Civilian at War

Before my father died in 2002 he made an audio tape of his war. Here are some highlights
When the war started Dad had just joined the construction company French's as a Civil Engineer. Mr French, who was a farmer and had dabbled in road building, had just landed a large contract with the Air Ministry to build a balloon station in Chigwell. Neither Mr French nor the Air Ministry surveyors had a clue as to what they were doing but it was imediately obvious to Dad that the whole hillside would have to be removed before a much more complex structure than envisaged could be built. The Air Ministry accepted Dad's plans but insisted that the construction had to be completed by the stated date. This was achieved by Dad acquiring all the diggers he could get his hands on and then borrowing horses and carts from surrounding farms to remove the soil, the army having requisitioned all the lorries.
After the successful completion of this contract French's gave Dad full charge of all Air Ministry contracts and he was shocked to discover that aerodromes were being constructed with unsuitable materials, a bomb storage depot at Schrewsbury was being built with wrongly spaced spans that would fracture with heat -which they did.
Eventually the Air Ministry left Dad to get 'on with it' himself the only stipulation that the work was urgent. Anything they asked him to do he said, in typical Dad fashion - no problem - and it wasn't. He was reponsible for constructing aerodromes all over the country, all of which were completed at breakneck speed.
Dad was unable to find any engineers most having been called up so he had to give classes in the evening to chosen employees so that they would know how to use the instruments.
As there were problems getting enough hardcore Dad opened up old quarries and employed a blaster. Concrete was fetched in the back of Dad's car and gelignite and detonators acquired from a hundred miles away were all conveyed in the back of Dad's car, with the ever present risk of it exploding.
Cutting through the red tape he was often in trouble with the authorities but the Air Ministry got what they wanted and took to ringing Dad directly if they needed anything from bomb trolley's to sights on machine guns. He even rallied the local farms to help when the Air Ministry urgently needed several hundred camourflage nets.
The Air Ministry had intelligence of an imminent German raid on Southampon but because of the severe weather conditions that had closed everything down for weeks and had even frozen the sea the contractors had been unable to construct a balloon station. The Air Ministry phoned Dad and he got around the problem by covering the acre of ground with corugated iron and lighting fires beneath. Finishing just in time to save Southampton from extermination.

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