How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World

 Without a strong manufacturing sector, supplies to our military would have been thin pickings. Sure, in WW2 American kit was written large. Let’s take a step back. 

Creating Woolwich was fundamental. It was the go to place for armaments, dragged into the nineteenth century by the genius of William Armstrong, Able and Anderson

I find myself drawn ever deeper into the world of British Manufacturing, looking at the past to find where companies came from and, all too often, where they went. There is a third and exciting strand, for a good many British companies now are doing wonderful work not least in the green revolution and Manufacturing 4.0. 

One of my first memories was 'wiring' my bedroom with strands of dressing gown cord; I was obsessed by electricity as, I found much later, had been my father in his childhood at the turn of the twentieth century. Another memory was the brochures he would bring home for the latest Humber Super Snipe; he was export director of the Rootes Group. I discovered at school that my maths wasn't good enough for me to be an engineer, but my arithmetic was fine and so my career was in the accounting profession. In this I loved the challenge in getting to know my clients' businesses, many of which were manufacturing. 

Much later, on my retirement, I began a seven year project of writing about how the British army was supplied in two world wars. This brought me into contact with a great many British manufacturing companies who contributed to the war effort. I needed to find out who they were and this is resulting in my book, How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World published by Pen & Sword in 2022.

There was another side to my question: what happened to them, and this is the subject of my current research. It has though taken a life of its own as I am drawn into the vibrant world of 21st century British Manufacturing. The result is Vehicles to Vaccines published by APS Books in 2023

The timeline of Lincoln Engineering at the Celebration of Lincoln Engineering at Lincoln Cathedral by the brilliant Optima Design

I wanted to explore British manufacturing history geographically, having looked at it chronologically and by sector in my books How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines. 

Follow this link to a list of the places I have explored to date

My book How Manufacturing Shaped Britain tells the geographical story

Visit my manufacturing blog

Who Built Britain

 In my writing career I have explored army supply which drew in British manufacturing but also British construction. 

This latter string, I am researching at the moment. Military building features throughout. Roman roads were built for the Roman legions. William the Conqueror was castle builder extraordinary, that is until Edward’s stunning Welsh castles. 

Moving ahead, there were the barracks builders to see off the Scots. There were Martello Towers to defend our coastline, followed by Lord Palmerstone’s Forts 

The Woolwich Arsenal reaches into the twentieth century as does Weedon Bec. We then have the massive building challenge of the WW1 munitions factories and the Ordnance Deoits and airfields of WW2 

Throughout it all the dockyards created the ships for an indomitable Navy 

Building is in my blood; my mother's family ran a Midlands building company for ninety-nine years having previously been itinerant craftsmen. I remember with huge affection childhood visits to the 'yard'.

My last employment before I retired was as Chief Executive of Lincoln Cathedral where I learnt something of stone masons and the way medieval cathedrals were built. Most recently, I have been exploring the history of British manufacturing and the places where it took place. This brought me close to the building of mills, factories and urban housing, over a period spanning three centuries or so.

I needed to try to understand how it was all built and indeed who built it.

Visit my Who Built Britain blog 

300,000 blog views

 I can hardly believe that my blog has attracted so much attention. 

The story began in April 2014 when I brought down from the loft boxes filled with scrap books up to 5 inches thick filled with press cuttings, photographs, booklets, dinner menus and a pressed flower. 

I had known about the albums all my life but had never really explored them. The compiler, my mother, had died five years earlier and the key player, my father forty five years before that. The albums told the story of the Second World War through the eyes of the Controller of Ordnance Services who along with 250,000 soldiers and civilians was responsible for keeping the army supplied with all they needed except for food and fuel. 

My researches of the albums and related research of archives resulted in my book War on Wheels. 

I then needed to find out about army supply in the First World  War which resulted in Ordnance. 

I then realised that many of the leaders in the Second World War had served in the first….here please pause as I did. Two world wars in a lifetime. 

I needed to find who these people were and this resulted in Dunkirk to D Day. 

Not one to sit back I now needed to find out about those many British companies which supported the war effort. This expanded into a full exploration and has resulted in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines. All this went to shape our country and I am working on How Manufacturing Shaped Britain 

You can find more about my books by following this link and more on my research into manufacturing by following this. 

Thrilled at this review of Ordnance

 Great movements

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 May 2025 by Graham

This book tackles a difficult subject. In warfare the logistics of moving men is always a challenge. The concomitant movement of ordnance and other supplies is as equally difficult if not more so.
The difficulty for any author dealing with this topic is to make it interesting. Here, it must be said, Hamlin Williams succeeds.
He takes the reader on a journey from the beginning of world war 1 to its ultimate conclusion and what a vivid picture he produces. He refrains from the usual ‘touch on briefly before dwelling on at length’ technique and gives the reader a clear and lively insight into the task which presented itself and how that task was mastered.
Certainly there is a plethora of facts to be gleaned from this volume but they are interspersed with touching and poignant stories of humanity.
Whether you are a professional historian or a fireside enthusiast this book has much to offer.
I recommend it. It is certainly interesting and worth reading.

Interesting review of Dunkirk to D Day by Dave H on Amazon

I am very grateful to Dave for taking the trouble to write a detailed review. Here is the link. 

I would like to respond to some of the points he makes.

He was misled by the title! 

It was not my choice! I wanted The Soldiers who Armed the Army. 

It is indeed a biography of my father but, since he worked so closely with his colleagues, I wanted it to be about them as well. I hope this explains the early chapters. 

As to the business of Ordnance, I hope I have addressed this in my books War on Wheels and Ordnance.  

The three books stand together as my homage to the men and women who did something astonishing but who are largely forgotten 

It was this picture that inspired my research. Taken in the early twenties when young officers who had survived the war learnt the theory of the Ordnance work they had been doing. A good number would go on to lead the work on the RAOC in the Second World War.  

You can buy my books with this link 

The Royal Navy and D Day

 I found recently that my mother's cousin had served on the 'lead' Royal Naval ship on D Day and I needed to discover what this might have meant.

The image from the RLC archive shows the Mulberry Harbour in action.

A little research pointed me to HMS Ramillies as possibly the 'lead' battleship. A book entitled Operation Neptune written by Commander Kenneth Edwards offers a near contemporary account published in 1946. The book tells the story beginning with the planning and build up to the action on and around D Day and what happened thereafter.

It was intended at first that the Royal Navy would have the task of providing naval assistance to the whole invading force. In time it became clear that with commitments in other theatres, it simply did not have the ships and so the US Navy joined the enterprise. The Royal Navy certainly did not have anything like sufficient fully crewed ships, for Edwards talks of ship manned by 'passenger' crews, that is sailors who had returned to the UK without their own ships. There were in addition a great many ships of the merchant navy as well as coastal craft, armed trawlers, tugs and ferries.

In a sense the 'lead' ships weren't battleships at all but rather mine sweepers whose task it was to clear passages for the bombardment fleet and then the invasion craft themselves.

The bombardment fleet formed up on the Clyde and, with the delay to D Day of 24 hours had to steam back to use up time. Once across the channel the force first had the task of damaging German emplacements protecting the beaches. This would follow aerial bombardment by the Royal Air Force. Edwards writes that, whilst defensive opposition was not great, the strength of the concrete emplacements was such that only a direct hit in an aperture would have any chance of destruction and this would have normally to await the action of troops moving up the beach. Nevertheless the bombardment did reduce the opposition the landing troops would face.

Landing craft carrying troops, tanks, guns, vehicles and supplies followed the bombardment which would then precede the advancing troops up the beach and inland. Battleship had a range of seventeen miles and so offered cover well inland much to the shock of the Germans. The passage up the beaches varied from beach to beach with Omaha being the toughest. On all beaches the invading forces were met by mines and obstacles as well as gun fire, but they did get through and began the long fight across northern France.

The task of the Navy was now to safeguard the passage of ships bringing supplies and reinforcements. There would be in the region of two hundred crossings a day. Larger craft would be unloaded onto smaller craft for access to the beach.

Gooseberry harbours were created for each beach. These were artificial breakwaters formed by sinking old ships known as blockships which would offer some protection to small craft. As is well known the more substantial Mulberry harbours followed, one for the British at Arromanches and one for the Americans at St Laurent. What I hadn't known was that a gale blew for three days from D Day + 13 which caused massive damage to the American harbour and something like a half of landing craft were lost or damaged. Edwards notes that this far exceeded those damaged by the enemy. It is remarkable that only a week after the storms regularly cross channel supplies were resumed at the same level.

The job for the Navy was not over. There were U Boats menacing supply ships and E boats and armed trawlers protecting German coastal shipping. Then there were the major harbours to be captured beginning with Cherbourg. Two smaller harbours, Port-en-Bessin and Courselles, had been taken early on and were both receiving 1,000 tons of supplies each day.  

Once the army was advancing and supply routes secured, the Navy could turn its attention to an arguably bigger challenge, the war against Japan.

Churchill's Citadel - Chartwell and the Gatherings before the Storm

As a lifelong admirer of Winston Churchill and a devourer of films and biographies about the great man, I had awaited Katherine Carter's book with keen anticipation. I was not disappointed.

As curator of Chartwell for more than a decade, Carter had access to its astonishing archive. She has used this to great effect with pains-taking care of the detail. There is no broad brush of the biographer, nor the  preconceptions of a novelist. The archive is presented as an orderly account of tumultuous years. 

For me there were delightful surprises: time Churchill spent with Albert Einstein and TE Lawrence as well as the more prominent members of his circle. The American ambassador Joe Kennedy's relationship with the English is unpicked, as are those less well known with French, Czech, Russian and German opposition politicians. Helpful light is shed on the ambitions of Japan and its aggression toward China. 

With all this material, one might have expected a slow, rather tortuous read. Instead, Carter communicates clearly the changes in pace as crises are met. The opposition to Churchill is keenly felt, and even more so the impact this has on the man. Clementine is there in support, but as much the youngest daughter, Mary. 

This is a book that will inform and delight. It will take its rightful place in the Churchill canon.

Her Secret Service by Claire Hubbard-Hall

I first heard about this book when I knew Claire at Bishop Grossteste University in Lincoln in her capacity as secretary of the City of Lincoln branch of the Historical Association; she had kindly invited me to speak on a couple of occasions about my books on army supply. So I wanted to read what she was writing.

What I found was the product of a great deal of painstaking research, perhaps echoing the painstaking work of those about whom she wrote. It made me sit up and realise just what a professional historian can do; I am but an amateur, albeit an enthusiastic one!

The end result impacts in a number of ways.

For a lover of James Bond, Claire is generous with her references to the people who probably inspired his characters. Having enjoyed Helen Fry's Spymaster, I found myself back in that shadowy world. 

Claire, though, has done much more. She has given long overdue acknowledgement to the women who gave so much in the secret service of their country. She has named the glass ceilings imposed by men which denied the country the service of these women at more senior levels. More generally she has described the way women were brought into and then thrown out of the workplace in time of war. 

Perhaps the greatest credit is the way Claire illustrated the painstaking work done by conscientious women, without which the services would have been impotent. Secret service is about information, not only how it is collected but also about how it is stored, verified, safeguarded and accessed. 

This vital administration was done alongside a smaller group of women who, blessed with the gift of languages, risked all in the face of the enemy. 

A great addition in a vital area of national life. 

Civil war ammunition store in Spain reminiscent of CAD Corsham

 In the province of Valencia

I write of CAD Corsham in War on Wheels. 

The tunnels in Spain were smaller and had been abandoned in 1989. The place is open to the public https://www.levante-emv.com/comunitat-valenciana/camp-de-turia/2023/03/05/polvorin-riba-roja-olvido-futuro-83967574.html

Operation Market Garden at eighty

 In the archive of the RAOC held at the RLC Museum there is a remarkable account of an RAOC soldier's experience of being dropped into Arnhem. 

I quoted from it in War on Wheels and I reproduce it here.

'Amongst those who would take off from RAF Barkston Heath in Lincolnshire for Arnhem were men of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps , some of whom formed the Ordnance Field Park Recce Party whose job it was to seek out large garages and commandeer suitable vehicles to help transport the troops from the drop points. It was a group of seven men, including Private Ted Mordecai who wrote an account of the five days he spent face to face with the enemy.

The beginning was so positive. The Dutch civilians, all wearing Marigolds, welcomed the British soldiers landing near Arnhem as saviours. A small village pub offered beer which they had been told to refuse. Local people gave them cups of ersatz coffee.

With the news that the battalion ahead of them was encountering tough opposition, they were ordered to press forward at all speed. Further orders came that their intended role had been shelved and they were to take an active part in securing the bridge across the river.

Ted's words paint the picture:

"As we moved up the road parallel to the river we could see the span bridge outlined against flashes of gunfire against the sky. At the same time the Germans on the other side of the river were concentrating all their fire in our direction and at the bridge...the sound of shot and shell was deafening, but we inched our way forward up to the bridge…"

They successfully occupied a house within reach of the bridge. It was 2000 hours on 17 September:

"Shortly after daybreak we heard the sound of engines revving up and, looking towards the other side of the bridge to the South, we saw a line of open topped 'Opel' armoured cars coming across the bridge in line astern....one of our six pounder antitank guns caught the first car in the middle...it slewed round and blocked the bridge....everyone within range opened fire at the cars with Brens, Stens, rifles and grenades."

Once quiet descended, Captain Manley suggested that everyone should try to get some sleep. Mordecai received a rude awakening from a loud explosion:

"We couldn't believe our eyes at what we saw. Either a mortar bomb or 88mm shell had hit the back of the house and there was a gaping hole where the back wall and the roof should have been."

They took cover in the cellar of the house and remained hidden until the sporadic firing stopped:

"We were ordered back upstairs and resumed our position at the windows....we heard a klaxon horn and whistles sounding at odd intervals...in the afternoon we saw some Spitfires patrolling over the town and, hearing the sound of heavier engines, we guessed that the lift timed for Monday was taking place....

"Towards evening, just as the sun was dipping down, we heard our old battle cry of "Whahoo M****" ring out and going out onto the veranda just in front of the bedroom windows we waved our green recognition silks which we wore as scarves and returned the battle cry, thinking reinforcements had arrived. Our elation was short lived as they turned out only to be a small platoon with a six pounder."

A town house close by had been hit and 'was blazing like an inferno and lit up the surrounding area.’

"Tuesday dawned with a hint of fine weather and about 0800 hours we decided that it was time for a 'brew-up'.... no water was forthcoming...suddenly we heard a whistling sound...an explosion followed almost immediately...we lay on the floor whilst splinters of steel came whanging through the window and hitting the outside wall.

"Captain Manley told us that 30 Corps under General Horrocks had been held up by enemy opposition...and it would be some time before they reached us.

"We could hear tracks clanking away on the road. We all hugged the ground not daring to lift our faces in case some German spotted us. The clanking sound came nearer and, lifting my head slightly, I could see the dark shape of the tank through the hedge about ten feet away. The tank slowly moved off...we made a mad dash across the road to the demolished houses near the bridge. On our way across we were silhouetted against the flames from the houses we had vacated earlier and a German machine gunner must have spotted us as he opened fire on us and tracer bullets came through the darkness in our direction."

Other guns opened fire

"This fire was so concentrated it kept us pinned down for what seemed ages...during a lull I said to Harry, "we aren't going to be relieved and I think we should swim across the river and make our way to our own lines." Harry replied, "I think we should stay together and hope for the best.""

"It was now quite obvious we were on our own and cut off, as the deadline for being relieved had passed some hours earlier...we were completely hemmed in and gradually being compressed into an ever decreasing circle."

Ted Mordecai and his small unit went from house to house seeking safety from the Germans who were now preparing for a final onslaught; at the same time, they took every opportunity themselves to attack and cause the maximum damage. Ted got separated from his mates and found himself at Brigade HQ. The senior officer gave him a bottle of wine and encouraged him to rest.

He continued his account:

"I heard someone shouting, "does anybody here know anything about Bren guns." The shouting went on and so I went into a front room covering the street and told an officer that [being RAOC] I knew something about Brens. There was a gunner manning the Bren gun in the window with a corporal acting as his No 2. The gunner said he couldn't fire the Bren as it wouldn't work. I moved into his position and tried the standard procedure of removing the magazine, cocking the gun and squeezing the trigger. I told the corporal that the gun was OK and put the magazine back in and squeezed the trigger. It didn't work as the bolt would not push the cartridge into the barrel. So, removing the magazine, I ejected two of the cartridges, put the magazine back in the gun and tried again. This time it fired. Whoever had loaded the magazine had crammed too many cartridges in it, consequently they were too tight to move. Although the magazine would hold 32 cartridges, it was policy never to put in more than 28. The officer asked me if I would take over the gun...I therefore became the Bren gunner of the last bastion."

Ted manned the gun until the ammunition ran out and he then reverted to his Sten like the others. The mad dashes from one house to the next continued as the Germans followed demolishing houses with the fire of 88mm guns.

"There was a lull in proceedings and it was during this period that Jerry called upon us to surrender and a truce was called whilst a discussion took place between the Germans and our officers who were left. The truce last about an hour during which time Jerry agreed to let us hand over our wounded. After the wounded had been evacuated the Germans again called upon us to surrender as we were completely cut off, surrounded and nearly out of ammunition. Jerry was told in Army fashion to "Shove off" but much cruder and when someone threw a grenade at them hostilities commenced once again."

The shelling continued.

"I felt a blow like being hit with a stick on the right side of my face and across my right eye as the blast whipped under my helmet. It lifted me off my feet and knocked me flat out and when I came round I couldn't see a thing. Eventually I could make out things in the darkness with my left eye, but all I could see out of my right eye was a blinding glare. I felt my face but couldn't feel any blood and, as the shelling was still taking place, decided to try to find some cover. I crawled over the ground and eventually found a slit trench up against the wall and flopped in on top of another chap lying in the bottom. The shelling kept on all night and there was no reply from any of our chaps at all. They were either lying low or there weren't any left.

"Dawn eventually came and everything was very quiet...the chap under me stirred and said he was going to surrender...I stood up in the trench and the first thing that met my sight [through my left eye] was an 88mm shell with a bent nose lying half over the edge of the trench...being careful not to disturb it I climbed out...I waited a while, but couldn't hear any shooting and so decided to give myself up.

"When night fell, a small group of us, being walking wounded, were herded into the back of a small truck and transported to hospital.

"Later I volunteered to help out one of our MO's...it opened my eyes to the aftermath of battle as I was assisting in an amputees ward which had both German and British patients...Another thing that brought home the horrors of war was seeing a pile of discarded odd boots where they had been thrown after legs had been amputated. 

"As Jerry had said, "For you Tommy, the war is over.”"

D Day 80 the supply challenge

Preparations for D Day surely began with the evacuation of Dunkirk; if Hitler was to be defeated, an invasion would be required. An early date for the start of preparations for D Day is evidenced by the Pluto and Mulberry projects where a young Naval officer, Louis Mountbatten, was tasked with the identification of issues to be addressed. One such was just how an invading army would be equipped. 

On 25 June 1940 two men met by chance in the War Office. They had both served in the Army Ordnance Corps during the Great War (The AOC became the RAOC in 1918). Colonel Bill Williams had set up the Army Centre for Mechanisation at Chilwell outside Nottingham and had since April been Director of Warlike Stores on a six month probationary period. Colonel Clifford Geake had served in the British Expeditionary Force (‘BEF’) and would take command over Clothing and Stores. Working initially under the watchful eye of more senior officers, they had the job of supplying the army with all it needed except for food and fuel - the responsibility of the Royal Army Service Corps. They would be joined by officers and men who had fought in the Great War, those who had enlisted since and vastly more from civilian life – altogether some 250,000 men and women of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.

So much effort had gone into the preparation of the BEF and now, with so much left behind in France, they had to start over again. There was an imminent threat of invasion and in due course there would be other theatres of war to be supplied. To add to all of this the RAOC, still designated a non-combatant corps, was looked down upon by fighting sections of the army many of which wanted their own bespoke supply organisation. There were battles to be fought.

Motor transport was well in hand at Chilwell with depots at Derby and elsewhere coming on stream. Warlike Stores were handled at Greenford, but also Old Dalby in Leicestershire and Donnington in Shropshire where a vast depot was being built to take over from Woolwich and the ever present danger of German bombing. Small arms were handled at the 19th century barracks at Weedon and ammunition in many places around the country including a vast subterranean depot outside Bath. Clothing was based in the former pickle factory at Branston and general stores at Didcot. A brand new multitask depot was planned at Bicester specifically for D Day.

Equipment needed to be produced and I write of this in my book How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. Vickers formed the backbone of gun and tank production from its experience in the Great War. Lord Nuffield had undertaken the development of a new tank, the Cromwell. These were joined by Vauxhall’s Churchill tank. All the British motor companies came up with their war purposed vehicles together with anything from aircraft to tin hats and were supported by companies like Lucas, Dunlop and Smiths. Signals equipment was manufactured by the adolescent radio industry. Medicines and healthcare products came from the infant pharmaceutical companies. 

Ammunition and gun production became a vast industry surrounding the chemicals giant ICI and the network of Royal Ordnance Factories which had been resurrected and enlarged upon from that set up by Lloyd George in the Great War. Echoes of that earlier war came with the mass production of boots in and around Northampton which had long been a centre of boot making. Clothing although based at Branston came from the textile manufacturing areas of Yorkshire and Lancashire. For a seaborne invasion provision was made for changes of clothing should soldiers become drenched in seawater on landing.

As Churchill knew all too well, without America, there could be no D Day; quite simply this island, even with all the resources of Empire, couldn’t compete with the might of Germany. In terms of arming the army, this meant that we needed many tons of American weaponry, not least, it has to be said, since British motor companies were manufacturing many thousands of aircraft and had been since the shadow factories had been set up in the thirties. So we had Sherman tanks and Willis Jeeps as well as heavy tank transporters, and caterpillar tractors in anticipation of the devastation in the towns through which the invasion would need to pass. Hobart’s funnies was the nickname given to a whole range of tank adaptions made both in the factory and in REME workshops. The Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers had been spun out of the RAOC in 1942.

Just how do you get what is needed to an invading force? Experience of earlier invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Italy was analysed and answers proposed identifying three stages of invasion: on the beach, on the first advance inland and on the setting up of the first base depot. Parts identified for each stage had to be packed for protection, but also for clear identification. A system of packing was devised that could be used in depots and also by manufacturers. Volunteers, including school children, helped with packing millions of items. The roles of particular depots were redefined, additional storage was put in place by Dickie Richards who returned from the Middle East, swapping posts with Geake, to oversee Clothing and Stores and to hold together the interface between depots and field operations.

The next question was how to get the stores from the ship to the fighting man. There would be some mechanical help from DUKWs for example, but the majority of the work would demand manual handling and thus men able to carry loads under fire. Package sizes were selected to be capable of being carried, but the men needed to be fit. In the summer of 1943 a training programme was introduced for RAOC men to make them both physically fit but also capable of fighting. The RAOC had ceased to be classified as non-combatant in 1941.

With D Day approaching, the RAOC depots reported that essential spare parts were missing for vital American equipment. Bill Williams, armed with a letter of authority from General Montgomery, set out on a whistle stop tour of US factories and ensured that what was needed was sent. 

The Ordnance organisation for the 21st Army Group was an astonishing enterprise led by Brigadier Deniston with Colonel Cutforth as his second in command. Depots were to be set up to supply the advance across northern France.

This article was reproduced in the Pen & Sword guest blog 

200,000 blog visits

 I began my exploration of the history of the RAOC ten years ago with the help of the albums my mother kept of my father’s war 

Since then I have spent many hours in the RLC archive, the IWM, the National Archive and the British Library. 

The result is this blog and three books:

COD Greenford

COD Greenford’s main functions were the receipt of warlike stores from manufacturers, their storage, maintenance and issue to units at home and overseas. The depot also assembled complete units from many thousands of single parts. As with the other depots, there were workshops working alongside.

Kenneth Johnson-Davis was a barrister, a former scholar at St Catherine’s College Cambridge, and had served in the RASC in the First World War. On demobilisation, he remained in the Territorial Army. In the thirties he was Secretary of the Motor Traders Association and joined the RAOC with a number of others from the motor trade. He would undertake the task of setting up the Greenford Depot in West London.

de Wolff at COD Donnington was the only Chief Ordnance Officer to write at length about his depot, but there are surely many features in common with the others, not least size – they were all massive. The provision of education was a thread throughout. Kenneth Johnson-Davies ran the Greenford Depot, with his wife, Anne, as Welfare Officer. Together they instituted a very broad education provision, including a series of lectures drawing on Kenneth’s contacts industry and the law. A not dissimilar regime operated at Derby under Robbie Robinson, who saw it essential for his men and women to understand the context of their work. He also championed education and effective relaxation, given the very long hours worked.

Looking to the plans for the invasion, depot structures had been worked out. COD Greenford was to be the focus for armaments and technical stores and the first port of call for demands from the Advance Depots over the channel. COD Feltham as the southern part of the Chilwell network was to be the focus for vehicles. COD Bicester provided back up for both. Indeed all depots around the country had their focus on supplying the 21st Army Group.

In August 1943, the Queen visited COD Greenford, which was then under the command of Alfred Goldstein preparing for the key role it would in supplying the D-Day force. Her Majesty was accompanied by the Princess Royal and took particular interest in meeting the many ATS working there.