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The following oral history interview was carried out on behalf of Bedford Museum on 4th November 2005 with Mr. Harold Dawson.

I was 16 in 1939 and working in the colliery offices at Grimethorpe. I’d been there for two years after leaving school. Then I went into the munitions for a short while in Sheffield, I was billeted in Sheffield. I was doing some work on aircraft parts.

I knew I should have to go in to the Forces so I went for a medical and I passed that while I was in Sheffield. And then I got called-up and enlisted into the RAF. I went to Yarmouth for drill for eight weeks or so, learn how to march and present arms and one thing and another. I had seven days leave after that and then I went to Locking at Weston-Super-Mare on a Fitters course - that was 18 weeks. I was in the Band at Weston-Super-Mare, playing the large drum. They used to march to work, they went at different times from all the billets, from all over the place, we used to march them up then go back to … we’d finished then for the day, it was a bit of a lark anyway.

I got 14 days embarkation leave and then I was sent abroad to Algiers, North Africa. That was the leave I had! I never got home then for three years! We sailed from Gourock in 1942. We went on to Algiers, we were attached to the 8th Army, Montgomery’s men and worked on Spitfires.

Before we got there the Army used to go in and lay all these metal runways, clear all the ground and lay these metal runways for the planes to land on. But mostly it was ordinary fields and barren land that they did it on. They used to pick us up in lorries after we’d had breakfast and then we’d go out there all day long and work on the planes. We slept six men to a tent in North Africa. It was a bit grim as we slept on the floor.

We worked on Spitfires and Mustangs after that, mostly fighter planes that we used to work on not bombers or anything like that. The Fitters revv’ed the planes up as hard as they could so that they knew that they were alright. So there used to be two or three of us sit on the tailplane, get blown away nearly. It wasn’t really long, a couple of minutes or so to hold the back down. If I hadn’t of been sat on the back actually they had rope, well webbing things with sandbags which they should have used - but it was too much trouble to go and get those. So, ‘Eh you, you and you sit on the back!’ I think that’s where I started losing my hearing! They would run the props and check that everything was running alright We did everything! We just do inspections on them every day and see that the ailerons and rudders were working. They were good planes but they lost quite a few planes being shot down.

From North Africa we went to Corsica first and then Italy. We transferred mostly by ship because we’d to take all the lorries and the equipment. They had to get up an advance party and then a rear party. It wasn’t very nice in Salerno. We’d been to Rome and Naples. We were with ‘S’ 154 Squadron, Allepo, Italy in January 1944. We were in Tissano during May 1945. And then from there we went to Southern France, we landed in a place called Frejus between Marseille and Montpellier. We went in one of those tank landing craft. All the lorries and that had to be water proofed, oh, it took ages. They just dropped the things down, you had to go off on the water on to the beach.

We were all looking forward getting back to England. We’d been abroad that long that — we knew everybody — we knew all the pilots, we knew all the ground crew, they were all the same. The only time they got sent back home was when they were ill or lost a limb, something like that. I came back on an aircraft and I finished up at Finningley which was handy! I went home on leave and I had to report to Finningley. It was what, about 15 or 16 miles that’s all from home in Grimethorpe. I was demobbed not long after that, 1946 I think it was.

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