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This story has been submitted to the People’s War Website by Anne Wareing on behalf of Thomas Harrison and has been added to the site with his permission….

I was 19 when the war started and working at Butterworth Dickinson in Burnley. I was called up when in 1939 when I was 20. I joined the 126 Light Infantry my number was 07132015 I will never forget it. I went to Chester to do my training, only to find that there weren’t enough uniforms for us, I believe this happened in a lot of places.

After my training I came back and worked in a different factory making smoke shells. We had to train women to try and make them engineers and some of them could be a real nuisance. I can remember on girls mother coming and complaining because I had shouted at her. Although I have to admit that later in the war a lot of women did very good work.

I recall being sent to Worsthorne when the country was on red alert, they said that the Germans had landed on the South Coast and we were sent to set up road blocks, they also said we would be going to Calais to plant mines, but we never got there.

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