大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer for CSVBerkshire, Jim Grufferty,on behalf of George and Barbara Gardiner of Reading and has been added to the site with their permission.

Memories from George and Barbara Gardiner
of Reading in the war

About the time of Dunkirk my wife saw the men coming back A lot of them came back with what they stood up in. She saw some of them in Reading some without shirts some without shoes being taken up to sleep in the halls in London St. I got married in my 鈥淒unkirk suit鈥� which was the uniform I came back in.

My wife claims I wrote a letter to her every day I was in North Africa and that I have not written one since. Will not even write a cheque to pay a bill. Done my share of writing then is my excuse!

Barbara鈥檚 father ran a hardware shop in Caversham. When the USA entered the war in1942 they brought their Sherman tanks to Woodcote woods near Caversham. The soldiers used to come shopping to Caversham parking their tanks on the forecourt outside the shop. They would get their primus stoves out and cooked sausages and onions with a brew up.

A German plane tried to bomb Caversham Bridge dropping incendiaries all round, including the Peoples Pantry, on its way back from a London raid. We got galvanized buckets off the ceiling in the shop and with stirrup pumps helped to put out the fires. Barbara鈥檚 father used to go down to the paint suppliers behind Heelas and while there both he and my father were photographed for the Chronicle sweeping up all the debris from the same raid.. There was a bakers shop at the end of Hemdean Rd and the owner was burned terribly while sitting on the toilet. It went right down his back and made worse when people put water on it to try and ease his pain. He was in a very bad state.

It was many years later before I got my North Africa campaign medals. My wife saw an article in the paper to apply for them. She did apply and I got them, this was about 30 years ago. There were not any medals to recognise those at Dunkirk

While abroad in North Africa and just before coming home we were all asked our nearest railway station and of course I said Reading. About a month before Christmas 1944 when I got back I was posted to Sheffield training young RAF men to drive lorries. A friend of mine from Bolton was transferred to Aldershot. There must be some logic in it for the army. After four year abroad you were classified under the 鈥淧oison Scheme鈥� which meant you could not be sent abroad again. At this time my wife was working in her family hardware shop opposite the Griffin in Caversham. A customer asked where George was and when she said Sheffield and would not be going there for Christmas she said you could go with a cousin of hers Councillor Mrs Roebuck. We went all the way to Scotland and visited all the relations getting a Christmas dinner at everybody we called on. Had a marvellous time.

On another occasion we were driving to Manchester and then on to Scotland. My wife鈥檚 father had saved petrol assigned to the shop knowing I was coming home on leave. We had it in the back of the Morris Minor. We got to Oxford and the police stopped us. We were quaking in our shoes with about 20 gallons of petrol in the back. They asked me where I had been and when I said North Africa they said come on they would escort us through Oxford.

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