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Ron Levett, born in Alfriston, East Sussex, enlisted in 1943, and whilst posted to the British Liberation Army, took part in the liberation of Germany. He met and married his German wife, Ruth, while stationed in Münster then returned to England where he became interested in the new entertainment of the time - television.
Ruth had become very homesick by this time so with a great deal of effort, we saved enough money for her and Angela's, my daughter, train fare to Germany. They went off and that was the last time I was to see my daughter until she was in her thirties and married with two children.
I did see Ruth one more time-in court. Her letters got fewer and fewer, although she did send me a photo of Angela from Germany.
Gran did the cooking and I lived in with Gran and Freddie for a time. After two or three months had gone by it was obvious that Ruth had decided to remain with her parents, so I resigned myself to a bachelor's life.
Soon after this I saw an advertisement in Wireless World for radio testers at a factory in Coventry owned by GEC. I wrote to them and was invited to their works for an interview.
I travelled up to Coventry and had the interview and got the job. I had a look around Coventry, found some 'digs', not too far to walk to the factory, with a pleasant room and full board for a price I could afford on the wages at GEC. I came back to Sussex, gave in my notice at the brickyard, worked out the week, packed as much as I could carry, and set off for Coventry.
After the hard physical labour at Berwick, the job was a sedentary one. I sat in a row of seats beside a metal rack, down which, like a little train, a succession of radio chassis on wooden boards were pushed along to whoever was free to take one from it.
The top rack was for unchecked chassis, the centre one was for sets with faults, which were pushed back to faultfinders at the rear of the row. The job was to tune the radios up, IF transformers, then the RF coils to Long and Medium wavebands.
A lot of the faults were quite simple ones such as missing components. Any fault, which was diagnosed, was put on the lower rack and sent back to the assembly lines for correction. After a while in the job I was promoted to fault finder, which meant moving to the rear of the rack and picking sets from the middle rack, tracing the fault, then sending it back via the bottom rack.
At my lodgings, I had to get used to the Midlands way of life. The landlady, a dark-haired woman in her late twenties with a young daughter, never rose very early so, along with the remainder of the lodgers, I had to make my own breakfast.
Her husband worked in the Armstrong Whitworth aircraft factory as a 'Fettler'. His job consisted of removing the rough metal from jet engine turbine blades and was quite well paid. On Sunday's lunchtime their habit was to remain in their local pub until turnout time at 2.30 pm.
When the landlady arrived home, usually rather merry, she then started to prepare the Sunday lunch, invariably a roast with all the trimmings. Lunch was served at about 4.30 pm.
For entertainment, I was an avid picture-goer in those days and went very often in the evening. I also read quite a lot. My fellow lodgers had various jobs in Coventry.
One worked at Standard Motor Works, on the assembly line, the other two were car delivery drivers. At the time the large car delivery vehicles had not been invented and all cars were delivered individually. The drivers were paid their train fare back to Coventry, but most of them hitchhiked back and saved the extra money for themselves.
I discovered why GEC had to import labour. Although the wages were higher than the pay at the brickyard, they compared rather unfavourably with my friends in the car trade.
I decided to do something about it and went along to the Standard Works to enquire about a job. They asked me if I had a Union card and when I told them I did not have one they said that I would first have to go to the Union and obtain one. So I trotted along to the Union office, only to be told that I had to have a job in the trade before I could join the Union. Catch-22 strikes again!!
Ron Levett, 2001
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