anonymous soldier and builder

Part 1: family background. Mother's funeral, childhood games. School. Throwing stones over the viaduct. Hare coursing. Shrove Tuesday. Forged money. The circus. Dainty Dinah factory, Newfield colliery. 1926 strike - riot between miners and police. 1984 strike. Childhood pet dog. Building of Burnhope reservoir. Opening of the Tyne Bridge. Moving to Stockton. Holidays. Ravensworth castle tattoo, military reconstruction. Fenham barracks. Job as driver of six horses in army. Field pieces, a 4.5 howitzer, description. Duties in India. Travelling to the north west frontier. Mutilation of prisoners. Attack on the camp, ambush. Ghurkhas. Health problems. Snake hunting. Riots between Muslims and Hindus. Italians. Leaving Alexandria. Port of Gallibat. Part of the army which captured the first enemy land in world war two. Battles with Italians, fighting strategies. Enteric fever. Battle with the Vichy French, Cyprus. Transit camp. Front line at el Alamein. Stationed in Iraq. India, brother killed in action. Monsoons. Jungle training. Calcutta, famine there, Japanese atrocities. Burma. Air drops, fighting Japanese, met Mountbatten. Storm at sea. Posting to Belford Hall. Weekend leave to see ill father. Tank accident. How to make a tank waterproof. Getting on wrong train at new year. Awarded a court marshal. New postings. Sailing to Southampton, entertained by George Formby. Normandy landings - support for 50 division at Le Hamel. The Sherman tank. Typhoon rocket firing aircraft and how it bombed them. Events in Ghent, fighting Germans. Holland, travelling over half destroyed bridge. Winter and starvation, frostbite. Travel to the Rhine and Hamburg. House to house searches in Hamburg, civilians hiding in cellars. Belsen concentration camp, found soldiers like skeletons. "Aladdin's cave" of binoculars, watches etc. Berlin victory parade. German civilians cleaning the barracks. Meet the foreign secretary . Drunk on parade. Football match in Berlin Olympic stadium with West Ham united. Entertainments - pianist, Vera Lynn. Meeting his wife. Posted to Aachen. New year in Aachen. Swimming pool. Demob clothing. First job after the war - plasterer in Sunderland. Snowfall of 1947. Setting up business as builder.

County: Durham
AUD1997-17a

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Transcript of audio:
So we went in there and were on the top of Black steel at Whitburn and I remember this was 1947 we were working there, back end of January. And it snowed and it snowed and it snowed. Oh God. Good lord. I've never ever seen icicles hanging from the roofs and touching the ground, coming from the offshoots on the roof. And the thing was it would freeze and it would thaw and it would freeze again and thaw and in the end you had icicles coming from the top right down like that, right down a foot wide going all the way down to the bottom.

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