A BRIEF HISTORY
OF LIFE IN REME
A Craftsman’s Story 1948 to I953
Contributed by: Phil KEMPSTER
Chapter Four.
4 A/A Workshops, Barton, Manchester. October
1948.
It was a very long journey, especially the stage from London
Euston to Manchester,
this was on the L.M.S. The train I
travelled on was an express so it only stopped at major . line to Scotland
town stations, it was interesting for me as it passed through places that I
knew Watford, Kings Langley, Apsley where I lived with my Grandparents,
Boxmoor where my Step dad was living, Berkhamstead where I used to ride my
bicycle to in my train spotting days, Bourne End. I shall always remember that place as there
was a very bad train crash there in 1942, an express train had come off the
track and had gone down an embankment into a field, the carriages were piled
up on top of each other and the engine and tender was on its side with the
driver and fireman still trapped in the cab.
There were bodies strewn everywhere, a lot of them Servicemen and
Women, there were a lot of people killed and injured and it was very
difficult for the emergency services to get to scene of the accident. Myself and my friend Roy had cycled there
and were very shocked at what we saw.
To get back to my story.
I arrived safely at Piccadilly Station Manchester, it was late in the
evening and a truck picked me up to transport me to the camp at Barton, about
15 miles west of the city on the main A57 road to Liverpool. The camp was quite close to a small airport
between the towns of Eccles and Irlam, I could not see much of the camp as by
this time it was quite late. I was
shown to my room, well not exactly a room but a Nissen Hut, the only way to
describe that. A long shed with a
corrugated roof and sides, with a couple of windows on either side and in the
centre a pot bellied stove for keeping it warm. I was shown to my bed space and I stowed my
kit away and found my way to the N.A.A.F.I. that was quite cosy and the girls
were nice. I had some thing to eat and
drink and went back to my Nissen Hut, there weren’t many lads in this room
about fifteen or so I think. I went to
the wash house to have a quick wash and use the toilet, and on the way back
to the hut I noticed what I thought was a huge hotel all lit up in the far
distance across some fields. I thought
I will investigate what that is in the morning.
I was soon making new friends and being told where every thing
was in the camp. At the crack of dawn
I was up, washed and dressed, and joined a couple of the lads to find my way
to the dining room for breakfast, on the way I looked across the fields it
was more like scrubland on the south side of the camp. I could see no sign of any buildings, just
the perimeter fence with barbed wire on top and a vast open space of bushes
and scrubland. I thought I must have
dreamt what I had seen last night.
Anyway curiosity got the better of me so I asked one of the lads about
this illusion I had seen. He said “Oh
that must have been a large ship passing on its way to the docks.” I said “Come on pull the other one, the sea
is miles away from here. I may be a
southerner but I am not that bloody thick.” He smiled and said “It’s the
truth, the Manchester Ship Canal is about half a mile away across the
fields and ships travel along it from Liverpool
to Manchester Docks, some are the Manchester Liners and are the largest ones
to use it. That was what you saw last
night.” I was amazed to think that
huge sea going ships could travel so far inland on a canal, there were even
locks to raise the ships from one level to another and many swing bridges
that roads crossed over, and quite near to the camp was a swing bridge that
carried the Bridgewater
Canal over it,
absolutely unbelievable. 4A.A.
Workshops was not a large camp, most of the site was taken up with the
workshop buildings and a large area full of mobile 5.7 Heavy Ack Ack Guns
covered over with canvas sheets. These
had been mothballed at the end of W.W 2 and left here for storage by the
Royal Artillery, there were many wartime gun sites in this area to protect
the large Industrial areas in Trafford
Park, the Dockland and Canal, and
the City of Manchester,
also aircraft factories around this area.
Some of these sites still had guns on them and still manned mostly by
the T.A.
I remember one site near Eccles was manned by the A.T.S, a
nice bunch of girls they were too. One
of my jobs after I settled in was to drive a team of REME and Civilian
Armourers and Gun Fitters to sites in and around the Manchester area. I used two types of trucks for this job, a
Bedford 3 Ton QL Personnel Carrier for the large teams and a Bedford 15cwt
Truck for the small teams, their job was to maintain the guns on site to keep
them in good working order for the T.A to train on. I remember one site at the A V Roe Factory
at Chadderton, Nr Oldham that we used to go to. This was only a small site, we were allowed
to use the factory canteen and we always got a good slap up meal there, we
had a bit extra put on our plates by the ladies serving us.
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This Bedford QL 4x4 GS Truck is similar to the one I
drove except that it was a lot longer with the Personnel Carrier body on
it.
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Another site I liked going to was the one furthest away in Upton on the Wirral near Birkenhead,
this was a large site with a few guns and manned by the Royal Artillery
T.A. I had to drive the Bedford QL for
these journeys as there were quite a lot of men on this team. To get to Upton
I had to drive through the centre of Liverpool to go through the Mersey
Tunnel and on to Birkenhead and then Upton.
It was always busy with traffic in Liverpool
with lots of buses and trams and to reach the tunnel entrance it was quite a
steep down hill road with tramlines in the centre. I remember one day I was driving down this
road, it was raining cats and dogs and busy with traffic as usual, a double
deck bus in front started to pull up sharply so I pulled out to overtake the
bus and staring me in the face was the back of a bloody great tram. I wasn’t travelling fast so I dropped into
a lower gear and started to brake, my offside wheels were on the tram lines,
between the tramlines the surface was made with setts, that’s like cobble
stones and very common on some roads in those days. Well, as some of you may know, army vehicle
tyres and wet roads don’t go very well together, especially on steel tracks
and cobbles. I started skidding
sideways to the left I managed to straighten up just as the tram started
moving off. I don’t know how I missed
it but by more good luck than judgement I did, the poor civilian chap sat
next to me must have been petrified.
Driving through the Mersey tunnel in
a Bedford QL was quite unnerving, in those days there were two lanes in both
directions with no central reservation and very little space from the sides
of the tunnel, and high sided vehicles had to use the outside lane. When a large vehicle was approaching
towards you and you had traffic alongside on the nearside it was scary to say
the least. It was a long tunnel and
partway along there were traffic lights at a junction where traffic going to
Birkenhead Docks turned off. After a couple of journeys I soon got used to it
and enjoyed my trips to the Wirral. It
was now towards the end of 1948 and very cold, Nissen Huts are not the warmest
of billets to live in so we used to stoke up the stove until it was glowing
red hot at night but in the mornings it was freezing and, with the roof being
made of corrugated iron, there was quite a lot of condensation as well.
There
were about six Nissen Huts and a brick built washhouse and toilet block, the
Admin office and M.T office were brick built and the CO Major Armstrong lived
with his family in a bungalow on site.
The Adjutant was Capt De Manio, I think that was his name. He was Maltese and quite a character, he
had thick black hair that stuck out from under the back of his cap and a
large moustache, he had an eye for the local girls too. I remember being on duty driver one night
and taking him and one of his girl friends home to her house in Urmston, a
few miles away, late at night and on the way back to camp, if there were any
girls walking at the side of the road he would say slow down driver and start
chatting them up, I used to think lucky Sod I wouldn’t get away with it, I
would soon be on a charge. Quite a few
of the men stationed here lived locally and were allowed living out passes,
it was like home from home for them, a lad called Brennan who became a friend
of mine lived in Miles Platting just north of Manchester. We sometimes went to his home at weekends,
he used to take me to some of the local pubs that he knew. He was a bit of a boozer but a nice chap
and we became good friends, we met a couple of girls from Eccles when we were
having a evening out there. We were
going to a cinema in the town so we invited them to come along with us, the
girl I was with was called Lillian and Brennan was with her friend, I think
her name was Muriel. We went for a
drink when we came out of the pictures and that was the start of a
relationship that went on for quite some time, my girlfriend in Reading was still
writing to me, but I stopped answering her letters. After a while her mother wrote to me to say
Kathleen was upset, I felt awful but life goes on and I was not ready for
settling down at that time of my life.
Lillian was a nice young girl and good fun to be with, she was only
small about 5ft 3ins and her friend Muriel was about 6ft tall, Brennan really
fell for her. We used to take them
boozing with us near his home and we had some fun. After a couple of shandies Lilly was drunk
and would start giggling, both girls lived close to each other and when we
took them home it was only about half an hours walk back to camp. After a while Brennan and Muriel fell out
for some reason. I carried on seeing
Lilly for a while until I met another girl called Margaret at the N.A.A.F.I
Club in Manchester. I had gone there with a few of the lads,
they used to take groups to Manchester
from the camp in a Personnel Carrier on Saturday afternoons and pick us up
later in Piccadilly at around 11pm. I
had done that run myself a few times, the N.A.A.F.I Club and Y.M.C.A were
popular with Servicemen in the City centre with bars and dancing etc. going
on till late most nights of the week.
Margaret was about two years older than me and worked as a nurse at Prestwich Hospital
approx five miles from Manchester,
she lived in quarters at the hospital and I remember one night, it was quite
late and I went with her on the bus to where she worked to make sure she got there
safely. It was quite a walk from the
bus stop to the hospital, they were not allowed to take men friends up to
their rooms so we chatted etc. for a while and I went to catch a bus back to
camp. I had not a clue what buses to
catch so I jumped on the first one that came along. The conductor asked where I wanted to go, I
said “Eccles” he said “You wont get one to there at this time,” it was now
after midnight, he said “Stay on this to the bus depot in Salford, you may
get one that is going to our Weaste depot that’s about two miles from
Eccles. You will have to walk from
there.” I thought bloody hell. It’s at
least another two or three miles to camp from Eccles. Anyway, I got back to camp about 2am
completely knackered and sneaked in to my hut, trying not to wake anyone and
climbed into bed vowing not to go to the hospital with Margaret again late at
night. That’s enough of my sordid love
life. I joined the army to be a Driver
Mechanic not a playboy.
There
were two of us Driver Mechs at Barton, the other chap had been there a lot
longer than me and seemed to get all the cushy driving jobs such as driving
the C.O about in the Hillman Tilly and delivering dispatches to other camps
in the area and collecting stores for our camp.
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The
Hillman Utility Tilly. I sometimes used to drive the CO Major
Armstrong about in this type of vehicle at 4 A/A Workshops, Barton, Manchester. It was nice to drive.
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The
Austin
Utility Tilly. This was an older type of vehicle and
had been used during WW2. I did not
like driving this vehicle, it was very heavy on the steering for it’s size.
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Then,
unfortunately for me, he was involved in an accident and a young child was
killed in Ashton-U-Lyne, this resulted in him being grounded pending a police
investigation. I felt sorry for him, I
would have hated it to have been me. I
said it was unfortunate for me because he was the Dispatch Rider for the camp
as well. The inevitable happened, I was called to the Admin Office the
Sergeant in charge said “You are a Driver Mech aren’t you Kempster?” I said
“Yes Sarg.” He said “There are some
urgent documents to take to Fullwood Barracks in Preston, you will find a
crash helmet leather jacket and gloves in the M.T. office, make sure the bike
has enough petrol in then pick up the documents from Admin and off you go to Preston.” I
thought Christ, I have big problem now.
I cannot say I was never taught how to ride motorcycles, my licence
says I am qualified and I don’t want to be down graded or sent on another
course. I had a rough idea how to
start them, my mate Roy from Civvy
Street had one and I sometimes rode on the
pillion seat with him. I had also
worked in a motorcycle garage in Apsley for a short time when I was sixteen,
I was only employed as a cleaner and did all the dirty jobs like cleaning
engine parts and workshop floors and sometimes I would go and collect new
motorbikes from the rail station near by and wheel them back to the garage. It was downhill most of the way and I used
to sit on and freewheel back, but never was I taught to start any bikes up
and ride them. Anyway back to my story. I managed to push the bike out of the
main gates without being seen, got on to the main road, luckily it was
downhill for quite a way from the camp so I free- wheeled to the bottom of
the hill past the airport and found a place to park, got the bike up on to
its stand turned the petrol tap on and after a bit of fiddling with the air
and choke controls on the handlebars managed to kick-start it into life. I jumped on and pushed it off the stand,
pulled the clutch lever in with my left hand pulling tightly on the handbrake
lever, put my right toe on the gear change lever and pressed it into gear. I then carefully released the handbrake and
slowly released the clutch. The bike
lurched forwards and the engine stalled so I fiddled about with the gear
change to get it back into neutral and after a while fathomed out the
gears. You put your toe under the
lever and pressed up for 1st gear, then down through neutral to 2nd
and down further for 3rd and 4th gears.
I got it started again and set off slowly in 1st gear for a
few yards then managed to get into 2nd gear, I was travelling at
around 15mph. I then found out where
the footbrake was, near my left foot, and applied that for some practice at
stopping and starting. I was beginning
to get the hang of it and fortunately there was not a lot of traffic about. I got to Peel Green and turned left to head
northwards, I was still in 2nd gear and the engine was getting a
bit warm. I thought I had better get
into 3rd gear and speed up a bit more traffic appeared and it
started getting more busy now, but I was keeping a steady speed of 30mph and
the engine cooled down to normal. This
road started to get narrow and I got behind a double deck bus. Every time it stopped at a bus stop, I
pulled up behind it until I got enough confidence to overtake it, this was
learning to ride a motorbike the hard way.
I was getting more confident all the time now and by the time I
reached the A6 road in Walkden and turned left on to it I knew this road
would take me all the way to Chorley and then on to Preston my destination. I
was now flying along in 4th gear at 40mph and feeling good, I
arrived in Preston okay, it was a very busy
large town but I soon found the Fullwod Barracks. This was a large brick walled camp and
belonged to the Kings Regiment. I rode
up through an archway and reported to the guardroom, they directed me to the
Admin block and I handed my dispatch case to a clerk and told him where I was
from. A Corporal came to me and said
“We have been on the phone about these documents, they said they were on the
way, that was hours ago. Where the
hell have you been?” I told him a
little white lie I apologised and said I had broken down en route and it took
me a while to fix it. He smiled but
accepted my excuse and handed me back my dispatch case and I was out of there
pronto, it had taken me about two and a half hours to travel the 35 miles to Preston, it took me about an hour to get back to
Barton. No one questioned me when I
arrived back at camp but needless to say I was never asked to deliver
dispatches again.
November
was drawing near now and it was getting cold in the evenings, we used to
stoke up the stove until it was red hot to warm our hut up at night. Another
job drivers had to do in winter was drain the cooling system on your vehicle
every evening when you got back from driving duties to stop the engine
freezing up and causing serious damage to the engine and radiator. Failure to
do this could get you in big trouble (there was no such thing as antifreeze
in those days), sometimes if it was extremely cold your radiator could start
to ice up as you were driving on long journeys and to combat this you had to
blank off part of the front of the radiator grill to restrict the flow of
cold air entering the grill.
Some
of the gun sites were being closed down now, one of the first to go was the
one nearest to us at Peel Green that was situated on the edge of the
airfield, in a field behind the local cemetery. This was manned by the A.T.S (T.A) unit,
most of the girls there lived locally and went on to join other T.A units in
the area. There was only one vehicle
heavy enough to move the A/A Guns about on our site that was an old WW2
Karrier Gun Tractor with a canvas cab, drivers at the camp had to be taught
how to handle this truck. In those
days synchromesh gear boxes were unheard of so all gear changes were done by
double clutch movements, that was done by starting off in 1st
gear, you got up to a slow speed then depressed the clutch, put the gear
lever into neutral, released the clutch, took your foot off the accelerator
and shifted the gear lever into 2nd then released the clutch and
depressed the accelerator to increase the speed. This procedure was repeated until you got
into top gear, when slowing down or approaching steep hills sharp bends etc.
you repeated the procedure to change down into lower gears, except you revved
the engine for a second whilst in neutral at the same time engaging the lower
gears it sounds complicated but you soon got the hang of it. All of us drivers were trained to do this
on our initial driver training, but with this old Karrier truck it wasn’t
that simple to change gears. When you
changed up from 1st to neutral to go into higher gears you had to
pause to let the engine revs die down completely, this took about 3 to 4
seconds. If you did not get it just
right no way would it engage, the gears would grind and make a right
racket. It took lots of practice and
swearing to perfect it.
To
move the guns around on the site was another work of art we were trained to
do, moving them from one position to another you had to get nose on to the
tow bar of the gun, this was a two man job.
You carefully inched forward, watching for hand signals from the man
holding the tow bar, and when your position was okay he signalled stop and
connected the towing ring on the tow bar onto the towing hook on the front of
the truck. If you did this on the
first attempt you were lucky. You then
pulled the gun out of its parking place using your rear-view mirrors to make
sure you didn’t back in to anything.
This was the easy bit, pushing a four wheeled Heavy A/A Gun into
another parking space was very difficult, indeed power steering was unheard
of, you cursed and sweated cobs trying to do this manoeuvre. I thought thank God I did not join the
Royal Artillery. It was all good
training and would stand me in good stead later in my driving career.
Christmas
was drawing near, it was bitterly cold and driving was hazardous on the ice
covered roads. I decided to spend my
Xmas leave at camp, we had a good slap up dinner in the dining room, served
by the N.C.Os, at this time I had become quite friendly with one of the
N.A.F.F.I. girls, I have forgotten her name, she had very red hair and lots
of freckles a nice girl. I used to go
to her quarters with another lad who’s name I have forgotten. He was friends with her mate, we had some
good fun playing cards and listening to records and it was a nice way to
spend the long winter evenings. The
driving duties were getting less and less now with most of the gun sites
closing down, a lot of time was spent cleaning and maintaining the vehicles.
Occasionally, when I was on duty driver in the evening and at night, I would
have to drive the lads into Manchester
in the Bedford Q.L Personnel Carrier and drop them off near the bus station
in Piccadilly, which was in the city centre, and pick them up at around
midnight to take them back to camp. On
the way back they would all start singing and some would start bouncing up
and down at the rear of the truck, there was quite a long overhang at the
rear end of the personnel carrier and when the buggers started to do this
prank it used to make the steering go suddenly very light and frighten the
life out of me. I soon cured the sods
though, I would brake sharply and they used to get thrown in a heap in the
back. Winter was over now and I would
soon be at the ripe old age of 19 years in February, March was at it’s usual
best, very wet and windy. I remember
one evening it had been pouring down all day and we were just getting settled
for the night when an N.C.O. came rushing in to the hut to tell us to get
dressed and report to the main gate as there was an emergency in the
Ammunition Store that was situated about 500yards from the camp in a fenced
off area. Most of this Ammo Store was
underground and grass covered similar to huge air raid shelters, we were
issued with Wellington
boots and were marched off taking with us the fire pump from the emergency
fire hut. A security guard opened the
compound gates and let us in, what had happened, due to the heavy rain, the
floor inside the store had flooded and when this happened it would
automatically set off an alarm connected to our camp. It was an amazing sight inside these
stores, just row upon row of racking filled with boxes of A/A Shells and
Explosive Charges left here from the Second World War. We soon had the water pumped out and
marched back to our huts to dry out and get tucked up in our beds, that was
quite an exciting evening to say the least.
Spring
was here at last and the weather was getting warmer and the days longer, I
was out on the road again driving the Gun Fitters about and enjoying myself
but not for much longer though. My
name came up on part one orders with one or two of the other lads, we were
being sent on a Regimental Training course at a place called Tuxford in
Nottinghamshire for six weeks intensive training. I thought bloody hell not more square
bashing!
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AQMS Tony Hurst dressed up in WW2 Despatch Rider
uniform on his BSA Motorbike.
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Me on Tony’s bike, it brought back many memories of 4
A/A Workshops, Barton.
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Unfortunately
I have no pictures of the REME 4 A/A Workshop from 1949. I went back to this site in 2006 but it has
been mostly demolished and is now a Pallet Storage Depot. The following pictures are those I took on
my return visit.
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The Boiler House.
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The Fire Station.
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Published: 1st August 2007
  Chapter Five.
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