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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Dianne Burtrand of Chelmsford Library on behalf of Douglas John Pike and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

My initial reaction to conscription in February 1940 was resentment. Having spent four years after school as an assistant tester of newly laid underground cables to and from towns as far North as Glasgow and as far South as Brighton, I was singled out by my age group of 20-21, making me the only one not qualified as being in a Reserved Occupation. Later in Service I mixed with many of the GPO men and was horrified to learn that they had their ’money made-up’. They or their wives had the difference between the two shillings a day Army pay and their civilian salary, credited during service. Later still I found that this applied to all Civil Servants! Sometime during the 1970s I met by telephone an ex-Signalman and ex-Post Office engineer whose Mother had carefully saved his made-up salary throughout his service from which he was able to buy outright his first married home!
This resentment lasted throughout the greater part of service, only modified by a Government promise of ‘reinstatement’ after discharge. Come 1946 and a Class B release found that ‘reinstatement’ meant precisely what it said, putting me back just where it found me as a single assistant tester, whilst those who were reserved had progressed in status and income! I had married on July 1st, Aud having awaited my return to the UK from the Middle East in June 1945.Not satisfied with four years and seven months service without UK leave (known as Python), the powers that be found this group nicely packaged and posted most of us overseas again after three months at various stations in the UK. In my case posting found me in Hamburg attached to the RAF. This completed the pattern of no Christmas at home from 1939-1946.
Looking back I was in the unusual situation of being a soldier attached at various times to the other two arms of service, the RAF and Royal Navy.
After discharge in March 1946 I struggled to settle into the gypsy-like life enjoyed pre-1940 but without success. Marriage did not suit the lowly level of Assistant Tester, albeit a thoroughly acceptable job for bachelors.
My first attempt was the Colchester-Clacton cable, where fortunately a GPO man that I met in the Middle East introduced us to a very comfortable furnished room in Colchester. This was followed by a very unpleasant spell in Oldham (on Manchester-Halifax cable). The latter route’s commencement was delayed by the severe winter of 1947. Lack of enjoyment persisted, including an accident whilst working in Halifax In May 1947 fracturing pelvis and rupturing urethra. It confined me for twenty weeks in Oldham Royal Infirmary. After three months my salary was halved, forcing my wife to seek employment to pay the rent etc.
This post was not very comfortable for someone whose previous occupation was in banking at Barclays, St. Johns Wood at quite a high level in the absence of wartime mobilised males.

Returning to wife’s home as virtual paupers, I was soon given an ‘inside job’
at Dagenham Dock (Southern United’s base). By May 1948 stricture developed from scar tissue landed me in Temperance hospital for two months. Back to work I tried to settle in several ‘inside jobs’ but without success.
The journey from St Pancras to Dagenham Dock proved intolerable, leading us to seek an inexpensive house nearer work. We found one in Seven Kings, at £1000, and borrowed the deposit of £100 from Aud’s mother and my father (half each). This proved to confirm that ‘one can always buy dirt cheap’. The house had a controlled tenant on the first floor paying seventeen shillings a week. Proximity of landlord to tenant made relationships poisonous. We tolerated the atmosphere for about five years, (daughter born in 1953). Two living on two salaries reduced to three surviving on one! Then we left for a larger property in Ilford where my parents could join us, my father providing the deposit. I found a reasonable post at Plessey which progressed to Purchasing Manager and O and M Supervisor in their international subsidiary. Keeping an eye open for a less confined life (and a company car) I joined a very young company, Envopak Ltd., as their rep. Noting a gap in the stationery trade, I offered it to Envopak M.D. but he was not interested so I resigned and set up Data Bind Ltd. in 1970. This lasts today, giving my daughter and son-in-law a living and wife and self a small income. The company’s main activity being the exclusive agents of a much respected American Banker’s calendar. Initiative and low cunning learnt in the Army became very useful. Without Aud’s support and accountancy we could not have succeeded.
Today our marriage has lasted, first of July saw our 58th anniversary. To my great sorrow Audrey ‘celebrated’ the event fast asleep all day in hospital. Six weeks later she was discharged to a nursing home where she died, not the girl I met in 1939 as she lived in her private world of some seventy to eighty years ago. Until these recent events the years of pleasures and adversities had given me rose tinted spectacles which fitted quite comfortably when compiling memories of 1940-1946. Without conscription I would never have had the fun of digging ‘oles for poles’; in the peaks; experienced the Oronsay worries; the thrill of cruising round the Cape on the luxurious Andes; short shore leave in Durban; Christmas 1940 afloat in the Red Sea; gently voyaging up the Suez Canal to Port Said; visiting the Pyramids and Cairo, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Greece(on the Bulllfinch), Italy, Gibraltar, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. Surviving uninjured, unlike so many thousands of my contemporaries. All this could not have been experienced had I had ‘reserved occupation’ status.
Additionally my parents and future wife endured the Blitz, Flying bombs, rationing and rockets. My parents with my Godmother narrowly escaped death when a land mine exploded, demolishing their home together with a block of flats (birthplace of Aud) killing some 70 souls in a surface ‘shelter’. My wife was out to lunch when the Barclays Bank where she worked was rendered unserviceable by a Doodlebug. Conversely had I been reserved, I would have shared those and other horrors. By what right was I resentful — if there was any it cannot pass the test of time. Only intense dislike of authority remains!
The year 2004 started with the tragedy of Audrey’s death on January 13th. Support from my daughter and son-in-law, neighbours and friends has enabled me to live alone. Not easy after 58 years of highly successful marriage, but a selfish streak (not unconnected with being an only child) has given me the will to make the best of it.
Douglas John Pike August 2004

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