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This contribution to WW2 People’s War was received by the Action Desk on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Norfolk. The story has been written and submitted to the website by Jane Bradbury (Volunteer Story Gatherer) with the full permission and on behalf of Frank Wroth.

The 2nd World Wartime memories of an indentured apprentice electrical engineer 1939-1944

My apprenticeship started about six months before war was declared on Germany and it was with a Norwich firm, Mann Egerton (Electrical ) Ltd. The main business of this firm was involved with cars, especially top of the range, but it did have an electrical section with strong connections with industries, businesses and country estates throughout Norfolk.
Preparations for war must have been well underway because we had the work of wiring and installing air raid sirens on public buildings and I well remember the one on the old Odeon Cinema which meant working precariously on the top of a very tall ladder.
Work was also involved putting lighting in street air raid shelters. Electrical regulations must have been relaxed because the wiring was exposed and held up with ‘cleats’. There were no power tools in those days and holes for fixings were made into solid concrete with rasping bit and hammer, hard work working above one’s head.
Within a few weeks all electrical work was orientated towards the war effort with repairs only being carried out for other businesses.
One of the larger jobs I recollect working on for a few months was the RAF Hospital at Ely; it was an important building as it was getting injured air crew fit and well enough again to get back on duty. It was here that I had my first taste of being bombed. Fortunately the Jerry bomb aimer missed the hospital target and although they went off some distance away it was a terrifying experience for a young 16/17 year old.

Many electricians in the early war years were working on airfields wiring accommodation (Nissan huts), hangars, control towers etc. I, with other apprentices, was sent down to a place called Fairlop, just near Ilford, to wire out such an airfield on an open grass field area. Unfortunately, London was in the middle of the 40/50 day night air raid period and I well remember we were all terrified the first few nights. There was no possibility of sleep with the continuous crunch of bombs exploding and an ack ack battery not far away. Not nice to lay in bed and watch a blazing aircraft plunge to the ground. Fighter aircraft were using the airfield before we left.
Whilst there we were billeted with a Welsh lady and her family. She was not a very good manager of the very small food rations we got in those days and we were left very, very hungry and resorted to getting whatever we could find to fill up on. A jar of cod liver oil and malt was a good filler. On a sad note , the landlady’s son, Henry, a sailor, had some leave time whilst we were there but we heard later he was lost when HMS Hood was sunk. Sad, he was very young.

On returning to Norwich my firm was very involved with the Admiralty, carrying out work on trawlers, minesweepers, motor gunboats and torpedo boats at various ports around the coast. Myself and another apprentice were sent to Lowestoft to work on these boats. At first we caught a train every day but later we were billetted to some digs in Lowestoft. These digs were with an elderly lady (Minnie Cotton) and her maid/companion (Jessie). They took us ‘boys’ in, as otherwise their spare rooms would have been filled up with sailors.
There were so many sailors in Lowestoft at that time in the war that an officer with a lorryload of men would go down a street, knock on a door, ask how many rooms in the house, how many occupants and, if there were any unoccupied rooms, the officer would order so many off the lorry and tell them this was their billet. So Minnie and Jessie, being wise to this, filled their spare rooms with two apprentices and two electricians. They looked after us very well and I remember we had lots of fish as somebody she knew brought it by the pailful. I think the firm paid about 24 shillings and sixpence a week for us, full board and washing etc.!
With the regular night raids and bombings Minnie and Jessie spent a lot of time in the air raid shelter but we ‘boys’ braved it out and stayed in bed — with very long working days we were too tired and presumably decided if it happened, it happened.

The work in the shipyards consisted of carrying out the electrical work to convert trawlers to minesweepers. They could sweep for moored mines, acoustic mines (set off by engine noise) and, at the time we did not know it, but very secret magnetic mines. These were exploded at sea by trailing long floating cables behind the trawlers and passing very heavy electric currents down them which set up a strong magnetic field and exploded the mines, apparently as far as a mile away.
Passageways had to be swept up the North Sea at regular intervals to allow shipping to pass through. The Germans would replenish the minefields more or less all the time with fast motor boats or from the air. All the other shipping in the port had to be de-gaussed (demagnetised) and made non-magnetic by encircling them with cables and passing an electric current through them. A few special boats were built at Richards in wood to overcome the magnetic effect.
This electrical work was carried out to very strict Admiralty specifications so the boats could operate anywhere from the Arctic circle to the heat of the tropics.
Motor gunboats and torpedo boats also operated out of Lowestoft, leaving at dusk for the Dutch and French coasts looking for E boats or anything else which was sailing along the coast. We got work next day doing emegency repairs so that they could get back to sea again asap.
The Germans were obviously very aware of the work which was going on at Lowestoft and Yarmouth as they regularly sent aircraft over to bomb and strafe the shipyards. We seemed to get used to it, make for the air raid shelters and get back to work again as soon as they had gone. Unfortunately, some of our workmates were killed doing just that, when they made for the shelter behind Wensum Dock and the bomb dropped on the end of the shelter. Another bomb killed many sailors in a restaurant in the High Street which fed the sailors every lunchtime. The Germans knew!!

At one of the shipyards where I was working a machine gun had been set up on a pedestal in the yard and when the sirens went off (which was more than often too late anyway as the bombers were already here) somebody would get on the machine gun, hoping to have a pot at a Jerry plane. This particular day, a dull, misty, very low cloud, November day, we heard the now familiar sound of a Jerry plane approaching and just for about 30 seconds it appeared out of the gloom, flying very low. The lad on the machine gun was on to it immediately and we saw the tracer bullets going into the Jerry. It only lasted perhaps 20/30 seconds but we heard later a Jerry plane had crashed up the coast, whether it was the same one we will never know but I well remember the incident and like to think it was the guy on our machine gun.

So my so called apprenticeship went on but any teaching/instruction was non existent, it was learning on the job. We worked very long hours: 8 — 8 Mon. to Friday, 8 —6 Sat. and 8 — 4 Sunday. Sunday evening we maybe got to a film and I remember one such evening when bombs dropped very close, shaking the cinema so bits were dropping from the ceiling. I was surprised at how probably 3 or 4 hundred people could disappear under seats so quickly — it was a survival reaction. I don’t remember getting any time off whilst based at Lowestoft to go home to my parents at Holkham. My mother wrote me letters regularly and I think I was pretty good in writing back. They were tough days for a young apprentice.

Occasionally electrical work had to be done on a ship or gunboat which was commissioned and fully crewed and I remember (but only just) how the crew would play cards around a table at lunchtimes, mostly pontoon or brag. I suspect we electricians were invited to put money on cards as easy pickings. Every so often a bottle of strong navy rum would be passed round the table and a sup taken. After about two or three times of this I don’t remember much until waking up in bed at our digs at about eight or nine in the evening, feeling terrible. Needless to say it taught me a lesson and I haven’t been able to drink rum or whisky from that day, over 60 years ago, to this day.
Sometimes, after the work was completed, the skipper would want to take the boat, usually an MGB or motor launch, out for a short sea trial and we lads were sometimes allowed to stay on board which was a great thrill but very dangerous as Jerry was always looking for an early picking just outside the harbour. It didn’t happen to us!

After about two or three years based at Lowestoft, electricians and apprentices returned to Norwich to do general electrical installation work and I had digs in College Road with a Mr. and Mrs. Lane. There was no family there and myself and two other boys became their adopted family. It was home from home and they looked after us well. We paid something like 32/6d a week for this privilege. Being reasonably setteled, I and the other apprentices were able to attend evening classes at the Technical College and did well to get good technical qualifications in electrical engineering which stood me in very good stead for the rest of my working life. There was no day release in those days and no help or encouragement from my employers, Mann Egerton — a very poor deal for the apprentices and it required one’s own initiative and dedication to succeed.
It was one evening class in the old St. George’s building, Duke Street, that we heard this big double explosion and it was not until several days after that that it came out that a rocket fired by the Germans had missed Norwich and landed somewhere in Hellesdon.

It was probably about the same period that they were sending over doodle bugs (flying bombs) which were horrific. One could hear them coming miles away and the heart would thump like mad until either they continued over or, alternatively, the engine stopped and the bomb would explode some way off and the heart could get back to normal again. Thankfully we did not get many flying bombs in this area but bombers still came over, some even during daylight hours. We were working at the old Norfolk and Norwich hospital and, hearing a German bomber, rushed out just in time to see a stick of bombs drop out. They landed in the Dereham Road area. A few minutes after, a lone fighter came tearing along on full throttle in hot pursuit. Did it catch him? We will never know.

As luck would have it I was working with an electrician, Harry Withers, on an isolation hospital at Dereham when the terrible Baedaker raids on Norwich took place. For some reason I had decided to go home to my parents at Holkham each night whilst working at Dereham, so missed the awful bombing and fires. My electrician, who lived in Norwich, did not turn up for several days as his house was blitzed. I just carried on working as best I could. My landlord and landlady in College Road had bombs all round and had two terrible nights to endure. It was just pure luck that circumstances took me out of Norwich for this terrible destruction of our fine city of Norwich.

Even whilst staying at home near Holkham it wasn’t completely incident free as two bombs were dropped about half a mile away on an open field above the house. Oddly enough, one made a deep hole with little crop damage, the other one did not make a hole but destroyed the crop about 100 yards all round from where it exploded. No enemy action was recorded for that night — queer?

Peace was declared in 1945, an apprentice with a pretty wide range of electrical installation knowledge carried on working in the trade for many years and was fortunate enough to be able to organise, design and create work for other people. At first it wasn’t easy as there was a shortage of all sorts of electrical equipment until the switch from war work to manufacture was completed. Also, for quite a time after 1945, there was still food rationing and a shortage of all sorts of everyday things.

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