大象传媒

Story told by Ted Peare.

This story rectifies the errors that occurred in Article ID A1141930.

I was still at Cirencester Grammar School (Gloucestershire) when war broke out. By rights I should have finished but agreed to stay on an extra year as I was too young to be taken on as an apprentice at the place I had applied to. The training school was in Birmingham and it was thought that I was too young to stay away from home by myself. Not long after the war had broken out, my brother came home and said that they were looking for apprentices where he was an electrician so I quickly applied and was accepted.

In the December of 1941, when I was 18 and a half, we were working on the aerodrome at Chedworth when I received my call up papers. In the April of 1942 I was sent to basic training and thereafter was sent to serve with the REME. After a brief embarkation leave I sailed from Penarth aboard the S.S. Recorder on the 17th December 1942 and met up with the convoy in the Clyde. From the Clyde we set sail for North Africa on Christmas Eve. I spent the whole of Christmas being very seasick. I arrived in North Africa in the January of 1943 and from here we were sent out in units trained to support and look after the vehicles. I served in North Africa until the October of 1943 when we were then posted to Italy. We sailed through the Mediterranean and once in Italy I travelled up through Tarantoi, Brindisi, Bari, Ancona, Roma and Florence during the progress of the war. It was in Florence that I celebrated VE day. From Florence the unit was posted to Milan where we were based in the Lambretta Factory, putting together vehicles out of the wrecks that were brought into us. These vehicles were then given to the newly reformed Italian Police Force. One day, we got a call asking whether we could go and move a submarine. The Germans had been prefabricating them in one of the factories and at the end of the war it had just been left. The soldiers needed it to be moved as it was taking up the whole of the factory. When we got there we couldn't believe our eyes, it was massive, we thought that the call had been put through as a joke! Needless to say, despite trying very hard our little truck couldn't move the submarine and it was left as it was and the soldiers had to work around it.

In the January of 1946 the unit was split and my section moved from Italy to Greece, where I ended my overseas services in the following September; I was sent back to Corsham (Wiltshire) to complete my service before being demobbed in the December of 1946; 4 years 8 months after having left home.

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