Episode 10, Ray and "Nick"

Before WW2, Nick Wells was an engineer who specialised in commercial vehicles. At the outbreak of war, he joined the Royal Navy and became an engine room 'artificer'. He was at sea for four years.Ray arrived in 1946 - an early baby boomer.​​Nick didn't talk much about his war but one horrific tale stuck in his son's mind: Nick saw a colleague get vaporised by steam from a damaged turbine when their ship was hit by a torpedo.​Other stories included accounts of going ashore in Crete with commandos in small dinghies to sabotage enemy supply lines. Then hurtling perilously back to the UK across the Mediterranean. "Blood, sweat and tears," was how he described the voyage.​​There were also mentions of freezing Murmansk and motorcycling in the desert on a Moto Guzzi with a dangerously rogue flywheel. (It shot off into the sand at 60mph.) The overall effect of his father's war on Ray was a lifelong wariness of moving parts in engines. He's never serviced his cars. Send us Fan MailSupport the show