大象传媒

This Story was submitted to the People's War site by Tom Morden
(volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester on behalf
of Roy Seville(author) and has been added to the site with his/her
permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I left school in 1940 aged 16 and started working at a rubber factory in Manchester.
I used to watch the dogfights throught the window at the factory betwwen the RAF and Luftwaffe bombers.
When I saw the devastation that really changed me. Two thirds of the rubber factory was absolute rubble.
Two years later a bomb dropped in Oldham and two of my friends were killed subsequently in the explosion. My two friends who were killed were aged 17 and 18.
An evacuee from the Channels Islands survived the explosion which I considered unusual.
That reinforced the lesson I learned when a bomb dropped on the rubber factory where I worked.
The name of the factory was Redferns Rubber factory in Manchester.
The Manchester Blitz was just dreadful.
There was intensive bombing over a duration of 3/4 days by the Luftwaffe mainly on large aircraft and munitions factories.
Even those not in the area were aware of the fires and the sound of the bombs falling.
I joined the Fleet Air Arm in early 1943 and I trained as a radio mechanic. My service was in air stations in Scotland, mainly Northern Scotland. The end of the war was close and we were trained to work a mobile operational unit; we were drafted to Singapore towards the end of the war.
I was young on entry and couldn't be demobbed straightaway. One of my jobs in the unit was to look after Japanese Prisoners of War.
They weren't treated with kid's gloves. They were made to do all the drudgery jobs on the station under the command of their own officers. I had never seen someone so strict.
On one occasion there was a Japanese working party of about ten. One of ours who was looking after them complained that a pack of cigarettes was missing.
We told a Japanese officer and they were all lined up and had to turn out their pockets. Lo and behold, one of them had the cigarettes and the officer approached him and knocked him to the ground because that was a very severe loss of face. What happened to him when he got back to the camp I have no idea.
However, they were treated to a Japanese show. With just shovels they ecavated a trench for 3000 people in a fortnight.
I have never seen such industry.
I then joined the ship 'Indomnitable'in Singapore and came back home and was demobbed. It made its way home by a circitous route, it went to Ceylon was Sri Lanka was known then; Malta picking up people, and Gibraltar.

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