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A Poker Game.

I was thirteen at the time of the D-Day landings and living in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire where my parents owned a boarding house in the Market Place. In 1944 most of our guests were American servicemen who seemed to be able to skip out of the local camps for frequent weekend leave. Although they knew that eventually something massive was going to start in Europe and that they would be plunged into, in the meantime they were waiting and rehearsing a sort of war game. They swept though our town in dark green jeeps to their camp behind the Brewery in Albion Street or out to their tanks parked in the fields around our town. This was the official and public face of our allies but whenever they could get away from those duties they booked themselves in to our boarding house and spent every available minute playing poker in my mother’s dining room.

For me those Yanks, like the war in some respects, came straight out of an artificial film world. They wore very smooth well tailored uniforms unlike our troops who came dressed in rough and often baggy kit. I imagined them to be superior beings, fresh out of Hollywood with a sophisticated language that sounded just like film-talk with a behaviour to match. Even when they cursed something or someone it all sounded quaint and foreign to me. At that time I thought I knew everything about war from reading comics such as the Rover and the Wizard and of course seeing all those war films. Usually the business of war was presented as one great adventure which always skirted around its central purpose. Much later in 1949, doing National Service, it came as a complete surprise to me when our instructor told us that our main purpose would be to kill the enemy.

There were others in Chipping Norton who shared another naive view of the Americans, in particular those young girls who queued to get into olive green army trucks every Saturday in our Market Square. Girls, who screamed at reluctant parents, flaunted their sexuality, believed that it was all secure if you were standing upright at the time and who disappeared for odd periods between the appearance of new siblings.

'No better than she should be' my mother would say

I saw other facets of the Americans at war that challenged what I had seen at the local cinema. Sometimes looking dishevelled in the morning then later in my mother's dining room, eating Spam and eggs for breakfast, with jam on the eggs. Playing endless games of poker or pontoon amid cigarette smoke clouds with very little said except raise you or see you, The daughter of my mother's assistant was continually finding excuses to get into conversation with them but on such occasions the card battle was all absorbing. On Saturday when she was adorned with makeup and wearing her tightest dress, the day would be punctuated by rows about the forthcoming evening camp dance.

' No you are not going and there's an end to it'

This followed by screams and slamming of doors cries of

'Its my life'. 'You always spoil everything'.

Eventually she would be out there in that queue, along with the others, swinging her cheap plastic handbag and giggling as the Americans helped her up over the tailboard of the transport.

These were the early days of the American involvement when they were arriving, preparing for war, and meanwhile entertaining us with their strange behaviour. Later it became more serious with regular training periods as the possibility of a landing in Europe increased. They were now doing week-long field manoeuvres that began in the Market Square around a cluster of military vehicles including jeeps with a few lorries, and occasionally half-track armoured cars. The tanks, which once used to scrape away at the corner of our streets as they spun on their tracks were kept off the roads after the first years of the war and restricted to the fields. The Yanks after assembling in our square, would board their transport and then, watched by the usual cluster of small boys and girl friends, take of with a wave and general scattering of chewing gum and other odd objects.

They were off to play serious war games but not all of them were very enthusiastic about those field events and some preferred the comfort of my mother's dining room. For most manoeuvres, it took them about half a day to escape the rigours of the countryside before they slipped back into town through the back streets. Their jeeps would be parked in old sheds behind the boarding house camouflaged with sacks and then they would troop into our back garden. The dining room was at the back of the house away from the street and well concealed from the special police SP.'s who would occasionally patrol the town in their white gloves and helmets, but rarely left their jeeps. Meanwhile my mother prepared endless eggs and chips for the hungry crowd in a smoke filled room next to our kitchen. Giant figures would stand hesitant in the doorway holding cups or plates.

'Say Ma'am how about some more of your coffee'

Our dining room had a single very large table around which everyone ate and a smaller table against the wall on which we had a small Philco radio. This was always switched on, tuned to the home service but turned down low so that it didn't disturb the concentration of the poker school. At such sessions, the table became covered with a chaotic mess of cards, ashtrays, money and used plates. My mother would order that this should be cleared and a fresh white tablecloth laid before the formality of the evening meal. For the rest of the day from mid morning to late afternoon, those Americans were undisturbed and totally absorbed in a war of cards. They did listen at, odd times, to the news but for the most part concentrated on their game and the uneven pile of bank notes at each position around the table.

By some strange scheme, perhaps it was as simple as a telephone call, the absent soldiers knew exactly where to rendezvous with their group out in the countryside. They would pack their kit, pay their bill and disappear only to reappear as real soldiers next day back in the square. Girl friends would cluster around them probably believing their stories about sleeping rough and looking forward to a weekend jitterbugging at the local camp dance.

After a number of such field manoeuvres, our visitors had became almost casual in their rendezvous in my mother's dining room and would now book in advance rather than simply appear in our garden. The war continued to go against the Germans, and everyone knew that something was about to break except it seemed, for those who continued to evade their war practise away in our back room. Graffiti was appearing calling for the second front to be opened and everyone sensed that there was going to be an invasion soon. Everyone it seemed but our Americans who appeared strangely cool about the prospect and more interested in those camp dances and winning at poker.

Another field manoeuvre just like the others and our Americans were all sitting around the table in the back room with the little Philco radio murmuring on the side table. At first, it could be hardly heard above the chatter of the card players but then one of the Americans caught something unusual, shouted for hush and turned up the volume.

'This morning the first contingent of our forces landed along the Normandy beaches, The Americans have landed near …'

The announcer read on with a list of places where the allies had landed in Normandy. Their war had begun and our Yanks were supposed to be involved; somewhere in a field, on the road to Southampton or even on their way to France in a landing barge. Instead, they were standing among the debris of their cards, their money piles and unwashed plates with that little radio still adding ever more stories about that other war. They were detached, absent without leave with no idea where their colleagues might be.

'How much we owe you ma'am', 'I'm packed Gene you ready', 'You owe me',
'Lets go', 'Hey where'd did we park that damned jeep'

The dining room was empty now, the plates stacked by our sink, the window open to clear the smoke and my father already preparing an evening meal. Our Yanks just vanished, we never saw any of them again, although we learnt later about such things as hopeful GI wives, and other survivors who they had left behind in Chipping Norton. An American sergeant cook, who my father knew well, was one of those we did hear about. He had been stabbed to death by a fanatical Hitler youth that he had befriended and allowed to work in his kitchen. For those of our backroom boys who survived that dreadful carnage on Omaha beach and the rest of their war through to Berlin, we liked to believe that they would sometimes remember how their war started out of a disturbed poker game.

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