got everything up and running all over again".

In January 1944, as Divisional Officer, he was transferred back to West Ham in time for the "Baby" Blitz and flying bomb attacks.

[3] He was transferred again to the City and Central London in November 1944, where he was involved in three of the most deadly V-2 rocket attacks, in which more than three hundred people were killed.

[2] During this period, he travelled widely throughout Australasia and developed the aviation fire departments of Norfolk Island and Papua New Guinea.

[5] A sculpture by John W Mills has become the National Firefighters Memorial, erected to the south of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1991, and elevated and rededicated in 2003.