Stephen Abbott's story

The following is a transcript of a digital recording of an in-person interview with the contributor.

"My Granddad's name was Stephen Robert Abbott, but he would be known as Bob or Robert. He shared stories personally with myself and my father, Granville.

Here's one of his kind of memorial clocks, which was made by one of his comrades. There's only about five or six of these and listed on the clock is where he served. Jim Howden, he was from Birmingham, he made five or six of these clocks. So we believe there may be a few others. He made them at the end of the War, in a captured German sea-plane factory on a lake. And we believe that the brass is probably the gun shells and the centre of the clock is off the German sea-plane.

Bob died when he was 97 years old on the 21st of March in 2010. Myself, my father and my auntie we were by his bedside. So he talked to me about his memories. And sometimes I did ask very delicately. He would never just share them. It was only at the very end that we heard some very harrowing stories.

I've got his dog tags here. His regimental number [is] 8104781047.

His regiment is actually on the clock as well, and we do have all his enlistment documents as well. He was in the 5th Y Division of the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC). There's two letters as well that we have where I don't have them here, but I have the very fragile, they're very faded, so absolutely carefully. We've got a lot of other documentation as well as medals that we need to photograph. And lots of photographs of Bob from his time in the Army and, by the truck as well.

My Granddad would be fixing the trucks that were breaking down, that were going to the front line. He drove in an old London Bread van. A lot of his stuff has already gone to the Imperial War Museum, London.

When Bob was based in Egypt at the rest camp in Cairo, they set up a cycling team called the Buckshee Wheelers, which was still going until just recently, because the members are now passing away. We used to go to their reunions in Alcester, in the Midlands. They had cycling races around the pyramids! Grandad held a Welsh record for cycling on a fixed wheeler. So he was very into cycling. He swore that was the key to good health, cycling not running. They were based in an electrical shop in Cairo. So all the Buckshee Wheelers cups, history and documentation does go back to Cairo, and the owner of the shop who made friends with them. He supplied parts for the bikes with many of the bikes being handmade after many years.

One of the letters that I haven't brought with me is from one of the schools that they were billeted in in Belgium, where they were when they were told that the German armour was on their way. So they had to quickly leave in their London bread van and headed to Dunkirk. The letter is from the school headteacher addressed to my grandmother, Ruth (Bob's wife), to say Bob was safe and the scholars (the school children absolutely loved them). So after driving overnight to Dunkirk there was a bit of a story there because they took some wrong turns, but they still ended up at the location which is obviously the most important thing. That London bread van was their mobile workshop, of course. When they got to the beaches they had to set it on fire to disable it.

Another letter I have is from when they're in South Africa, They had to lodge with a family, and the family wrote to say that Bob was well.

Later in Germany their convoy of trucks stopped in the forest and Jim (the chap who made the clock) he went into the forest to go to the toilet. He was gone for such a long time but then came back with a couple of German officers! They had surrendered to him and Granddad and his comrades arrested them and took them to the military police. We believe that they surrendered because they favoured the British over the Russian soldiers, the Russians were chasing them through the forest.

We've got demob papers and references from the Army officers.

My Grandmother was Ruth Barnes, then Ruth Abbott. She was very young and she was waiting at home for Bob for six years. Ruth only saw him once my Grandad's unit kind of regrouped in Scotland. So, Grandma got two week pass and she went up there for two weeks. And other than that, that's the only time that they saw each other. Ruth's family had a local shop, sweets, green grocers."