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This contribution was submitted by Owen Cleaver to Edgar Lloyd and is added to the site with his permission.

The MT course was only a stone‘s throw from Blackpool. We had two weeks from the BSM on Austins - 10s and 12s, then a week on Ford V8s, then a week on 3-ton Bedfords, a week on 5-ton Bedfords or Commers or something, then a week on Crossleys - lorries -and Queen Marys. The Crossleys were big lorries. You sat on the cab with the engine right next to you and your gear stick was the other side. So fairly poor design….but the worst thing was starting them up in the morning. You had one man in the cab and two men on the handle in the front and you hoped to god it didn’t kick back…because if it did they would be thrown them over the hangar. Generally speaking we had a good time there…it was a time when there was a lot of us youngsters joined up and in the RAF when there was a group of people who were General Duties. You got Corporal and Sgts who were GD …drill sergeants were Gds, it could have been in the guard room or what have you. But they all had to have a trade…and a lot of these were Motor Transport drivers…so you got in a hut and they all forgot their ranks, there were corporals and sergeants and us all mixed up together. We had two quite amusing characters…because they’d both been in the guards in the 1930s. One had been in the Welsh Guards for about three years and the other had been in the Coldstream Guards for about three years. ..and they told us stories about Hong Kong and places out east and so forth. But we had a very good time because we all used to go down the Sally Ann at night (The Salvation Army) …the old Major down there he didn’t mind what you did, what songs you sang, as long as you sang. And he played the piano for us ..there’s a thought that if the police were looking for you or anything like that, you went in the Sally Army and they couldn’t touch you…it was a bit like sanctuary in a church. But after about three weeks this Major said…”I’d like you to come to Blackpool….I’d like you to come to the Temple. You lot can sing. I want you to come and sing” That’s about the only time I’ve ever been in a Salvation Army service. We had a good time. There were three sorts of canteens…the NAAFI, the YMCA and the Salvation Army…but generally I think people liked the Salvation Army best. The NAAFI was a bit repetitious with the rock cakes and the chocolate sponge and things. We went to Blackpool at weekends and so forth and again that was a bit of an eye-opener - but you weren’t allowed up the tower. After that there was no returning to Heaton Park and no sign of us being going on a draft so we had to go on detachment again. And Tom Fisher and I were sent up to Inverness 56 MU Maintenance Unit….it was right where the bus station is now in Inverness. All it was was a square compound and they had about - well usually there were three or four Queen Marys in there - 60 foot long and 10 foot wide low-loaders - and these drivers were very good most of them woul reverse back right next to the next one. They did also have a couple of three ton trucks and so forth. We had a bit of bad luck there… a week before we got there …there were some UT signallers from Hereford who had done an MT course somewhere…I don’t know where but it wasn’t at Wheaton . They’d been given a job to do in the previous week, their first week there and one of them demolished the side of an army ambulance and the other had demolished a telephone box. So we weren’t exactly flavour of the month and I was given a test by a Sergeant in a lorry from this depot out to Inverness Airport and back…and all I remember was there was a bit of string that went down from the roof with about an eighteen inch long coil spring and then another bit of string down to the accelerator pedal, because the return-spring had gone and this was their makeshift spring for the accelerator. Anyway…I drove to the airport and back and he said: “Alright”. But we were never offered another job driving…so the four of us: Tom Fisher and myself and the two signallers…we sat in the back of a fifteen hundredweight truck for about the next four months playing cards. It was over Christmas…I think I must have had some leave then because I remember the train journey all the way from Inverness down to Bletchley, then take the train towards Oxford because I lived just outside Aylesbury. Going back I would get a seven oclock train at Euston at night, and by eight o’clock the next morning you’d be going up through Scotland and you would get to Inverness about midday. We were in digs there…I was in a funny little house…I had an upstairs room and there were about four beds but I only about once saw anyone else..because the others were all drivers and were out on the road. The toilet was at the bottom of the garden, and I never found that….but we did have a big basin in the corner, and I’m afraid that’s what we used.

Tom was in another house that was a bit more modern…the only trouble there was that they were on the first floor and there was a second floor and the owner of the house was busy making toys for his children at Christmas and most of the night there was sawing and hammering going on up above. But I moved there to be with him. I quite liked Inverness and I was there until about March. Then just at the end of our time there the Sergeant sent for us and said: “I’ve got a job for you two - second man on two Queen Marys. We‘ve got to take the Stirling wings (bomber wings) from Peterhead down to Cambridge“. So we went to Peterhead…and we were the second man. We stayed there the night and went to the pictures and saw “Gone with the Wind”. It was an interesting job…you had these 60 foot long trailers and they were about ten foot wide but we had an eight foot six overhang one side and a four foot six the other side…the engines because they were that wide…and then we had two of these. And they were a mirror image of ours…so we had the eight foot six hanging one side and they had it over the other side and when you met anything you watched the other drivers trying to sneak around on the wrong side… There wasn’t that much traffic and when you came to a town you had to have a convoy, you had to get the police out. You knocked a few lampposts down and the odd traffic light. I think it was Grantham where there was a traffic light on a bracket on a corner, and when we left they were pointing in a different direction! It took us about a week to get down to Cambridge. We stopped the first night in Aberdeen, the second night in Perth - in a wooden hut on the edge of a park - and we met a driver from Inverness that our driver knew and he said: “You haven’t seen a Queen Mary with a Mosquito fuselage on it have you?“ “No - we haven’t” “Because I parked it out here last night and now its gone!” You were meant to park in secure yards…most towns had a compound or somewhere where you could park your load overnight. We always did. But he’d been a bit tired or a bit lazy. We heard afterwards that it was found about six miles outside the town. Someone had borrowed it to go home…but he hadn’t made it. It was in a ditch! So we made it to Cambridge, and then went back via Manchester to pick up a load or something and then we stayed a night in Glasgow, because in passing through Airdrie we broke a half shaft (that‘s when I discovered what a half shaft was). When we got back to Inverness they said “We‘ve been looking for you everywhere …ten days ago they wanted you back at Heaton Park…“ They gave me an early warrant and told me I had two days embarkation leave, and within a few days we were on the boat - the Caernarfon Castle from Liverpool.

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