L.G. Mouchel & Partners

The next most ignominious rite of passage proved to be my introduction to a working life. As might have been anticipated, the morning was occupied by meeting my colleagues-to-be, all the way downwards from the august Mr Kirkwood-Dodds, whose pupil I now formally was (but whose Christian name I was never to discover). Also on the all-important 1st Floor was Mr Bernard Hiley, Chairman of L.G.Mouchel & Partners, Consulting Engineers, established by two French brothers Mouchel who came to London at the turn of the 20th century bringing with them their newly discovered art of reinforcing concrete with steel bars, which was to revolutionise construction by substituting stone chips, sand and cement for heavy steel frames.

With historic elegance, the firm had just taken on an eminent Austrian refugee, Dr Karl Mautner, who represented the next leap forward by slimming down both stone and steel. He had already worked some years with the inventor of pre-stressed concrete, Monsieur Freyssinet, and arrived at a moment when it became vital to conserve essential war-time resources. Pre-stressed concrete works by substituting steel bars with tensioned wires, imparting to a much reduced concrete member astress opposite to the load it will need to carry. This could save not only steel but hazardously imported timber, through its application to the manufacture of concrete railway sleepers. I was to benefit most particularly from acquiring this arcane art, and eventually propagating it.

Just in time for lunch, I was introduced to my work station on the fourth floor of this red-brick Victorian office complex, within the traditional habitat of civil engineering around Victoria Street. It was a large drawing office with good lighting, spiked by four large wooden drawing boards, with one open office space set slightly apart. It was peopled by four men who, on closer acquaintance, could only have been assembled by a delirious director of Savoy operas.

Frank Crabbe, a slightly built forty-five year old, was the Chief Draughtsman. The only married man, he had a certain reserve - until it came to recounting episodes from his married life. Jack Jones, barely into his thirties and recently invalided out of the Army, was a benign Cockney with highly polished boots reflecting the beam on his face and a vocabulary and joke book out of the sergeants' mess. There was a colourless young man, evidently unfit for military service, whom we lost before long- but not before his becoming the standard butt of largely good-humoured banter. And presiding over us all was the Chief Designer, Signor Filippo Ravelli, a grey-haired Italian engineer. No one knew how long and why he had been washed up on these shores, but it was evidently long enough for him to realise that his ltalian-ness was a quality to be artistically preserved and traded upon.

My three draughtsman companions took me for lunch at the nearby British Restaurant (toad-in­ the-hole and sticky pudding, max. 5/- Sh.); Signor Ravelli lunched with the lady pharmacist on the corner of Strutton Ground. I do not recall other details of my first day at work, but the stress on my stomach had been such that I was unable to return for ten days until a gastric 'flu had subsided.

In the midst of such company, matters then improved rapidly. Learning a trade brought its own reward, as did the long-feared contact with strangers who proved to be kindly and considerate colleagues. Dr Mautner was also an exacting master, anxious to pass on his invaluable knowledge. At a certain point one began to have a sense of actually making a contribution - however inglorious - to the common struggle of those days, especially in the final phase when the design of mysterious caissons codenamed AFD33 was eventually revealed as part of the D­ Day landing structures christened Mulberry Harbour. The idea for what Churchill called 'Piers for use on beaches,' which needed to float up and down with the tide yet remain firmly anchored, had come directly from the Prime Minister. 'Don't argue the matter,' he commanded. The difficulties will argue for themselves'.

After hours, one went on duty as Firewarden, to spot incendiary bombs that at intervals were rained upon the city and might lie smouldering undetected. Looking back across these many years, one is no longer conscious of the uncertainties besetting the men who undertook these vigils. We are comfortable in knowing the outcome; for them each night, each howling siren, each step opened a mini-chapter of existence, to be written with panting urgency. In the end, however, the undistinguished row of red-brick Victorian offices fell not to hostile action but two decades later to make room for the latest emanation of New Scotland Yard. No doubt its secrets, among them those of the beaches of Arromanches, remain well guarded.

Other activities clearly covered my engineering studies, with lectures at London's University College and evenings at the Institute of Structural Engineers, where Dr Mautner also contributed greatly to transmitting his unique knowledge of pre-stressed concrete, which had begun to show an important effect on the conservation of strategic materials.

After completion of the project in Soth Wales the return to the old Mouchel offices off Victoria Street was accompanied by the question of where I saw my future in the organisation. My answer to the Chairman was that I would like to work as his special assistant, for six months, with the remit of making recommendations for the future development of the firm. Much to my surprise he agreed. My reasoning was that the structure was only nominally a company, but in reality a partnership with each partner serving his traditional clients in his area. With Mouchel's monopoly of the design of electricity generating stations and attendant patented hyperbolic cooling towers, they were effectively living off a pension that would last only as long as those forms of construction were still in vogue.

On the half-anniversary of my appointment I had a reasoned report ready to place on the Chairman's desk. It outlined the weakness of the present system, looked ahead to how the market might be expected to change, and made recommendations on the consequent structure of the partnership. At first there was no reaction, then at last I was informed that all I had done amounted to gross insolence. Looking back on the episode, I cannot help but agree. The fact that Mouchel has over the years changed beyond recognition and is working in a largely unrelated sector indicates that the forces at work proved inexorable, even if not when delivered through the mouth of a self-appointed 25-year old.

By a benign coincidence, Major Leech had been considering an association with the patentees of a process of large-scale rapid construction named Vacuum Concrete. I became free just at the moment when he was looking for a civil engineer to explore and potentially run this new initiative. I joined Millars' Machinery Company in Austin Friars in the City and was introduced to the energetic Israeli engineer who acted for the Patentee. Together we travelled to construction sites in Fiume and in Rome, in refugee camps in Jordan, and along the Euphrates in Baghdad. The process was indeed adaptable to a great variety of demands, given that, aside from facilitating rapid manufacture of components, it also provided a ready means of lifting substantial sections to speed construction. Its influence on my life will emerge in succeeding chapters.