大象传媒

My father, Peter Headeach, was a lance corporal in the Royal Engineers during the war and took part in the D-Day landings. He never spoke to us about this time in his life, and he was a very gentle man and all of us in the family cannot imagine him being one of those who leaped out of a duck and ran up that beach under heavy fire.
He did tell us that he helped to rebuild bridges over the Rhine after the war and that he was also used as a postman, going round on a bike delivering mail.
As I said, he never spoke about his war experiences, but every time we travelled by train, and went through (I think) Waterloo station, he would go off for a moment and spend a few moments talking to a ticket collector called Ernie, who, he said, he had known in the war. He never said what they talked about, we never asked.
It was not until after he died in 1975 and we saw his demob papers and other documents, that we realised he had been wounded in the knee by shrapnel on the second day of the invasion.
He must have been such a brave man to do what he did, because violence was so much outside his nature, and I'm sure that he must have hated every minute of it. I also think that the stress of that time must have shortened his life, since he never spoke about his suffering and there was never any counselling or help available for those brave people who went through all that so that we could have the freedom we enjoy now.

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