Spectator In Hell

A British Soldier's Extraordinary Story

Arthur Dodd was born and raised in the Castle district of Norwich, a small Cheshire town on the River Weaver. His mother's first husband had been killed in the trenches of France during the First World War and had married his father, a regular soldier in the Cheshire Regiment, just after
Armistice Day. Arthur himself arrived on 7th December, 1919.

His father was an austere, distant man. He had served in the Boer war at the turn of the century and
as a sergeant had been captured during the Great War. As a parent, he was distinctly military and
Victorian in his attitude and had little time for Arthur and his younger sister.

At fifteen, Arthur left school and was taken on as an apprentice mechanic at Norwich Transport Company. There he learned to drive and began to understand the mechanics of the internal combustion engine under the watchful, friendly eye of his boss, Harold Isherwood.
For his labours he was paid all of ten shillings (50p) a week, but Arthur had already taken the first steps down the path that would lead him to Auschwitz.

The company owned a Ford People's Popular saloon car, which was used to transport mechanics to
broken-down lorries. Arthur fell in love with it the first time he saw it. It was in this car he had been taught to drive and, having added a year to his age when completing the driving license application form, he passed his test in the early part of 1935. A year later, he repeated the lie and passed his
HGV test.

Those early working days were fun for Arthur. Harold took to the young man and they would often go fishing together in one of the many meres in the Cheshire countryside. Arthur had to serve under
the Articles of Apprenticeship for seven years, but when Harold opened his own transport company
in 1937, he invited Arthur to finish his time with him.

Tempted though he was, ten shillings a week was hardly conducive to living away from home and
Arthur had to decline. His mother, too, was against it, as she was against the transport business in
general. In those days a driver had to find his own consignments and could be away from home for
as long as three weeks at a time.


In Harold's absence, Arthur quickly became bored and began looking for another company to take him on. When he was eighteen he entered the world of scrap, being employed as a driver by Jimmy Caffrey, a well respected, local entrepreneur. Caffrey only had the one vehicle and most of the work
was sub-contracted from the Middlewich Borough Council. Consequently, Arthur was home every night by tea-time and was paid the quite princely sum of £5 a week.