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This is John Luff’s story: it has been added by Pauline Colcutt on behalf of the Fernhurst Centre, with permission from the author who understands the terms and conditions of adding his story to the website.

In 1939 I was a local lad working at the village butchers, Mr Arthur Denyer whose shop was in Church Road, trundling far and wide around the village on a trade bike.

It came time for the children from London to be evacuated to the village. They came in coaches and as I was a Boy Scout we had to take them to the different families in the village to where they had been allocated.

When I was sixteen and a half I learned to drive the butcher’s van. I have never taken a driving test as this was all cancelled during the War. This was much better than the trade bike. In addition I was in the Home Guard.

Then one day in November 1942 my papers arrived to say that I had to join the Army on the 3rd December 1942. This was four weeks before my eighteenth birthday. I was to report to Blackpool on that day. I was really looking forward to it as some of my pals had already gone before me.

My mother was worried because I had to travel all that way on my own as previously the furthest that I had been on a train was to Guildford. I found my way across London to Euston Station to get the train to Blackpool. There I met up with five other lads who were joining up with me. We were to report to Squire’s Gate holiday camp at Lytham St Anne’s and decided that we would go and have a beer at a pub before we reported in. It was a day’s journey and we arrived at about six o’clock.

When we got off the train there were Red Caps waiting for us and they grabbed us and put us on a truck for the camp before we could look round so we never got our pint of beer.

We were in chalets two to a chalet with one double bunk bed and a wash basin with running cold water. My partner was Charlie Lonevagane. He had arrived before me and taken the bottom bunk.

After a few days we had our inoculations, sometimes one in each arm at the same time. Our arms became very sore and stiff for a few days and I had great difficulty in getting in and out of that top bunk. We were issued with mess tins and a small enamel bowl like a basin with no handle. This was for our soup and also our tea.

Charlie came from the East End of London and was a London bus driver. He was aged about forty with glasses and a bald head but quite a character. He suffered badly from piles and after a day’s training on the sands he would say that his backside was sore and go off with his little basin to the cookhouse to get warm water to bathe them.

After a few weeks we had to go on a parade to visit the dentist. If you had bad teeth they were taken out. I was lucky and only needed two fillings.

In our final week of training we had to go to the firing range to fire a rifle. We had to carry all the ammunition up to the tram terminus to take us to the firing range.

On completion of our six weeks basic training we were sent to the driving school at Ashton under Lyne to train as transport drivers although there was little they could teach Charlie as a bus driver.

We were billeted on the ground floor in an old cotton mill with several lines of beds as far as the eye could see, in all about two hundred of us. We had to drive small trucks, three ton trucks, motor cycles and Bren gun carriers. A lot of people had their walls knocked down when we were out training with the Bren gun carriers as they were steered by tracks and not wheels.

The course lasted six weeks but by week four Charlie and I had decided that enough was enough and volunteered for North Africa. That was the last I saw of him.

Our driving instructors were civilian personnel and after declaring us as having passed the course offered to record us as having failed if we fancied staying there another six weeks — I was not in any hurry to get into the War.

It was after this that we were told that we would be put into the Royal Ordnance Corps as a Driver I.C. (internal combustion). I was posted to a vehicle park in a little village about six miles from Shrewsbury in Shropshire. Here we had about a hundred cars and trucks most of which we had to take to Liverpool Docks to be delivered overseas, North Africa I think.

My next move was to a mobile Laundry and Bath Unit in Yorkshire. This was a complete laundry mounted on three large trailers. We would do a weekly collection and delivery service around all the units in north Yorkshire collecting underwear and towels etc., to be laundered.

After this we moved to Scotland where we joined the 52nd Lowland Division and were training in the hills and snow in preparation to go to Norway but this never materialised. In October 1944 we came down from Scotland to Lee on the Solent to board ship for Europe.

We loaded our trucks and trailers and all our equipment onto the landing craft and set sail at night. For me it was quite frightening, crossing a rough sea in a flat bottomed vessel. The crew reminded us to swim away from a sinking ship — and I was a non swimmer.

Next morning we arrived in France at Le Trepourte. After unloading our trucks and equipment we travelled to St Omer where we rested for the night in the town square. We travelled through Belgium and into Holland and caught up with the advancing infantry where we set up our Unit by a river to get the water to operate our equipment. The troops would then come to have a much appreciated shower and change of clothing.

When the War ended and in the subsequent occupation, we took over a civilian laundry in Bielefeld where the German civilians had to work for us with two of us and a sergeant in charge to launder all the troops clothing. During this time we were able to go on seventy two hour passes sightseeing to Berlin where we stayed in the Olympic Stadium buildings.

After a time the Unit was disbanded and I was posted to the 7th Armoured Division Headquarters at Bad Rothenfeld between Bielefeld and Osnabruck. Here I became the driver for a major in the RAOC. We had a large Auto Union car and a VW Beetle which they had just started producing again. They were some of the first to come off the production line and were for military use only.

Each day we would be travelling all over Germany visiting other Units. This was the best six months of my Army career.

I was demobbed on the 7th May 1947 and came back to Fernhurst with my wife whom I had met and married in Shropshire during my Army service.

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