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Memories of my Early Days.

I was 17½, living with my parents in Redhill near Reigate when war broke out working in a Steel Wool factory as an apprentice Bench Fitter. The product was classified as luxury goods, so I was told I had to move to ammunition factory work and was given the chance of moving to either London or Birmingham.

I chose the latter and came to work in the Hercules Cycle Factory at Manor Mills, Aston Cross where we produced Bren Gun parts. We worked a day shift doing this and we volunteered to work one or sometimes two nights a week as fire watch on the factory roof looking for incendiary bombs dropped by the German bomber planes bombing Birmingham. If one dropped on the flat roof we had to run and cover it with a dustbin lid to put out the flames. I lived Small Heath and it was just as scary at home, the bombing would go on all night, I stayed in the kitchen when the bombs were dropping to keep the Landlady’s daughter company. She would not go into the bomb shelter that was under a nearby factory — Butlers, which was at the top of our road. People who never lived through this time would never believe some of the stories we could relate and it was with some relief that I joined the Fleet Air Arm in 1942.

I spent a few months in Scotland getting used to aircraft maintenance and when I was ready I was shipped off to India and Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka) serving on various squadrons around the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. It was pretty scary at times as the Japanese were quite active in those parts. I remember our commander telling us “If you’re lucky enough to survive to the end of the war that we should try to put the bad times behind us and remember the good times we had when ashore in Columbo, Bombay or Trinkamalee.

We had some bad times and memories and you could probably write a couple of books on them but I will relate just a quick one here. I remember staring down into the sea after being told that we may have to abandon ship and seeing the biggest sharks I have ever seen attacking the hull of the boat. I watched these sharks, which had brought much amusement until know, for nearly two hours. Thankfully we didn’t need to abandon ship but we did have quite a few drinks when we got a shore a day or two later on my 21st birthday.

I never returned to Redhill in Surrey after the war to live as my father had told me when I left home, and yes I went on to marry the Landlady’s daughter

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