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WHY I EXIST AT ALL

My sole purpose was to get my Mother out of the munitions factory where she worked at Newton Aycliff in County Durham. Once you got employed to work in the munition factory, there were only two ways of getting out of that employment, one was in a box, and some friends did lose their lives in accidents there, and the other one was to get pregnant, preferably with a husband! So this story really is my parents’ story, as I was born with only a few months to go before the end of the war.

Dad was called up before the war, and he was in the Black and Tans Regiment in Ireland, so he was already a serving soldier when the war broke out. He was then transferred into the South Staffs Regiment

Like many soldiers he wouldn’t talk much about his experiences, so most of what I learned was from either eaves dropping when he was talking to other ex soldiers, or from other members of the family.

He did part of his training at Catterick Camp, in Yorkshire, and they were billeted out into the villages. There were many Midland soldiers there, and my Father was billeted out to a small village called Shielding, in County Durham, (where the railways began in 1925), which is its only claim to fame!

At the time, he was billeted in a shop on the corner of the market place, and protocol demanded then that soldiers should stand guard outside their billets, and it was there that he met a young 8 year old girl, who later became my Aunty Joan who used to walk her dog along, and out of sheer boredom of having to stand guard, Dad would talk to her and stroke the dog. He hated guard duty so he applied to become an Officer’s batman.

During the conversation with the little girl, she asked him if he would like to come to her birthday party, and as he was 200 miles away from his own family, and he thought it would be following the orders of being friendly to the locals, he decided to accept and at the arranged time he knocked on the door of the house, and my now Grandmother, answered the door, which was quite a daunting sight. This lady was a big woman and one who had brought up six children in the years of the depression, when my Grandfather was out of work for 13 years. She was actually 4 or 5 inches taller than my Grandfather so she was the dominant one. My Dad looked up at her and sheepishly said he had been invited to the party and my Grandmother turned round to shout to somebody in the house, that there was a soldier outside who says he’s been invited to the party, and the little girl said ‘he’s mine’. It must have been quite amusing.

When he got inside he must have thought it was his birthday, because there were my Aunty Joan’s two older sisters, one of 18 years and one of 20 years, and were both long haired blondes. He always seemed to be round at the house after that!
He used to take the male of the house (my now Grandfather) a few cigarettes each time he went, so my Grandfather encouraged him to visit.

The local weekly dance was put on by a lady called Lizzy Pincher, and she called it Lizzy Pincher’s Ball, and that was the centre of the socialising. My Dad eventually introduced a colleague called Norman Llewellyn to the younger of the two sisters, whilst he concentrated on the older one, who eventually became my Mother, and from these liaisons, two wartime weddings took place.

Both the sisters worked in the munitions factory at the time, and the only way to get out was to become pregnant. In the meantime my Father had become successful in becoming a batman, and one of the perks of this job was that you lived with your officer, so that you were on hand, and he moved into one of the local pubs, and that was quite an upgrading from his previous billet.

Whilst Mum and Dad were courting they moved on several times and then they moved about 10 miles away to a village called Stain Drop, and they billeted again in an Inn, due to the Commanding Officer, called The Black Swan (nicknamed ‘The Dirty Duck’), and the only way my Mother could visit my Father, at the weekends, was to find some digs in the village, and the only place she could get to stay was with a old spinster who lived the other end of the village, who refused to have soldiers in her house - as it might compromise her status as a single woman in the village, and you had to be in by 8 o’clock otherwise you were locked out, so it didn’t really help their courtship much!

Dad went overseas, and he did share one story with us, where he went to Europe and he was in France. They were called to a high powered meeting somewhere in France and the drivers were all left outside, and as the meeting went on for some time, Dad suddenly got ‘caught short’ and as they were not allowed inside the house, he had to disappear into the bushes! In the meantime the Germans must have got to know about this high powered meeting, and they decided to bomb the chateau and they only scored one direct hit — which was on Dad’s staff car. When the officers came out of the chateau after the all clear, Dad’s officer was surprised to see that where his staff car had stood, there was now a huge crater, and out of the bushes staggered my Father! The officer warmly shook my Fathers hand when he saw him because he thought he had gone the way of the car, and told my Dad that if the war went on for 100 years he would still be around at the end of it.
As it was they both survived the war after having gone through many campaigns together, including Dunkirk.

The story of ‘Dunkirk that I overheard, was that Dad’s officer was the first senior officer to arrive on the beach, so they were ordered to set up a disembarkation Headquarters, so when Dad met other Dunkirk veterans who complained that they were there for 2 days and 2 nights, he used to say, ‘you were lucky I was first on and last of’ — he was there for over a week, and he went back to the U.K on D Day.

On the push to Arnhem he was posted ‘missing believed dead’ and for 14 days my mother believed he was dead but he had been sheltered by a Belgium farmer, and two daughters who nursed him back to health because they had found him suffering from shell shock and he was partially deaf from it, but he was proud of the fact that he went back and was actively involved in the liberation of Brussels.

My Dad kept in touch with his commanding officer, after the war, and the only time I saw my Dad really upset was when he heard from the wife of his officer to say that he had died of cancer, which was sad after all they had been through in the war.

After the war Dad did try to settle in the North East, but it was a very grey area with the pits closing down, and we lived in the house with my Grandparents, where I was born. They did get allotted a pre-fab which you got in order of your war record. The first one went to an ex serviceman who had lost both legs, and the second one went to my Dad, so my Mum was very proud of my Dad for that.

Work was very spasmodic and after 4 years we came back to the Midlands to Stourbridge.

When Dad was abroad there was an article in the local paper, where two brothers had met up in the front line and my Dad was in the front line trying to take a road, and the Germans were also trying to take the same road and this road was in the middle of no mans land, and a lone motor cyclist came riding down this road with firing above his head and he was an Englishman looking for his brother, and that was my Uncle Sid who had heard that his brother was down the road, and as a despatch rider had decided to ‘borrow’ the bike and go and find him, and he didn’t realise he’d ridden down ‘no mans road trying to find his brother.

When we came back to the Midlands rationing was still on, and I can remember living with my other Grandparents, and as my Grandfather was the head of the family all the rationed food went into the pantry and he had first pick of it. My Mother was always very bitter that the eggs that were the allowance of my brother and myself went to my Grandfather so that he could have his hard boiled eggs every morning, and we were given either a spoonful of the egg or a bread ‘soldier’ dipped in the yolk. I don’t know how old I was before I had a whole boiled egg to myself.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by June Woodhouse (volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of John Mobberley (author) and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

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