大象传媒

I was born and brought up in Stockton on Tees. My father was a chief engineer in the Merchant Navy and had his home in Roker Terrace.

When the war broke out I was almost fourteen. The first four months were almost an extended holiday, since I only attended school one day a week. That was simply because there were not enough air raid shelters at the school. Then calamity! The school was relocated to Ragworth Hall in Norton. The grounds were large enough to allow for the building of the requisite number of shelters, and so it was back to the old routine. That said, my education 鈥� or what remained of it 鈥� was still interrupted by frequent air raids.

Being a grammar school boy, I was allowed to stay on until I was sixteen. Then I left to take a job as a laboratory assistant for the Davy United Roll Foundry at Haverton Hill. I trained for about one year and then progressed to shift work.

My job on shift was to look after the analyses of three electric-arc furnaces. These were designed to make high quality complex steel, so their analyses were far from simple. I also had to calculate the additions necessary to ensure the steel was the correct analysis before it was cast: all heady stuff for a lad still in his 鈥榯eens. (It was only afterwards I discovered that I shouldn鈥檛 have been working shifts until after my eighteenth birthday. All the work I had done prior to that had been 鈥� strictly speaking - illegal.)

The steel had to be right because, among other things, we made the turrets for Churchill tanks. They were made of very special steel, which comprised carbon, silicon, manganese, chromium and vanadium. I think every twentieth turret we cast was taken for testing. This entailed being shot at. The results were always encouraging. The turrets came back with shells embedded in them but nothing had penetrated.

The castings were always in peril of being interrupted by air raids. There were three stages of air raid warnings:

1. YELLOW. This meant that an air raid was likely.
2. RED. This was when the sirens sounded.
3. BLACK. This meant that the bombers were approaching.

At the 鈥楤lack鈥� stage we knew that the foundry鈥檚 lights would go out in three minutes. It occasionally happened that the steel was in the process of being poured when this stage was reached. At these times the filling continued by the light generated by the molten steel.

I attended night school at the former Constantine College. When it came to metal analysis, I found I knew more than the teacher. He鈥檇 only read about the subject, whereas I had actual hands-on experience.

After two years of this I got bored with the life, which was a routine of eat, sleep and work i.e. no social life (鈥淎ll work and no play鈥︹��) The problem was that my job was classed as a reserve occupation. This meant I could not leave unless I was to be accepted for training as aircrew. There was a long waiting list to join the RAF, so I applied to join the Fleet Air Arm. I went along to a building situated in the centre of Darlington to take the medical and intelligence tests.

Having a surname like 鈥楤rown鈥� can have its advantages or otherwise, when it comes to lists. On that occasion it served me well since, being fairly near the top of the list I didn鈥檛 have long to wait. When it came to my turn I didn鈥檛 know what to expect. The first man who had gone in looked someone who could give a gorilla a good battle. Much to my surprise he said he鈥檇 FAILED the medical. Part of the medical entailed standing on one leg with eyes closed and outstretched arms. Another involved putting one foot onto a chair then standing up and down fifteen times. Then it was onto the other foot. After the medical there was a maths test. I had to answer thirty questions in as many minutes.

To my surprise I passed both tests so, in mid-1944, I left the foundry and joined the Royal Navy to train as an observer. The training was to take eighteen months. The first six months was spent studying maths and geography at Edinburgh University. During my time there the Professor of Geography disappeared for a few days. No explanation was ever given but I heard on the grapevine that he was one of the civilian advisors who helped plan the D-Day invasion. Apparently he was an expert on shorelines.

The next phase of training was tremendously hard; square-bashing, all kinds of signal systems, which included learning to send and receive Morse code at 25 words per minutes. This was even though, in the air, you were only expected to send/receive at a rate of 12 words per minute. (Morse keys aboard aircraft were fitted with very strong springs so as to prevent a wrong message being sent due to sudden movement.)

The remaining phase took place in Trinidad. To get there I sailed firstly to New York aboard the Queen Mary. There were about two thousand American wounded aboard and some five hundred British. The British contingent included a full destroyer crew going to pick up a ship in the USA. In theory I was sleeping fourth bunk up in the cocktail lounge.

It was a bit of fun but no one was idle. We were all given jobs. The destroyer lads were allocated to the galleys (kitchens) where there was more than enough work to do feeding all and sundry. I was put on a four-inch gun located on the bow (the foremost part of the ship). I was working four hours on - four off and, as such, was given the right to take my meals at any one of the four daily sittings. This was made possible by the fact I was given a white meal card, whereas most of the others had either a red or green meal card, which only entitled them to two meals per day.

The ship, which was supposed to take us from New York to Trinidad was sunk before she reached us, so we had to spend four weeks in New York awaiting alternative transportation. Hardships all round!

On arrival we berthed at Pier 90 and from there we went to Pier 92. The officer in charge there, for some unaccountable reason, took an instant dislike to our lot and set about trying to make our lives uncomfortable. Unhappily for him he had no idea who he was dealing with 鈥� we were all hand-selected personnel 鈥� and he ended up getting the worst of the exchange. Sgt Bilko鈥檚 platoon had nothing on us! In the end he gathered us together, called us a 鈥榬otten lot鈥� - and gave up.

There were two very helpful organisations in New York, the Union Jack Club on Fifth Avenue, and the USO (United Services Organisation.) You could go to either of them and get free tickets for practically anything, including the cinema and restaurants. Going to the cinema there was big event because you would see a movie and then there would be a stage show. And there was always someone to invite you home for the weekend. I, and two others went to the home of some people in Newark, New Jersey. They were originally from Newcastle upon Tyne. I also found time to visit some relatives of mine who lived near the town of Wilmington, Delaware. I spent a weekend with them.

Ironically, and I only found this out afterwards, my father had been in New York at the same time and neither of us knew. He went to visit our relations in Wilmington about a week after I had and been told then. Unhappily I had left New York by the time he got back.

I had been given a ticket to see 鈥楾annhauser鈥� at the Metropolitan Opera House and was looking forward to it immensely, when we got our orders to move out. As I love classical music, I was very disappointed but, fortunes of war鈥�

We went by train to Norfolk, Virginia, where we were treated like royalty. It all stemmed from an incident that had taken place a few years before when the damaged aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious, had berthed for repairs (she had sailed across the Atlantic Ocean backwards because of the hole in her bow.) Some British soldiers had been beaten up in the town a day or two beforehand and the crew of Illustrious were anxious to make amends. Her captain, Earl Mountbatten, gave them his blessing and, after a night on the town, British personnel were thereafter treated with respect. Indeed as a precaution against a repeat performance, the American authorities moved the ship鈥檚 company to a holiday camp in the hills out of harm鈥檚 way during repairs.

We left Newark in a converted oil tanker. Before going to Trinidad, however, we stopped off at Guantanemo Bay in Cuba.

I finally got to Trinidad in April 1945 to begin six months of intensive training. We were billeted in long huts, six feet off the ground to keep the creepy crawlies away from us. The work there was very hard, and if you didn鈥檛 keep up you were sent home. I studied navigation, meteorology, radar, aerial photography, air-gunnery, ship- and aircraft recognition and the theory of naval warfare.

It was not all work, of course, and a lot of pleasure was had. I especially remember Sunday trips to a place called Balandra Bay, which is on Trinidad鈥檚 Atlantic coast.

I finally got my observer鈥檚 wings in September 1945, the very month in which Japan surrendered. I feel that, as the life expectancy of fliers in the Pacific was short, the dropping of the atomic bombs probably saved not only my life, but a great many others, too.

ADDENDUM

This story, and those entitled DEATH BY MISADVENTURE and MY FATHER鈥橲 WAR form the trilogy of my family鈥檚 contribution to the war effort. But no words of praise can be high enough for the effort of my mother. She ran our home and coped with all the problems of rationing, general shortages, queuing and indeed all the problems that beset those left behind. On top of that she had the continual worry about her men.

My mother was nothing special in those days 鈥� she was typical! Typical of the spirit of the wives, mothers and sweethearts of our country at a time when our backs were to wall. She will always, of course, be special to me.

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