大象传媒

World WarII 1939-1945

During 1939, before World War II had started my dad, Orlando Harry Tomalin (known as Harry Tomalin) joined the Royal Air Force at Stanmore Air Field in Middlesex. He wanted to join the Royal Navy, but his Mum Didn鈥檛 want to and even though he was married he respected her wishes.

He became a Corporal Cook and then a Dispatch Rider and was blown off of his bike and broke his back. He was told he would never walk again but after being in hospital for a year in a wheelchair he did walk again and went back to active service. He was given all the injections to go to Burma in the place of a deserter, but just before the gangplank was pulled up the Military Police arrived with the deserter and Dad as taken of the ship.

He was sent up to Scotland for extensive training, which was very hard, to train for the Combined Services Commando鈥檚. after passing out as a Commando he was sent all over the place fighting. When the Normandy Invasion started he sailed from the South Cost in the first wave of soldiers to go across. He said they were all very scared. He had jet black hair and he said that one side of his hair went white in a straight line across the centre of his head. It did eventually come back to its normal colour.

He landed on the Normandy beaches from a Duck (a vehicle that took the men to the beaches from the ships). The duck had 86 men on board and it took a direct hit as the men were disembarking and only 2 men survived. My Dad and one other. From then on it was fighting all the way to Berlin as a Commando taking villages one by one. One day, during fighting, they found themselves in a minefield. After getting out, one injured man was left in there. Dad went into the minefield and pulled the man out. Dad didn鈥檛 receive the medal for gallantry that he deserved, the Sergeant did and Dad was very upset about it, but said it happened all the time. They reached the outskirts of Berlin before the Russians, but because it had been decided between General Eisenhower and the Russians that the Russians could go in first the British and American Armies had to wait. He said that when they were fighting in Germany they had to drink the water from the River Rhine, as they had no drinking water, it was full of dead animals and people and at that time they never ate any hot food.

One day they came upon Belsen Concentration Camp. My Dad was among the first soldiers to go in. What he saw that day he said he would never forget until the day he died as it was so horrendous. When he came home from the war having been in the Combined Commandos he said that he鈥檇 been taught lots of things (i.e.ways to kill etc.,) and that now he had to forget it all.

I remember him coming home on leave once and opening a brown tin, it was a First Aid tin, it was full of chocolate he had saved from his rations. We didn 鈥榯 know what chocolate was. That was the first time I remember seeing my Dad, although he had been on leave before and brought my younger brother and me a teddy bear each, when he had come out of hospital but I don鈥檛 remember that leave. I remember a Wren (Women鈥檚 Royal Navy) coming one Christmas to take me to a Christmas Party and when we came home all the windows in the kitchen had been blown in, my Mother was very lucky as she was in the kitchen washing my brothers nappies as the time. The bomb had been dropped on a railway line a few streets away, we lived in North London. Thankfully that was the only bombing I remember. My Mum said that we used to go into a cupboard under the stairs when there was an air raid as my Uncle who was an Air Raid Warden had told her that it was the safest place as more often than not the stairs were left standing if a house got hit.

My Dad was demobbed at the end of l945 and he went back to work on the same day as I started school for the first time in January l946. After the war I remember my Mother and I had to queue for Bananas at the greengrocers and I didn鈥檛 know what they were.

In l948, 3 years after the war had ended, my Dad was rushed into hospital seriously ill. His health was never the same again and he died in l979 at the age of 68 having had years of illness. He always said that his bad health was due to things he and many others had had to endure in the war.

Thank God for all the brave men and women that saved us.

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