Lasting First Day Advice

Holset differed from the other major engineering companies in the town in that it did not yet have an apprentice school. Beginner tuition consisted of a mixture of technical college education and on-the-job training. To this end, the mechanical engineering apprentices were moved around the company for the first three years, picking up skills in various sections. After this, depending upon the performance observed and the individual’s noted preference, the final two years of the five-year apprenticeship were spent in the department in which he would be permanently employed. [Although we had a female starter join us, she was destined for administration only and was not subject to the same programme. To the best of my knowledge, opportunities for female mechanical engineering apprenticeships began at Holset a year or so after I left]. 



The factory was split into two main production areas: dampers and turbochargers. Just as their product specifications varied – heavy steel dampers came in medium to large sizes, whereas turbochargers were smaller lightweight aluminium assemblies – so their manufacturing processes differed. Within the company the sections were known as ‘The Heavy Machine Shop’ and ‘Turbos’ respectively. I spent all my shop-floor training time in the heavy machinery zone, seldom venturing into the separate turbocharger workshop.



I joined the four other beginners on the first day when, after a short introduction by the production manager, we were taken off to our differing starting points. I was directed to Goods Inwards Inspection, where I was introduced to Stanley Walton, who was to be my mentor for the next couple of months. What I learned on that first day was to stay with me all my working life.



Stanley, in his fifties, had been with the company from the start. He wore a brown warehouse coat – the recognition uniform of an inspector or chargehand – whereas I was resplendent in new dark blue overalls and boots with steel toecaps. Foremen were easily spotted as they wore white coats, not necessarily the best choice for a grubby working environment.



Stanley obviously identified my nervousness and inexperience and did his best to make me feel comfortable and welcome. He first took me around our hanger-sized section and introduced me to all workers with “This is Leo, our new apprentice” whilst giving me a rundown of their jobs and duties. In my nervousness I had given him my nickname; it was only a few days later that he found out my name was Brian. I was still known by the majority there as ‘Leo’ right up to my leaving day.



My first lesson learned: make newcomers feel welcome. Stanley treated me as an equal from the start, despite our age difference. He was also there to gently correct me when I made a mistake. One time in the following days I made a comment to him about how fat one of the assembly workers was. Stanley took me to one side and quietly said to me “If you’d gone through what he had to endure, you’d also eat at every opportunity. He was a prisoner of war of the Japanese for two years in Burma, where many of his soldier colleagues died of exhaustion and starvation”. In the fullness of time I was to find out that more of my new workmates were World War 2 veterans. Thanks to Stanley’s salutary advice, I learned not to rush to judgement and respect them highly for what they had experienced.



The first step was to discover what goods inward inspection entailed. Into this section, located next to the main door of the heavy machine shop, were delivered all types of materials from outside suppliers. The inspector’s job was to ensure that these received goods conformed with the specifications against which they had been procured. 



Stanley first gave me a handful of drawings, plus a tape measure, and sent me off to check the dimensions of a stack of large steel castings which had arrived from a supplier’s foundry.  These were deposited in our outside yard. Having left me to my own devices for around half an hour – watching from afar – Stanley came up and asked “How are you getting on?”. I told him that I was having some difficulties in matching the drawings with the individual castings, as well as identifying the dimensions to be checked. He said “Come with me” and took me back to our workbench. He then gave me a gentle first lesson, the crux of which stayed with me for the rest of my working life. The main points I recall were:

• Only do one job at a time.
• If in doubt, find out. It’s not a sign of ignorance to ask; it’s a sign of intelligence.
• Before starting a job, make sure that you have everything you need.
• Make yourself as comfortable as possible before commencing any task. For example, don’t stand when you can sit. If you have to stand, take any available possibility to lean against a solid object; anything to ease the burden of being on your feet all day. 
• Be aware of potential dangers around you. Engineering workshops are not playgrounds; hazards exist everywhere. Learn to look up, as well as down, when walking around, especially where there are overhead cranes.



The advice about making yourself comfortable before work became a way of life for me. I’ve even laid flat out on the floor to complete tasks, as that was the most convenient way to carry out the job. And I once saved my (non-engineer) boss from a potential serious accident in a factory in Ukraine, when I noticed that an overhead crane driver was about to drop a load on us. Good habits die hard.



At the end of the first day he said to me “I’ll see you in the morning at a quarter past seven. And you can bring a paper with you”. I thought this was a funny request, as our start time was 7.30am. Also, it was cheeky for him to ask that I bring him a newspaper. But I did as he requested. On my arrival next day Stanley was already there. “Good. You’ve got your paper, I see. Right, make yourself a cup of tea and you can read your paper for a few minutes”. At around 7.28 he said to me “Put your paper away and get your overalls on”. When the hooter sounded at half past seven, we were dressed, on our feet, and ready to start. “To arrive on the hooter and then get ready for work is unprofessional” was Stanley’s stated opinion.



I adopted this early arrival routine for the rest of my working life. And his comment about the newspaper had been a misunderstanding on my part. He didn’t want me to bring a copy for him. Besides, it turned out that we both read the same daily paper.



After around two months with Stanley, I then moved on to the machinery section and started to learn the art of turning and other metalworking skills. But my period in goods inward inspection had been most beneficial. I could now read technical drawings and had learned that a micrometre is not a g-clamp. (Ask an engineer for an explanation of the latter statement, if it doesn’t make sense to you).



In one of those coincidences which seem to bedevil my life, I was to get to know Stanley again nearly twenty years later. By then he had retired. One of his close friends was Joe Percy. Joe was the father of my second wife Barbara, whom I met in 1980 and married in 1981. It was great to catch up with Stanley once more; he was simply one of nature’s gentlemen. We both recalled our period of working together with great pleasure and no little amusement.



Incident-prone Training

In the following two and half years of my apprenticeship I progressively added to the list of skills in which I was never particularly proficient. My machining capabilities were acceptable but not outstanding, whilst I quickly realised, amongst others, that I could not operate as a welder or a draughtsman. 



I couldn’t quite master the technique of arc welding, often ending up with the welding rod glued solid to the metal when tapping it to generate the starting spark. When I first did this, I made the additional mistake of trying to remove my mask to inspect the damage. My trainer immediately reacted to protect my eyesight, pushing me heavily to one side, simultaneously reminding me in terms most coarse of the folly of my action. To add to his professional delight, my later attempts at soldering succeeded only in burning holes in the metal without a hint of a formed working joint. At the end of my training period with him, my colleague informed me that, if I was not the worst pupil he had ever had, I was definitely in the top two. I felt strangely proud of this honour.



To begin my time in the drawing office I was given the task of making drawings of prototype parts which had been manufactured in the tool room. Regularly the parts in question were supplied, together with an oil-stained sketch outlining the main dimensions. Even with this advantage, I just somehow couldn’t get it right. Every drawing in our system was ‘third angle projection’. Five times out of ten I got the representation wrong, either producing an unusable ‘first angle projection’ version, or one which contained incorrect details.

After a couple of weeks, the Chief Draughtsman had a private word with me and made a proposal for the rest of my sojourn with them. If I wouldn’t mind standing in for a colleague absent through illness and take care of filing and retrieving original drawings in their system, as well as printing drawings on demand, he could offer me overtime every Saturday morning in this work. This was the optimum solution for all concerned. I got time-and-a-half pay for the overtime, as well as an unstated advantage. As the person responsible for placing and collecting the traditional Saturday morning bacon teacakes order at the local café, my bacon and fried egg butty came free, courtesy of the owner. Even when I had finished my drawing office stint, I continued this Saturday morning bonus duty.



As part of my circuit of the heavy machining sections, I spent time in the cleaning and coating shed. I shudder still to think of this, particularly the cleaning side. In the centre of the room was a deep tank with a manually operated overhead crane. The tank contained a chemical cleaning agent: trichlorethylene. Although I was warned that this chemical can cause dizziness, I had watched how others worked with it without apparent caution. As a young risk-taker, I adopted their devil-may-care attitude. One day, whilst endeavouring to place a heavy chained casting into the tank, leaning over to get a good view, I started to rock forward. Fortunately, one of my workmates spotted my imbalance and came to my immediate rescue. A couple of seconds later and who knows what could have happened? 



On the day following this, my engineering union representative at the company came to see me. He explained in detail what a lucky break I had experienced. He arranged that I was transferred out of the cleaning shed immediately, whilst ensuring that no apprentice would ever undergo future training there. 



Years later I remember reading that trichlorethylene (“trike”) had been proven to be carcinogenic and how its usage was banned in many countries. Nowadays its industrial application is severely restricted and only employed in a well-ventilated environment.

On the subject of danger, I experienced this on an almost daily basis. Voluntarily, I might add. Over on the other side of St Andrews Road, the factory’s second building then had an open-air earthen patch at the front, separated from the street by a high wall. I think that the original intention had been to use this as a car park but, in the meantime, this made a good ad-hoc sports pitch. Every lunchtime, when the weather allowed, a kind of football contest broke out there.  An old leather football (the type with laces) was produced and a group of grown men, each wearing steel toe cap boots, played a childish but lethal game.  I don’t recall anyone being seriously injured, but this was through pure luck. One day jokingly I brought a pair of shin pads; this only encouraged others to use them as target practice.  I did not repeat the experiment. Happy memories, nevertheless.



I must have impressed someone during this free-for-all, as I was asked to play a game for the Holmes Holset United football team, at that time a leading light in the local amateur league. The best thing I can say about this occurrence is that it made up my mind to concentrate on playing rugby league. I was simply abysmal. Perhaps it would have made a difference if I’d played in boots with steel toe caps and not the football kind.



In my latter days at the company, I was single-handedly responsible for causing a design change on a large expensive coupling destined for a marine engine. By this time, I had advanced to operating the largest machinery in the section, for which a box step had been purposely built for me, to allow easier access to overhead controls. On this occasion I was trusted with operating a vertical grinder, used to add fine tolerance finishes to the socket grooves in which large ball bearings would operate inside the final coupling assembly. This particular model was around one and a half meters in outer diameter, with a large internal bore on which I was working. It was a costly part for an apprentice to be left to work on alone.



With it being a grinding operation, only miniscule cuts were taken at a time. In the midst of this long operation I suddenly realised that I had taken too much off one groove. I went to inform the chargehand, who fetched the foreman, who brought in the designer. They went into a huddle, emerging to ask if I would please carry on and make all the grooves to this same incorrect dimension. They would bring me a new drawing later that day, whilst ordering slightly larger ball bearings from the supplier to compensate. At no time did anyone reprimand me. I was perplexed.



Later that day my union representative called round again. He knew all about my error, telling me immediately “Don’t worry, we all make mistakes. The important thing is that we learn from them”. He then gave me the background to the situation and explained the reason why I had not been admonished about this. Apparently, the operation I was doing was designated for completion by an experienced operative only. An apprentice could do this, but only when supervised by a competent operator. Those in charge had given me the task alone to free up others for urgent jobs.  They justified their actions by pointing out that my labour costs were much lower than that of an experienced man, thereby making money for the company. They were now afraid of what would happen if the works manager found out about this. 



My error was never mentioned again. Neither was it recorded on my work records.  However, somewhere out there could still be a ship with a functioning coupling of unique design, all courtesy of apprentice Leo Leonard. 



Growing Dissatisfaction

Although I worked with good people throughout, I gradually realised that this occupation was not what I really wanted to do in life. I also had family problems, where my home relationship with stepfather Norman was worsening. If blame has to be apportioned here, it was without doubt coming mainly from my side. I was going through that dangerous late teenage phase. 



The new Holset Personnel Officer tried to help as much as possible, putting out a factory notice asking for accommodation for one of the apprentices. As a result of this, I moved out from Ainley Road to rent a bedsit in a fellow worker’s family home in Birkby. This, at least, resolved my living arrangements problem.



Additionally, I was failing in my training at the Huddersfield College of Technology. I had originally been placed on an Ordinary National Diploma (‘OND’) sandwich course in Mechanical Engineering, on the condition that I re-sit and pass my ‘O’ Level Physics examination before being permitted to progress to the second year. I failed both the ‘O’ Level and the first-year course examinations. I still had a ‘just do enough’ attitude to education, so this outcome was not surprising. The college and company decided to drop me down to a more craft-based course, much to my displeasure.



The straw that broke the camel’s back for me, however, was a decision made at the start of my third year of training. I had already found a possible future position which I would enjoy above others, that of working in the tool room. I had previously spent three months here, operating a variety of machines on differing daily tasks, demonstrating an agreed degree of proficiency. The tool room foreman had indicated that he would be willing to take me as one of his team. 



The decision of the management, however, was that I was to be based in the heavy machine shop for the last two years of my apprenticeship, with a view to eventually becoming a chargehand and foreman in that section. This would have been my last choice of full-time employment at the company. I decided to seek out something different and get out of this situation.



Coincidentally, at this time our St Josephs rugby team was receiving additional fitness training from a teammate’s father who was a serving soldier based at the Army Recruitment Office in Huddersfield. For some reason, I decided to broach the possibility of joining the military with him. To the best of recollection, I had never thought of this option previously. His truthful advice, however, put me off joining the Army. I didn’t fancy going to sea, so it would have to be the Royal Air Force.



I started to read up on the RAF, who at that time were running recruitment campaigns in the national newspapers. The first opportunity that caught my eye was that of becoming a physical training instructor. I was really into my rugby at that time, so this seemed to be a good choice, especially as I was keen on many other sports. They were also looking for linguists. With my ‘O’ level French and Latin, I could perhaps be of interest to them here too. I didn’t make any active moves though to follow up these suggestions.



When being informed of the company’s decision for my future employment path, I was working on a training rotation in the planning office.  My dissatisfaction with my situation was getting more by the day, not helped by the fact that I would tell anyone who would listen “I think that I’m going to leave here and join the RAF”. It must have been really annoying for my colleagues.



One day it came to a head. I had a holiday planned for the day after. When one of my co-workers asked if the reason for the break was so that I could go over to Leeds to enlist, I replied that I didn’t have enough money for the train fare.  His response, along the lines of “Why don’t you stop talking about it and do something? Here’s ten bob. Take it. Now go over to Leeds and see the RAF!”, had called my bluff and effectively changed my life.  I had no option but to use the ten shillings note he had given me to fund my journey. (I made a point of publicly handing him back the money on the next pay day, with genuine thanks).



First RAF Encounters

When I arrived at the RAF Recruitment Office on The Headrow in Leeds the next day, for some reason I was surprised that all the representatives were in uniform. Why had I expected otherwise?



As there were no other candidates in the office, the team of three had plenty of time to discuss possibilities with me. I first mentioned my wish to be a physical training instructor, but they were already more interested in the language qualifications shown on my application form. They asked if I had considered becoming a linguist, to which I was able to answer in the affirmative.  They were very keen on this option, to the extent that, by the time I left the office, I had been booked to take the next available  language aptitude test at an RAF station.



One of the sergeants took time to inform me that, if I were to become a linguist, I would be better paid than a PTI. They may have a starting rank of corporal, but this was acting and unpaid. The PTI’s pay scale was one of the lowest, whilst the one for linguists was at the top of the tree. Additionally, PTIs were promoted in “Dead Men’s Shoes” whereas linguists had time promotion. Besides, if my plan was to play rugby regularly, I would get more opportunities to participate as a linguist than as a professional trainer. His words proved to be one hundred percent correct from later experience.



Around a week later, I received a letter from the RAF office with a travel warrant and a date for the aptitude test. I was to go by train via Peterborough to South Luffenham railway station, from where I would be transported the short distance to RAF North Luffenham in Rutland, the home of the RAF School of Languages. I was met by a sergeant there, ready to take the test with a couple of other civilians and one serving airman.



The paper test we took was the US Military Language Aptitude Examination. I was informed later that the language from which we were asked to remember words and phrases was Mongolian. I don’t know how true this was, but it certainly bore no resemblance to any of the languages I had previously encountered. The test was completed by listening to sounds spoken in Russian, for which we had to write down the equivalent of what we heard. I remember hearing words like vodka and Tchaikovsky on this tape.



A couple of days later, I called the Recruitment Office as requested, to be informed that I had passed the test. If I wished, I could join the RAF at any time in the next couple of months, in preparation for the next language course to start in late July. 



When I entered the Leeds office, I recall being spoken to by an RAF corporal. This person – fellow Yorkshireman Brian Scott – was to re-enter my life a couple of years later. At the time of first meeting he was a Clerk Administration by trade, but he was in the process of applying to re-muster to linguist. For this reason, he clearly recalled my visit. 



We met again in Berlin, by which time Brian was a qualified German linguist. He sought me out to give a rundown of the situation behind my enlistment procedure. Just a couple of weeks before my arrival, RAF recruitment teams around the country had been instructed particularly to be on the lookout for potential linguists. From the enhanced pay and promotion prospects information obtained, Brian himself had been tempted to change trades. It transpired that I was the first civilian candidate thereafter to arrive at the Leeds office with a couple of language GCE ‘O’ Levels; hence the joint efforts of the team to persuade me to take the test. The fact that I had failed my German ‘O’ Level didn’t put them off in the least. Brian told me that the team had been delighted when I had passed the test and then decided to join up. 



As a further coincidence, ten years later I was to be Brian’s instructor on his specialist Advanced German Course at the RAF School of Languages. We were both sergeants. Then, around twelve months ago and after a gap of over forty years, I was able to reconnect with Brian, courtesy of the RAF Linguists Association. He was living in retirement in London. Although I couldn’t know it at the time, this proved to be timely, as Brian died suddenly from cancer a couple of months ago (2020). I am therefore highly grateful that, in the short period before his unexpected passing, I had been granted a last opportunity to relive our common experiences with my namesake and good friend.



A Rocky Road to a New Start

Having now been accepted by the RAF, I had one final task to perform: inform my employers. I believed that this would simply be a process of handing in my notice and departing.  How wrong I was.



I sought out the personnel officer at the first opportunity, informing him that I was leaving to join the RAF. He immediately took me into his office and asked “Are you aware of the difficulties of amending an indentured apprenticeship contract?”. I gave the honest reply that I didn’t know what an indenture was. He asked me to return to his office later that afternoon, bringing the union representative with me if I wished. We would go over it then.



When I returned with the union rep, a copy of my signed apprenticeship contract was laid on the table. We were given time to read through this. Even my union counsellor admitted that he was unfamiliar with this document, so he couldn’t give immediate advice. He would need to seek guidance from his union colleagues. 



In essence, the indentured nature of the contract formed a legally binding two-sided agreement: whilst the employer undertook to provide a position and training for the whole of the apprenticeship, the apprentice employee in turn accepted to be bound by its conditions. That is, unless there was some overriding misdemeanour or compassionate reasons, the contract could not be broken by either side for the period of its duration. In simple terms, I could not leave now until I had completed my apprenticeship.



The personnel officer – who was familiar with my recent domestic problems – was not unsympathetic to my position, but he stated that his hands were tied on this. Indentured apprenticeships were registered with the relevant authorities and any actions to break their terms had to be reported back to them.  The only factor in my favour might be that I wished to finish to join the military. He and my union mentor then asked me to go, so that they could further discuss the situation privately.



A couple of days later I was asked to meet with the management, bringing with me the letter I had received with the offer from the RAF. The result of this brief meeting with the works manager, personnel officer and union representative was that, due to my special circumstances, I would be allowed to break my indentured agreement and depart the company.



The union representative then took me to one side to explain what had happened. Although the company did not wish to have a dissatisfied employee on their hands for the next two years or so, they also did not want it to appear that it was easy to break indentured agreements. He commented that the union had fought hard to have these guaranteed apprenticeships introduced, so he agreed in principle with the company’s stand. 



As expected, it was the fact that I was joining the RAF which swung the decision in my favour. I would not have been allowed to leave to join another unconnected company.



I later had to go to the personnel office to sign relevant documents. When asked when I wished to finish, without thinking I replied “As soon as possible”. Therefore, without ceremony, I ended work at Holset Engineering Co. Ltd. a day later. I did, however, take time to locate the union representative and thank him for his kind help over the last couple of years.



Now I had practicalities to address. As I was no longer working at the company, I moved out of the bedsit in my co-worker’s house in Birkby. This was not a problem, as my Auntie Hazel and her husband had regularly offered a place at their house in Golcar. It was cramped, but it was only temporary, and they were grateful for the extra income I brought into the household.



I first went over to Leeds to finalise my joining-up date. I already knew that the next language course was due to start in late July. It was now mid-March, so there was still four months to that date. Although I was willing to start immediately, the RAF staff persuaded me to hold my fire. I could of course join up now and go straight off to complete my six weeks’ basic training. However, this would leave me with a couple of months waiting for the beginning of the language course.

Before an airman is qualified in any trade, he is officially a “Trades Assistant General” (T.A.G.), a dogsbody who can be asked to perform any basic task at any location. If I was lucky, as a T.A.G. immediately on completion of basic training, I would be posted early straight to my next camp (RAF North Luffenham). However, if there was a known delay before the start of my trade training, I could just as easily be sent to another location to carry out unspecified duties in the meantime.



For this reason, they recommended that I delay my enlistment until May. This would bring perfect timing for completion of my ‘square-bashing’, followed by a few days' leave, and still have time to complete the arrival procedures at my new camp. They asked did I, by any chance, have the possibility of finding work between now and May?



Luckily, such an opportunity did exist. My friend’s father Ted Cooper was a director of the building company Cooper & Worswick which was constructing a new housing estate in Birchencliffe. I went to see him the next Sunday afternoon and on the following morning I was already on site, ready to work as a labourer.



If I thought that my engineering colleagues had a cavalier attitude to health and safety at times, then they were saints compared to the team with which I was now working. Transgressions of procedures which would give a modern H&S inspector apoplexy were commonplace here. 



In particular, I recall the day when new concrete roofing struts were installed. I was up on the open roof with two others, perched on narrow beams. Our task was to guide the heavy slabs, which were suspended on crane chains, into the correct position.  At one point my engineering experience came in. No-one seemed to be in control. “Can only one person instruct the crane driver, please!” I recall saying, more to myself than as a general instruction. My surprised colleagues did just that. Nevertheless, this only made the operation marginally safer; I have never been more relieved to finish a job and return to terra firma. Thank goodness that the next delivery of roofing struts was not due until well after I had finished my career as a builder’s labourer. I know. I checked.



It has to be said that my new workmates were exceptionally helpful. I was accepted into the team from the start and felt appreciated. On my last day they insisted on taking me to the pub, where I don’t recall paying for a single drink. They all genuinely wished me good luck in my new career.



Ted Cooper himself added to this goodwill by telling me “You’re a bright lad. And the boys like you. They told me how you instructed them to control the crane driver. If it doesn’t work out in the RAF, there’s a job here for you. We’ll teach you the building trade.” I was sincerely touched by this sentiment, then I remembered an incident of a few days previously, which had put everything into context for me.



I was out digging the front garden of a house nearing completion when the new next-door neighbour saw me. “Leonard, isn’t it? What are you doing here?” he asked. It was one of the lecturers from the Huddersfield College of Technology who had tried unsuccessfully to inculcate engineering theory into my brain. I told him that I had left Holset in order to become a linguist in the RAF. “That’s probably best!” he concluded and went back into his house.



One advantage of this temporary change of employment was that I received more than double the wage I had earned as an apprentice. This put a few pounds in my pocket to fund a haircut and my new start in the RAF. 



_________________