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Ron Levett, born in Alfriston, East Sussex, enlisted in 1943 and joined the Royal Armoured Corps. He joined the British Liberation Army and took part in the liberation of Germany. He met and married his German wife, Ruth, while stationed in Münster then returned to England to be demobbed.
I managed to get Ruth onto a train for London. She had managed to make her own way when she came up to Harrogate and I was pretty confident about allowing her to travel alone.
I travelled to York by another train, to the Demob centre. There I handed in most of my army kit, retaining my kitbag, greatcoat, cap badge and brass from my belt.
I was fitted out with civilian clothing including a blue pin striped suit, a trilby hat, two shirts with collars to match, civilian shoes, a tie and a small suitcase to carry the extras in. I kept my army underclothes.
By this time it was midmorning. The whole operation had been very well organised and by mid-day I was on another train heading for London. I thought I would act like a civilian and went along to the dining car for lunch.
They had Jugged Hare on the menu, it was delicious! I managed to get across London in time to catch the last train to Berwick but it was so late that I had to take a taxi home.
Ruth had arrived safely and we were pleased to see each other. The following morning the family sat down and made plans how we could make a separate home for Ruth and me. It was decided to let us have the room next to the front door as a bedroom, with the big room, which had been the guest dining room as our living room.
Freddie said he could make a kitchen out of mum's pantry by bricking up the door to her kitchen and knocking a new door through in the opposite side wall, leading through into our living room. The whole thing worked out very well and we settled down to our new life.
We had a small electric cooker to cook on and to make drinks we had one of the German portable immersion heaters. The kitchen, which had been a larder, had the window covered with a wire mesh to keep the flies out and being in the centre of the house on the North side kept quite cool.
We made a bedside table out of an orange box with a piece of material held on with drawing pins to form a curtain over the front. Granddad gave us vegetables when he had some to spare and I managed to grow some extra in the piece of the garden opposite the French door in the living room.
I grew French beans, peas, carrots, and onions and tried to grow tomatoes but there was insufficient sun to ripen them and so we made green tomato chutney with them.
I soon realised that the money which had been my last pay from the army was not going to last very long and I began to look for a job. I heard that there was a radio manufacturer in Seaford so I found my old bicycle, cleaned it up and rode to Seaford, to Champion Electric Corporation.
When I told them that I was a radio mechanic and showed them my discharge papers they sent me up to the test department. The man in charge asked me to set up a signal generator to 465kc/s, which was the frequency that most radio sets of that era used as an intermediate frequency.
This was no problem, the signal generator being the same model which had been used in the workshop at Hartley's, in Harrogate, where I had done some work whilst still in the Army.
I was told the rate of pay, which I reckoned I could afford to live on, so we agreed terms and I started work the following Monday. The job consisted of tuning up new radios, which were being produced in the main factory.
They were five valve superhets using the American range of small octal valves, which had been designed for use in American sets. This meant that they were set up for 110 volts mains. To drop the extra 110 volts of British mains voltage, the mains lead had a resistance wire built in. This ran hot in use and the customers were warned in the instructions not to cut the mains lead.
Working in Seaford meant cycling up High & Over every morning. I invariably met Wally Turrell on the bend on High & Over and we walked up the hill together. He was the branch manager at the Broad Street store of Sainsbury's.
We had known each other before the war and soon became good friends. My cycle was fitted with a dynamo and when the darker evenings came I had to use lights on the way home. Down High & Over the dynamo must have produced too much voltage and more than once the front light bulb blew. In the end I carried a store of spares.
Ron Levett, 2001
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