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The Apprentice

In August 1939 I began work as an office boy at Rolls Royce Ltd. Nightingale Road, Derby. Other members of our Spondon gang already worked at Rolls Royce and other local factories. Among them were Ken, an apprentice grinder, Harry, a machinist, and Alf, an apprentice coppersmith. Maurice and John worked in the Celanese offices, while Jack was an apprentice tinsmith there. A three-year age spread distinguished us but did not separate us. I was the youngest of the bunch and John was the oldest.

Most weekends were spent together, broken only with time out for meals at home. I think we all took ballroom dancing lessons at Kelsey Smith's studio on London Road, Derby. Sometimes we went to the roller skating rink on Ashbourne Road. Many summer-time evenings were spent walking in a group to Chaddesden and Borrowash to see if we could meet with any girls similarly engaged. Sunday afternoons would be spent playing at cards in homes and listening to gramophone records. Fifty years later those of the gang remaining still kept in touch and could recall these delights.

Air Raid Precautions or ARP was the official name of the local Civil Defence volunteers and many citizens joined. I was enrolled as a messenger boy and was given a steel helmet and an armband. I think I was expected to take messages on my bicycle when the bombs started falling, but after several months of inactivity, the job petered out. All householders were assigned fire-spotting duties, and were given stirrup/hand water pumps and sand buckets. The Second World War had been creeping inevitably towards us like a sullen tide and it began on Sunday, September 5th,1939, two weeks after I began work at Rolls Royce.

I remember the air raid warning sirens sounding just after the voice of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had come over the wireless to tell us that no reply had been received to the British ultimatum to Germany to end its invasion of brave and foolish Poland, and therefore we were now at war. We stood in the garden looking down over the valley to Derby as the fat, silver balloons of the R.A.F. Balloon Barrage began to rise like great slow fish toward the blue skies above. The invisible wires trailing from the balloons were expected to deter the attacking bombers from coming in low and accurately dropping their bombs on Rolls Royce and the rail marshaling yards of the locomotive works. It was false alarm and the "all clear" siren soon sounded and the silver fish sank down again.

The design and testing of Rolls Royce and Bentley cars continued for another 9 months or so during the gearing-up of the war effort, and I soon learned a great deal about car manufacture. As an office boy I was expected to quickly learn the geography of the various departments and offices throughout the factory so that memoranda could be distributed, collected and sorted. An older office boy was assigned as my guide and mentor, sometimes tormentor as well depending on how busy we were. In between the normal duties of sharpening pencils, filling inkwells, and taking in the tea and coffee trays to the Chief Engineer, and the Assistant Chief Engineer, I would read the fascinating field service reports sent in from all around the world by our field service representatives. Accounts of problems with the cars of Maharajas, Princes, and other noble owners and the corrective actions taken were noted. One report I remembered in particular gave an account of a car overheating in Brazil, caused by hundreds of butterflies that were drawn in and cooked on the radiator matrix!

I early learned a great deal about the unforeseen problems that could affect even the world's finest motor car and this later helped build my sense of a correct perspective in design analysis later. My pay as an office boy was ten shillings and sixpence for a forty-four hour, six-day week, including Saturday mornings until noon. The wage just about covered my cost of traveling and lunch meals. I was able to buy a secondhand Raleigh sports bike, with a red frame and dropped chrome-plated handlebars, for 27s/6d. Each workday I cycled the four miles from home whenever possible, down Lodge Lane, along Nottingham Road, then on the new Raynesway cycle path to Alvaston, and along the Derby Ring Road to Nightingale Road. I could usually allow myself twenty minutes and this beat the alternative two-bus schedules. I got one shilling a week for pocket money and the rest went into the family pool, as did the wages of my brothers until they reached the age of 18. We were then expected to pay for board and lodging at a fixed amount, but as it turned out, I never reached that happy state.

After six months serving as an office boy I was assigned to the Experimental Garage as an apprentice mechanic and put to work on weight analysis of Rolls and it’s competitors automobiles under the tutelage of Fred, a test driver. Our office was the Bump Test Rig where cars sat on huge rotating drums with rim-mounted lumps to simulate potholes, pounding away at the suspension system hour after hour. Fred would sometimes take me out as an observer on test drives all over Derbyshire as a treat. What an ego booster to be swishing along country lanes at high speed in the front seat of a luxury Rolls Royce with my clipboard! I even partook of my lunchtime sandwiches in the parked cars inside the garage, surrounded by finely tooled leather and burl-walnut trays . Since those halcyon days all other cars I have owned have been merely transportation! The experimental Rolls Royce aircraft piston engines were assembled in the next shop and were as fascinating as the cars, though in a different way. I regarded them with much interest and not too much comprehension. I didn't know then that I would later be flying between two of those Merlin engines in Mosquito fighters of the Royal Air Force.

When I became fifteen I started to attend evening classes at St. Marks Road School, Derby. There I gained an East Midlands Educational Union certificate which qualified me to enter studies at the Derby Technical College. Running to catch a last bus at 9pm, in the blackout, and during an air raid alert with a smoke screen operating, I ran into an iron street lamp post, face first. I was knocked to the pavement and unbeknown to me at the time, I had bloodied my face and broken my nose. I caught the bus home, experienced some strange looks from the other passengers, and startled Mam as I walked in looking like a prizefighter.

The so-called "phony" war ended abruptly with the German invasion of the Low Countries. After the June 1940 evacuation of the British Expeditionary Forces at Dunkirk, I showed up at work one morning to be told that the Chassis department had been evacuated to Belper, about seven miles north of Derby. For some reason they had neglected to tell me, so I had to go and search for it. We had a motor car skid-pan test facility in operation at Sinfin, near to an anti-aircraft battery manned by Territorial Army volunteers from our factory. My boss was the Captain of the battery and his assistant was second-in-command. The foremen were sergeants and corporals, conveniently paralleling the Company's own hierarchy. Someone sent me there and I stayed at the test office for a week or so before the Garage people realized I was missing, and I was then sent to Belper to join the others.

In the Experimental Garage in Derby we had been engaged in the weight analysis of an American Studebaker car, and with Fred now assigned to bench work, I was given the assignment to arrange photography, complete the report and assemble it. Looking back, this was no mean task for a fifteen year old boy, but I took it in my stride without questioning. Afterwards, together with the rest of the Car Experimental Department I was set to work on assembling components and sub-assemblies for piston engines used in aircraft and fighting vehicles. We were paid a production bonus and I was also paid a weekly traveling allowance of fifteen shillings that was greater than my normal wage. As I mostly cycled to work I felt highly paid as a result.

My eldest brother was serving in a regiment of the Sherwood Foresters in 1940 and was trapped in France, but fortunately was able to be evacuated from St. Nazaire, one of the Normandy ports. There were a few tense days until we found this out and I remember the anguish of my parents while waiting for news. The ships in his embarkation line were dive bombed and one took a direct hit from a German bomb down its funnel, with heavy loss of life. My sister Marge's husband was also rescued. Others from Spondon and our neighbouring villages were not so lucky and were made prisoners-of-war for five long years.

Stan, as a needed skilled workman was shortly afterwards released from the Army to work at the L.M.S. Locomotive Works for the remainder of the War. My brother-in-law, Ernest Holyoake, was a sergeant in the Sherwood Foresters and also escaped in the rout of the Allied forces. Later however, his battalion was shipped to the Far East to help in the defence of Singapore. He was captured by the Japanese and worked on the construction of the ‘Death’ Railway in Siam. He became a drowning victim of the tragic sinking by an American submarine of a Japanese P.O.W. transport ship en route to Japan. Some of the survivors were rescued by the allied submarine when it surfaced, and came later to tell my Aunt and Uncle of the details of the disaster.

My cousin Jack Coxon had enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and had been trained at R.A.F. Hucknall near Nottingham as an air gunner, flying in Fairey Battle two-seater fighter-bombers. Each was equipped with a gun turret but lacked any forward-firing guns.They were too slow and lumbering against the nimble single seater Messerschmitts and almost all were shot down defending the Dunkirk evacuation. Jack was later reported killed on a bomber raid over Germany, leaving my Uncle Jack and Aunt Ethel childless. Other young men from the village were killed, including Jack Craig, the brother of my friend Ken, and Jack Smith, one of my school teachers. Many others were taken prisoner.

Suddenly, the nation faced the prospect of an imminent invasion with hardly anything in the way of weaponry to defend us from it. A militia called the Local Defence Volunteers was created out of anyone able to carry a pike or a pickaxe, and these local citizens with L.D.V. armbands were sent to guard road junctions and bridges. Veterans of World War I were made officers and N.C.O.s, and our pals became part-time private soldiers. Drills were conducted at Locko Park and we Air Training Cadets also had rifle instruction with them. All village place names and highway signposts were removed to foil any invading paratroopers, and poles were planted in any larger fields which were seen as potential landing sites for gliders. All iron fences around homes and buildings were requisitioned and cut down for re-melting for armaments. After a while, this seemed to be an improvement in the appearance of the Village centre.

The Mediterranean theatre of war then began to get our attention. The Italian invasion of Greece was abortive but Germany quickly came to Italy's aid, and soon the small contingents of British troops which had been sent to help Greece were being evacuated. My next door pal Frank Holmes fought as a gunner in the evacuation of Crete, serving on H.M.S. Orion, a battle cruiser. They were dive bombed while loading with troops and a bomb penetrated down to the crew quarters where many soldiers were killed. After disembarking the survivors in Egypt, Orion sailed through the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean to Mare Island, San Francisco, for repairs which lasted six months. Returning to England, Frank enjoyed a brief leave with us and was then posted to H.M.S. Welshman, a minelaying cruiser. It was torpedoed in the Mediterranean during the Malta convoys of 1943, and Frank was posted missing presumed drowned, at age 18. For many years Frank's parents clung to the chance that he had somehow been rescued by the submarine and taken prisoner-of-war, but this was a forlorn hope.

In 1941, after the War had entered a kind of stalemate, I enrolled in the Ordinary National Certificate Mechanical Engineering Course at Derby Technical College and pursued internal combustion engine studies on a part-time basis. Three weekday evenings were spent this way and all day on Friday. Many of the teachers were also Rolls Royce engineers and the instruction was first class and highly relevant. As an apprentice it was the custom to take an extended lunch break on Christmas Eve and visit a pub with the journeymen, even though we were under-age to be legally served. I remember getting inebriated for the first time on Advocaat, a yellow creamy liqueur made from eggs and brandy, and then afterwards trying to do intricate filing of bronze slipper pads for a supercharger drive clutch at my workbench, with the other lads laughing at my oh-so-careful attempts to find the tiny slots with my knife-edge files.

At the age of sixteen I became a member of the Air Training Corps, and enrolled in the Spondon flight of the Derby 2069 Squadron, under the command of Flt/Lt. J. Arthur Ward. He had been an R.A.F. pilot in World War I; he was a second cousin of my father, and also the father of my friend, John. This air cadet training activity occupied another evening, and with drills on Sunday afternoons, this didn't leave me a great deal of spare time. Royal Air Force blue-grey became the new optional colour of my clothes and we wore our ATC uniforms at every opportunity, especially to dances. Some of our partners were girl evacuees from the London blitz, with intriguing Cockney accents, but most were school friends. The ATC met at the Springfield School in Spondon and sometimes in Borrowash schools where elementary armaments, Aldis lamp and telegraph signaling of Morse code, meteorology, navigation training and aircraft recognition were taught. Flight familiarization was gained in summer camps at R.A.F. Burnaston, Derby, using De Havilland Tiger Moths and Miles Magisters. I must have been proficient at telling other people what to do since I was soon promoted to Corporal, then Sergeant and finally achieved the rank of Flight Sergeant.

As youths seeking entertainment we would go to movies, weekly dances in the Church Mission Hall or at the Womens Institute. World War II was then a permanent part of our lives, and the blackout of all outdoor lights was a feature to contend with. There were four anti-aircraft gun locations within two miles of the village and nearby windows would be shattered when they were fired during the air raids. The nearest German bomb fell about a half mile away from our house, and I still remember the shrieking noise it made on the way down to the explosion. Shrapnel would patter on the slate roofs during these raids, and sometimes incendiary bombs would fall and be quickly dowsed by ARP volunteers.

The local #498 HAA (M) Royal Artillery battery, comprised of both men and women soldiers, also held dances that we ATC cadets were able to attend. Here we were able to make friends with grown-up girls from other parts of the country for the first time, and romance entered some of our lives. War work continued, and after the winning of the Battle of Britain by the RAF, some of the Clan Foundry group began work on a cast iron version of the Merlin engine using lower quality parts from the aircraft engines for use in tanks. At that time the British Army was still using obsolescent Liberty engines from the first World War. We also designed and built new tank hulls for testing complete installations, one of which became the prototype for the Cromwell, used later in the liberation of Europe.

Another accomplishment was the design and construction of an armoured troop carrier, powered by a Ford V-8 engine. These vehicles were tested on the nearby Chevin hill at Duffield, and their metal tracks caused havoc to the local road surfaces and the ‘cat’s eyes’ centre line markers.

For tank engineering we had to adjust to very heavy metal work, in contrast to the light alloys of the aircraft industry. Eventually this Rolls Royce tank engine program was exchanged for the Rover Company's jet engine developments, and subsequent history of the automotive industry shows who had the better bargain. From time to time many of the craftsmen had asked me to make dimensioned drawings for machining purposes of needed tools. I showed enough proficiency at this that Tom Fisher, the shop foreman, soon asked me to work full-time as a jig and tool draughtsman in his office. Later I was installed in a separate drawing office of my own.

At the minimum legal age of 17 years and three months I volunteered to fly in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, and was invited to Crewe for a selection board but was rejected by the medical examiner for inadequate colour vision. Three months later, in May 1943I was recommended by F/Lt. Ward for an Air Ministry Science Scholarship. I then was given a railway fare warrant for travel to Birmingham where I had to pass a written examination in mathematics and English and was interviewed by an Officer Selection Board. I passed the Royal Air Force medical examination without difficulty, colour vision included, was enrolled in the R.A.F. Volunteer Reserve as an Aircraftman, 2nd. Class, and given my service number.

Soon after that I was notified that I had won a place at St. Andrews University for two semesters, commencing with the Michaelmas term in October. It took a little finagling to achieve a release from my protected wartime occupation and I was required to get clearance successively from the Apprentice Supervisor, and after that, my Works Superintendent. I saw them out of turn and cheerfully lied to each that the other had already given me the needed permission. Where there’s a will there’s a way. Shortly afterwards I was on my way to Scotland.

My adolescence and my factory apprenticeship were over. Other than for vacations and service leaves, I never lived at my Spondon home again.