Interview with Douglas Clark
Title
Interview with Douglas Clark
Description
Doug Clark grew up in Lincolnshire and witnessed the construction of RAF Ludford Magna. He saw the wreckage of a Lancaster crash and recalled the time when Lancasters filled the sky. After he left school, he joined the Royal Observer Corps. He went to work for the aircraft industry on the Comet and Valiant as an air frame fitter. He later worked as a draughtsman, and in the offshore oil sector.
Creator
Date
2025-09-01
Language
Type
Format
01:20:58 Audio Recording
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
AClarkD3-250901
Transcription
NM: So, it’s Monday the 1st of September 2025 and I’m with Doug Clark in his flat in Milton Keynes. Also with us is Margaret Egglestone. My name is Nigel Moore and we’re going to talk to Doug about his childhood growing up in Lincolnshire. So Doug —
DC: Yes.
NM: First of all when were you born and where were you born and tell us about your childhood.
DC: I was born on the 2nd of June 1936 at a place called Oxcombe. Near, that’s O X C O M B E. Oxcombe near Louth in Lincolnshire. Yeah. My parents who were, the place where I was born was Oxcombe and it’s just a hamlet really. There’s three pairs of houses, a church and a farmhouse and stables. That’s all there is there really and I went back there, it was the first time I’ve ever been since I was born, about three years ago wasn’t it?
ME: No. It’s only last year.
DC: Yeah.
ME: Last year.
DC: It wasn’t last year. It was when Grace died.
ME: Oh, I beg your pardon. Yes. I’ve got muddled up. Was that three years ago?
DC: Yeah.
ME: Oh, okay. Sorry.
DC: Yeah. So, yeah and it was quite interesting to go there. See that I was baptised in the church in the July following my date of birth and yeah it was good to see the place you know and see my name in the Baptist Register. So that was good. Lincolnshire —
NM: So did your mum and dad stay in the village or —
DC: They, farmworkers always move from one farm to another about every two years. I think the grass is always greener on the other side because they, about two years is the maximum they stay anywhere and so much so that they all move on the same day. The 6th of April and they call it Lady Day for some reason. But they all move on the same day. And that’s what they did. So the 6th of April came and we moved on to another farm. They’d stay a couple of years and then move on again and as I say they all move on the same day so all these farm workers moving.
NM: So did, your dad was a farm worker then. Did he have a special, did he have a speciality at all?
DC: No. I went to a secondary modern school.
ME: Dad, he’s asking about your father. What your father did on the farm.
DC: Oh, my father.
ME: Yeah.
DC: My father was a horseman. He looked after the horses and he would, anything to be with horses really you know. He loved it and that was his job there.
NM: Right.
ME: Your mum kept house.
DC: And I think they probably went to another farm because the horses were better horses or something and you know the —
NM: Right.
DC: That was the way they lived.
NM: What about your mum? Did she have a special role?
DC: My mum. She was just a housewife. She was quite happy doing the housework and I had a brother who was by then about twenty weeks, twenty months old. Dennis. And so she looked after him and both of us of course and that was the kind of life we lived you know. It was very basic but we always had food and that was the main thing.
NM: So you moved around in Lincolnshire.
DC: Yes. Yeah. Not [pause] not really a lot. We moved to a place called Heighington which is halfway between Lincoln and Louth. About sixteen miles to Lincoln and ten to Louth and we lived there for about four years. Oh more than that. More than that. Moved there when I was about three and didn’t leave ‘til I, I suppose it was [pause] yeah it was about [pause] yeah it was about five years. We must have worked in, they must have lived in Heighington.
NM: So if you moved there when you were three in ’39 that was when the war was starting wasn’t it?
DC: Yeah. Yeah, I was there when the war started and quite near to Ludford Magna airport and we used to watch the Lancasters leaving at night and we could hear them then coming back the following day. The following morning. And yeah, so I went to Market Rasen Modern, Secondary Modern School. Didn’t really have any qualifications except that they reported that I was quite good at art and I’m colour blind so [laughs]
ME: I thought, I don’t know whether you’re interested but we’ve been trying to do Doug’s life story because his family sort of not sure. So, I mean he’s actually written down in more, because obviously when he’s being interviewed he doesn’t always think of —
DC: I’m in the process of writing my memoirs so —
ME: So he, he —
NM: That would be good. Yeah.
DC: Yeah. And it tells all about where I lived and all the things that happened during the year that I was born you know. Like the Jarrow March.
NM: Okay. Yeah That would be very interesting.
DC: Yeah. That happened.
NM: What we can do later is possibly get that scanned.
ME: Yeah.
NM: And get it attached to the interview.
ME: Yeah, because I’m helping him at the moment. Just helping him to, I’m proofreading it.
NM: Right.
ME: And that sort of thing because like when he was born —
NM: Yeah.
ME: There had been several kings. There was George the Fifth. When he died —
NM: Yeah.
ME: Edward the Eighth became king and abdicated in the December and George the Sixth became king.
NM: That’s right.
ME: It was the first flight of the Spitfire that took place from Eastleigh Aerodrome.
NM: Yeah. What we’ll do is we’ll get that scanned.
ME: Okay.
NM: At some point.
ME: Yeah.
ME: Yeah.
NM: I won’t take it away today obviously.
ME: No.
NM: If it’s being worked on.
ME: Yes.
DC: Yeah.
NM: And we’ll work with the people in Lincoln. When it’s ready —
ME: Yeah.
NM: We can get a copy sent electronically possibly —
ME: Yeah.
NM: Up to Lincoln and it will go into Doug’s collection alongside the interview that we’re doing now.
ME: Okay.
NM: So that’s what we’ll do with that.
ME: Yeah because I think it just, I mean did you want to while you’re having your interview because there’s quite some good things in here that you will sort of not record.
NM: Well, we might go back to a few things.
DC: Yeah.
ME: Yeah. Okay.
DC: Yeah. And then we’ll pick that back up but if there is something missing than obviously please please help.
ME: Yeah.
DC: Yeah.
NM: I was going to go back to your junior school before you went to Market Rasen.
DC: Yeah. I left school. I didn’t have any real qualifications and so I wasn’t interested really in anything except working on the farm and driving a tractor. That was my ambition [laughs]
NM: That was later though wasn’t it because —
DC: Yeah.
NM: Because the war started when you were just three.
DC: Yeah.
NM: What are your early recollections then?
DC: My early recollections of the war?
NM: Yeah.
DC: Was seeing Wimpy lorries. Waiting. We were waiting with my mother at the centre of Heighington for a bus to go to Louth and there would be lorry after lorry after lorry. Yellow painted. You know, Wimpy trucks and they were building Ludford Magna airport which was just another mile up the road from where we were waiting you know. And then we didn’t know what was happening really because I was too young but then the sky started to fill with aircraft. Lancasters everywhere in the end. Yeah. We used to watch them leave and come back. Yeah. So —
ME: You used to spend your holidays going to the beach and things didn’t you?
DC: Yeah. Mablethorpe usually. Just going to the beach and you didn’t have proper holidays in those days.
NM: No. That’s right.
DC: We, we just went to the beach and had a ride on a donkey and whatever.
NM: So what about your junior school when you were —
DC: The Junior School. Yeah. Lived very close to my school. You could see it from the house that I lived in and yeah it was pretty basic really. There was two teachers and eventually had a canteen and there was a cook employed there and so we did get a lunchtime meal. Then the next move was to Market Rasen. The Secondary Modern School. So [pause] yeah.
ME: But there was only really you and Dennis wasn’t there? So you just used to play with your older brother in them days didn’t you?
DC: Yeah. Before I went to school I hardly saw any other children because it was so sparsely populated that mixing with other children was quite daunting really I suppose you know and we got on fine. That was junior school. Made friends and you know.
ME: [unclear]
NM: Can you remember how the war affected your life at all in the early days at all?
DC: Well, the rationing of course but we lived on a farm so occasionally we could and the farmer was also a butcher so we could get a joint every [pause] dodge the rationing a bit but not too much you know and the groceries were delivered from a shop in East Barkwith and I remember the ration books and clipping the coupons out because we, he, I don’t know how he reckoned it out but he clipped so many coupons out of the ration book you know. So yeah. That was another experience.
NM: What about any air raids at all? Do you remember?
DC: Didn’t have air raids. We were, there was a bomb that dropped about a half a mile away and near a farm and of course the next morning we went to see what damage it had done and the shrapnel had gone straight through the house. The holes in the doors and straight out the window and there were people sitting in the room at the time you know. They were very lucky. A great big hole in the field outside and shrapnel everywhere. But that was the nearest we got to being bombed really but we could watch the German aircraft at night being in the searchlights. They had the searchlight station near [pause] West Barkwith up the hill from Heighington and you could see them. They came. They were in the searchlights you know then there was no chance of ever going home again you know. But you never saw them shot down but they did shoot them down. Yeah. And then what, I’m trying to think what happened then. There was as I say there were Lancasters everywhere. But when I was working on the farms this was just after the war now the Manby airfield was close to where we, where I was were working in a field and they were training pilots on Chipmunk aircraft. The pilots would come so close to us we could wave to them and they waved back and, yeah. That was quite good. I got interested in aircraft and I at seventeen, not seventeen, yes it was seventeen, at seventeen I joined the Royal Observer Corps tracking. The war had finished by then obviously but the RAF used to send up Meteors and Sabres and fox and terriers and we used to track their positions and report in and they could home in on each other. They might be two hundred miles apart to start with you know but it was just an exercise that continued after the war to keep us happy I suppose you know.
NM: Okay. We’ll perhaps come back to that in a minute.
DC: Yeah.
NM: But taking you back into the war years.
DC: Yeah.
NM: There were a lot of bomber stations in Lincolnshire. Did you ever mix or meet up with RAF personnel at all? Did they come across there?
DC: Well as we, as we got a bit older. I don’t remember ever mixing with them really except they used to go to the village dances and that kind of thing. It was, it seemed funny to me that the RAF was a different type of life to the Army. The Army were over in France or wherever they were. No, no contact with home except whatever means they had. But the RAF they could be going out with their girlfriends one night and they were flying the next you know. Yeah.
NM: So they used to have village dances did they and they used to come in the village.
DC: Yeah. They used to come from Ludford Magna to a place called Tealby and we used to go to the dances there and they would be there and yeah. But it never sort of mixed or anything because they were much older than us you see.
NM: Yeah. Yeah.
DC: Yeah.
NM: You were still a young boy at the time.
DC: Yeah.
NM: But so as a young boy during the war what did you actually think of the war? Was it something to be frightened of or was it an adventure?
DC: It was frightening sometimes when the, you know when there was so many aircraft about and they were dropping this blooming Window. You know the foil that they used to drop big bunches of it everywhere you know and I remember that. To zap the radar you know. So —
NM: Did you ever pick any up? Collect any?
DC: Yeah. It was just all over the field. We used to run about with it looking you know. Once it hit the floor, hit the ground it was anybody’s really you know. Yeah.
NM: Are you going to say about the Lancaster that crashed?
DC: Yeah. There was a Lancaster that crashed near us. It was a terrible thing really. It was a night when it was dark, foggy and they couldn’t find the airfield and I think there was about twenty Lancasters lost that evening. They crashed. This one crashed through the woods. I was walking up the road the following morning and I saw this about fifteen foot of fuselage in the field. Wreckage everywhere you know and so yeah. There was, the Army had a camp in the woods and they had their lorries parked on the roadside and one of them was wrecked as well. But it had gone through the trees and landed in the field but —
NM: So it was coming back from an operation then.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. They were coming back from Germany. I can’t remember where they said they’d been but I’ve done it. I did a bit of research on that and found the name of the pilot and everything.
NM: Yeah.
DC: And I left. I collected some small bits of wreckage and I kept them. This was when I was seven years old then and I handed them in at the Bomber Command place.
NM: Yeah. Peter Jones told me about that. That’s fine.
ME: Thank you.
NM: Did you actually hear the crash or did you just come across it the next morning?
DC: I just came across it the next day and [pause] but it was about, there was a group of about seven of us. Country, village lads you know and they were, I was seven and the others were fifteen and we couldn’t wait for the RAF to go. And the RAF took all that they wanted. It took them about a week to clear their side. Their bit of it you know. And then we went on there to see what we could find.
NM: You went exploring did you?
DC: We found a wristwatch and handed that to the police and I thought it may have been the navigator’s but somebody said since they had a special watch. I think I learned that when I was at the Bomber Command place.
NM: Okay.
DC: Yeah. But they, we did find this watch and handed it to the police but we found belts and belts of spent ammunition and oh we had some fun with that really. But it’s amazing that we’re alive to be honest because we used to [pause] several several belts of bullets and we, we’d take them out of the casing, out of the belt and pull the points out, stand on the road and get the cordite burning inside. Of course the cap was still live wasn’t it so it would explode and the casing would go flying up in the air you know [laughs] It was good fun. But then every fifth I think it was was a pinpoint tracer you know. And the point itself has a charge in it for tracking where the, where the shots are going. We decided we’d light a fire with Perspex from the aircraft windows and lay these points. We pulled them out. We laid them on and we knew they were explosive because they had a charge in them and they’d go bang and they’d go flying and we were all sitting around this [laughs] I think I said somewhere it was nearer to Russian roulette than anything else really.
NM: That was going through my mind actually when you said that. I thought like Russian roulette.
DC: So that was good fun.
ME: You made rings out of the Perspex’s didn’t you that you found.
DC: Oh, rings.
ME: Yeah.
DC: Yeah, we used to gather the Perspex and take a piece of Perspex you know and stick a red hot poker through it and then make it into a ring and we we actually thought they looked great [laughs]
NM: Well, you were seven. It was, it sounds like it was an adventure.
DC: Yeah. So that was fun, so —
ME: You didn’t hear anything more about the watch did you that you handed into the police.
DC: Yeah. We didn’t hear any more about that and of course all the, all the watches were the same apparently except the navigators’ so —
NM: You, you told Peter when you went to the Bomber Command Centre that was a 12 Squadron Lancaster.
DC: Yes.
NM: You had the registration number and just for your interest I’ve looked it up. It was only sixteen days on the squadron. It only arrived on the end of, it arrived on the 30th of November at Wickenby.
DC: Wickenby. Yes.
NM: And it crashed on December the 16th.
DC: Yeah.
NM: So it had a life of just over two weeks.
DC: It was a fairly new aircraft actually.
NM: That’s right.
DC: Yeah.
NM: So —
DC: One of the Goons — [pause]
ME: Harry Secombe.
NM: Bentine. Michael Bentine.
DC: Sorry? What was his name? Anyway, he was stationed at Wickenby and he was convinced that he’d seen one of the guys that was on this plane after it had crashed and he said he said goodnight to him and he said, ‘Cheers. Goodnight.’ You know. They were going to their billets. Who was the [pause] Do you remember the Goons?
ME: Harry Secombe.
DC: Who?
ME: Harry Secombe.
NM: Michael Bentine.
ME: Michael Bentine.
DC: I’m sorry?
NM: I think he was RAF wasn’t he? Michael Bentine.
DC: It wasn’t —
NM: Spike Milligan. No, he wasn’t. He was Army.
DC: No.
NM: Anyway.
DC: I forget. Anyway, he was one of the, one of the Goons.
NM: But you said there was nobody killed in the crash.
DC: He wasn’t killed.
NM: Right.
DC: But he was —
NM: The crew.
DC: Stationed at Wickenby where the aircraft came from.
NM: Yeah.
DC: And he was convinced that he’d said good night to the guy who had been killed you know.
NM: Oh, they were.
DC: Yeah.
NM: The crew were killed were they?
DC: He was already killed in the in the crashed aircraft.
NM: Oh really.
DC: Yeah.
ME: Because all the, all the people —
NM: Were they —
ME: The crew that you saw the crash only one survived the crash and got taken to hospital didn’t he?
DC: Yeah. But he died the next day apparently.
NM: They were all killed. Oh, I hadn’t realised that.
DC: They were all killed. Yeah. All seven of them and [pause] I did find out that there’s a guy that has written a book and he, his name’s Knott and he [pause] he was a friend of the son of the navigator and so he had written this book and it mentioned that you know. That he was a friend and the navigator’s son was running a pub up in in the Midlands somewhere. He was a friend of his. But yeah. Otherwise, the war years you know. I remember VE day and VJ day.
NM: Tell me about VE day then.
DC: Well, it was just a big party you know in one of the old Army buildings that they’d used previously and all the village got together and we had balloons and Union Jacks and everything. A great day. Yeah. So —
NM: But the RAF gradually left some of these airfields. Did you, were you aware of that after the war?
DC: Sorry?
NM: When the RAF left some of these airfields after the war did you —
DC: Yeah.
NM: Were you aware of that?
DC: Yeah. We never, we never went back to any of them that I remember but there were as you know hundreds well about thirty or something in Lincolnshire. They were everywhere you know.
ME: Another —
DC: Wickenby, Faldingworth.
NM: Yeah.
DC: Binbrook, Ludford Magna, everywhere.
ME: What about the prisoner of war camp that you you said they came and helped at your —
DC: The —
ME: The prisoner of war —
DC: Oh yeah. In, it was 1947, war was finished but we still had German prisoners of war in various places and in that year the snow was so bad the roads were all blocked up and they sent a team of German prisoners out to dig the roads out. And we lived in this house in the country. We had a wash house. Have you heard of the old wash house with a boiler in there and they came to the house and said could, could they use our wash house and my mother said, ‘Yeah. You can use it.’ They went to make coffee for the guys who were digging the roads out and two of them sat there all day just making the coffee and, you know sawing us wood. They went up to the woods and they got so much wood. It was enough to last until next year you know. They were really friendly and good to be with you know. One of them made a cradle for my sister’s dolls you know.
NM: So you went to Market Rasen Secondary School.
DC: Yes. Yeah.
NM: Did you, what age were you when you left?
DC: I left. Fifteen.
NM: Fifteen. And what did you do then?
DC: Went straight into farmwork driving a tractor which was what I wanted to do. It was [laughs] Eventually we, he was good. A good guy to work for but I was driving a tractor, milking the cows by hand and feeding the chickens. Looking after the chickens. General farm work.
NM: So was this all in Heighington?
DC: Was what sorry?
NM: Was this where you grew up? In Heighington?
In Heighington. But this village where the farm where I worked was in Benniworth which was about three miles away, you know. So I used to go there and —
ME: How did you get there Doug?
DC: Pardon?
ME: How did you get to work?
DC: Well, by bike at first and then my dad bought me an autobike, autocycle. A motorised one. I was really chuffed with that [laughs]
NM: So did you ever work at your dad’s farm with your dad?
DC: No. No. He was, he was always on a different farm to me for some reason but I didn’t move around too much. I went to this, the first one, farm that I worked. I was there about three year I suppose. No. Two years and then we moved. The family moved to nearer to Louth to a place called Fockerby and I think there was a smallholding there. And after that oh I was working for a company that did it was a farm but they didn’t, all they kept the only livestock they had was chickens and there were contractors for combine harvesting and land drainage so we were combining in the summer and then in the winter land drainage, you know. Combining wasn’t a good —
ME: That’s how you got —
DC: I finished up this lung thing because all this dust and everything and you didn’t have any protection or anything in those days. Yeah and so I was quite please really when it was time for me to be called up into the Army.
NM: Was that National Service?
DC: National Service. Yeah. Two years in the National Service.
NM: Did you have a choice as to which branch you went into?
DC: We did. We did. But I asked to go in the REME because my brother was already in the REME and I thought we, it might be a chance that we would be together, you know but they sent me down to Honiton in Devon and then they decided that we all had various tests to see sort of intelligence tests and English and whatever and they decided that I would be better off in the Military Police. So I got transferred then to Woking in Surrey and did six months training in the Military Police and then went out to Germany and I kind of enjoyed that. It was quite a good place to be in those days, you know. The war was over obviously and I met my wife over there as it happened. Her father was in the Army. He was an officer so I wasn’t really supposed to even talk to her you know. But my friend was also going out, it was quite a strange situation because they weren’t, the officers weren’t in any way allowed to mix with other ranks, right. So, but my friend was already seeing one of the daughters. He had two daughters this major and so every time he went, she went out my, the one that became my wife the two sisters had to go out so she was always the odd one and she went out there just because the father wasn’t supposed to know that she was going out with a military policeman you see. So anyway, we were out one evening a bit before Christmas. There was my friend Pete from Boston and the two girls and it so happened that their parents were away on holiday so we all went back to their house for a coffee.
NM: So what —
DC: Yeah. It was the Christmas then. I got invited up there for Christmas lunch so I’d already had a big lunch in the canteen in the mess anyway so at the Military Police mess we’d had a Christmas dinner [laughs] I couldn’t say no could I? [laughs] So —
NM: So what years were you doing National Service?
DC: Pardon?
NM: What years? Can you remember the dates you were doing —
DC: Just two years. 1955 to 1957. January.
ME: What about when you had to charge Mona’s mother?
DC: Oh yeah [laughs] Oh yeah. That was good. The officers all lived in officer’s quarters you know and I was sitting there one in the lounge one afternoon and her father had taken her mother out for a driving lesson. Just driving the car around the, it was an open plan estate. A really big estate. A really big garrison town it was. Probably about five thousand people on there. Anyway, we heard this big crash you know and looked out the window and her mother had driven the car around a corner and she hadn’t straightened the wheel up. She went straight in the front of this house and the bonnet was like that. Oh God. You know. I thought, and I was at that time on the Traffic Accident Department.
NM: Oh really.
DC: Yeah. So I had to go out and measure up and do everything and the, my commander lived next door to them and he said, I put a report in obviously, he said, ‘Oh, yeah, he said, ‘And did they have L plates on the car corporal?’ I said, ‘No. They didn’t.’ ‘Well, you know what to do about that then.’ He said. I was to then drop them in it you know because they didn’t have L plates on the car you know. So I don’t know what happened really about that but they obviously straightened things out somehow or other. I don’t know how but it was —
NM: So where were you stationed in Germany?
DC: Munchen Gladbach. Well, you hear about it now because of the football teams and that but Rheindahlen was the Headquarters of the British Army of the Rhine and there was a massive building there with seven miles of corridors in it you know and we had to man the entrances. That was the first job we got was security on the entrances but it was, it was all guarded and always the guards with loaded weapons.
ME: Just going back. Just going back to Mona. Her father, he’d been captured by the Japs hadn’t he?
DC: You what, sorry?
ME: Mona’s father had been captured by the Japs.
DC: Oh, he had. Yeah. Oh yeah. The whole family. There was a father, a mother and three [pause] Oh, yeah, five children and they were in Singapore when the Japs moved in and he was captured of course and put in Changi and they had to get out as quick as they could and they, the ships that had taken them out they got a ship to South Africa and they spent the rest of the war in South Africa. But in my filing cabinet I have a list of passengers on this ship that took them and there were, I don’t know if you know there’s a list of passengers and there is all their names and ages on this list. I managed to get a copy of the passenger list of the ship that took them out to Singapore. They were very lucky to get out. I think there was only about seven ships that got out without being sunk you know. So —
NM: And he obviously survived the war and they were reunited at the end.
DC: Yeah.
NM: Yeah.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. They, he came back in the end but —
NM: So —
DC: Thank you.
NM: So tell me about the time when you were in the Royal Observer Corps. Was this before you went to National Service or after?
DC: It was before I went into National Service.
NM: So how come, how did you get into the Royal Observer Corps? What was the process?
DC: Into the Observer Corps?
NM: Yeah.
DC: My boss. My boss had been in the Observer Corps. This was a farmer I worked for. He had been in the Observer Corps and he met his wife. She was on the centre in Lincoln so he had met his wife through that. But the, one of the other guys that worked on the farm was already in the Observer Corps and so I joined and it was, yeah it was quite an interesting thing to be doing you know. It was. Yeah.
NM: So how long did you do that for?
DC: When I was seventeen, [pause] seventeen, eighteen, a couple of years I suppose because then I had to go in to the Army anyway. So first in the Observer Corps.
NM: So you had observation posts nearby did you?
DC: There was one in the village and they were in almost all, well I don’t know how far they were apart really. I suppose they were about two or three miles apart all over the country you know and we’d track. We’d take a reading off an instrument that we had and the height and speed and if we could recognise it and we had to recognise it. We had lots of tests about recognising aircraft and I can still remember most of the older ones you know. As soon as I see it I think oh there’s a Viscount and that’s a [pause] and, you know. But, but then when I came out of the, when I came out of the Army because I’d been in the Military Police I tried to get into the civvy police here. So I took the entrance exam. I passed the entrance exam. Went for a medical. Slightly colour blind. So no chance after that. I’ve tried about six constabularies different places and there is no chance. Once they, once they’d found out that you were colour blind I suppose they’ve got a right to do it really. You know, chasing a green car when it should be a red one or something [laughs] it would be a bit embarrassing wouldn’t it, you know. So I didn’t get into that but I went into the aircraft industry then.
NM: Oh, you did.
DC: Yeah.
NM: What did you, what was that then? What was your role?
DC: I was a fitter in the [pause] I did a training course in aircraft fitting and worked on the Comet 4s. They were building the Comet 4 at the time and I was a fitter on those. And then there was a space between the Comets and the Trident so I thought, and they were getting rid of people so I thought I’d better get out of this otherwise I won’t have a job you know because I was a fitter but they needed to get rid of people because there was a gap when they started construction on the Trident. So I contacted Handley Page and got a job there as an airframe fitter on the Victors.
NM: So the work you did on the Comet. That was in Hatfield was it?
DC: That was at Hatfield. Yes. Yeah.
NM: So you moved down there.
DC: It was. Yeah.
NM: Did you live in Hatfield?
DC: I did live in Hatfield for a while. Yes.
NM: So how long were you at de Havilland’s then?
DC: I was at de Havilland’s about two years I suppose. It seems such a long time ago now you know. It was at a time when the Manchester United crashed. I remember that. I was working in the fitting shop at de Havilland’s when we heard that. Anyway, I went down to Handley Page and was an airframe fitter and just general modifications really you know.
NM: So did you move house from Hatfield or did you just stay in Hatfield and work in Radley?
DC: I was living in St Albans. I was already married then and I was living in St Albans. So [laughs]
ME: Because you came back from doing your National Service and Mona, your wife she was still out in Germany for a while wasn’t she?
DC: Yeah. She, she was out in Germany for about another year I suppose so I was living in flats and whatever in St Albans and working at Handley Page at Radlett. Radlett and Park Street. I remember driving along the taxi way once and there was a Victor coming towards me just taxiing [laughs] I pulled over and a wing came over my car and the pilot just went [laughs] yeah. So some good times you know we had there. But yeah.
NM: So how long were you at Handley Page?
DC: Handley Page? About two years I suppose and then.
ME: You went to night school didn’t you?
DC: Went to night school. Yeah and —
NM: What did you study there?
DC: Oh, just general engineering. Higher National Certificate for General Engineering, you know. And then I got a [pause] while I was at Handley Page’s, that was a point, yeah I was working as a fitter and I saw all these guys I’d worked with at de Havilland’s and they were all with their collars and ties you know. Everybody wore collars and ties and I thought how did they get [pause] what sort of job have they got? You know, and they had apparently when they heard that de Havilland’s were getting rid of all these people there was a drawing office company contracting drawing office company went in there to recruit people into, as trainee draughtsmen. I thought I got out of there too quick really you know. But I knew from night school I knew one of the section leaders at this draughting place and I managed to get a job there as a trainee draughtsman. So then I was draughting for ages.
NM: So, where was that? Where was that based?
DC: That was in Boreham Woods. Elstree. Right next door to the studios there in Elstree and, yeah so it was a contract drawing office so you never knew where you were going to finish up you know. You’d go in one morning and they’d say, can you build so and so and be out there tomorrow morning? Oh yeah. You didn’t know at first. You might [pause] it might be civil engineering. It might be anything mechanical and they’d say, ‘It’ll be alright. You’ll get out of there.’ [laughs] Yeah. They sent me to Handley Page again and I worked in the drawing office there and they said will you, will you go out to — no. They said, ‘Tomorrow morning Handley Page want you out there.’ I said, ‘What to do?’ They said, ‘Design aircraft controls.’ I said, ‘I’ve never done that.’ ‘You’ll do it. Get out there.’ They didn’t care you know. And so I spent about fifteen years standing at a drawing board and did various mechanical. And then we had the contract with the, they had a contract with the government to do what they called DTLs. Draught Technical Leaflets for the RAF and we had to go. What we would do is the, say Avro would, would decide that they needed to do some changes to the Vulcan and they would send the details to the, to the Ministry and they would approve whatever it was and then we got the job of writing the technical, Draught Technical Leaflet to instruct the RAF on how the, what they should have to do to incorporate this change, you know. It was you had to tell them every single thing they’d got to do to make the change. There was even a specification for, a requirement for what bolts you could throw away if they could throw away and what they had to keep for various other, and so they had to get rid of certain things and other things were a bit more security based. Those things they couldn’t get rid of but there was a special way of getting rid of them you know. So, so instructing the RAF on what they had to do to incorporate this change you know. And I worked on the Shackletons at Woodford and I have actually been on a Lancaster. But I remember thinking how difficult it must have been to have got out of those things, you know. there was the main spar goes through. You have to climb over the main spar to go [laughs] to the front. If you were diving I can’t think of how the hell you’d get out of that thing, you know and, yeah. So and then I worked on the Shackleton. It became a Mark 3. A Mark 3 Shackleton. What they did really was take the tail wheel off and put it on the front and called it tricycle undercarriage. But they put tip tanks on that thing and they used it for coastal defence and they had tip tanks and I think they put some small jet assistance on them but they could fly to Japan without stopping. Yeah. That’s a long way.
NM: So were you still the contract draughtsman at this point working on the Shackleton?
DC: Yes.
NM: You were contracted out.
DC: We were incorporating changes.
NM: Right.
DC: And it always surprised me on how thick the instrument panels had got to be because it’s like a piece of pastry when you’ve taken all the bits out. There’s nothing left. The instrument panels are maybe an inch thick you know because there’s nothing left of them. There are so many instruments in there that it surprised me at first to see how thick they were you know. Yeah. So then I worked at Cranfield for a while. That was a good place to work. I enjoyed that because we used to go flying from there but almost everybody that worked at the College of Cranfield had a pilot’s licence and they wanted to take somebody up. They could go halves with the fuel. So we were over the moon to get a trip out every lunchtime if we could get one you know.
NM: So two questions then. What were you flying?
DC: They were Beagle Pups.
NM: Okay.
DC: Yeah. The small ones. They had about four Beagle Pups but they did take for their own use for training a radio operator I think it was. They’d got about three Jetstreams which at Handley Page had closed by then and they’d got about three Jetstreams there.
NM: So what was your role then at Cranfield. What were —
DC: There.
NM: Yeah.
DC: We were putting a Blind Landings Experimental Unit on to a BAC 1-11. So we were designing all the bracketry and everything. The aircraft is sort of the opposite way around to normal engineering. We had to go in and decide where the designer bracket that we could fit anywhere in the aircraft within a certain area and then submit the drawing and the stress engineers then would look at it and decide if it could do what we wanted it to do to support the unit that was going to sit on it. And if they liked it and it passed all the stress tests then they’d accept it you know but anywhere else they did the, all the stress work is done first. You know, any other engineering work you know this was just the opposite way around you know. But so we did this conversion of BAC 1-11 [pause] That worked well. Then we did a head up display for a Hunter. All the gear that went in to do that you know. Yeah. So that was Cranfield. That was a good, good base. I lived in Dunstable at the time so it was quite an easy drive you know and yeah, we used to go. We had a lot of fun there and the —
NM: So after Cranfield?
DC: Pardon?
NM: After Cranfield?
DC: After Cranfield? That was my last job really in the aircraft industry because it was a funny industry really. Went in peaks and troughs you know. Different airliners were, airlines would require a plane and a designer and that would be [pause] you know and then it would be hit. When I was left Cranfield there was no more aircraft contracts around. So the very thing that was picking up was the offshore industry and some of my friends from this contract place where I was working one of them rang me and he said, he knew that I was finishing at Cranfield. They said there was no point really to go out of the office. There was no work down there and he said, ‘Why don’t you come over here to Bedford?’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything about the offshore industry.’ He said, ‘Well, neither do we.’ [laughs] So I went over there and then that started me off in a different from the lightest thing you could ever have wanted to design to something that was about as heavy as you could do. You know. It was all massive. I couldn’t believe it when I went to site in Scotland. So you looked around. There was nothing that you could pick up. The Shackles were half the size of this room you know.
NM: So what were you working on?
DC: Just massive you know. Just unbelievable how big everything is you know.
NM: So what were you working on?
DC: I’ve been in the Auk. The Auk jacket was the first thing they did. The jackets. The firm I worked for did all the what they called the jacket. That’s the bit goes below the water. The top side is another different thing altogether. It was all accommodation and all the drillings and stuff. So —
NM: So these are the oil platforms in the North Sea.
DC: Yeah.
NM: And you worked on the jackets side of it.
DC: The jacket side. Yeah.
NM: The legs and the bit —
DC: Yeah, the Auk and the Brent and then eventually on Magnus which was forty thousand tonnes. A Magnus.
ME: You had to go up to Scotland didn’t you to work.
DC: Pardon?
ME: You had to go up to Scotland.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I spent a long time in Scotland because we went to the job we had on the yard was to be the link between the drawing office and the foreman because to make sure the foreman was reading the drawing properly you know and that was a big and complicated job really operating the barges that we took them out on you know. And the site had a one in forty slope so when you slid this gigantic structure on to the barge it all had to, all had to line up so there was no step in it and that meant pumping water into the barge to get the barge in exactly the same slope as the land, as the slip way and then we spent all night in the freezing cold maybe pumping all the water out so that the barge then didn’t bottom at low tide you know so we had lots of fun there. It turned out you know and —
ME: You had to leave Mona at home looking after the children didn’t you because you were away a lot.
DC: A long time.
ME: Yeah. Mona had to look after the children.
DC: Oh yeah. Mona, my wife she had to look after the children. I was away a long time. Just we came back at the weekends sometimes but I spent a lot of time up there. I suppose I spent ten years in Scotland.
NM: Is that right?
DC: Altogether. Yeah. One side and then the other. Yeah.
NM: Whereabouts in Scotland were you?
DC: Methil. Just over the [pause] over the bridge. The Forth Bridge. Over the Forth Bridge and about ten miles up on the right of the country in Fife.
ME: Didn’t you do some work on the Forth Bridge?
DC: You remember more than I do.
ME: Didn’t you do some work on the Forth Bridge up there?
DC: Not on the Forth. I did some. I did some work on the Keswick Bridge.
ME: Oh, the Keswick Bridge.
DC: Yeah. Yeah.
ME: What did you do there?
DC: That was later.
ME: Oh okay.
DC: Yeah.
NM: Was your role a sort of intermediary between the design and the actual construction was it on the oil platforms?
DC: The platforms was all the construction, yeah. But the firms I was working for had done the design and then they needed somebody to oversee the construction work, you know.
NM: Yeah.
ME: You had lots of fun. You had lots of fun with the workforce up there didn’t you?
DC: Oh, the workforce. Trying to get them to work was just [pause] They just didn’t want to work you know and sabotaged everything you did you know. Just criminal really. You know they just [pause] and they would do it in front of your face you know. The Unions were so strong that you couldn’t dare to sack somebody you know. The, they just, I’d install some cable, the electricians had installed it and I looked after it and because we had to monitor how much water was pumped in the barge and this was the night before we were taking the rig out and there’s a guy there burning some of the surplus steel off and he was going through the cable and the site superintendent was standing there with me. He said, ‘Ay stop that,’ he said, ‘You’re burning through the cable.’ And five minutes later he was doing just the same again. They didn’t care you know. They just wanted to make sure that that rig didn’t leave the site one way or another you know.
NM: Oh. I see because they could then continue working.
DC: Yeah.
NM: It was going to be the end of their —
DC: They would do anything to sabotage it so that you couldn’t —
NM: Delay it.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. And —
NM: So after the rigs?
DC: The rigs.
NM: After that.
DC: After the rigs what happened then? This thing. I had to go up then to the [pause] there was a firm, Britoil up in Glasgow had decided they would design a rig and I had to, there was a group of us had to go up to Glasgow. There was about, there was two companies. I suppose about two hundred of us went to Glasgow and —
NM: What were you working on with Britoil?
DC: For Britoil? How long?
NM: No. What was the —
DC: I didn’t —
NM: What was the project?
DC: I was working — sorry?
NM: What was the project for Britoil?
DC: For Britoil was the Clyde —
NM: I have to ask because I used to work for Britoil.
DC: Did you work at Britoil?
NM: Yes. We’ll have a private conversation after the interview but —
DC: Right. Well, we —
NM: I can’t believe how much this interview overwraps my life.
DC: We were at Linwood. In the Linwood office and it was John Brown Irving Wright that I worked for.
NM: So you were in Glasgow for how long?
DC: Well, I worked there [pause] on the Clyde project I was doing weight and centre of gravity and materials. On Britoil I suppose about a year and a half. Two years perhaps.
NM: Yeah.
DC: Yeah. Quite a long time because Humphrey’s of Glasgow were there. A lot of people there and there was another firm. Cowboys they were.
ME: You was up in Glasgow for quite a lot of years in total wasn’t you?
DC: Oh yeah, because I, then when I went over to the other side and because I’d been on a construction site for quite a long time I got a phone call to say would I go up to Scott Lithgow Yard up in Greenock and, because Scott Lithgow had closed by then, gone and open the yard up and run the yard and take on whatever staff I needed. And this was to build the Dartford Bridge sections and I went up there and took on over a hundred people there. Got all the [pause] the trouble was that the scrap merchants, scrap dealers had got in and pinched all the copper cable off the overhead cranes and everything and the security people were making their money and they were allowing them to do it. And there was brand new machines, pipe bending machines but they just cut up with a flame torch and you know the induction bend maybe where the bend instead of stretching the pipe if you get a big pipe when you bend it the outside becomes thin and the inside becomes thick. Now, with induction bending it’s heated up and it’s pushed through and it forms a curve and they are very expensive machines. They just burned them up you know.
NM: And how long did you do that for?
DC: On the site? Six months or so just until, until Dartford. The Dartford Bridge until the company that was building that was back on track again because they were getting seriously behind and they needed somebody to [pause] they just needed to get the job done I suppose you know and to get back onto programme.
NM: So that was another big project. What about after the Dartford Bridge then?
DC: The what, sorry?
NM: After the Dartford Bridge where were you then?
DC: After the Dartford Bridge?
ME: When did you go out to Spain? To work out in Spain.
DC: I went to work in Spain. Yeah. But I don’t know where I went from Dartford.
ME: You was out in Canada as well weren’t you?
DC: Pardon?
ME: You was out in Canada and Spain and so when —
DC: Yeah. Yeah, I was working for John Brown in London and they got this contract with the oil company. I can’t remember. They got this contract and I was doing the material take off and working out how much steel they were going to need to build the rig and I had to go out to work in Spain. It was quite a good job there because I spent a couple of weeks in Spain and then a couple of weeks back here. We were down in Cadiz. Or Caddie [laughs] And go out there for a couple of weeks and then come back and that was quite a nice contract and, yeah. And then John Brown decided that they were going to get rid of a load of people and they decided they’d get rid of me. And the oil company, Shell said, ‘You can’t get rid of him because we’re halfway through a job and you can't just pick up —’ you know. So they had to keep me on but I’d already signed the agreement and I had one of their company cars and they said, ‘Well, if Shell want to keep you you’ll have to go contract.’ So I went freelance then and I was the only freelancer that was driving one of their company cars for two months [laughs] So that was a bit of a bonus. I went freelance then and I stayed freelance then right through until I retired.
NM: Right. Okay. Quite an adventure.
DC: Yeah. I went to, I worked for the, on piping. I went to the refineries and went to work out in Leipzig at the big oil refinery out there and that was quite interesting as well you know just to see the other side of the, of Germany. I used, and —
ME: When did you go to Canada?
DC: Pardon?
ME: When did you go to Canada?
DC: To Canada?
ME: Yeah.
DC: When?
ME: Was that after Germany?
DC: Yes. No. No. It wouldn’t have been I don’t think.
NM: So you recently went up to Lincoln to the Bomber Command Centre.
DC: Yes.
NM: Was that a special trip just to go and see it or —
DC: Yes.
NM: Just visiting the area anyway.
DC: We’ve got, I’ve got a cousin who lives in Barnsley and she had, she knew all about this place because she’d been there and she said that she would drive us to Lincoln from Barnsley and we went and had lunch there and then drove over to Barnsley. Over to —
ME: We went though too because you didn’t know what to do with your pieces of the Lancaster. So she arranged it so that you could see if they wanted it.
DC: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So —
NM: So what did you think to the Bomber Command Centre when you visited it?
DC: Over there?
NM: Yeah. What did you —
DC: Brilliant.
NM: Yeah.
DC: Brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. It was a good. It was very well, very well done really and really well organised wasn’t it? It was really nice. A nice place. Well, it’s a Memorial so it’s as nice as it can be you know. Yeah. We enjoyed that and met some more of my relatives there you know. One of them anyway, a cousin to me. Cousin. I suppose she’s a cousin.
ME: She’s a cousin once removed. Yeah.
DC: Yeah. So she came and, yeah that was a good day.
ME: You didn’t retire until you were in your seventies didn’t you?
DC: Pardon?
ME: You didn’t retire —
DC: Yeah. I retired when I was seventy-two I think. Something I like. Seventy-four maybe.
ME: You were doing contract work for —
DC: Yeah.
ME: Different companies. You’d move around with contracts doing material take off wouldn’t you?
DC: Yeah.
ME: Different firms.
DC: Contracting. Yeah. Oil refineries.
NM: Sure.
DC: Working out the amount of material they would need to do various jobs and —
NM: Okay.
DC: Yeah.
NM: A fascinating life story. So I’m just going to conclude by saying thank you very much for talking us through it.
DC: A pleasure. Pleasure.
NM: And this will go on to the Archive. It will get transcribed so that people can read it as well as listen to it.
DC: That’s good.
NM: Okay. And when you’ve finished the —
ME: Yeah, because there’s a lot more in there.
NM: More in there.
DC: Yeah.
NM: When that’s all finished we’ll arrange for it to get sent up and be part of the collection.
DC: Yeah.
NM: So can we conclude by saying thank you very much for your time.
DC: Thank you.
NM: Thank you for telling your story. Thank you Margaret for helping.
DC: I’ve tried to fit everything in.
NM: No that’s —
DC: It was just to remember how everything all works.
NM: That’s exactly what we wanted here so thank you very much indeed.
DC: Thank you.
NM: Thank you.
DC: Yes.
NM: First of all when were you born and where were you born and tell us about your childhood.
DC: I was born on the 2nd of June 1936 at a place called Oxcombe. Near, that’s O X C O M B E. Oxcombe near Louth in Lincolnshire. Yeah. My parents who were, the place where I was born was Oxcombe and it’s just a hamlet really. There’s three pairs of houses, a church and a farmhouse and stables. That’s all there is there really and I went back there, it was the first time I’ve ever been since I was born, about three years ago wasn’t it?
ME: No. It’s only last year.
DC: Yeah.
ME: Last year.
DC: It wasn’t last year. It was when Grace died.
ME: Oh, I beg your pardon. Yes. I’ve got muddled up. Was that three years ago?
DC: Yeah.
ME: Oh, okay. Sorry.
DC: Yeah. So, yeah and it was quite interesting to go there. See that I was baptised in the church in the July following my date of birth and yeah it was good to see the place you know and see my name in the Baptist Register. So that was good. Lincolnshire —
NM: So did your mum and dad stay in the village or —
DC: They, farmworkers always move from one farm to another about every two years. I think the grass is always greener on the other side because they, about two years is the maximum they stay anywhere and so much so that they all move on the same day. The 6th of April and they call it Lady Day for some reason. But they all move on the same day. And that’s what they did. So the 6th of April came and we moved on to another farm. They’d stay a couple of years and then move on again and as I say they all move on the same day so all these farm workers moving.
NM: So did, your dad was a farm worker then. Did he have a special, did he have a speciality at all?
DC: No. I went to a secondary modern school.
ME: Dad, he’s asking about your father. What your father did on the farm.
DC: Oh, my father.
ME: Yeah.
DC: My father was a horseman. He looked after the horses and he would, anything to be with horses really you know. He loved it and that was his job there.
NM: Right.
ME: Your mum kept house.
DC: And I think they probably went to another farm because the horses were better horses or something and you know the —
NM: Right.
DC: That was the way they lived.
NM: What about your mum? Did she have a special role?
DC: My mum. She was just a housewife. She was quite happy doing the housework and I had a brother who was by then about twenty weeks, twenty months old. Dennis. And so she looked after him and both of us of course and that was the kind of life we lived you know. It was very basic but we always had food and that was the main thing.
NM: So you moved around in Lincolnshire.
DC: Yes. Yeah. Not [pause] not really a lot. We moved to a place called Heighington which is halfway between Lincoln and Louth. About sixteen miles to Lincoln and ten to Louth and we lived there for about four years. Oh more than that. More than that. Moved there when I was about three and didn’t leave ‘til I, I suppose it was [pause] yeah it was about [pause] yeah it was about five years. We must have worked in, they must have lived in Heighington.
NM: So if you moved there when you were three in ’39 that was when the war was starting wasn’t it?
DC: Yeah. Yeah, I was there when the war started and quite near to Ludford Magna airport and we used to watch the Lancasters leaving at night and we could hear them then coming back the following day. The following morning. And yeah, so I went to Market Rasen Modern, Secondary Modern School. Didn’t really have any qualifications except that they reported that I was quite good at art and I’m colour blind so [laughs]
ME: I thought, I don’t know whether you’re interested but we’ve been trying to do Doug’s life story because his family sort of not sure. So, I mean he’s actually written down in more, because obviously when he’s being interviewed he doesn’t always think of —
DC: I’m in the process of writing my memoirs so —
ME: So he, he —
NM: That would be good. Yeah.
DC: Yeah. And it tells all about where I lived and all the things that happened during the year that I was born you know. Like the Jarrow March.
NM: Okay. Yeah That would be very interesting.
DC: Yeah. That happened.
NM: What we can do later is possibly get that scanned.
ME: Yeah.
NM: And get it attached to the interview.
ME: Yeah, because I’m helping him at the moment. Just helping him to, I’m proofreading it.
NM: Right.
ME: And that sort of thing because like when he was born —
NM: Yeah.
ME: There had been several kings. There was George the Fifth. When he died —
NM: Yeah.
ME: Edward the Eighth became king and abdicated in the December and George the Sixth became king.
NM: That’s right.
ME: It was the first flight of the Spitfire that took place from Eastleigh Aerodrome.
NM: Yeah. What we’ll do is we’ll get that scanned.
ME: Okay.
NM: At some point.
ME: Yeah.
ME: Yeah.
NM: I won’t take it away today obviously.
ME: No.
NM: If it’s being worked on.
ME: Yes.
DC: Yeah.
NM: And we’ll work with the people in Lincoln. When it’s ready —
ME: Yeah.
NM: We can get a copy sent electronically possibly —
ME: Yeah.
NM: Up to Lincoln and it will go into Doug’s collection alongside the interview that we’re doing now.
ME: Okay.
NM: So that’s what we’ll do with that.
ME: Yeah because I think it just, I mean did you want to while you’re having your interview because there’s quite some good things in here that you will sort of not record.
NM: Well, we might go back to a few things.
DC: Yeah.
ME: Yeah. Okay.
DC: Yeah. And then we’ll pick that back up but if there is something missing than obviously please please help.
ME: Yeah.
DC: Yeah.
NM: I was going to go back to your junior school before you went to Market Rasen.
DC: Yeah. I left school. I didn’t have any real qualifications and so I wasn’t interested really in anything except working on the farm and driving a tractor. That was my ambition [laughs]
NM: That was later though wasn’t it because —
DC: Yeah.
NM: Because the war started when you were just three.
DC: Yeah.
NM: What are your early recollections then?
DC: My early recollections of the war?
NM: Yeah.
DC: Was seeing Wimpy lorries. Waiting. We were waiting with my mother at the centre of Heighington for a bus to go to Louth and there would be lorry after lorry after lorry. Yellow painted. You know, Wimpy trucks and they were building Ludford Magna airport which was just another mile up the road from where we were waiting you know. And then we didn’t know what was happening really because I was too young but then the sky started to fill with aircraft. Lancasters everywhere in the end. Yeah. We used to watch them leave and come back. Yeah. So —
ME: You used to spend your holidays going to the beach and things didn’t you?
DC: Yeah. Mablethorpe usually. Just going to the beach and you didn’t have proper holidays in those days.
NM: No. That’s right.
DC: We, we just went to the beach and had a ride on a donkey and whatever.
NM: So what about your junior school when you were —
DC: The Junior School. Yeah. Lived very close to my school. You could see it from the house that I lived in and yeah it was pretty basic really. There was two teachers and eventually had a canteen and there was a cook employed there and so we did get a lunchtime meal. Then the next move was to Market Rasen. The Secondary Modern School. So [pause] yeah.
ME: But there was only really you and Dennis wasn’t there? So you just used to play with your older brother in them days didn’t you?
DC: Yeah. Before I went to school I hardly saw any other children because it was so sparsely populated that mixing with other children was quite daunting really I suppose you know and we got on fine. That was junior school. Made friends and you know.
ME: [unclear]
NM: Can you remember how the war affected your life at all in the early days at all?
DC: Well, the rationing of course but we lived on a farm so occasionally we could and the farmer was also a butcher so we could get a joint every [pause] dodge the rationing a bit but not too much you know and the groceries were delivered from a shop in East Barkwith and I remember the ration books and clipping the coupons out because we, he, I don’t know how he reckoned it out but he clipped so many coupons out of the ration book you know. So yeah. That was another experience.
NM: What about any air raids at all? Do you remember?
DC: Didn’t have air raids. We were, there was a bomb that dropped about a half a mile away and near a farm and of course the next morning we went to see what damage it had done and the shrapnel had gone straight through the house. The holes in the doors and straight out the window and there were people sitting in the room at the time you know. They were very lucky. A great big hole in the field outside and shrapnel everywhere. But that was the nearest we got to being bombed really but we could watch the German aircraft at night being in the searchlights. They had the searchlight station near [pause] West Barkwith up the hill from Heighington and you could see them. They came. They were in the searchlights you know then there was no chance of ever going home again you know. But you never saw them shot down but they did shoot them down. Yeah. And then what, I’m trying to think what happened then. There was as I say there were Lancasters everywhere. But when I was working on the farms this was just after the war now the Manby airfield was close to where we, where I was were working in a field and they were training pilots on Chipmunk aircraft. The pilots would come so close to us we could wave to them and they waved back and, yeah. That was quite good. I got interested in aircraft and I at seventeen, not seventeen, yes it was seventeen, at seventeen I joined the Royal Observer Corps tracking. The war had finished by then obviously but the RAF used to send up Meteors and Sabres and fox and terriers and we used to track their positions and report in and they could home in on each other. They might be two hundred miles apart to start with you know but it was just an exercise that continued after the war to keep us happy I suppose you know.
NM: Okay. We’ll perhaps come back to that in a minute.
DC: Yeah.
NM: But taking you back into the war years.
DC: Yeah.
NM: There were a lot of bomber stations in Lincolnshire. Did you ever mix or meet up with RAF personnel at all? Did they come across there?
DC: Well as we, as we got a bit older. I don’t remember ever mixing with them really except they used to go to the village dances and that kind of thing. It was, it seemed funny to me that the RAF was a different type of life to the Army. The Army were over in France or wherever they were. No, no contact with home except whatever means they had. But the RAF they could be going out with their girlfriends one night and they were flying the next you know. Yeah.
NM: So they used to have village dances did they and they used to come in the village.
DC: Yeah. They used to come from Ludford Magna to a place called Tealby and we used to go to the dances there and they would be there and yeah. But it never sort of mixed or anything because they were much older than us you see.
NM: Yeah. Yeah.
DC: Yeah.
NM: You were still a young boy at the time.
DC: Yeah.
NM: But so as a young boy during the war what did you actually think of the war? Was it something to be frightened of or was it an adventure?
DC: It was frightening sometimes when the, you know when there was so many aircraft about and they were dropping this blooming Window. You know the foil that they used to drop big bunches of it everywhere you know and I remember that. To zap the radar you know. So —
NM: Did you ever pick any up? Collect any?
DC: Yeah. It was just all over the field. We used to run about with it looking you know. Once it hit the floor, hit the ground it was anybody’s really you know. Yeah.
NM: Are you going to say about the Lancaster that crashed?
DC: Yeah. There was a Lancaster that crashed near us. It was a terrible thing really. It was a night when it was dark, foggy and they couldn’t find the airfield and I think there was about twenty Lancasters lost that evening. They crashed. This one crashed through the woods. I was walking up the road the following morning and I saw this about fifteen foot of fuselage in the field. Wreckage everywhere you know and so yeah. There was, the Army had a camp in the woods and they had their lorries parked on the roadside and one of them was wrecked as well. But it had gone through the trees and landed in the field but —
NM: So it was coming back from an operation then.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. They were coming back from Germany. I can’t remember where they said they’d been but I’ve done it. I did a bit of research on that and found the name of the pilot and everything.
NM: Yeah.
DC: And I left. I collected some small bits of wreckage and I kept them. This was when I was seven years old then and I handed them in at the Bomber Command place.
NM: Yeah. Peter Jones told me about that. That’s fine.
ME: Thank you.
NM: Did you actually hear the crash or did you just come across it the next morning?
DC: I just came across it the next day and [pause] but it was about, there was a group of about seven of us. Country, village lads you know and they were, I was seven and the others were fifteen and we couldn’t wait for the RAF to go. And the RAF took all that they wanted. It took them about a week to clear their side. Their bit of it you know. And then we went on there to see what we could find.
NM: You went exploring did you?
DC: We found a wristwatch and handed that to the police and I thought it may have been the navigator’s but somebody said since they had a special watch. I think I learned that when I was at the Bomber Command place.
NM: Okay.
DC: Yeah. But they, we did find this watch and handed it to the police but we found belts and belts of spent ammunition and oh we had some fun with that really. But it’s amazing that we’re alive to be honest because we used to [pause] several several belts of bullets and we, we’d take them out of the casing, out of the belt and pull the points out, stand on the road and get the cordite burning inside. Of course the cap was still live wasn’t it so it would explode and the casing would go flying up in the air you know [laughs] It was good fun. But then every fifth I think it was was a pinpoint tracer you know. And the point itself has a charge in it for tracking where the, where the shots are going. We decided we’d light a fire with Perspex from the aircraft windows and lay these points. We pulled them out. We laid them on and we knew they were explosive because they had a charge in them and they’d go bang and they’d go flying and we were all sitting around this [laughs] I think I said somewhere it was nearer to Russian roulette than anything else really.
NM: That was going through my mind actually when you said that. I thought like Russian roulette.
DC: So that was good fun.
ME: You made rings out of the Perspex’s didn’t you that you found.
DC: Oh, rings.
ME: Yeah.
DC: Yeah, we used to gather the Perspex and take a piece of Perspex you know and stick a red hot poker through it and then make it into a ring and we we actually thought they looked great [laughs]
NM: Well, you were seven. It was, it sounds like it was an adventure.
DC: Yeah. So that was fun, so —
ME: You didn’t hear anything more about the watch did you that you handed into the police.
DC: Yeah. We didn’t hear any more about that and of course all the, all the watches were the same apparently except the navigators’ so —
NM: You, you told Peter when you went to the Bomber Command Centre that was a 12 Squadron Lancaster.
DC: Yes.
NM: You had the registration number and just for your interest I’ve looked it up. It was only sixteen days on the squadron. It only arrived on the end of, it arrived on the 30th of November at Wickenby.
DC: Wickenby. Yes.
NM: And it crashed on December the 16th.
DC: Yeah.
NM: So it had a life of just over two weeks.
DC: It was a fairly new aircraft actually.
NM: That’s right.
DC: Yeah.
NM: So —
DC: One of the Goons — [pause]
ME: Harry Secombe.
NM: Bentine. Michael Bentine.
DC: Sorry? What was his name? Anyway, he was stationed at Wickenby and he was convinced that he’d seen one of the guys that was on this plane after it had crashed and he said he said goodnight to him and he said, ‘Cheers. Goodnight.’ You know. They were going to their billets. Who was the [pause] Do you remember the Goons?
ME: Harry Secombe.
DC: Who?
ME: Harry Secombe.
NM: Michael Bentine.
ME: Michael Bentine.
DC: I’m sorry?
NM: I think he was RAF wasn’t he? Michael Bentine.
DC: It wasn’t —
NM: Spike Milligan. No, he wasn’t. He was Army.
DC: No.
NM: Anyway.
DC: I forget. Anyway, he was one of the, one of the Goons.
NM: But you said there was nobody killed in the crash.
DC: He wasn’t killed.
NM: Right.
DC: But he was —
NM: The crew.
DC: Stationed at Wickenby where the aircraft came from.
NM: Yeah.
DC: And he was convinced that he’d said good night to the guy who had been killed you know.
NM: Oh, they were.
DC: Yeah.
NM: The crew were killed were they?
DC: He was already killed in the in the crashed aircraft.
NM: Oh really.
DC: Yeah.
ME: Because all the, all the people —
NM: Were they —
ME: The crew that you saw the crash only one survived the crash and got taken to hospital didn’t he?
DC: Yeah. But he died the next day apparently.
NM: They were all killed. Oh, I hadn’t realised that.
DC: They were all killed. Yeah. All seven of them and [pause] I did find out that there’s a guy that has written a book and he, his name’s Knott and he [pause] he was a friend of the son of the navigator and so he had written this book and it mentioned that you know. That he was a friend and the navigator’s son was running a pub up in in the Midlands somewhere. He was a friend of his. But yeah. Otherwise, the war years you know. I remember VE day and VJ day.
NM: Tell me about VE day then.
DC: Well, it was just a big party you know in one of the old Army buildings that they’d used previously and all the village got together and we had balloons and Union Jacks and everything. A great day. Yeah. So —
NM: But the RAF gradually left some of these airfields. Did you, were you aware of that after the war?
DC: Sorry?
NM: When the RAF left some of these airfields after the war did you —
DC: Yeah.
NM: Were you aware of that?
DC: Yeah. We never, we never went back to any of them that I remember but there were as you know hundreds well about thirty or something in Lincolnshire. They were everywhere you know.
ME: Another —
DC: Wickenby, Faldingworth.
NM: Yeah.
DC: Binbrook, Ludford Magna, everywhere.
ME: What about the prisoner of war camp that you you said they came and helped at your —
DC: The —
ME: The prisoner of war —
DC: Oh yeah. In, it was 1947, war was finished but we still had German prisoners of war in various places and in that year the snow was so bad the roads were all blocked up and they sent a team of German prisoners out to dig the roads out. And we lived in this house in the country. We had a wash house. Have you heard of the old wash house with a boiler in there and they came to the house and said could, could they use our wash house and my mother said, ‘Yeah. You can use it.’ They went to make coffee for the guys who were digging the roads out and two of them sat there all day just making the coffee and, you know sawing us wood. They went up to the woods and they got so much wood. It was enough to last until next year you know. They were really friendly and good to be with you know. One of them made a cradle for my sister’s dolls you know.
NM: So you went to Market Rasen Secondary School.
DC: Yes. Yeah.
NM: Did you, what age were you when you left?
DC: I left. Fifteen.
NM: Fifteen. And what did you do then?
DC: Went straight into farmwork driving a tractor which was what I wanted to do. It was [laughs] Eventually we, he was good. A good guy to work for but I was driving a tractor, milking the cows by hand and feeding the chickens. Looking after the chickens. General farm work.
NM: So was this all in Heighington?
DC: Was what sorry?
NM: Was this where you grew up? In Heighington?
In Heighington. But this village where the farm where I worked was in Benniworth which was about three miles away, you know. So I used to go there and —
ME: How did you get there Doug?
DC: Pardon?
ME: How did you get to work?
DC: Well, by bike at first and then my dad bought me an autobike, autocycle. A motorised one. I was really chuffed with that [laughs]
NM: So did you ever work at your dad’s farm with your dad?
DC: No. No. He was, he was always on a different farm to me for some reason but I didn’t move around too much. I went to this, the first one, farm that I worked. I was there about three year I suppose. No. Two years and then we moved. The family moved to nearer to Louth to a place called Fockerby and I think there was a smallholding there. And after that oh I was working for a company that did it was a farm but they didn’t, all they kept the only livestock they had was chickens and there were contractors for combine harvesting and land drainage so we were combining in the summer and then in the winter land drainage, you know. Combining wasn’t a good —
ME: That’s how you got —
DC: I finished up this lung thing because all this dust and everything and you didn’t have any protection or anything in those days. Yeah and so I was quite please really when it was time for me to be called up into the Army.
NM: Was that National Service?
DC: National Service. Yeah. Two years in the National Service.
NM: Did you have a choice as to which branch you went into?
DC: We did. We did. But I asked to go in the REME because my brother was already in the REME and I thought we, it might be a chance that we would be together, you know but they sent me down to Honiton in Devon and then they decided that we all had various tests to see sort of intelligence tests and English and whatever and they decided that I would be better off in the Military Police. So I got transferred then to Woking in Surrey and did six months training in the Military Police and then went out to Germany and I kind of enjoyed that. It was quite a good place to be in those days, you know. The war was over obviously and I met my wife over there as it happened. Her father was in the Army. He was an officer so I wasn’t really supposed to even talk to her you know. But my friend was also going out, it was quite a strange situation because they weren’t, the officers weren’t in any way allowed to mix with other ranks, right. So, but my friend was already seeing one of the daughters. He had two daughters this major and so every time he went, she went out my, the one that became my wife the two sisters had to go out so she was always the odd one and she went out there just because the father wasn’t supposed to know that she was going out with a military policeman you see. So anyway, we were out one evening a bit before Christmas. There was my friend Pete from Boston and the two girls and it so happened that their parents were away on holiday so we all went back to their house for a coffee.
NM: So what —
DC: Yeah. It was the Christmas then. I got invited up there for Christmas lunch so I’d already had a big lunch in the canteen in the mess anyway so at the Military Police mess we’d had a Christmas dinner [laughs] I couldn’t say no could I? [laughs] So —
NM: So what years were you doing National Service?
DC: Pardon?
NM: What years? Can you remember the dates you were doing —
DC: Just two years. 1955 to 1957. January.
ME: What about when you had to charge Mona’s mother?
DC: Oh yeah [laughs] Oh yeah. That was good. The officers all lived in officer’s quarters you know and I was sitting there one in the lounge one afternoon and her father had taken her mother out for a driving lesson. Just driving the car around the, it was an open plan estate. A really big estate. A really big garrison town it was. Probably about five thousand people on there. Anyway, we heard this big crash you know and looked out the window and her mother had driven the car around a corner and she hadn’t straightened the wheel up. She went straight in the front of this house and the bonnet was like that. Oh God. You know. I thought, and I was at that time on the Traffic Accident Department.
NM: Oh really.
DC: Yeah. So I had to go out and measure up and do everything and the, my commander lived next door to them and he said, I put a report in obviously, he said, ‘Oh, yeah, he said, ‘And did they have L plates on the car corporal?’ I said, ‘No. They didn’t.’ ‘Well, you know what to do about that then.’ He said. I was to then drop them in it you know because they didn’t have L plates on the car you know. So I don’t know what happened really about that but they obviously straightened things out somehow or other. I don’t know how but it was —
NM: So where were you stationed in Germany?
DC: Munchen Gladbach. Well, you hear about it now because of the football teams and that but Rheindahlen was the Headquarters of the British Army of the Rhine and there was a massive building there with seven miles of corridors in it you know and we had to man the entrances. That was the first job we got was security on the entrances but it was, it was all guarded and always the guards with loaded weapons.
ME: Just going back. Just going back to Mona. Her father, he’d been captured by the Japs hadn’t he?
DC: You what, sorry?
ME: Mona’s father had been captured by the Japs.
DC: Oh, he had. Yeah. Oh yeah. The whole family. There was a father, a mother and three [pause] Oh, yeah, five children and they were in Singapore when the Japs moved in and he was captured of course and put in Changi and they had to get out as quick as they could and they, the ships that had taken them out they got a ship to South Africa and they spent the rest of the war in South Africa. But in my filing cabinet I have a list of passengers on this ship that took them and there were, I don’t know if you know there’s a list of passengers and there is all their names and ages on this list. I managed to get a copy of the passenger list of the ship that took them out to Singapore. They were very lucky to get out. I think there was only about seven ships that got out without being sunk you know. So —
NM: And he obviously survived the war and they were reunited at the end.
DC: Yeah.
NM: Yeah.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. They, he came back in the end but —
NM: So —
DC: Thank you.
NM: So tell me about the time when you were in the Royal Observer Corps. Was this before you went to National Service or after?
DC: It was before I went into National Service.
NM: So how come, how did you get into the Royal Observer Corps? What was the process?
DC: Into the Observer Corps?
NM: Yeah.
DC: My boss. My boss had been in the Observer Corps. This was a farmer I worked for. He had been in the Observer Corps and he met his wife. She was on the centre in Lincoln so he had met his wife through that. But the, one of the other guys that worked on the farm was already in the Observer Corps and so I joined and it was, yeah it was quite an interesting thing to be doing you know. It was. Yeah.
NM: So how long did you do that for?
DC: When I was seventeen, [pause] seventeen, eighteen, a couple of years I suppose because then I had to go in to the Army anyway. So first in the Observer Corps.
NM: So you had observation posts nearby did you?
DC: There was one in the village and they were in almost all, well I don’t know how far they were apart really. I suppose they were about two or three miles apart all over the country you know and we’d track. We’d take a reading off an instrument that we had and the height and speed and if we could recognise it and we had to recognise it. We had lots of tests about recognising aircraft and I can still remember most of the older ones you know. As soon as I see it I think oh there’s a Viscount and that’s a [pause] and, you know. But, but then when I came out of the, when I came out of the Army because I’d been in the Military Police I tried to get into the civvy police here. So I took the entrance exam. I passed the entrance exam. Went for a medical. Slightly colour blind. So no chance after that. I’ve tried about six constabularies different places and there is no chance. Once they, once they’d found out that you were colour blind I suppose they’ve got a right to do it really. You know, chasing a green car when it should be a red one or something [laughs] it would be a bit embarrassing wouldn’t it, you know. So I didn’t get into that but I went into the aircraft industry then.
NM: Oh, you did.
DC: Yeah.
NM: What did you, what was that then? What was your role?
DC: I was a fitter in the [pause] I did a training course in aircraft fitting and worked on the Comet 4s. They were building the Comet 4 at the time and I was a fitter on those. And then there was a space between the Comets and the Trident so I thought, and they were getting rid of people so I thought I’d better get out of this otherwise I won’t have a job you know because I was a fitter but they needed to get rid of people because there was a gap when they started construction on the Trident. So I contacted Handley Page and got a job there as an airframe fitter on the Victors.
NM: So the work you did on the Comet. That was in Hatfield was it?
DC: That was at Hatfield. Yes. Yeah.
NM: So you moved down there.
DC: It was. Yeah.
NM: Did you live in Hatfield?
DC: I did live in Hatfield for a while. Yes.
NM: So how long were you at de Havilland’s then?
DC: I was at de Havilland’s about two years I suppose. It seems such a long time ago now you know. It was at a time when the Manchester United crashed. I remember that. I was working in the fitting shop at de Havilland’s when we heard that. Anyway, I went down to Handley Page and was an airframe fitter and just general modifications really you know.
NM: So did you move house from Hatfield or did you just stay in Hatfield and work in Radley?
DC: I was living in St Albans. I was already married then and I was living in St Albans. So [laughs]
ME: Because you came back from doing your National Service and Mona, your wife she was still out in Germany for a while wasn’t she?
DC: Yeah. She, she was out in Germany for about another year I suppose so I was living in flats and whatever in St Albans and working at Handley Page at Radlett. Radlett and Park Street. I remember driving along the taxi way once and there was a Victor coming towards me just taxiing [laughs] I pulled over and a wing came over my car and the pilot just went [laughs] yeah. So some good times you know we had there. But yeah.
NM: So how long were you at Handley Page?
DC: Handley Page? About two years I suppose and then.
ME: You went to night school didn’t you?
DC: Went to night school. Yeah and —
NM: What did you study there?
DC: Oh, just general engineering. Higher National Certificate for General Engineering, you know. And then I got a [pause] while I was at Handley Page’s, that was a point, yeah I was working as a fitter and I saw all these guys I’d worked with at de Havilland’s and they were all with their collars and ties you know. Everybody wore collars and ties and I thought how did they get [pause] what sort of job have they got? You know, and they had apparently when they heard that de Havilland’s were getting rid of all these people there was a drawing office company contracting drawing office company went in there to recruit people into, as trainee draughtsmen. I thought I got out of there too quick really you know. But I knew from night school I knew one of the section leaders at this draughting place and I managed to get a job there as a trainee draughtsman. So then I was draughting for ages.
NM: So, where was that? Where was that based?
DC: That was in Boreham Woods. Elstree. Right next door to the studios there in Elstree and, yeah so it was a contract drawing office so you never knew where you were going to finish up you know. You’d go in one morning and they’d say, can you build so and so and be out there tomorrow morning? Oh yeah. You didn’t know at first. You might [pause] it might be civil engineering. It might be anything mechanical and they’d say, ‘It’ll be alright. You’ll get out of there.’ [laughs] Yeah. They sent me to Handley Page again and I worked in the drawing office there and they said will you, will you go out to — no. They said, ‘Tomorrow morning Handley Page want you out there.’ I said, ‘What to do?’ They said, ‘Design aircraft controls.’ I said, ‘I’ve never done that.’ ‘You’ll do it. Get out there.’ They didn’t care you know. And so I spent about fifteen years standing at a drawing board and did various mechanical. And then we had the contract with the, they had a contract with the government to do what they called DTLs. Draught Technical Leaflets for the RAF and we had to go. What we would do is the, say Avro would, would decide that they needed to do some changes to the Vulcan and they would send the details to the, to the Ministry and they would approve whatever it was and then we got the job of writing the technical, Draught Technical Leaflet to instruct the RAF on how the, what they should have to do to incorporate this change, you know. It was you had to tell them every single thing they’d got to do to make the change. There was even a specification for, a requirement for what bolts you could throw away if they could throw away and what they had to keep for various other, and so they had to get rid of certain things and other things were a bit more security based. Those things they couldn’t get rid of but there was a special way of getting rid of them you know. So, so instructing the RAF on what they had to do to incorporate this change you know. And I worked on the Shackletons at Woodford and I have actually been on a Lancaster. But I remember thinking how difficult it must have been to have got out of those things, you know. there was the main spar goes through. You have to climb over the main spar to go [laughs] to the front. If you were diving I can’t think of how the hell you’d get out of that thing, you know and, yeah. So and then I worked on the Shackleton. It became a Mark 3. A Mark 3 Shackleton. What they did really was take the tail wheel off and put it on the front and called it tricycle undercarriage. But they put tip tanks on that thing and they used it for coastal defence and they had tip tanks and I think they put some small jet assistance on them but they could fly to Japan without stopping. Yeah. That’s a long way.
NM: So were you still the contract draughtsman at this point working on the Shackleton?
DC: Yes.
NM: You were contracted out.
DC: We were incorporating changes.
NM: Right.
DC: And it always surprised me on how thick the instrument panels had got to be because it’s like a piece of pastry when you’ve taken all the bits out. There’s nothing left. The instrument panels are maybe an inch thick you know because there’s nothing left of them. There are so many instruments in there that it surprised me at first to see how thick they were you know. Yeah. So then I worked at Cranfield for a while. That was a good place to work. I enjoyed that because we used to go flying from there but almost everybody that worked at the College of Cranfield had a pilot’s licence and they wanted to take somebody up. They could go halves with the fuel. So we were over the moon to get a trip out every lunchtime if we could get one you know.
NM: So two questions then. What were you flying?
DC: They were Beagle Pups.
NM: Okay.
DC: Yeah. The small ones. They had about four Beagle Pups but they did take for their own use for training a radio operator I think it was. They’d got about three Jetstreams which at Handley Page had closed by then and they’d got about three Jetstreams there.
NM: So what was your role then at Cranfield. What were —
DC: There.
NM: Yeah.
DC: We were putting a Blind Landings Experimental Unit on to a BAC 1-11. So we were designing all the bracketry and everything. The aircraft is sort of the opposite way around to normal engineering. We had to go in and decide where the designer bracket that we could fit anywhere in the aircraft within a certain area and then submit the drawing and the stress engineers then would look at it and decide if it could do what we wanted it to do to support the unit that was going to sit on it. And if they liked it and it passed all the stress tests then they’d accept it you know but anywhere else they did the, all the stress work is done first. You know, any other engineering work you know this was just the opposite way around you know. But so we did this conversion of BAC 1-11 [pause] That worked well. Then we did a head up display for a Hunter. All the gear that went in to do that you know. Yeah. So that was Cranfield. That was a good, good base. I lived in Dunstable at the time so it was quite an easy drive you know and yeah, we used to go. We had a lot of fun there and the —
NM: So after Cranfield?
DC: Pardon?
NM: After Cranfield?
DC: After Cranfield? That was my last job really in the aircraft industry because it was a funny industry really. Went in peaks and troughs you know. Different airliners were, airlines would require a plane and a designer and that would be [pause] you know and then it would be hit. When I was left Cranfield there was no more aircraft contracts around. So the very thing that was picking up was the offshore industry and some of my friends from this contract place where I was working one of them rang me and he said, he knew that I was finishing at Cranfield. They said there was no point really to go out of the office. There was no work down there and he said, ‘Why don’t you come over here to Bedford?’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything about the offshore industry.’ He said, ‘Well, neither do we.’ [laughs] So I went over there and then that started me off in a different from the lightest thing you could ever have wanted to design to something that was about as heavy as you could do. You know. It was all massive. I couldn’t believe it when I went to site in Scotland. So you looked around. There was nothing that you could pick up. The Shackles were half the size of this room you know.
NM: So what were you working on?
DC: Just massive you know. Just unbelievable how big everything is you know.
NM: So what were you working on?
DC: I’ve been in the Auk. The Auk jacket was the first thing they did. The jackets. The firm I worked for did all the what they called the jacket. That’s the bit goes below the water. The top side is another different thing altogether. It was all accommodation and all the drillings and stuff. So —
NM: So these are the oil platforms in the North Sea.
DC: Yeah.
NM: And you worked on the jackets side of it.
DC: The jacket side. Yeah.
NM: The legs and the bit —
DC: Yeah, the Auk and the Brent and then eventually on Magnus which was forty thousand tonnes. A Magnus.
ME: You had to go up to Scotland didn’t you to work.
DC: Pardon?
ME: You had to go up to Scotland.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I spent a long time in Scotland because we went to the job we had on the yard was to be the link between the drawing office and the foreman because to make sure the foreman was reading the drawing properly you know and that was a big and complicated job really operating the barges that we took them out on you know. And the site had a one in forty slope so when you slid this gigantic structure on to the barge it all had to, all had to line up so there was no step in it and that meant pumping water into the barge to get the barge in exactly the same slope as the land, as the slip way and then we spent all night in the freezing cold maybe pumping all the water out so that the barge then didn’t bottom at low tide you know so we had lots of fun there. It turned out you know and —
ME: You had to leave Mona at home looking after the children didn’t you because you were away a lot.
DC: A long time.
ME: Yeah. Mona had to look after the children.
DC: Oh yeah. Mona, my wife she had to look after the children. I was away a long time. Just we came back at the weekends sometimes but I spent a lot of time up there. I suppose I spent ten years in Scotland.
NM: Is that right?
DC: Altogether. Yeah. One side and then the other. Yeah.
NM: Whereabouts in Scotland were you?
DC: Methil. Just over the [pause] over the bridge. The Forth Bridge. Over the Forth Bridge and about ten miles up on the right of the country in Fife.
ME: Didn’t you do some work on the Forth Bridge?
DC: You remember more than I do.
ME: Didn’t you do some work on the Forth Bridge up there?
DC: Not on the Forth. I did some. I did some work on the Keswick Bridge.
ME: Oh, the Keswick Bridge.
DC: Yeah. Yeah.
ME: What did you do there?
DC: That was later.
ME: Oh okay.
DC: Yeah.
NM: Was your role a sort of intermediary between the design and the actual construction was it on the oil platforms?
DC: The platforms was all the construction, yeah. But the firms I was working for had done the design and then they needed somebody to oversee the construction work, you know.
NM: Yeah.
ME: You had lots of fun. You had lots of fun with the workforce up there didn’t you?
DC: Oh, the workforce. Trying to get them to work was just [pause] They just didn’t want to work you know and sabotaged everything you did you know. Just criminal really. You know they just [pause] and they would do it in front of your face you know. The Unions were so strong that you couldn’t dare to sack somebody you know. The, they just, I’d install some cable, the electricians had installed it and I looked after it and because we had to monitor how much water was pumped in the barge and this was the night before we were taking the rig out and there’s a guy there burning some of the surplus steel off and he was going through the cable and the site superintendent was standing there with me. He said, ‘Ay stop that,’ he said, ‘You’re burning through the cable.’ And five minutes later he was doing just the same again. They didn’t care you know. They just wanted to make sure that that rig didn’t leave the site one way or another you know.
NM: Oh. I see because they could then continue working.
DC: Yeah.
NM: It was going to be the end of their —
DC: They would do anything to sabotage it so that you couldn’t —
NM: Delay it.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. And —
NM: So after the rigs?
DC: The rigs.
NM: After that.
DC: After the rigs what happened then? This thing. I had to go up then to the [pause] there was a firm, Britoil up in Glasgow had decided they would design a rig and I had to, there was a group of us had to go up to Glasgow. There was about, there was two companies. I suppose about two hundred of us went to Glasgow and —
NM: What were you working on with Britoil?
DC: For Britoil? How long?
NM: No. What was the —
DC: I didn’t —
NM: What was the project?
DC: I was working — sorry?
NM: What was the project for Britoil?
DC: For Britoil was the Clyde —
NM: I have to ask because I used to work for Britoil.
DC: Did you work at Britoil?
NM: Yes. We’ll have a private conversation after the interview but —
DC: Right. Well, we —
NM: I can’t believe how much this interview overwraps my life.
DC: We were at Linwood. In the Linwood office and it was John Brown Irving Wright that I worked for.
NM: So you were in Glasgow for how long?
DC: Well, I worked there [pause] on the Clyde project I was doing weight and centre of gravity and materials. On Britoil I suppose about a year and a half. Two years perhaps.
NM: Yeah.
DC: Yeah. Quite a long time because Humphrey’s of Glasgow were there. A lot of people there and there was another firm. Cowboys they were.
ME: You was up in Glasgow for quite a lot of years in total wasn’t you?
DC: Oh yeah, because I, then when I went over to the other side and because I’d been on a construction site for quite a long time I got a phone call to say would I go up to Scott Lithgow Yard up in Greenock and, because Scott Lithgow had closed by then, gone and open the yard up and run the yard and take on whatever staff I needed. And this was to build the Dartford Bridge sections and I went up there and took on over a hundred people there. Got all the [pause] the trouble was that the scrap merchants, scrap dealers had got in and pinched all the copper cable off the overhead cranes and everything and the security people were making their money and they were allowing them to do it. And there was brand new machines, pipe bending machines but they just cut up with a flame torch and you know the induction bend maybe where the bend instead of stretching the pipe if you get a big pipe when you bend it the outside becomes thin and the inside becomes thick. Now, with induction bending it’s heated up and it’s pushed through and it forms a curve and they are very expensive machines. They just burned them up you know.
NM: And how long did you do that for?
DC: On the site? Six months or so just until, until Dartford. The Dartford Bridge until the company that was building that was back on track again because they were getting seriously behind and they needed somebody to [pause] they just needed to get the job done I suppose you know and to get back onto programme.
NM: So that was another big project. What about after the Dartford Bridge then?
DC: The what, sorry?
NM: After the Dartford Bridge where were you then?
DC: After the Dartford Bridge?
ME: When did you go out to Spain? To work out in Spain.
DC: I went to work in Spain. Yeah. But I don’t know where I went from Dartford.
ME: You was out in Canada as well weren’t you?
DC: Pardon?
ME: You was out in Canada and Spain and so when —
DC: Yeah. Yeah, I was working for John Brown in London and they got this contract with the oil company. I can’t remember. They got this contract and I was doing the material take off and working out how much steel they were going to need to build the rig and I had to go out to work in Spain. It was quite a good job there because I spent a couple of weeks in Spain and then a couple of weeks back here. We were down in Cadiz. Or Caddie [laughs] And go out there for a couple of weeks and then come back and that was quite a nice contract and, yeah. And then John Brown decided that they were going to get rid of a load of people and they decided they’d get rid of me. And the oil company, Shell said, ‘You can’t get rid of him because we’re halfway through a job and you can't just pick up —’ you know. So they had to keep me on but I’d already signed the agreement and I had one of their company cars and they said, ‘Well, if Shell want to keep you you’ll have to go contract.’ So I went freelance then and I was the only freelancer that was driving one of their company cars for two months [laughs] So that was a bit of a bonus. I went freelance then and I stayed freelance then right through until I retired.
NM: Right. Okay. Quite an adventure.
DC: Yeah. I went to, I worked for the, on piping. I went to the refineries and went to work out in Leipzig at the big oil refinery out there and that was quite interesting as well you know just to see the other side of the, of Germany. I used, and —
ME: When did you go to Canada?
DC: Pardon?
ME: When did you go to Canada?
DC: To Canada?
ME: Yeah.
DC: When?
ME: Was that after Germany?
DC: Yes. No. No. It wouldn’t have been I don’t think.
NM: So you recently went up to Lincoln to the Bomber Command Centre.
DC: Yes.
NM: Was that a special trip just to go and see it or —
DC: Yes.
NM: Just visiting the area anyway.
DC: We’ve got, I’ve got a cousin who lives in Barnsley and she had, she knew all about this place because she’d been there and she said that she would drive us to Lincoln from Barnsley and we went and had lunch there and then drove over to Barnsley. Over to —
ME: We went though too because you didn’t know what to do with your pieces of the Lancaster. So she arranged it so that you could see if they wanted it.
DC: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So —
NM: So what did you think to the Bomber Command Centre when you visited it?
DC: Over there?
NM: Yeah. What did you —
DC: Brilliant.
NM: Yeah.
DC: Brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. It was a good. It was very well, very well done really and really well organised wasn’t it? It was really nice. A nice place. Well, it’s a Memorial so it’s as nice as it can be you know. Yeah. We enjoyed that and met some more of my relatives there you know. One of them anyway, a cousin to me. Cousin. I suppose she’s a cousin.
ME: She’s a cousin once removed. Yeah.
DC: Yeah. So she came and, yeah that was a good day.
ME: You didn’t retire until you were in your seventies didn’t you?
DC: Pardon?
ME: You didn’t retire —
DC: Yeah. I retired when I was seventy-two I think. Something I like. Seventy-four maybe.
ME: You were doing contract work for —
DC: Yeah.
ME: Different companies. You’d move around with contracts doing material take off wouldn’t you?
DC: Yeah.
ME: Different firms.
DC: Contracting. Yeah. Oil refineries.
NM: Sure.
DC: Working out the amount of material they would need to do various jobs and —
NM: Okay.
DC: Yeah.
NM: A fascinating life story. So I’m just going to conclude by saying thank you very much for talking us through it.
DC: A pleasure. Pleasure.
NM: And this will go on to the Archive. It will get transcribed so that people can read it as well as listen to it.
DC: That’s good.
NM: Okay. And when you’ve finished the —
ME: Yeah, because there’s a lot more in there.
NM: More in there.
DC: Yeah.
NM: When that’s all finished we’ll arrange for it to get sent up and be part of the collection.
DC: Yeah.
NM: So can we conclude by saying thank you very much for your time.
DC: Thank you.
NM: Thank you for telling your story. Thank you Margaret for helping.
DC: I’ve tried to fit everything in.
NM: No that’s —
DC: It was just to remember how everything all works.
NM: That’s exactly what we wanted here so thank you very much indeed.
DC: Thank you.
NM: Thank you.
Collection
Citation
Nigel Moore, “Interview with Douglas Clark,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed March 8, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.omeka.net/collections/document/56388.