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Friend or enemy truck.

Posted Jun 17, 2004

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Army Cadets.

Posted Nov 24, 2003

Names.
John Mcnally, John Dent, Ian Downs,
Dennis Goldsbrough, Bob Marley and his twin.
Sig Mason, Bomber Evans, Carter,
John Paine.
Major Downs Captain Collet,
Captain Fiddes later Major.
Bill Williams. Bob Snaith (Captain)

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London interlude.

Posted Nov 24, 2003

In June 1945 I was rushed into hospital and almost straight onto the operating table, three days later I was back on it again for further operations of which I do not have much memory. My first real remembrance was waking up feeling so ill that I hoped I was dying to get it over with. A wounded soldier from the next bed holding my head over a dish and saying get it up you will feel better, I may have done if there had been anything to get up.
Youthfullness and pretty nurses soon had me rallying to the extent I could get down the ward to the piano in the corner and belt out "In the Mood" and other songs with a sycopated boogie beat much to the annoyance of the old chap in the bed next to the piano.
One day he said for god sake cant you play anything slow, how about some Irish songs, so I gave him some. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, I was playing Danny Boy, turning I froze it was Matron to me a Dragon who would have frightened other dragons. She said keep playing and after a while she said you have a gift there, music heals people and left. Two weeks later they pushed me out of the door of Ropner Ward Stockton and Thornaby Hospital with a sigh of relief on their part. Matron said you will never know how lucky you were, whether that meant getting killed by her or the old chap in the end bed or she was refering to the operations I did not stop to find out.
Mum had organised me a trip to Relatives in London. Uncle Charly and Aunt Kitty with the two girls lived in New Park Road Brixton, then a quite posh part of London, they had a large flat in a block and to me it was luxery with its built in Bathroom and large rooms.
So on the train at Darlington for the eight to nine hour trip to London, I had my bags with sandwiches and the big bottle of Lowcocks lemonade that came in very usefull later. The train was packed with troops from Catterick going South, they made room for me in a window seat and I listened to them talk about what it had been like near the end of the war, they were going back as occupation troops after some leave. We shared sandwiches and as the corridors were crammed full of troops to the point there was no way we could get to the toilets some one suggested we empty the big bottle first so it could be re used for relief purposes, shades of the football matches were we all had an empty bottle in our pockets for such use.
Kings Cross Station and they showed me how to get on the tube and what to look for they had to make their way to Waterloo by the same means, goodby's to my knew friends after all we had shared a bottle in more ways than one and I was off to Brixton.
I had all the directions to New Park Road and the flat so it was easy to get there and a big welcome. Uncle Charly was over the moon as they had two girls and he now had some one to talk sport with.
That started my Safari of London, going out each morning with them all I would by underground, by bus and by tram, tour different area's each day. I had seen a lot of the damage done in the raids coming in by train but could not believe the utter devastation of some area's. Sitting upstairs on trams or busses I would go out to the terminous and back or right round a circular route. The underground would take me to a new part and back onto busses or trams for further tours.
My morning outing would always end up back near Hyde Park were a trip into Lyon's Corner House for a bun and cup of tea usually ended up with some lady with a plate of cakes saying give those to that young man, or the young smart waitresses bringing me over what was only going to be thrown out any way. I started to put on all the weight I had lost. A walk across to the Surpentine and the hire of a Skulling boat for an hour gave me the exercise then back to Brixton for tea.
London was a vibrant place to be, we were still at war with Japan but that was a distant war, people wanted to get on and settle into a more placid routine. Uncle Charly took me to Petty Coat Lane Sunday Market where you could buy almost anything including your own boots back you did not know you had lost. Aunt Kitty decided to feed me up and get some meat on my bones as she would say. At week ends I took the girls to see things they had not seen even though they lived in London it was all good fun.
I discovered the Locarno Dance Hall at Streatham, I had never seen anything that big in my life and the orchestra was like one off the films.
Never being backward when it came to dancing I soon found I could hold my own on the floor and was finaly asked by a woman with a cut glass voice if I would dance with her. We were off and half way round she said good now 45 and away we spun, then it was 81 and we went scissoring corner to corner. Good bow number 32 and so on until the end of the dance where she said "thank you for that I will be back" leaving me totally puzzled as to what had happened. My cousin said those are fixed step and routines in professional dancing, she was testing you out. My reply was I had no clue what she was talking about. I think that because my life was dancing I had got accustomed to body movements in my partner picking up the signs and going the right way by sheer feel, I could do all the various routines but had never heard they had numbers. She did come back and asked me to go other nights too, again it was being lonely with her husband away and she must have felt safe with a waif of a lad only sixteen but as I said tall for my age.
So my weeks in London came to an end, I had seen everything I could from Hampton court, palaces, museums and galleries, loving every minute of it. My dance partner wept at losing me and Uncle Charly wanted me to go down there and work, it was very tempting.
Back on the Kings Cross and another eight hours on a packed out train then home again and it would be back to work Monday but then I enjoyed work.
It had brought home to me what London and its people had suffered but it did not seem to phase them at all, they got on with life living a bit faster just in case. I will always respect the London people.
Frank Mee.

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Latest reply: Nov 24, 2003

War Work Part 3

Posted Nov 18, 2003

We all knew the war in Europe was coming to an end. The Allies had crossed the Rhine and the Americans were running free in Southern Germany, the British and Canadians were over running North Germany, Mother and Dad were talking about after the war.
Dad had a heart attack through over work in 1943 and had only just got back to full time work, he had two "A" licences for lorries which were as good as gold because with the "A" licence you could transport goods of any kind any where in the country. A "B" licence was anybody's goods within 50 miles and a "C" licence was your own goods only ie:- a coal man, etc; The licences were to named people and owned by them so Dad lent his two "A" licences to Bob Durham another local truck owner and he literally gave Dad a job for life making sure he had it easy until Dad could manage properly. They had come to some agreement over those licenses and I never knew what it was. Mum was still working at Goosepool Aerodrome and the planes were still blackening the sky's each night as they pounded what was left of Germany. I do believe they were also dropping food to the Dutch people with the full knowledge of the Germans still occupying Holland who did not fire on them.
At work things seemed to increase in urgency and we were all working flat out. Arthur Brown asked me one day how I felt about riding on the back of a motor bike, I told him I had assembled, tuned and learned to ride a motor bike in a field and on the empty roads round about since I was 14. The bike was a New Imperial 150cc that had raced on the Isle of Man and Dad had given me it in a box saying when you get it going you can ride it. He probably thought it would take a year or I would get sick of it. The bike came to Dad through Freddy Dixon a local garage owner and Racing driver before the war, I think he and Dad had a bet on whether it would ever go again. I had that bike running six weeks later having had plenty of mechanical experience on Dads trucks. I fired it up one night after we had all had tea and Dad was up the garden feeding the animals, it had no exhaust and I was in the large garage we kept the truck and cars in so the noise was horrific, Mum Dad and my sister plus half the neighbours came running to see what was happening and there was me tweaking the throttle with a big happy grin on my face.
A couple of days later complete with exhaust Dad took me into the Showfield behind the house and I was off, hand change hardly any brakes but when Dad made a promise it was set in concrete he said I could ride it if I completed the job so let me go. A few days later I said "I can ride the bike" "have you fallen off yet" "no" "well go back in the field and fall of a few times then" he knew what he was doing because a few falls on a muddy field hurt but did not kill me as hard road would. (Back to the story)
Tommy Dixon one of the best tradesmen had a large motor bike it was an Ariel and he came to work every day from Sedgefield a fair ride in those days. We were getting calls to do quick jobs at some of the large factory's who were short of men. The government Safety officers were getting militant over machines having guards on them, too many girls were getting injured by unguarded machinary. We would go on the motor bike and measure up for the guards then when they were delivered go fit them so with a pannier of tools we became motor bike gypsy's.
ICI Billingham Plastics a lot of girls worked there, Nuffields at Eaglescliffe, the Salt packing works at Hartlepool to name but a few. It was on those jobs I discovered the problems of working among a lot of women. It was hazardous in the extreme to a sixteen year old boy.
At ICI plastics we were based in the Sheet Iron Building a small iron hut with a couple of older men and some girls as mates. I met Zena and the sun shone again I thought she was lovely. Older than me and engaged to a man in the forces we still became friends she looked after me among the vampires working on the plastic trays. We would measure the guards and make them up from material suplied then when the girls were on their breaks dash in and fit them. I had gone in on my own one lunch time to fit a small guard under a machine when I was suddenly siezed by the legs and hauled out by three of the women. There was a small group who boasted that they could make more on the Docks than on war work but they were a minority among the girls, these were three of those. One was quite a big girl in all directions and she said I was her afters for that day and started to drop her overalls while the other held me and described what was about to happen to me and I would love it. Yeh well I was not stopping to find out as, 1) you only had to look at a woman and she was pregnant and, 2)you then had to marry them and it lasted for life. No way, with a surge I threw one woman who was holding me across the floor, swung my then free arm with closed fist smack onto big womans nose and as she screamed the other woman got one on the side of her face and I was gone. Rushing into the hut I could hardly speak because I knew what I had done and in my day you never hit a woman, I had visions of prison even. Zena got the story out of me and went out she came back a while later and said its OK, the women had to cover up as they would have been in trouble themselves. I learned to go every where in the plant on top of the plastic baking ovens which were red hot but it was the safest way even if the nails fell out of the soles on my boots, Dad was forever re nailng them.
A couple of days after that incident we went to the Chrome works a terrible place, we had to measure some pipe work for urgent renewal. It had to be exact as the pipes were glass lined against the corrosive chrome salt and then had to go up in the shortest time so production loss was a minimum. One pipe went from one building to another across at roof level a fair old drop. We got to the section and Tommy said we need one on each side but how do we get the tape measure across. Well I was not afraid of heights and the pipe was three feet in diameter so I said I would walk across with the end of the tape and away I went. well on the way I felt the pipe give way under me and I was going down but had the sense to open my arms wide, that stopped me with my legs in the hot flowing salty air inside the pipe and my arms holding me up. I realised I was rapidly cooking and there was not a lot I could do as each time I moved the pipe gave a bit. Tommy was yelling and some one down below shouted they would try and find a ladder. In a split second I had come to the conclusion that I did not have time to hang around as my legs would be roast beef. In one of those super human moments I pulled up on my arms shot out of the pipe like a cork from a bottle and belted along the pipe to the other roof before the pipe gave up the ghost and fell. I must have been running on air as it stayed up. Men appeared and took me to the medical room where I was cleaned up then covered with green salve, a glass of Sal Volatile the cure all and declared fit for work. You had to be on your very last gasp to get light duties in those days. I got shouted at by the works foremean for wrecking his pipe, he had to stop production while they went up on ladders and put a patch on my entry and exit hole, one and the same. Tommy could not stop laughing as he described my exit from the hole and dash to the roof he thought it hilarious, I went down and kicked his bike in revenge, boy was I sore and for a while after the skin was red and tender so there was a good degree of burning there but "Hey" the wounded soldiers had it worse than that so back to work. It was May and the rumours were rife that the Germans had packed up but no announcement yet, we all waited for this long war to come to an end knowing we would then have to settle with Japan.
More yet.
Frank Mee.

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Latest reply: Nov 18, 2003

War Work part 2

Posted Nov 17, 2003

February 1945 sixteen years old and starting my apprenticeship. After my introduction to work in the wire section I was now moved down to the ground floor and the Sheet Iron section.
To say it was a busy area would not do it justice, all the men were on peace work churning out Lockers for the Navy of all shapes and sizes, Ventilation trunking for the boats being built localy. New rules had come in about ventilation in factories so there were Cyclones with filters and bag shakers. Dan Buoy's for the river, Guards for machinary, every kind of pipe work you could think of and other odd sections for various uses. Guillotines, shears rolling machines burning welding riveting all going on at the same time meant we spoke quite often in sign language but those men were a happy bunch.
My tutor and mentor was an old boilermaker brought out of retirement for the war. Old Pa Forrester, I called him Pa, with respect I might tell you as he had a mighty hard hand. He was Arthur Browns father in law and to say he was a cantankerous old rapscallion was paying him a compliment. I found he had a sense of humour when we met up each morning at the bus to go to work. We got on at the terminous on Norton Green straight upstairs to the front seat and out would come his pipe. A battered burnt and crusted item that once lit with his own mixture of smokescreen fuel he puffed away at until the bus was blacked out and every one behind coughing for England. The conductress would arrive and slam the front window open which was OK by me a none smoker but hard luck on the people behind who got a turbo charged dose of the smoke. The second we got off the bus he knocked the pipe out and I hardly saw it again until we were going home on the bus, the morning scene in reverse.
The very first thing he did was to drag me to the Boilermakers Union and join me up as he did not think much of his Son in laws none union shop policy. It was the best thing he did for me as I am now in reciept of a union pension as a life member. He then started on my education. I was doing two nights at school by then with a couple of hours in the works time on a friday afternoon. I also had to work two nights overtime as this was the law then but being sixteen could only work until seven instead of eight each night. Saturdays were part of the working week although shortly after I started we went down to a half day Saturdays.
He set too teaching me how to make templates for different plate sections, Cones and truncated cones, Square to rounds, off set trunking sections, Segment bends for pipe work and all the many other things requiring Mathematical precision. I had to make cardboard templates with all the geometry or trigonometry marks on them plus all the working out, they had to roll into the right shape and be the measurement he had given me. A solid learning zone which although I did not appreciate it at the time stood me in good stead years later.
The foreman put me on a small guilotine cutting light metal into strips and I had a light metal folder beside me where I folded the metal into shelves for the Navy Racks as we called them, each would have dozens of small shelves, the units were made and assembled by the tradesmen on peace work so I had my work cut out to keep up.
My wage was 15 shilling and four pence around 75 pence a week in funny money. I made jigs and stops for both machines as I got used to them and my peace work earnings went up from a few shillings to three pound a week, a small fortune in those days. Foremans office now was the call? Why, "you are finding this too easy we are cutting your wages" "OK I cut production of shelves" (I was a bit fiery in temper) "you cannot do that it must stay the same" "Ok my wage stays the same" "Dont cheek me go home for three days without pay" "Right" and walked out.
Next morning sitting having breakfast Arthur Brown came to the house, "Get in the car with your overalls" he marched me to the machines and said start work "No way" "do as you are told and your peace rate is back now get on with it" it turned out the men had been unable to complete the units without shelves and had caused a small war as their money would be down. I got my own way but had a running battle with the foreman after that.
A word about the men here they were tradesmen too old or unfit to go in the services, Dilutees who did semitrade jobs, aprentices like me and labourers. A couple of women worked on the shop floor welding and cutting and we had a couple of men who had gone in the forces been wounded and discharged again. They were a hard crew but worked very hard as it was peace work, they sang as they worked and were not averse to playing jokes on us lads. If you took it in good heart it was mild but if you showed upset it got worse, I learned to roll with it. One of the lady welders worked in her own bay, she gas welded Dan Buoys and once she started a seam would stop for nothing, as she never ever got leaks in the tests later I could see why she kept the seam going no matter what. She was a very nice looking girl but to me elderly that would be around 24, well I was sixteen any one seventeen was old. Now and again one of the lads would go up behind her as she welded a seam and run their hands over her body, not a flicker she just carried on. At the end of the seam she would put her torch down and go look for the culprit who got a straight left on the nose, I never tried it as I was fond of my nose but a couple did it more than once, they must have been masochists. She taught me to gas weld and was a very nice girl when I got to know her she certainly knew her job, I never risked her wrath though thinking of that solid smack on the nose.
Leaving work at seven of a night meant I could get home washed changed and back out to the local dance halls. The Maison De Dance, Jack Marwood and his band. The Palaise De Dance, Jack O'Boyle and his band. The Jubilee Hall and the Corporation Hall. On top of this were the small local church hall dances sometimes to records and sometimes a three piece band its members so old they had to be wound up now and again.
I loved dancing and would be there ready and on the floor as the director raised his baton for the first dance of the evening. This meant many a time I was one of the few men or boys among all the women so got to dance with the best, the only way to learn. The odd time there was no dance hall open I would go to the dance school and Ruby would get me up dancing she of the nubile body and who dressed like Carmen Miranda but looked the same age as my mother. I probably do her injustice saying that but she certainly raised my hormones with her close up dancing, phew!
Across the road from where I worked was a tea packing warehouse with a lot of girls plus a brush factory in the next street with more girls, they all danced and I fell in love for the first time. She was a tea packer and to me a film star in looks. A very quiet girl and we became holdy hands sweethearts for a few weeks. A little cuddle and a very chaste kiss good night that was the way it was then or so I thought. My sweetheart suddenly disapeared, I could not understand it until one of the older lads took pity on me and told me the story. She was having a baby and had been sent away into the country until it was born and then adopted. To say I was shocked shattered and betrayed was putting it lightly. My mood was black thunder having been deceived and I swore it would never happen again no woman would play with my feeling again. She came back months later a changed hard girl who did try to revive things but was rebuffed. Thinking about it there must have been a sad story there because I am sure she was a really nice girl when we held hands.
I told Dad about it when we were working together in the garden he looked at me and said, "Son women do not have an easy life" "and remember one thing" "What Dad" "there are no birds, bits of stuff, Bints (Soldiers from the desert brought that one)Broads, slags, skirts or any other name, they are all Ladies remember that and you will never go wrong, treat them as such" as I have said before a very wise man my Dad.
More Later.
Frank Mee.

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Latest reply: Nov 17, 2003


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