CLIFF REYNOLDS
When the war broke out, against my father鈥檚 advice and with a few other young lads at the age of seventeen, I signed up with the L M S railway. The railway sheds were in Bourneville next to Cadbury鈥檚 chocolate factory. On this particular day I was at work shovelling ashes from the ash pit. This was a pit where ashes from the engine fire boxes were raked out and damped down with a water hose. I had heard talk of an air battle over what was then the Austin motor works who were producing Wellington bombers. Suddenly from out if the sky a few feet above me roared a German bomber. The pilot looked me right in the face and I dived under a stationary wagon on hearing machine gun fire. Later we were told that the pilot had machine gunned mothers and children walking home from school, this happened several times during air raids This kind of behaviour made me very bitter against the Germans.
Sometimes my job was KNOCKING UP. This was to awake drivers and firemen; they had to be called to sign on for duty at the most awkward hours of the night. I had to ride an old bike with paraffin lamps and would cycle from house to house tapping on the wall with a stone until a bedroom widow opened and a voice shouted ALRIGHT in answer.
The difficulty arouse when driver and fireman on the same shift lived several miles apart Black out was always in progress at night , it was very difficult in thick fog when I could hardly see a hand in front of me .
THE ARMY
I enlisted in the army after leaving the railway, being married now with our first son who was born in March. I awoke one morning in April, one month later on a troop ship the CAPETOWN CASTLE and joined a convoy in the Irish Sea. We left Liverpool in the night and we were on our way to heavens knows where!! After hair-raising experiences with the CHINDITS in the Far East and the war being over I returned home, my son was turned three years of age. We took a long time to bond and even now at eighty three years of age I feel that never quite happened, we are still a little distant.
One thing that I will always remember and that is, returning on the ship MOOLTAN in 1947. The snow was still piled up on the pavement. Getting out of the train picking up my two large bags at New Street station Birmingham I had been ill whilst in the far east and probably not looking at all well wearing my bush hat . And in spite of the fact that I was almost black from the sun. Suddenly from nowhere two A T S girls ran towards me , They picked up my bags and helped me up the steep steps and out of the station The girls beckoned a taxi and after asking me where I wanted to go, bundled me in, paid the fare I never saw them again. My ever grateful thanks wherever they are.
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