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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 2^nd and down further for 3rd and 4th gears. I got it started again and set off slowly in 1^st gear for a few yards then managed to get into 2^nd 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 2^nd gear and the engine was getting a bit warm. I thought I had better get into 3^rd 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 4^th 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 1^st 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 2^nd 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 1^st 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!

AQMS Tony Hurst dressed up in WW2 Despatch Rider uniform on his BSA Motorbike.

Me on Tony’s bike, it brought back many memories of 4 A/A Workshops, Barton.

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.

The Boiler House.

The Fire Station.

Published: 1^st August 2007

Chapter Five.