´óĎó´ŤĂ˝

Introduction

This account is submitted on behalf of Mr Joe Toner from Whitehaven, Cumbria who served with his twin brother Pat in the RAF during World War Two. Joe shared these memories of World War Two with me and signed a form agreeing to assign copyright to me so that I could write about them. The terms of “The People’s War” website have been read and understood.

I have known Joe and his wife Joan all my life. Therefore, I am honoured to submit this memory of the war on their behalf. They both regularly attend commemorative services such as Remembrance Sunday. Joe and Joan have visited some of the Battlefield sites in Western Europe in recent years, including the official 60th Anniversary Commemorative Services in Normandy in June 2004.

Pre-war years in Whitehaven

“I was born at 18 Michael Street, Whitehaven, Cumbria on 13th August 1923. It was part of Cumberland then. My Dad’s name was Pat Toner and he was a clog sole-maker and he was born in 1894. His wife, my mother, was Kathleen Toner and she was born in 1892. Her maiden name was Daley. In 1933, we moved from Michael Street to Rosemary Lane and that’s where we were when war broke out.

In our family there were five brothers and two sisters: Francis, known as Frank, Gerard, Patrick, John, Nora and Kathleen. Then I’m Joe Toner as you know. Pat is my twin brother and funnily enough I’m J.P. Toner and my twin brother is P.J. Toner and we’re identical twins. My eldest brother went away to be a priest before the war but then he left during the War and then he married and eventually went to live Scotland. Another brother went to live down in Lancashire after the war and one of my sisters went to live in Yorkshire. So we didn’t all stay in Cumbria.

I first went to school at Quay Street Roman Catholic School on Quay Street. That’s an Infants’ School and I started in 1928, I think it was. Then I went to St. Begh’s School on Coach Road and I left school when I was sixteen. I left school in 1939 just about when war broke out. So I started work when I was sixteen at Smith Brothers on the North Shore of Whitehaven. I went there to do a trade, really. It was apprentice bookbinding. Smith Brothers is, or was, a printing firm. They didn't produce books, mostly printing tea bags and bread wrappers, things like that you know?

So when the war started we went there It was really a case of, “Got a job?” We stopped on at school until we had got a job. We could have left at fourteen, you know? But, I stayed on at school until I got this job at sixteen. While at school I went to sports and I liked football mostly and cricket as well. I wasn’t in a band then but I was very musical. We used to sing a lot, you know? And I loved the sports. But later on, when we were in the RAF of course, Pat and me, we used to sing.

Signing up for the RAF

Actually, we weren’t called up for the Forces: we volunteered! So, I was at Smith Brothers from 1939 until I joined the Air Force in 1941. I remember the exact date when we got our call-up. Me and my brother Pat, we went away to join the Air Force when we were only seventeen and a half. They gave us our number and our rank and then they sent us home until we were eighteen.

Then on the on the morning of our eighteenth birthday, a letter came through the post: “Report back to Warrington.” So we were born on 13th August 1923, and they would have come on 13th August 1941. So, we went back and we were there until 1946 when we were demobbed.

I don’t really know now why we wanted to volunteer then. We just wanted to do something in the War effort. We wanted to go away! Our Dad had been in the First World War, he was in the Army. He was not in the local Regiment because he was in the 27th ‘Tyneside Irish’ Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers. I had an uncle who was killed and his name’s on the Thiepval Memorial — Peter Toner. Although our uncle had been killed, it didn’t put us off volunteering.

Well, of course, we never knew our uncle. He was dead before we were born He was twenty-one when he was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, that was on the 1st of July 1916. I think he was killed at Cantal Main. My Dad was with him when he died I think. Of course Dad wouldn’t have seen him because he was blown to bits. But my Dad was in the same battle. Funnily enough, my father never spoke much about the War. He was wounded in the War but he never even showed me where he was wounded! It was in the right hip. And I don’t think he ever marched in any parades to the Cenotaph when I was very young.

Anyway, when we went away to join the RAF, we went to Warrington first, to Padgate. We did our foot-slogging there, and our training. That was because we both got a trade to do. We got ‘Flight Mechanic: Airframes’ for our trade. That’s looking after — not the engines of the plane — just the airframes. We were trained to see to them. And we went to Padgate and we stopped there for a while. Then next we transferred down to Hendon, in London for what they called ‘foot slogging’ and all that parade work again.

None of us were deterred from going in the Forces by our father really. Frank, my eldest brother was in the Air Force and Gerard was in the Army, he went to Burma. Gerard joined the Army when he was only sixteen. He told them he was eighteen. So Gerard joined when he was sixteen which was under-age. Of course he was abroad a lot, and then Frank was also abroad. Luckily enough and funnily enough, we all survived the War. We all came back home — all four of us. And then our youngest brother, John, he joined the Army after the War. So he did his ‘regular service’ as well.

Wartime service

We went abroad two or three times during the war, after we’d done our training. Do you remember Belsen, the concentration camp? We went there, to Belsen, during the war, after it had been liberated. That would have been in 1945. One of the planes had crashed and we went to salvage what we could off the aeroplane. It really wasn’t very nice there at Belsen.

And we also went out to Palestine as it was known then. We went to Palestine once in 1943. We went there for a while and then we went to Italy. We went down to Italy, to Bari. To fly over to Palestine we just got in a plane and went off and landed over there in Palestine. We just used to put all our kit, all the gear: toolbox and everything, it went on the plane and all the fellows got on. That was it, we were off! So they managed to get us out there. Then we went to North Africa to do a spell out there as well.

We didn’t meet ‘Monty’ or any of these famous people out there overseas. But we met a few fellows from back home in Cumberland. That’s the local fellows that were away you know, we met one or two of them. There was one fellow called Davidson and then other fellows I didn’t know, but they lived in Cumberland. We could recognise each other by the accent. Yes, we met them all right. They knew where we were from when they heard our accents. They would look at us two and see we were twins. “Are you from Whitehaven?” they would say. It was funny!

For the big actions of the war, we never really got to know about them until we were putting the planes out and getting them rigged up. Then they would say, “Well they’re going over to Arnhem!” or, “They’re going off to Europe!” and all this sort of thing. I remember seeing this one fellow called ‘McGuinness‘ from back home in Whitehaven. He was Hugh McGuinness and you will know the family. He was a paratrooper and he got on the plane at our aerodrome. They were the paratroopers on their way out to Arnhem. We actually said goodbye to him on the aerodrome as he was getting on the plane to go with the Arnhem Paratroopers. He was related to Pat McGuinness who was killed out in Italy, and all of that family.

Really, for our work, we were in what they called ‘Transport Command’. ‘Flying Dakotas’ was all that we had then. We used to fly out the paratroops on these missions, to Arnhem and all that. We flew out both the paratroops and we also flew out all they needed for their work, everything! All of the supplies went out by plane. It was good, really!

Then when D-Day was on, we worked with those who became the Normandy Veterans. We supported the Landings by working on the aircraft back in England. We were the Air Force support. Well, when the pilots came back, they used to have one or two stories to tell. But some of it wasn’t very nice, really. A lot of them didn’t come back, you know? Some of them were killed and didn’t come back.

Socialising in the RAF

For social things, when I was in the Air Force, we were in the Concert Party, my brother Pat and I. There were three of us. My twin brother Pat, me of course and a lad from Canada who was called Don Roberts. He played a guitar of course. So my brother and me, we sang with him. We went on the Concerts as a trio and we used to go outside and all.

We used to sing on RAF Concert Parties on the aerodromes all over the place, and yes, we went outside as well! If they went to a local town to give a ‘Music Hall’ evening, that sort of thing, then we used to go round and give a turn there. It wasn’t being involved with ENSA, just our own group. It was just our own Air Force group. It was known as an Air Force Concert Party. Oh yes, we used to have some fun in the Air Force Concert Party!

It was this Canadian Don Roberts. He used to say, “Come on you two lads! Surely you can sing?” So I said to him, “Oh, yes, we can sing a bit!” So, we started singing Hawaiian songs and Cowboy songs and all that kind of thing. Well, that just delighted him, being a Canadian, you know? With our American-style singing, he was delighted! So, we joined up together, all three of us. Oh yes, we had some fun!

After the war, I never saw him again after we left the Air Force. No, I would say he might be dead by now. I used to sing after the war, for a long time, but I haven’t sung for a long time. I used to sing in the “Knight’s” club (Knights of St Columba) and clubs round here many a time. But it’s been quite a while since I packed it in. But I used to like it, singing!

You once asked me what was the best thing about service life. Now then, we had never been away from home before we joined the Air Force. So it must have brought us out. In some way or another it must have done, it definitely brought us out! You did things you wouldn’t have done at home, you know? We joined in things and it a lot of it was very sociable. We met a lot of people and made a lot of friends, of course.

Well, I’ll tell you, before I joined up, I didn’t drink and I didn’t smoke. Mind you, I was only eighteen, you know? But of course, when you got in the Forces, to be sociable, you just did what everybody else did. Then we started drinking and smoking! We never got issued with fags, not many anyway. Of course we learnt to dance in the Air Force as well. We went to these local church “do’s” and parish hall “do’s”, met some girls and that’s where we learnt to dance!

They were organised by the local villages near where we were at. These were people that we met through going to church on a Sunday night. We went outside the camp to the nearest town. We went to church there. Then, of course there were “do’s” in their parish hall after Mass and that. We used to go in and enjoy them. That’s where we learnt to dance. Of course being a Catholic we went to church and carried on going all during the war. It was usually on the Sunday night we went and then into the parish hall afterwards were they had a “la’al do” (little do). It was good!

We always went to church, every Sunday, wherever we were. We always went to church and I’ve never left it. In the war, they nearly forced you to go on Church Parade. Well, of course we never went with the others. We went with the Catholics. So we just got a bus out into town to go to Mass, you know?

Service life was good for us. If you asked was there was one thing that’s happened in my life that was better than service life, there’s only one thing to answer to that question. That’s getting married to my wife Joan, isn’t it? Getting married, that was the main thing! Joan loves supporting anything we do about the war now, anything! I’m a member of the British Legion and a member of the Normandy Veterans Association, an Auxiliary Member. We’ve been to lots of commemorative services and Joan comes with us sometimes. We married in 1952. I’ve been lucky in life and lucky in love! I’ve had a good life, definitely!

I enjoyed my time in the services. There were good times and bad times, but good and bad, they’re all the same. I enjoyed them all. I think every young person should go for National Service, it does them good. It brings them out - definitely!

Demobilisation

My brother Pat and I, we were together for five years, slept in the same bunkhouse, the bed next to each other. For five years we were together all the time. They do that in the Air Force. They don’t do it in the Army. But in the Air Force, if you want to be with your brother they make sure you do. There were three sets of twins in our unit. Now, in the army, they don’t always do that. They split you up.

But I was with him all the time, for five years, until he had an accident and he took bad. Then he was in hospital and I left before him. We made some good friends in the Forces and they were all good lads. So I came out of the Air Force in 1946 as a Leading Aircraftsman and went back to Smith Brothers to start with, as a Book Binder. I was there a few years and then I got paid off. The Book Binding job was ‘kaput’! So I worked at Sellafield for a while and then I had twenty-six years working at the Marchon chemical factory.”

Conclusion

Joe has laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in Whitehaven on behalf of the Normandy Veterans Association on a number of occasions. This is a responsibility commemorating the victims of war that Joe takes very seriously.

In June 2004 Joe and Joan took part in the 60th Anniversary Commemorative events in Normandy as part of the West Cumbria Branch of the Normandy Veterans Association. At the time of writing this submission (March 2005) Joe and his wife Joan are looking forward to a 60th Anniversary Commemoration Parade to be held in Whitehaven, Cumbria at the end of June 2005.

On other occasions, Joe and Joan have attended commemorative services at the Normandy Veterans Memorial in Whitehaven, West Cumbria, the Whitehall Cenotaph in London or the War Graves Cemeteries in France and Belgium. They also have many good and happy memories of wartime, such as music, singing, dancing and friendship. These things are also important things that took place during World War Two and should be remembered.

Š Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.