Interview with Roy Berry

This a summary of a recorded interview with Mr Roy Berry
Recorded on the 5th October 2005

My name is Roy Berry. I was born in 1922.There were 4 in our family. I was born in Tyldesley which is near Leigh in Lancashire. I went to the local Council School and when the new Gareth Hall Road School opened, I went there. My Father worked in the local Moseley Common coal mine.

I do not clearly remember the day that war was declared. I was 16 year old and worked for a shoe repairer in Leigh. I decided that I wanted to go into the forces
“I wanted to be like every one else, a marine or something”. My parents refused to let me volunteer but allowed me to start a course to be an “Aircraft Fitter”

I started my course at a training workshop in Greengate, Salford. I think it was in Orchard Lane. I remember that there was a pub nearby called the Mechanic’s Arm. Inside the training centre there were rows and rows of benches with wooden cupboards at each bench where we kept our own tools and instruments, “I was always handy with tools, so it came easily to me”

The staff and apprentices at the centre had to work a nightshift rota, fire watching. The night of the 2nd June 1941 was one of the heaviest nights of bombing, I and 4 others were on fire watching duty, we were outside in the street near the workshop, the shrapnel was so heavy that we decided to go back inside the workshop. Once back inside we realised that the far end of the workshop, the canteen kitchens, was on fire. Incendiary bombs which were about 7 inches long had come through the roof and although we did not know it at the time they had also landed along the roof of the workshop. We managed to extinguish the fire in the kitchen using buckets of sand and the stirrup pumps that were our fire fighting equipment. The only way out was to go back into and through the workshop which by now was on fire and full of thick smoke. I started to crawl on my hands and knees. I remember calling to the other men and not receiving any answer. I was breathing in the smoke. “I had had it”. “The last thing I remember of being in the building was lying near the main doors into the street and seeing a sailor in uniform, coming towards me”. My memory of what happened over the next few hours is hazy. My rescuer must have put me sitting up against the wall on the opposite side of the road to the workshop. I remember seeing the window glass melting and running down the walls like syrup. “There was no one about, no Fire Brigade, no Police, no one”. I noticed that there was a light on in the pub. I went in and asked the young woman who was there if I could have a pint of beer. She said that she could not serve me because it was 2.30am, she and her mother gave me drinks of tea. When I went back outside it was early dawn. Only bits of the walls of the workshop building were standing and still there was no one about. During that night Salford Royal Hospital was hit by a bomb and 17 nurses were killed. “It is a long walk from Salford to Tyldesley, I was a fit lad in those days” I eventually arrived home and was off work for about a week. When I went back to work I worked in a steel workshop off Chapel Street in Salford, cutting steel and making Bailey Bridges. At this workshop I was nearly electrocuted. Conditions were so cramped, the welders used electric arch welding equipment, Unlike today, “Health and Safety was make do and mend” I touched the piece of steel that was the earthing rod, just as one of the welders began to weld. “I know it was only seconds, but it seemed like ages, I could not let go” when the current stopped I fell to the floor.
Through out my apprentice I had been applying to join the forces. When my call-up papers arrived I was told to report to Arbroath in Scotland where I did my 8 weeks basic training. I then went to Cossford near Wolverhampton where I trained as a flight mechanic “I was disappointed when I found out, that although we were called Air Crew we mainly worked on aircraft on the ground” My next posting was to West Africa, we went by boat, the “Louis Pasteur”, a French boat which was stocked by the Americans, good food, loads of cigarettes, any thing we wanted”. We landed at Freetown and then by train to Hastings. “The Africans used to raid our billets at night and steal our kit, they would strip off and cover themselves in palm or coconut oil, if you caught one they just slipped through your hands like a banana out of its skin and were gone” “I saw fire flies at night, all the grass was lit up like Blackpool illuminations, very nice”. I was then sent to Apapa which is across the river from Lagos I worked on and eventually flew in the Sunderland Flying Boats which were using radar to seek and destroy U Boats. I was responsible for the airframe maintenance of three of these aircraft. One of the problems with those aircraft was that they could not land on calm water, the drag on their floats on calm water would make them tip up so M.T.B’S (Motor Torpedo Boats”) were used to make the water choppy and enable them to land. “A Sunderland was like being at home, they were very roomy, when you were flying you could walk around, make yourself a cup of tea, beans on toast” “I also used to sit in the rear or forward gunner positions as lookout, we never had parachutes” “We would fly from Lagos down to Freetown, Acra, Daka, French Equatorial Africa and back to Bathurst.

“I ALWAYS SAID I WAS IN A GOOD WAR!

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