´óÏó´«Ã½

My story relates to a shadow factory built just a few miles outside Bromsgrove in the industrial town of Redditch and no doubt where many people from the Bromsgrove area found employment.

It was here that since my house building business had folded that I too found work. The factory to which I refer was known as the BSA (Birmingham Small Arms) Co. Shadow Factory, designed as mainly one huge machine shop but with the exception of one separate building for the production of gun barrels, so an undertaking of considerable national importance. Small arms being the business of the BSA, machine guns like the Browning and the company’s own design, the BESA were being turned out in their thousands and of high importance. The barrels and the highly complex and intricate precision engineered breech loading mechanism for The Bofor Anti Aircraft Gun which, firing a 40mm shell, was used extensively for airfield defence and as an armament aboard convoy boats.

Something of life working in the atmosphere of such a huge wartime workshop. Just imagine row upon row upon row, endless lines it seemed of machines. Drillers, reamers, presses, saws, and you name it; grinders operated in the main by girls and young women turning out components for war machines. These young women recruited from all over the country and many far from home to do their bit for their country.

And now an impression which I will live with forever. All up and down the country the Luftwaffe bombers had wrought destruction throughout the night and this morning; the mood amongst the girls was heavy and sad, thinking of loved ones left behind, perhaps in bombed out homes and cities. Then from somewhere in that vast machine shop, a lone voice started a song:

It’s a lovely day tomorrow

And soon it was taken up by all in that great workshop, the girls singing their hearts out:

Tomorrow is a lovely day

What remarkable chorus:

Come and feast your tear dimmed eyes
On tomorrows clear blue skies

And to the accompaniment of the whirr of a mirriad of electric motors, the thump of presses, the screams of drills and saws and the screech of labouring reamers, the girl’s and men’s voices harmonising in a never to be forgotten glorious symphony:

If today your heart is weary
And every little thing looks grey
Just forget your troubles and learn to say
Tomorrow is a lovely day

A machine shop chorus I will never forget.

With the end of the war in Europe and everyone with demob on their lips, realisation that hundreds of thousands of men had joined up and would be returning to civi street with no experience of working life and with no trades or profession to fall back on — such people were going to need help and so the EVT or educational and Vocational Training Scheme came into being; this scheme to be operated throughout all the armed forces.

With my job in the building of Airfields no longer of importance I remustered to become an instructor or teacher within the scheme. A move to a large RAF maintenance unit at Bowlee, Manchester resulted. Segregation of trades, skills and professions here took place and as luck would have it I being the only one doing building construction I got placed with a group of artists.

The first thing the artists did was to decorate the hut which would become our classroom and where we would learn the rudiments of teaching. The decoration was a large mural larger than life size. In this I was depicted as a tough building labourer climbing a ladder with a hod of bricks to the top of a tall cylinder significantly marked EVT washing machine, emerging then with cap and gown and a hod full of learned books, so a fun start to a very short teaching career.

Next move was down to Abingdon, Oxford to meet up with another varied crew, among them a group of domestic science people. It was here I was presented with the keys to my mobile classroom — a large and tall six wheeler van — ex-army command vehicle ready fitted out with desks and drawing board and simple instruments. I felt I had graduated! I had a list of RAF stations I was to visit. I was indeed in for a very interesting tour. Special among the stations where I was privileged to hold class was RAF Silverstone, later to become our Grand Prix racing circuit. My first class was well attended and resulted in the station CO giving me the use of a teaching room within the building and at my next visit I had a class of about 40 people, and what a class — A wing commander, Squadron Leaders varying officers and other ranks down to Erks, all hoping to learn something about working for a lving, and I their very privileged mentor.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.