大象传媒

This story was entered onto the peoples war website by John Warner on behalf of Bert Vickery, the author, who fully understands and accepts the sites terms and conditions.

Soon after the show I was allotted a job with the most miserable electrician. The job was at Catterick Camp in Yorkshire. This happened because I had a few sharp words about the guns being sent to Coventry after it had been bombed, and this is my punishment. We named the electrician Moanalot. He had already got digs in Richmond, because he鈥檇 been up there before, but I was billeted with a poor family whose husband had spells of violence and the food was the worst I鈥檝e had in my life. She used to make a whacking great Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday; that was to fill us up so we didn鈥檛 eat anything else. Anyway I worked on the signals camp, I think it was called a Gustard Line, I know it was the end of the bus route that went out of Richmond to Catterick Camp, and I had the luck to be befriended by a sergeant PT instructor, a professional footballer who arranged for me to play in an Army XI, playing on the garrison ground against an England team that included both the Comptons, Les and Denis, Frank Swift, Wilf Mannion, Swedey Risby, and a lot more others that I forgot the names of, but to me it was an honour for me, a boy of 16 to play against these internationals.

Well I stuck the abuse from Moanalot as long as I could, which was about six weeks, till I could stand it no longer. I packed my small bag and caught the train back to Market Harborough. Mum had the luck to find a job and the ladies name was Mrs Barrett, and I came to understand that Mr Barrett was one of o the Barretts of the Barrett Shoe Company, I believe was either in Kettering or Northants, er . . . Kettering or near there anyway. Mrs Barrett gave my Mum three rooms of this nine-roomed great big Georgian house, almost next door to the largest hotel in Market Harborough. I think it was called The Swan. Lucky for me, and Flo my mum, they allowed us to rent two rooms and a sitting room, I wasn鈥檛 out of work long, I got a job as an unintentional electrician apprentice in what was called the aircraft factory which before the war I understand made liberty bodices but in the war they were making engine mountings for the Avro Anson, in fact I think the firm was called A V Roe Limited. Up to this time girls weren鈥檛 part of my life but I felt something for a young assistant cook in the canteen, but there was a snag. She was twenty and I was sixteen, but she was from Mawnan Smith, a village in Cornwall, and these young ladies, in the war, had the choice of going in the forces, the land army, or go on to war work. Well this lady, my Cornish pixie I called her, took the job in this aircraft factory as assistant cook. I was an a sixteen year old Cockney who looked a lot older than my sixteen years, and my bringing up was so I acted a lot older as well. My attractive Cornish assistant cook was hooked when she saw me in my Sea Cadets uniform, and we went on the first date on two old bikes we borrowed, and we went to a place called Foxton Lock. It was on the way from Market Harborough to Leicester. It was a small walled stream running through the fields. We were oblivious to any war that was going on;
At Foxton Locks me and Mary were in paradise.

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