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Meantime my brother came home from London expecting to go to Scotland to a big meeting of the Scouts but from feeling a bit off-colour became quite seriously ill with fluid in his chest displacing his heart and ended up in hospital to have the fluid drained and then a period of rest at home followed by a week of convalescence at a small farm in Northumberland between Alnwick and Rothbury. Whilst he was there I was taken by my landlady and the lodger by car to visit him. This was a very kind act on their part, but people were kinder to each other then than they seem to be now. Perhaps that was an example of what has become known as the ‘wartime spirit.’ Not long after that visit a returning German bomber, perhaps damaged or lost, dropped a bomb to lighten its load before returning home to Germany. He missed the buildings but perhaps woke up a few sheep or hens. There were no legitimate targets on the moors in mid Northumberland.

My sister got fed up with clerking and joined the WAAF which was the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. She served a while in England around Oxford and the Thames valley and later at the end of the war she served in Egypt. In fact by a fluke of coincidence in mid to late summer in 1946 she was on a jaunt with one of her WAAF friends and a couple of RAF men when she saw the troopship carrying me on National Service to Singapore. I was standing on the deck of the Strathnaver troop ship in my tropical uniform along with a lot of other young soldiers wolf whistling at the small camouflage canvas topped van by the side of the Suez canal as we spotted these young women waving. I thought then ‘that looks like my sister’. This was confirmed by her letter home saying that she had seen my ship going through the canal. She had had no previous warning because I did not know which ship I would be on or which day it would be where so my parents could not know either. Besides which there was the ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ embargo. However that was after the war so it has no part to play here.

My brother joined the Army when he was able to work again and when he was able to get release from his ‘reserved occupation’ working for the Government and Ministry of Defence or perhaps its old name of ‘The War Office.’ He had training in the Royal Corps of Signals and then officer training and posting to Italy towards the end of the campaign. I believe his work was mostly the installation and servicing of the Army telephone network rather than fighting.

As a youngster and away from home for most of the time I did not experience much of the bombing but the war was all around us. Every sound of aircraft was a worry and there was much learning of ‘aircraft identification.’ German bombers had a distinctive noise from their diesel engines, quite different from the sweet Merlin engines of the Lancaster bombers and the Spitfires and Hurricanes. I did see a British bomber in a field after an emergency landing when returning home damaged by shells or guns from a raid across the North Sea. That was near Boulmer on the Northeast coast of Northumberland. There was also a German fighter on fire in a field near Alnwick but its ammunition was exploding so we stayed clear.

Of course this was the time before television, when as youngsters we could not buy radios and the news was for the nation rather than the regions. My pocket money and curiosity were not enough to stretch to newspapers which in any case were censored and often late in hearing news of events and reluctant to provide up to date news which could confirm damage to the enemy. ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ remember. It was written everywhere and if you were overheard someone on your side would remind you of it. An enemy would encourage you to say more! The war altered ordinary behaviour too. It reached surprising depths in your life patterns and attitudes. Of course that only dawned on me later in my more mature years.

There was a change of attitude which became known as the ‘Wartime Spirit’. It was a feeling of togetherness and concern for the troubles of others caused by a common and identifiable enemy but my troubles were as nothing compared to those of my German born wife who is a little younger than me but she then was on the other side. At six years old she was hardly a menace.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Nicola Muni of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Stoke on behalf of Malcome John Green and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the terms and conditions.

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