大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Alan Jeffery CSV from Kent County Library Services on behalf of Maurice Gordon Jeffery and has been added to the site with permission of his only surviving son Alan Jeffery. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I can鈥檛 remember which year it happened but my father joined the Air Training Corps as soon as it was founded in the very early stages, perhaps even before the war, and eagerly preparing to take his place in the Royal Air Force as soon as he was old enough, he underwent basic aircraft training, including flight instruction in a glider with great enthusiasm and a little impatience.
Residing in Luton with his father, a master baker, and stepmother, his seventeenth birthday came around and he watched with anticipation as the postman delivered his call up papers. It was late in 1943 and the emphasis on war effort was beginning to alter radically and one of the more essential features that would ensure victory was industry and fuel to keep it going. His papers ordered him to turn up at a Colliery in Ferry Hill, Spenymore in Durham. Deeply resentful, he had no choice but to get on a steam train with ticket provided, where he met with other young men with the same destination and made his way to Durham station, a long and lengthy journey at that time, where overnight travel was the most convenient.
In the early hours of the morning, they arrived at the forbidding station with no reception, no food, no provisions or any guidance and the entire small group could do, was seek some form of food in suffering quite desperately from hunger. The only place they could find was a canteen in an industrial factory unit and gained entry through an open window. With security at a premium, they were soon caught gobbling down dry bread and the odd item of fruit they could find and were caught. This resulted in them being locked up in the notorious Durham Jail until an official came to collect them thirty six hours later.
My father was seconded to a billet and placed under the guardianship of a veteran pitman called Ernest Prest, who in a comparatively short time, took a liking to him and took him back to his place for a Sunday meal. It was here that he met his future wife Olga, who was to become my mother some five years later. My father鈥檚 mother was a serving officer in the Women鈥檚 Royal Auxiliary Air Force and petitioned hard and fast to get him transferred into the RAF, which was both their wish. But, the Battle of Britain was over, the Battle for Britain had just been started and her petitioning was to fall upon deaf ears. The only redemption, whilst conducting military service at Whitehall, she was able to secure him a trainee job with the Air Ministry and with eager anticipation, both he, and my mother to be, fled to North London and sought a special license to marry from the main Church in Upper Street; Islington.
Their married life started and my father worked for the Ministry on some of the most prestigious airports in the UK including Heathrow and the airfield that saw the first and only flight of the Brabazon. Plus to his great joy, he toured his dream airfields such as Tangmere, Biggin Hill and Manston with an honorary rank to allow him security clearance as well as military accommodation on aerodromes. Another responsibility he had, was to mark out with large buoys, bombing ranges off the Dutch coast to dispose of tons and tons of excess explosives upon completion of hostilities and did so at night by utilizing co-ordinates from the stars from Landing craft, a skill that was to serve him well in less than ten years as a ten pound Pom in Australia, out in the outback plotting the route for new interconnecting state roads.
My Father was to pass away on September 3rd 1996 a painful death of emphysema caused by his year down the coal mines in 1944. In many discussions over his life, he remained both resentful, even ashamed that he never served his country with the armed forces. My deep regret is that he never saw the year when the Bevin Boys were invited to parade with all the other veterans of the Second World War at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. That would have been a sight that would have made both of us proud, as it does me in his absence.

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