CMP Assembly

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

I have looked to my thesis which has authorities in it for information on Army personnel being used in the Southampton CMD.

Men to staff the Plant were in very short supply, British civilian manpower being stretched, and the assembly operations were badly under-staffed: the aircraft industry had top priority on personnel. The official solution was to draft in Canadian Army personnel to cope: the troops camped next to the Plant as Stan Ellis had envisaged at the end of the previous year [i.e. 1939...Stan Ellis had called for Canadian Army personnel to be drafted in].

Norman Coffin wrote in 1980 [in the GM Limited plant staff magazine] that he was a civilian employee in the Plant from 1939. After war was declared and most of the Plant was taken over as the C.M.D., he worked on assembling trucks for the famous Canadian Regiment, The Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry [‘P.P.C.L.I.’] that was part of the 2nd Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division. He also states that during this time they were having Air Raid Warnings six or seven times a day, and as a foreman, was a Shelter Steward. He had to see the personnel in his shelter get in and stayed in. He was also a member of the A.R.P. at night, and groups of them would take turns of a fortnight on duty and a fortnight off. They slept in the front office and in the morning had their breakfast and went straight to work at 7.30 a.m.....

Mr. Norman Coffin thought that many of the Canadian soldiers employed in the Plant were later killed in the Dieppe Raid