Interview with Harry Lees

This a summary of a recorded interview with Mr Harry Lees
Recorded on the 3rd November 2005

My name is Harry Lees I was borne on the 10th September 1926. I lived in Percy St off Ellor St in Salford. There were 7 in my family. My father was a Greengrocer, he used to go around the streets with his horse and cart. He also sold at the local market. My mother worked at home. I went to John St School, the boys playground was on the flat roof, the girls playground was the small yard attached to the school. One day we were taken onto the roof of the school to watch a Zeplin Airship go overhead.

My brother, sister and I were evacuated to Blackpool “we were all excited about getting on a bus and going to Blackpool”. When we arrived in Blackpool the boys and girls were separated. My brother and I were taken to a boarding house, in Coronation St, Blackpool. Landlady’S were paid a set amount of money per child, there were about 10 children in the house. When the RAF were looking for accommodation and landlady’s received more money for adults, we were moved into another boarding house. I would see my sister when we went to school. Our mother was able to come and visit us.

After a time and because there had not been the expected bombing, my mother brought us all home. The bombing started and we had to go into the Air raid shelter in Percy St, it had been built on a croft (spare ground). My mother then sent us to an Aunt who lived in Bredbury near Stockport. I left school at 14 and got a job at a company that made Gas Capes, they covered you from head to toe. My job was to fill the pots of glue that the workers used to stick the seams together “I am now 5ft 2 inches now, imagine the size of me then?” “ I could hardly reach the top of the tables that they did the work on” “I was then put on a machine that cut out small pieces of the material, but I couldn’t pull the handle down” “I was then put to work with the mechanics repairing sewing machines”

I came back home to Salford and went to work for William Eagles, which was near Percy St. I working on a metal turning lathe. All my mates worked at the Coop delivering milk with a horse and cart, so I went to work with them, as what was called a “nipper” the job was to run alongside the cart, pouring milk from a small churn, into the customers jugs, which they had left on their windowsill the night before, collect the money that was alongside the jug and give the money to the driver. When we returned to the yard our job was to clean the horses and carts, feed the horses and bed them down. I was promoted to my own small cart called a “dandy” with 3 crates of milk and a 25 gallon churn. no horse, I did the pushing, I had to go down some of the cobbled streets off Langworthy Road Salford “it was hard graft (work)”.

I was called up when I was 18. I had to go to the Labour Exchange on Trafford Road, dear Salford Docks. I told the officer that I wanted to go into the mines as a “Bevin boy” not the forces “I had just started courting”. He told me that I couldn’t and put me down to go into the Army. I went to Carlisle for my primary training “which was murder” “you had to do a 5 mile run every morning before breakfast” “ I even went into the Gym. at night to get fit” “ they then sorted us out, they couldn’t put me in the guards, they put me in the Royal Engineers, that is where I learned to drive and repair all types of vehicles. After 12 weeks at Chesterfield I passed my tests. I then went down to the south of England driving lorries carrying materials for the building of Air Raid Shelters.

I was then posted to the 8th Army in Milan, Italy. I drove one of the biggest vehicles that they had in the Army, a Diamond T which was 12 tons with 9 tons of steel ballast on the back, just to hold the wheels down, towing a 24 wheel trailer, taking whatever wanted driving to wherever they wanted it, Yugoslavia, Naples and into the Dolomites. I even had to drive up the winding roads that they used when they film the “Italian Job”.

I will never forget one of the destinations that I went to. I took a heavy lifting crane into a field near Pola? In Yugoslavia, where there were German POW’s, working, bringing 100’s of bodies out of a pit shaft, the bodies had been dumped there after being shot. The pulley wheel on the crane seized and I had to go and get and fit a new pulley wheel. I will never forget that sight and the smell.

In 1947 I came home to be married. When I went back to my company they had moved to Palestine. There I worked driving a 15 cwt. water truck. I then returned home to Chesterfield where they fitted me out with my de-mob suit. I arrived home at midnight on Christmas Eve. 1947.

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