REMINISCENCES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Harold Seckington

When Harold was still at school, Sammy Walters owned two buses, a Leyland Cub and a Ford 14-seater and Harold used go round with him, selling oranges and newspapers for half a crown a week. This had increased to ten shillings a week when he left school to work full time with Joe Ayres. During the week, young Harold cut faggots and tied them into bundles and with horse and cart set off to sell them. On Saturdays, he’d take the horse and trolley laden with logs to sell them in Sulgrave. The horse and cart belonged to Joe but were kept at Kings Sutton, and it was Harold’s job to bike to Kings Sutton every morning, with a load of corn for the horse on his back, and harness the horse in shafts by 7.30 am. He finished work at 5 pm and then had to return the horse and cart to Kings Sutton and cycle home. On Saturday, he would finish at 1.00 pm and was paid 12s 6d a week, 10s 0d of which he paid to his mother.

He enlisted in the Army at the same time as Walt Southam, when they were seventeen and a half (Harold had to lie about his age) and was stationed initially at the Aldershot supply depot, organising the supply of petrol and provisions to the 100,000 service personnel. In 1940, he learned of the sale of an Austin 7 Ruby, three years old, maroon in colour with the registration number ALT 57. He was contacted by Mr Barltrop, who said that if Harold could raise ten pounds to match the ten pounds he was prepared to give, it was his. Harold fondly remembers the very generous gesture and it became his first vehicle.

He met Jean, who lived in Clitheroe, and married at Aldershot Parish Church in 1941. Following a short period at Barry in South Wales, he was posted to the advanced petrol filling station in Merthyr Tydfil and from there to Scotland. In 1942, he boarded a ship for a new posting in Singapore but the ship was rammed in dock and when they returned to shore, Harold was sent to Yorkshire. However, the men in the convoy that did go on to Singapore were immediately taken into a Japanese prisoner of war camp there.

In November 1942 Harold was posted to Algiers to help supply the 6th Army Division with petrol. One month later, on 8 December, Jean, evacuated from London to High Wycombe, gave birth to their baby daughter, Patricia. He then had various postings to Northern Italy, (where he visited Fred Humphrey in hospital), Tunis, North Africa (where he was delighted to meet up again with Walt Southam) and Sicily, whilst Jean and Pat went back to Clitheroe. In Sicily, Harold was part of the Port Detachment Unit, looking after imports and exports and finally was posted to Naples for the last two and a half years of the war, where he was in charge of provisioning all the ships - a total of 73 berths in Naples Docks.

Whilst abroad, the army paid an allowance to Jean of £1 10s 0d for both her and Pat. Harold’s pay as a sergeant was 84s 0d (£4.20p) a week and as well as money, he was able to send luxury goods back to England, such as sugared almonds, oranges and lemons.

The family went to live at 10 Station Road (it has since been re-numbered 40) in 1947, when the rent was £1 1s 0d and from there started the business that Jean and Harold have run for forty five years. It began when Harold was working on the railway and was asked to help Mrs Duncombe (the late Bill Duncombe’s mother) with the sale of papers. He changed shifts, and decided to give it a six month trial. The round grew and demand for provisions meant that the business began from their front room in 1953.

They then moved in 1957 to their present home and the following year, in his spare time, Eddie Franklin built on the store rooms. The whole cost was £48. Harold’s first van was an ex-Post Office vehicle which cost £60 and since then he has had several delivery vans and travelling shops. One, which was first registered on 1 January 1971, cost £2,500 and was built to his own specification by Sid Wyatt of Cheadle. He also purchased a travelling shop which was built on an RAF fire tender chassis, again to specification.

Harold was demobbed at Aldershot in 1946, having travelled back by train via Switzerland and France and started work as a signalman at the top station. He was promoted to Woodford Halse as a Class 2 Relief - working anywhere between Culworth and Leicester.

Harold’s most vivid memories about the war years are coming home from Sicily and seeing his daughter for the first time when she was almost three years old!! Whilst abroad, one of the more spectacular sights he witnessed was watching the eruption of Mount Etna.

As told to Lyndsey Leeden Glassett in Aspects of Helmdon No 2