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FACTORY AND ARMY CADET FORCE

ROBERT NELSON WHITE

Part 1 War declared, making equipment for lifeboats and aircraft, Army Cadet Force, Home Guard, WD Inspection, End of War

This is an edited version of an interview by Sylvia Burrows on 30th April 2004. The original recording and full transcript are held in the Wessex Film and Sound Archive, ref. BAHS 110 and BAHS 111. © Basingstoke Talking History.

Part 2 describes his experiences of Call up, RASC, Army of Occupation in Germany, Berlin Airlift, Belsen and Demob.

WAR DECLARATION
On war being declared I remember sitting down and listening to the radio and feeling quite perturbed, wondering what was going to happen next. I think it was the phoney war period but I can remember being quite concerned for a week, that something was going to happen.

FIRST JOB
I became a sheet metalwork apprentice at L Young and Company who produced ductwork, ventilation work, and a variety of things including fuel tanks for motor torpedo boats. I can remember my first day there. I was a little apprehensive; suddenly there I was, a young boy with older middle-aged men, a whole range of uncles, if you like, because as this was 1943 all the young men had been called up. At that time they were making, out of tin plated steel, fresh water tanks to go into lifeboats

We were also making a lot of ventilation ducts for the battery room where they charged up the batteries that would then go into aircraft. One of my jobs as an apprentice was to paint these things inside and out with a sort of rubber-based paint.

ARMY CADET FORCE
There were several lads in our road and just at the tail end of school we joined the Army Cadet Force. Meetings were held in the church hall in Shirley where we played military games and pretended to be soldiers, and waited patiently to be issued with this itchy battle-dress. I was quite happy with it and I eventually became a Sergeant Major.

INTERNEES
I had some very close friends then, which I’d been in the Army Cadets with and one was Tony Genevera, his father of course was Italian. He was one of the unfortunates that was interned at the beginning of the war. He'd moved over in the war and in fact he was a naturalised Briton. He came across from Italy with three children, he was a widower. He used to do general furniture removals with his ancient Ford van and when he was interned his van was commandeered as part of the war effort. The irony is he ended up, while he was so-called ‘interned’, being allowed to drive his lorry on government business.

HOME GUARD
My Uncle was in the Home Guard attached to Pirelli General in Southampton, so I was aware that young schoolboys could be messengers, and one of the few requisites was that you should have a bicycle. I had a bicycle, and I was tall, so I went down to Lymont Drill Hall by the side of the TA Drill Hall which was for the Home Guard, and I rolled up and said 'I would like to be a messenger'. But of course subsequently in the evening they found out that I was only fourteen and they insisted that I had to be at least sixteen. My being tall, everyone had taken it for granted that I was old enough and I was told, 'Oh well, go home and come back in a year or so, son.' I became quite despondent about that. Uncle was attached to a rocket device section and he used to go across the water to Hythe when it was his duty night, and his most bitter regret is that they never fired the damned thing. We didn't really have any direct raids, aircraft would come in slightly to the east or the west of us, aiming for other places, and of course would exit over us on the way out, after swinging back from London. There would be odd bombers that had lost their way. Places like the New Forest and places on the coast would get bombs where the bombers would just get rid of the excess load and go back to Germany or to France.

WD INSPECTION
Prior to D-Day, of course, we were making dozens and dozens of boxed exhausts with a curved top which would be bolted on to the rear of the tank where the exhaust was, so that when they left the tank landing craft they could travel up through the surf with no fear of the water going back up in the exhaust and killing the engine. The WD (War Department) Inspector came down and cast a critical eye over these things. We had trouble with the spot welder. It was a quite a large area, about 3 foot by 3 foot six wide, and there were baffles inside to stop it drumming, and for some reason, perhaps the type of metal (because sometimes the quality of the metal we got was varied) the spot welds wouldn't hold, and we sat there during our tea break and suddenly you'd hear pop, pop, pop and all these spot welds would snap apart, due to the distortions and buckles. The chaps then drilled them and put rivets in them and there followed a very heated argument among the men and this Inspector. But eventually the chaps apparently won the day because these things were all sprayed green and went away on a lorry. But in retrospect I think about that now, and I realise it was absolutely absurd as the rivets would have held just as tight for the amount of time that any tank was going through the surf.

END OF THE WAR
It was evident from radio news and newspapers that the war was ending and it was just a question of when. On the declaration I went down town into Southampton to enjoy the celebrations. In those days there were trams still in Southampton, and down by the Bar Gate the road was made of wooden blocks and people there were levering them up to keep great big bonfires going in bombed out building sites. Most of the buildings had been cleared away and people would come up and grab you and dance in the street.

There was no sudden change at work. Certain contracts were finished, one or two started, and then there was a big gap. The firm I worked for, L Young and Company, were makers of the stewards’ friend which was a bucket with a rubber rim round the base, and rubber round the handle, so that the stewards on board boats wouldn't wake up their passengers. They became Hampshire Car Bodies, a firm that had made car bodies and wing sections of gliders during the war in Winchester Road.

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