Bill Treadwell - From Tail End Charlie to Typewriter Mechanic

My grandparents, Bill and Lil Treadwell, were living in Bermondsey with their son, Bill who was nearly 14 when the Second World War started.
In 1940, as a 15 year old, he must have watched the battles taking place in the skies above London and been in awe of the courage and daring of the RAF fighter pilots.
Like many other boys, having been inspired to help save his country, he joined the Auxilliary Fire Service where he was a messenger boy on a bicycle. He looks so young in a photo with the crew from the station in Bermondsey or Camberwell.
As soon as he was 17½ , in May 1943, he joined the RAF. The photo taken when he completed his training in August shows him still looking very young but very proud in his RAF uniform.
I don’t know where he trained or where he was stationed but he became a rear gunner and flew in Lancaster bombers. It’s possible that he was involved in the Battle of Berlin and he flew on bombing raids over Bremen, possibly after D-Day when the ground troops were heading the same way.
He transferred into the army, and was married in April 1945 just two weeks before VE Day. His Marriage Certificate records that he was a Driver and Typewriter Mechanic in the RASC.
In January 1946, he was in Cairo — I have a photo of him with ‘Cliff’ and ‘Scots’ at Cairo OMW. In August 1946, he was guarding German POWs in Moascar, Egypt and he befriended one of them, George, who came from Bremen. A photo shows him with George, four other service men and Dhobi — a dog who was given to him by a laundry man! He was allowed to take George out of the camp and show him around.
They kept up their friendship and over the years, we visited George, his wife, Medi, and their two sons in Bremen, they also visited us in London.
We all met up for the last time in Spain in 1980. George and Medi have both passed away as did my father in August this year. My mother still keeps in touch with Klaus and Helmut in Germany.
My father never talked about the war and he felt terribly guilty about bombing Germany so his friendship with George and his family made some recompense although his experiences haunted him.
This is my tribute to my father who would have been 80 today (2nd November 2005). If it wasn’t for my father and men and women like him, I wouldn’t be here today and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to write this — I will remember him and them.
Lilian.

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