Albert Findlow-A Family At War.

This is one of the stories collected on the 25th October 2003 at the CSV's Make a Difference Day held at BBC Manchester. The story was typed and entered on to the site by a CSV volunteer with kind permission of Albert Findlow.

My father said “There is another war coming. I have had four years and thirty five days of war. It is no fun, and when the war does start I’m not going and neither are any of my lads!”

Back in 1938 we were a family at war. When Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich Dad’s reaction was that we going to have another war. He made two predictions, one was that there was a war coming, and the second was that he wouldn’t go and ‘neither would any of my lads’. One he got right and one he got wrong.

His lads were William, Arthur, John, Harold, Albert, Wilfred, James, Fred and Frank. Between the years 1940 to 1946 apart from Dad and Harold, John went into the Lancashire Fusiliers; Arthur, Albert and James to the royal Corps of Signals; Wilfred joined the Royal Navy; Fred went into the Army Catering Corps and the baby of the family Frank, to the youngest of the three services the Royal Air Force.

The family saw service in the UK, Malta, Italy, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, Africa, India and Burma. It was some time in 1940 when the first of the lads got his call up papers under the conscription Act by the end of 1940 we had all entered the war.

Well you can imagine my mother when we returned home, you don’t think at the time about your mother’s reaction. But my belief was I was going in alive and I meant out come out alive, God willing. My dad’s attitude also changed when Harold joined the Royal Artillery-“If my lads can be init, then so can I!”

I joined up as a wireless operator but never achieved that, II became a linesman instead. When you think back, we knew where we were but we never really thought of the effect it was having on our mother and the rest of our family. John was the only one who came out wounded, he was wounded in Italy. A family that served in the forces, it’s a simple story of how we survived the war as a family.

One of my brothers had a miraculous escape. Wilfred was in the Navy as a stoker on the battleship Queen Elizabeth and it was in the dry dock in Alagradria. He was in the engine room when Jerry dropped a bomb down the funnel. Landed in the engine room………….It was a non banger! Call it fate or call it what you will, but when you consider that the Mac Roberts from Scotland had three sons and all perished in the RAF here was a family with eight sons, and they all survived.

Albert’s wife Elizabeth was also involved during the war. As Elizabeth only had one parent she was compelled to work on munitions and as she wanted to do something to help the war effort, so she joined the A.R.P. voluntarily and later worked on aircraft.

During the bombing she had a great many bad experiences. One instance was when a bomb hit a factory. There was a man sheltering behind the glass windows, but when the bomb hit he was covered in glass and killed. Another was when a sailor came home on leave and was having a bath. The bomb hit the building directly and the poor lad lost his life. These were terrifying times but Elizabeth feels that she did something to help. “I have helped to put out fires when the incendiary bombs dropped helped to get people out and lots of other difficult situations”.

We got through it in the end and are no worse for it now.

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