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This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of Bernard Stevens and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I had own business as an ironmonger during early war years at 45 High Street, Dunstable. As soon as the war started the demand changed for all sorts of items in the shop — e.g. black paint, and other materials that people needed for blackout purposes and to try make their houses more ‘bomb-proof’. Rolls and rolls of adhesive tape were sold to put across windows and then of course materials stared getting short. The only way you could get hold of supplies was to go to the wholesalers in London and Birmingham. I used to go up to the Birmingham wholesalers about once a fortnight. Other times we would obtain special permits from some factories, as we supplied many of them with materials. By getting these certificates you could get supplies from the wholesalers; there was one occasion when the army came to Dunstable and wanted 100 enamel mugs. So of course we were given a permit to enable us to go up to London and get the supplies. This also applied to other things that the army needed such as shovels, etc.

There were a number of army groups in the town; the Sugar Loaf was used as an officers mess and several well known film people became officers and stayed at there. Of course there were a lot of huts situated where the ASDA (supermarket) is now, also in First Avenue, Dunstable, a women’s artillery group was based there. Apart from soldiers being billeted in the town for short periods of time, trade in the shop decreased in volume generally. It was quite a job eking the stuff out and finding enough pots and pans for people to use. Many had evacuees and they needed more equipment to cater for them. Some firms were perhaps a little more generous if you went to their actual factory, they would look after you and try and find something for you. During the war years my wife and father kept the business going, we also had two girl assistants and a part time lady working in the shop and so did not involve any loss of manpower.

Before I joined up I was in the ARP. Sometimes we slept in the Westminster bank behind the counters and then later we got moved into the conservative club in Dunstable. We had no equipment, although we had some demonstrations of how to work the foot pumps but I had no idea where they were kept!

I was called up after 12 months deferment in the autumn of 1941 and had to report to Penarth in Cornwall, although we did our basic training in Blackpool. I remember doing PT in middle of the road, in side streets. It was in quite a nice residential area; on one occasion we had to change out of our trousers into our shorts in the street, which I don’t think the residents appreciated very much! We were there for about 6 weeks and moved to a unit in Chigwell where we were posted to the Second Tactical Air Force. (Before we went to Chigwell we went to Eastbourne and stayed in the Grand Hotel where we lived for about a month while training. We got leave that Christmas - the following Christmas was spent in Eindhoven. We stayed in a monastery there; the monks came to the church dressed in their brown robes, I think they probably lived in private houses while we were stayed in their monastery!) We were in the equipment section, while we were there (the balloon barrage storage place), there was a big field where ambulances where made ready for the African effort. We used to receive instructions to get so many ambulances ready for collection the next morning and paint all the shipping instructions on the doors for when they reached the docks. Although we used to have to cover these instructions up with brown paper before they left Chigwell so that no one knew where they were going.

I was then moved to Croydon Airdrome where we were supplied the material for converting caravans for shipping to Africa; one of these caravans was for Montgomery - it had lots of furniture in it. That was the main job of the unit; it kept us very busy and was a nice job; preparing caravans for the African invasion. Then from Croydon we started getting ready for going overseas and after a trip down to the New Forest we finished up at RAF Faversham. We went from Gosport - we should have gone about D 13 — our job being a mobile motor repair unit. The idea was that we followed up the advanced airfields; we carried quite a lot of spares for cars, lorries and motorbikes. If any of the vehicles broke down they would be collected by our unit, and if they could be repaired in 24 hours, we would do the job and return them. We had a unit of about 70 people and travelled in convoy (in Normandy); sometimes we would be in a place for about 2-3 days and other times we would be there for about a week or so, it just all depended how the advanced airfields were progressing.

Before we went over on one of the tank aircraft, we were given one or two tryouts, driving through water, coming off ramps, things like that. We went down to Shoreham and went into a boating pool to practice for this; we drove though water and up ramps into the loading craft and backed out again and then we had to wait until it got dark and do the same thing again with torches. It was quite a good day out!

We loaded up at Fareham; in the evening we set off and when we got into the Channel near Arromanches, they anchored for the night. It was a bit rough because we had to go and anchor all the vehicles down. A lot of the war ships were shelling over the top of us onto the beaches but anyhow, by the time daybreak came it all quietened down again and we were able to drive off up Arromanches beach into a field. We took off all the sealing that had been on the exhaust pipes and did not see any trouble. We then set off into the countryside and stayed for about a fortnight; the conditions were fairly hard in a way, we ate tinned bacon, had only one slice of bread a day, otherwise you had these very dry thick biscuits. We lived in the vans and had our own beds; each van had a row of metal lockers for storage and our own generator to supply electricity. We were fairly near Bayeux at that time, then as we drove up through the Falaise Gap we saw our first sight of real bombing; we saw nothing but heaps of rubble. Then as the airfield moved forward, so we went up and then of course we got into Belgium and then into Holland and then we finished in Celle where they signed the treaty. Our unit did not get attacked; there was a certain amount of aircraft about at the time but we were lucky being a comparatively small unit and covered all the vehicles in camouflage when we stopped anywhere. We were then posted back to Morecombe, England. I got put onto a billeting unit, checking up on different places where troops were allocated; it was an interesting time. Some of our unit got posted to India from there but I got posted back to Henlow. I was there for about 12 months until the end of the war came and I was demobbed.

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