大象传媒

I married George Tulip in 1941 while I was working as a VAD nurse (see Mildred Joan Tulip I). He was the history teacher at Hookergate Grammar School where I had taught English before the war. He was 33 when we got married, rather too old to volunteer in the beginning but expecting to be called up soon.

When this happened, he was sent to Salisbury Plain to train in tanks. With his qualifications and age, he was given the chances of officer training and of remaining at Salisbury to instruct others, but he was determined to go overseas on just the same terms as the others and to do his best for his country by joining in the fighting. He was in the Queen's Bays, part of the Eighth Army which was deployed to North Africa in 1942. This is what I remember him telling me afterwards.

On the long sea crossing, lots of the men were sick; but fortunately George liked the sea. He got to know the other men who were to serve in the same tank and who remained lifelong friends - accountant Arthur Atherton, Scot Jock Lawrence, and Londoner Stan Betts. Arthur is the only one left now in 2006, living in Dorset.

In North Africa, conditions were tough, especially because of the shortage of water in the great heat. At first they were on the edge of the desert, near Cairo: as a historian, George was interested to be in Egypt. But once they were out in the desert, the ration was just a pint of water a day to cover everything - washing and shaving as well as drinking. There were bad sandstorms too: the sand got into everything, including the food. Leave was another problem because of course they couldn't get home. At one later stage though he did enjoy going walking
in the Atlas mountains with Arthur: there are a few phoptographs he took of them 'fraternising' with the local Arabs - many years later a picture of this was used as the frontispiece for the regimental magazine.

Field-Marshall Montgomery, 'Monty', became the Eighth Army's commanding officer in the desert and is often praised for how he led the Desert Rats and especially for his effect on the morale of the troops - not being standoffish and getting to know all his men. But George used to comment wrily when he heard this particular aspect of praise that he thought there was a fair element in this of what we would now call PR with an eye on popularity at home - his part of the army never saw him, whatever his other merits as a commander.

Back in England I was helping the work on decoding signals about the Germans at El Alamein, not knowing because of wartime secrecy that George was there himself. In fact his regiment had just been informed, 'The Queen's Bays have been given the honour of leading the attack'. "Some honour!" said George later, "It was the honour of being first through the minefield!" It is well known how fierce the battle was. Many of the attacking tanks were blown up, including the one driving right alongside George's with whose crew close friendships had developed. This was grim. There was virtually no chance when this happened of getting out of the tank through the small top hatch, so the surviving tank crews knew their less lucky friends were being roasted alive. But there was nothing you could do: you just had to keep going ahead.

But the battle of Alamein was won and the army swept on right across North Africa, clearing out the Germans. When they had done this, the troops thought that after all the fighting they ashould have been given home leave at last, instead of being kept waiting around in Africa. I thought so too. On the other hand, the U boats were keeping it dangerous to be at sea and at least waiting in Africa they were safe.

At last the wait came to an end and the y were moved to Sicily, then italy, fighting their way north up through the Italian mountains, often with vehicles getting bogged down. George wasn't this time involved in the very worst of the fighting, but even so the campaign was gruelling. Eventually they did reach Rome and found some respite.

On VE day, i was still at Blechley park. heartily glad though we were that the war was over, not all of us felt like celebrating much because of the losses many of us had suffered (see Mildred Joan Tulip IV). I was lucky to get George back safely - but not yet, for he was still in Rome. he was given a month's glorious leave in August 1945 but then, dispiritingly, had to return to Italy again even though the war was over. And there he remained for some months. he was relatively fortunate to be classed as a 'B' release, with a job to return to, but even so he had to continue to wait while the 'A' release people who were judged to have particularly impoortant work to do at home returned first. There were bottlenecks in issuing the necessary ration books, together with demob suits and the like; but, interested in the reasons for Churchill's historic post-war election defeat, George felt this delay in getting the troops home must have been a contributing factor for he certainly lost the support of many of the fighting men George knew as their frustration grew.

While he waited, George started to learn Italian and got to know one particular helpful Italian family really well. They were very hard up indeed for rations and later from England he wanted to send them a parcel with some of the things he knew they couldn't get - I remember reels of Sylkp thread was one of these. We had the parcel allmade up and carefuilly labelled with its harmless contents; but for some reason the authorities wouldn't let us send it. So that kind family never got the present he wanted to give. However, i did get a present - two in fact - small, exteemely delicate pieces of italian galssware that george succeeded in carrying safely back in his rucksack on the eventual long march home.

We didn't talk much about the war once he was back - partly because of the sadness and of course I couldn't say anything about Bletchley (to the question, "What did you do in the war?", we were just to say, "Something secret"), but perhaps mostly because our big wish was just to get back to normal life. This we did, the Hookergate teaching resuming for George and a happy family life following for us and our two children. remembering all those we knew who had not returned home, we were indeed the relatively lucky ones. However, while George had left for Salisbury still looking quite young at 33, by the time he came back - small wonder - he seemed very much older. It was scarcely surprising too that he had become a chain smoker, not knowing then of course how damaging this could be. He had smoked a little before the war; but during it supplies of cigarettes, sent out regularly thanks to the generosity of good friends from the village where he lodged, were one of the few available sources of solace among the fighting. One way and another, his wartime experience surely contributed to his high blood pressure and relatively early death in 1969 at the age of 61.

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