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Description: | Interesting memoir (circa 110pp ts) recording his family's life in Manchester and London before the First World War, where he followed his father into the tunnel construction trade, work at army depots in London on the outbreak of war in 1914 and enlistment into the Royal Engineers, active service in France from April 1915 in the 7th Field Company RE (4th Division) in various sectors of the front including the Somme where he witnesses the early use of tanks (September 1916), being taken prisoner in the German offensive on Chemin des Dames (27 May 1918) and confinement in local camps before being moved to Langensalza, escape from that camp after enduring grim conditions and his journey to Holland concealed in a railway truck, from where he succeeded in reaching England, difficulties in adjusting to postwar life, return to his former trade and work on the extension of the London underground system in the 1920s, move to construction work in the London docks and helping to provide ARP installations in the Surrey Commercial Docks after the beginning of the Second World War, the heavy air raids on the docks during 1940, and briefly describing his involvement (in a supervisory role) in the construction of the components of the Mulberry harbour prior to the Normandy landings of 1944.
Cataloguer SWW
Catalogue date 2001-03 | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Taylor, C W | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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