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This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of John Cyril Rowlett and added to the site with his permission.

I was fourteen when the War started and we lived in Maghull near Liverpool. I worked as a Junior Messenger at Martins Bank in Water Street in Liverpool and I got 10 shillings a week. Out of that I had to pay my fares. I was fed up with the job.Our next door neighbour was a gentleman named Mr McKay and he was the Personnel officer at a company called British Enka - they had a silkworks at Aintree where they made silk for parachutes and he offered me an apprenticeship there.

So I worked there and at the same time attended Liverpoool Polytechnic in Byrom Street. It was my job to attend to the machines and keep them going. While I worked there I began to court one of the girls from the Sewing Room. Her name was Dorothy Roberts and she lived in Bootle.

In 1941 her home was bombed. It was the last night of the Eight day long May Blitz. It was a direct hit - there was only a pile of bricks left. Dorothy had been in an Air Raid shelter with her sister, Margaret, but her mother and father and three brothers were killed. When I found out about it I went straight from work to find out what had happened. I was greeted with a couple of back doors balanced on top of the pile of bricks. On them were the bodies of two of Dorothy's brothers.

She was taken to Walton Hospital with a broken pelvis and Margaret had a broken arm - a compound fracture.

I was called up and joined the Army when I was nineteen and , while I was away, my mother took them both in. I was called up to York on 19th December 1943 and from there was posted to Southend on Sea where I joined the 14th Training Battalion of the RASC. I trained as an electrician. We sailed from the South Coast to Cherbourg. My company was the 79th Petrol Transport. Petrol would be pumped from Merseyside to the South of England and then piped under the Channel to Cherbourg. Then tankers would fill up and take it to th Frontline. The Company's job was to lay pipes and then move forward and I myself was in the workshops.

It was toward the end of the War and the fighting was all over by the time we got to Holland. Our company was disbanded and we finished up at the Panzer Barracks in Hanover.

I was sent back to Cardiff and then posted to Ghana - the Gold Coast. When I was offered a Tradesman's Release I took it like a shot and I went back to the Silkworks in Aintree till Courtaulds took it over.

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