London

I started work at 14 years old, at a munitions factory there I was paid 5d (old money) per hour, I had to working a 52 hour week Compulsory at Forest Gates E.7. I stayed there until I was 18 years old making detonation boxes, we worked through all the different departments cutting out the metal, drilling, bending etc. During that time two busses one heading one way and the other the other way just as they passed we had heard a doodle bug coming and as the busses were about to pass the motor on the bug stopped and we looked up and saw it was going to crash on the busses we dived in to the hedge just as it hit the two busses which were just level with each other and were full of people, this was the only transport available. The result was a horrible mess. Our home was bombed and we were bombed out of different houses a total of 5 times. One morning we were in Windsor road when we saw a land mine hanging from a tree the military came and disarmed it, this was a result of the bombing the night before which had destroyed the whole of Princess Alice Junction. When I was 18 in 1947 I was conscripted into the Royal Army Services Core and was attached to the 1st of the 6th Guhka rifles in north Malaya, I was out there for 18 months we were on the transport division. He main Objective was to deal with the REDS. I was a driver in the workshops but when the call came we did anything connected with driving and repairing transport. The main transport I was concerned with were the “Cheves” being 3 toner trucks. I didn’t have any leave during these 18 months except compassionate when my brother died. After that I was married and then demobbed at the end of 1950.

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