The War'll be over before you get called up

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Sharon Lambert of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of John Pye and added to the site with his permission.

I left school just before my 14th birthday and I started work at Williamson’s factory at Lune Mills Lancaster and then I went to work for a biscuit firm, McVitie and Price’s. They used to have a garage, where they’ve built the new flats on the Quay, and they used to deliver the skips of biscuits to the station and we used to have to unload them, sort them out, and deliver them round Cumbria, the Fylde, all over the place. I got to know the Lake District doing that. I worked at the Grammar School after that, as a lab assistant and caretaker, till I got called up in 1943.

I was a signalman in the Royal Navy. I was on the D Day landings and then I went across France, Belgium and Holland. A priest came aboard our ship and he was saying Mass and I started answering. He said “We’ve got an altar boy somewhere.” So I became his altar boy through France, Germany and Holland and every time he came I served Mass for him. The chaplain was Father Holland, who later became Bishop of Salford.

I went out to Malta in 1946 on HMS Indomitable. During the war, when I was delivering biscuits, we used to go to Barrow Dockyard and there was two ships being built — Indomitable and Indefatigable — and I said I’d love to go on one of them. My boss said “John, the war will be over and finished before you get called up.” But that’s the ship I went out on to Malta - Indomitable.

After I was demobbed, I came back and worked at Storey’s for 38 years till I was made redundant. Then I worked at the Moor Hospital for about six years till I retired.

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