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My name is Harry Down. I was born and bred in Wrexham in 1921.
In 1932, I joined the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. Being only 11, I joined as a cadet. Of course, by the time the war came, I was old enough to transfer from the cadets to the adult division at the age of 17/18.
In the early part of the war years, we were trained in air-raid precautions, which latterly were called civil defence. When I left Grove Park School, my first job was at Wrexham Gas, Coke and Light company. In those days they made gas from coal, and Wrexham being surrounded by coal mines, they used to bring the coal into the gas works, first of all in the early days by horse and cart, and then by lorries, which couldn’t carry very much, and they used to do regular journeys backwards and forwards, from the coal mines to the gas works, to deliver the coal, so that it could be turned into gas.
As a young boy, and being in the St John’s Ambulance. I was involved in first aid in the works. During the early part of the war, the gas company, in liaison with the authorities, had a squad of main layers, who were on standby to be called out in case bombs were dropped and gas mains were damaged and had to be cut off. The main layers used to do a routine of so many nights available, and so many nights off. On the other nights, when they weren’t working, a lot of them, including myself, were involved in the Home Guard, because the Home Guard used to do patrols around the borders of the gas works, in case any of the foreign people got in and caused damage- sabotage, in other words.
So my early war years were involved in the Home Guard, then I was on the squad with the Main layers, and I was also involved in the Civil Defence and ARP with the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. And just bear in mind that I was doing all this and I was only a young lad at the time.
Anyway, a lot of the St John lads were older than me. They went to Warrington to join the Royal Army Medical Corps, and I went with them. There was a sergeant behind the table, and he asked us all our ages.. well, the others were 18 plus, and I wasn’t 18. So I told the sergeant I was 18, and he said to me ‘I’ve heard that before. I don’t think you are 18, are you? You’d better go and bring me your birth certificate.’ So my number was up then. I told my mum and dad what I’d done, and they were annoyed that I hadn’t sought their advice.
At that point, I was still involved with the civil defence, and I decided to volunteer for the air force. I was a VR- a Volunteer Reserve. I joined up and did my square bashing in Blackpool, and then I went to Halton, in Buckinghamshire, to be trained as a medic. Well, I qualified as a medic and was sent to the RAF hospital- Innsworth Lane- in Gloucester.
The sisters were officers. And me being a young lad, and a little naïve, I was a little bit out of my depth, and they were very efficient at lashing at their orders. So I was virtually a bed pan orderly, and in charge of urine bottle. And I didn’t join the air force for that! I wanted to do something worthwhile. So I thought out a method of getting caught, sleeping on nights..
Because of my misdemeanour, I was kicked out of the medics and the next thing I knew was, I was on point duty outside the main gate at RAF Innsworth Lane, and you can imagine, as a young lad, being seconded to the police, controlling traffic and saluting all the officers going in and out, again it was a little bit of an ordeal!
Eventually I was posted to the Orkney Islands, to RAF Skaebrae. At the time I went there, there was a Norwegian squad there, flying spitfires. The idea was that they were home cover for the fleet in Scappa Flow, because between Skaebrae and Scappa Flow, it was only a matter of minutes flying distance, and all the aircraft were on a moment’s notice for take off, which was fine in decent weather, but you can imagine in the Orkneys, particularly during the winter, we were up to our knees in snow. We were all kitted out with leather jerkins, balaclavas, gloves, and Wellington boots. But, of course, in those days, there were no modern snow ploughs, so everyone was moving the area with shovels, and as the snow plough passed, you had to dig the rest of it by shovel, and pile it up the side of the runway, because the runways had to be clear 24 hours a day, if possible.
Us young lads, we couldn’t grumble about what we were doing, because all the officers were involved as well! So, if they had to do it, we HAD to do it. And, just to confirm how bad it was, this was one of the only times I had a rum ration, which was usually confined to the navy, in those days.
After two winters in the Orkneys (I wasn’t on the squadron initially, I was station staff), I went from general duties to transport. I went from there to Weeton near Preston, to be trained as a mode of transport mechanic, and then I was posted to a secret unit. It was Mobile Radar.
So we went from Preston to Swanage in Dorset, where we were toughened up by guardsmen who had been wounded and brought back, and given other duties. Their job was to get us ready to go abroad.
After that, we went from there to Felixstowe, where we were introduced to this mobile radar kit, which involved assembly, like a meccano, with wood, and they turned out to be in towers about 50/60 feet high. After assembling them, and being able to concertina one part into another, we were able to put them onto a mobile vehicle (like a caravan on wheels), so that we could transport them about. The radar operators performed from the vehicle, because they had screens in there. All the allied aircraft was fitted with a device called IFF- Identification, Friend or Foe? When the operators looked at the screen, they could pick out their own aircraft with the IFF, and also pick out the German or foreign aircraft. And then they would be able to pass directions to a fighter squadron, who would go out and combat them in the air, because they were located and the fighter squadrons would be directed to where the foreign aircraft were.
We went to North Africa. We landed in a place called Oran. When we left Scotland, we went out in convoy, way out into the Atlantic, over Northern Ireland, and we didn’t know where we were going. The next sight of land after that was when we went through the straits of Gibraltar, because we were in the middle, and we could see land on both sides. There were a lot of lights, particularly on the North African side, because that was Morocco, and they weren’t involved in the war.
Anyway, we landed at Oran. When the boat (the Stirling Castle, a P and O liner) landed, there was a panic on, because German aircraft had been seen in the vicinity, and with a big convoy coming in to the Mediterranean through Gibraltar, they were after bombing something. And no sooner had we berthed, than we were all taken off the ship and put in a field nearby, in case the Germans came bombing. Well, after we’d got over that scare, we began to move along the North African coast, and eventually met up with the Eighth Army, coming up from Egypt, through Tubruck. We met them at a place called Bizetta. There was a peninsular there that went out into the Mediterranean. Many many thousands of German troops and all their equipment were trapped between the army coming up from Egypt, and our first army coming up along the African coast. They couldn’t fly out because they hadn’t got aircraft, and they couldn’t travel by sea, because the straits between there and Sicily were controlled by the Royal Navy, and there were submarines there as well.
Anyway, we went from Bizetta in LCT- Landing Craft Tanks, and there were some other landing craft, which was infantry. And we invaded Italy. We landed in Sicily, and then we travelled through Sicily from South to North, and we eventually came to — I can’t remember the name of the place- but it was on the coast, not far from Mecina. After a little while there, there was the invasion of Italy, at Salerno, and we went into the invasion at Salerno. And we were still involved with the radar unit, even then.
While I was in Sicily, I had several bad doses of malaria. On one occasion, where we were due to move off from Sicily, I was admitted to an American hospital. So, I lost my original unit. When I’d recovered sufficiently to return to full time duties, I was seconded to 43 fighter squadron. They were part of 324 wing. There were four squadrons- 43, 72, 93 and 111. We moved up through Italy on the Mediterranean side. There were also some units moving up Italy on the Adriatic side. When it was deemed necessary to break out of Salerno, we were hoping to connect up with the army who were coming up from the South of Italy. But the trouble was that Italy was very mountainous, and they were held up because of the Germans, so we didn’t link up for some time. But still, we moved up from Salerno, through Naples, and we were based at the main airfield at Naples. Of course, the squadron operated from there for a while. Eventually we moved from there, and went to the South of France, near to Marseilles. We landed there in LCTs, and moved up from there- now this was the time when the landings occurred in Northern France- and a lot of the German reinforcements were drawn from the South of France to support the Germans fighting on the beaches in the North. So we were sent to the South of France, so that it would make the Germans draw their reserves back again, to the South.
The first town of any size we came to was Avignon, and we had a short space of time there, before moving to Lyon, further North again. In Lyon, the squadron was split- part of it went to Bezancon, and the other part stayed in Lyon, as there were rumours of another Allied landing near Bordeaux, but as far as I know, that never came off.
After quite a time in the South of France, we were drawn back to Italy. This was North of Rome. Then we moved from there, over to the Adriatic side. From there onwards, we went over the River Pau- which was a fast flowing river- and we had quite a battle there, because the Germans had dug in well. We moved from there into Northern Italy. Eventually, the war was getting towards its end then. I think it was on VE day- I cant be certain, where there was a panic overnight, and we were told to move at a moment's notice, and we were moved from there, into Austria, through a place called Verlaque, and we went into Klangefort in Austria. But it was in Austria, and there was a huge lake nearby called the Vothersee. We saw some steamers there, and in peace time they used to have a lot of visitors there. We spent some time in Klangefort, because at that particular time, Tito, from Yugoslavia, threatened to take the port of Trieste, and the Allies said they weren’t going to have it, and that was the idea of sending a fighter squadron into Klangefort. It was only minutes — flying distance- from there into Trieste. From there we went to Ludenberg, which was further north in Austria, and near a frontier where the Russians were. When we went to Ludenberg, we took over the airfield from the Russians, and there was a lot of training aircraft, which the Russians had smashed all the engines, with sledge hammers, and chopped all the tails off, so nobody could fly them. And we found out that there were Cossacks there, because they even had their horses in the barrack blocks with the men, because of the weather. So when we came to take over the barracks, we couldn’t go in straight away, because they had to de-louse everywhere. We found the Russians to be a little bit of a problem, because they’d done a hell of a lot of damage to the airfield. When we came to go North, towards Vienna, we had to go through a Russian check point, before we got to the Allies side, and the Russians were very strict. They used to check all our identity cards and count us. The area between where we came across them, and went through No Mans Land.. it was a bit of an ordeal, because we didn’t know what they were going to do, because we thought they were trigger happy.
I joined the airforce in February 1941 and I was demobbed in October 1946, and over that period of time, as you can imagine, I travelled thousands of miles. I never flew anywhere, but I travelled thousands of miles, up hill and down dale, up mountains in Italy and down, there were no tunnels or motorways in those days, and it’s always amazed me how the vehicles we had in those days managed to fulfil the duties that were expected of them.

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