大象传媒

On Sunday 3rd September 1939, I was leaving work with three work mates when we heard that war had been declared on Germany. It was not unexpected and our group of age 16 to 18 saw it as an adventure! In early 1940, I left my employment at Cleveland Park Greyhound Stadium and started work at Acklam Steel Works on shift in the Rolling Mills. During this period we were getting air raids and we heard that there had been bombs dropped on South Bank Works near Middlesbrough. Some of us, out of curiosity, went to see where the damage was, but we were not allowed very near to the damage on the Works. Quite a few houses had been hit but we were not given any information about the incidents and whether any caustic bombs had been dropped. We were told some time later that South Bank had been the first industrial area in England to be bombed. On another occasion when we were on nights, there was an air raid and we spent most of the night in shelters. Smoke screens, which were quite smelly, had been put up to confuse the enemy. The full length of the road to Middlesbrough was full of smoke and we could not ride our bikes. As it happened, the Works bus was just leaving. My father and I were on night shift, and we walked with our bikes on either side of the road with our rear lights fully illuminated, so that the bus bus driver could follow us to the end of the road - a good move since there was a dangerous bank and corner along the way. We guided him to the right road to get him home. During 1942, I was in the Marton Home Guard. Since we were on shift work, we were on a rota for our guard duties. We did exercises and training at weekends with other units of Home Guards and occasionally with the Army. We were often called out on a Saturday night - one of our officers owned a removals firm so he provided transport to wherever we needed to be! On one occasion, we were at work on nights when there was an air raid and we were in the shelters. Incendiary bombs were dropped on the site and a few of us dashed out to extinguish them. We heard that Coventry had been similarly hit the previous week followed by raids with high explosive bombs so we wasted no time in getting back down the shelter!! We were lucky in that no high explosive bombs were dropped - either we got the 'marker fires' out in time before the bombers appeared or they simply had no bombs left.
During 1941 I passed at medical grade A1 and was told that I would soon be in the Army. I opened my pay packet on the following Friday night and there was a note inside to say that my employment with them was finished. On the Saturday morning, I and some others had to report to the Labour Exchange where we were told by them that each of us would receive a travel warrant for the 1045pm train on Sunday night to Birmingham where we would be on essential war work. I said that we were already doing essential work but they said we had to go anyway. We arrived in Birmingham on the Monday morning and went straight to a foundry. I worked there until 1943 - it was one of the worst places that I have ever worked in. I had another medical for the Army, but under the Bevan scheme I was sent down the coal mines in Stoke on Trent. One day I had a day off for some reason and when I went to work the next day, I heard that a big cable had snapped releasing some tubs which had hit some miners and killed them. It would have been me. Another time we were waiting to go down the pit as the last load of coal from the night shift was coming up. The cable snapped and the cage fell 1000 feet back down the shaft. If that had happened on the next trip of the cage, we would have been in it.

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