大象传媒

The beginning of the war was also my beginning. I should explain that I was born in June 1940 not that long after the famous Dunkirk evacuation by small boats from the continent of Europe.

Those of you with mathematical minds will already have worked out that I was conceived in September 1939 that was of course when war was declared and when my father left for the war. He was one of the first to be called up. The reason it was so early was that he had served in the Grenadier Guards for two years in the early 1930s and was a serving policeman in the London Metropolitan police. He was called up and became a private in the Military Police, a Red Cap.

I did not see my father until I was around six and a half years old nor did my mother He had left for war an extroverted athletic man, I have been told, with many trophies for cross country running and tennis.He returned a disabled introverted man not at all happy with his lot for the rest of his life.

What did he do in the war? You may ask. I am afraid it is all a bit of a mystery.

I do not know what he did, he did seem to have been in an amazing number of places.

My brother, conceived on my fathers return from war, and I have long fantasised whether he had been a James Bond character or not. He never wanted to talk about the war but we did manage to glean from him that he had been to France (he was at Dunkirk), India, South Africa, Malaya, Burma, North Africa, Sicily, Italy Greece, Holland, and in the Northwest of England, Scotland and Ireland.

He started the war as a Private and came out a Captain and would have stayed in the army after the war if it had not been for his terrible accident only 6 weeks before the end of the war. He was in Sicily and travelling in a jeep with three others and a fox terrier. They passed over a mine. My father was the only one to survive. I can remember my Mother receiving a telegram telling her that he was critically injured. I remember her crying for days on end and me, a mere five years old, trying to comfort her.

He had severe injuries which meant him staying in Hospital, in Sicily for many months, I think it was more than a year and then coming back to stay in hospital in Gloucester. The ward he was in had men with severe burns, although my father did not, from the war and I believe that a lot of experimental plastic surgery was carried out at that particular Hospital.

My first sight of my father was in that hospital with plaster covering his right leg and left arm. Both his arm and his leg were suspended from the ceiling. Men who had terrible scars where their faces had once been surrounded him. I was a very horrified six-year-old. Those memories have always stayed with me.

He lived a further 44 years. The war never left him. He was an extremely intelligent man who had been forced to leave school at 14 to contribute to the family income. His rapid promotion, through the ranks, had been very satisfying to him and he would have continued in the military if it had not been for the accident.

When he came out of hospital he pretty much gave up. He had no confidence and took a humble inside job as a store man in the police force. I believe it was law that whatever occupation one had when called up for the war had to accept you back on leaving the forces. That was the easy option and that was what he did for the rest of his life. He accepted the easy option.

Although my parents stayed together it was a loveless relationship. I believe they had been severely affected by their separation during the war and that neither of them lived up to the others expectation of the other when they were together again after the war.

I remember only a little of the war as I was a toddler. I remember air raid sirens, the family huddled around the radio as soon as the news came on, my mother running the family printing business as her two brothers were away fighting the war and my Grandfather was unwell, rationing, very few luxuries. Fruit was almost non-existent apples and plums grown locally. Bananas and oranges were nowhere to be seen.

There were very few young English men around only old or disabled men. There were very smart young American men who smiled a lot and offered chewing gum, but women were thought of as immoral or worse to even say hello to them.

We lived in Cheltenham. That was that. You had no chance of travelling. London seemed as far away as Sydney Australia is today.

After the war there was a long period of healing for everyone in the country. My mother and Father came to live in London in 1947 my first view of London was of a devastated city. Huge areas that had been bombed especially in the City of London and around where we lived. We rented a ground floor flat exactly where Pimlico Underground Station is today. When I have come out of the Station into Bessborough Street The view that hits me is the view that we had directly from our sitting room.

As I had a Gloucestershire accent I had to quickly become a cockney to become one of the boys. We were quite wild especially in the bombed out buildings around us. It horrifies me to think back to the dangers we faced in those far from safe shells of buildings. Floors collapsed with our weight but miraculously there were no major injuries apart from grazes and I remember one of the lads breaking his arm. Around Guy Fawkes Night we would enact the war by throwing bangers at each other or putting them into milk bottles.
How we were not killed or seriously maimed I do not know.

It wasn't until my late teens early twenties did I see around me any signs of prosperity. People, started to speak less and less about the war and the great recovery began.

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