My grandfather worked in the building trade before the war, and rose from tea boy to site foreman. Just before the war he worked on building air raid shelters around north London under a government directive. On the outbreak of war, he became an apprentice tool maker which was a reserved occupation at the time. He did this for a while until about early 1943, when as he put it "became bored" and decided to volunteer for the services. He got his permission to leave his job, and ended up training as one of the first REME personnel. As I said, he was attached to the 79th armoured division, and worked mainly on the Churchill Crocodile flamethrower tank. The upgrade for the Churchill was supplied as a kit, which had to be assembled in the REME workshops, he eventually arrived in France in late 1944, then moved to Belgium and then into Germany in 1945, moving with the workshops. After assembling the crocodile kits, they were maintained, along with all the other oddball vechicles that the 79th armoured division consisted of, as well as doing other tasks, such as repairing the dockside cranes at Antwerp. He mentioned that while he was in Germany in the dying weeks of the war, he was part of a REME LAD ( light aid detachment) assisting infantry units that were low on numbers. During one such patrol, he came across a lake in a forest, with a large house next to it. There were some German lads by the lake who told him in broken English that the house was occupied by fanatical Nazis and to prove his point, there was a call from the house that the occupants were ready to fight and die for their fuhrer. As there were so few of them, my grandfathers NCO decided to return to base and gather more men to investigate, and it was decided that an investigation would be made on the next morning. When they returned to the house, there was no sound, they entered cautiously to find that the house was full of bodies of young boys in German uniform, the youngest must have been about eleven, and the oldest around 16-17. They had all shot themselves in the head during the night. My grandfather never forgot what he saw....
As I have said, his main job was to repair and construct the crocodile flamethrower tank, and here is something that I am not so sure about. He stated quite a few times that he drove crocodiles sometimes on operations, he was not prone to boasting, and he was honest to a T. I wonder if this was the case sometimes with REME Personel operating them? He described the sound the flamethrower made as a screaming sound, and the jet being almost laser straight. What would happen would be that a Churchill AVRE with the petard would smash a hole in a blockhouse, then the crocodile would come in , fire a wet shot to saturate the blockhouse, then do a flame shot setting the interior on fire. He described seeing the effect on an unfortunate soldier which I won't repeat here.
Will add more soon.