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I was born in Temperley near Altringham. As I grew up I wanted to be a joiner, when I was seventeen I decided that a really good way of learning a trade would be to join the T.A.
Even now my memory is crystal clear of what happened next! I was called up at 5am in the morning- I was knocked up out of bed on Sunday morning September 3rd 1942. I was told I had been called up. I got out of bed and went and knocked on all my friends' door to tell them I was going; I went to the house of my then girlfriend and her parents to tell them I was off.. I was saying goodbye to everybody as I thought that was it; I was going, and at seventeen I didn’t know when and if I would see them again.
I had to report to a place near Old Trafford in Manchester, the most embarrassing thing was that after four hours we were sent back home! I felt like such a fool and an idiot, I’d been saying goodbye to everyone earlier and then I had to go back and face them!

I feel I have a bit of a ‘soft’ story in relation to many of the stories told. Even though my involvement and the jobs I did were important I felt like I was dealt the soft option, but really looking back now I realise I was very, very lucky. At the time all the young lads were thinking ‘this is it- we can go and kill the Germans’ and that seemed to be the thing to do-everyone expected to go out and be fighting
What happened next was that I was called up again and billeted out to various places with the army. I was sent up north and went to Scorton for a while and then we came up to Darlington. I remember distinctly being put on a train, we didn’t have a clue where we were going or what was happening, as we were heading north we presumed we were off to Scotland. It was pitch black in the middle of the night, the train stopped and out we got! We were actually at North Road station in Darlington. We were marched down the street to a picture house which was called the Plaza on the corner of McNay Street. We thought we were having a quick stop before moving on to Scotland but we ended up staying there for a few weeks. We had to live in the rooms up above the cinema. My first impression of Darlington as we marched down the road was of all the litter blowing about; I had never seen such a messy place in my life! It’s a strange memory but a true one!
We were put to work looking after stores; we had to get together timber, asbestos and other building materials. After a while we were moved from the Plaza out to various church halls, I went to St Matthews’s hall.
We became quite settled in Darlington and got to know people. We had a band in our troop and decided to organise a few ‘dos’, we held a few dances and asked all the local girls to go- that’s where I met the lady I eventually married.
My knick name with the other lads was ‘the powder king’ as I was quick off the mark! When we were in the Plaza I found a way to sneak out through a window and down a drain pipe to go and visit my girlfriend, who became my wife, in Trafalgar Terrace which was just a few streets away. I never got caught!
After a while we were moved on from Darlington, one day we were put on a boat and as usual didn’t know where we were going! We got off the boat somewhere in Africa and had a seventeen mile walk to this large concrete building in the middle of a grape growing farm, we had to live in there for a while, it seemed really unusual to us young lads, we had never left our country before, the officers kept checking our temperatures to see if we were too hot, particularly on long marches — they knew we were not used to such hot weather! We found it really funny.
Later we were moved on, still in Africa to Egypt and then on to Italy and then to Greece. In Italy everyone thought I was Italian as I had very dark hair, everyone tried to speak to me in Italian.
Rome was amazing, all the old buildings were fantastic, the same in Africa and Greece really, at the time you didn’t appreciate what you had the opportunity to see when abroad and of course there were no guides to tell you the history etc. When I got home I realised I had seen the Coliseum and the Parthenon and Pompeii and it had been wonderful, I just wish I had had the time to study the buildings and their history while I was there!
After the war I stayed in Darlington and got married….that’s how a lad from Altringham ended up in Darlington for all these years! My family were very lucky; my two brothers who did see active service both returned home safely.

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