大象传媒

What I remember of my Grandad was that he was a man of great stature: both in physicality and in his wisdom of the world.

As a child with the mysteries of my universe quietly unfolding before me, I would be delighted when this gentle giant would take my hand and lead me out into the world. A walk with my Grandad usually culminated in a stop at the library, a place that was to quench his thirst for knowledge and irritate my precious hours as I was yet to understand the value and beauty of books and was so far a stranger to the relish for knowledge.

Idling away my time, in the only way a child can, I randomly chose books in the hope of pleasing him and I would will him to hurry with his choices. But, as the hours passed, I would watch him from a secret corner beguiled: he was magic to me for reasons I cannot explain. Each of his chosen books would be devoured like some precious elixir that had to be consumed at speed and so our library visits were many. Despite my impatience, I observed him, quietly enamoured of his paternal presence.

That my Grandad had been part of the Second World War I knew very little about, but it was, despite my early years, something that I was acutely aware of. The marriage that existed between him and my Nana (a German civilian met after the war in 1948 when he was stationed as a Military Policeman in Brunschweig) was the best evidence I had that he had been part of the mystery that was war. I was yet to know that he had been to unimaginable places, that he would mostly be forever silent about the journeys that war had taken him on, the scenes that he had witnessed, the events of which he had been an instrumental part, the bittersweet triumphs and the shattering defeats and how he could probably still recall, without a pause, each moment of the years that he was involved in conflict, but that openly he didn't care to. With war etched in his past, he appeared to choose to leave it there: there was a future to concentrate on now.

With our bound narratives chosen we would sometimes take a quiet walk to the shorefront, and it is today only, as an adult glancing backwards into her own past, that I wonder, as we both stared into the violence of the crashing tide, with a deafening silence enveloping us, just how many intolerable scenes or respectful remembrances he was alowing himself to drown in. I had an innate sense that I was in the presence of greatness: an everyman kind of greatness and it was his war story that I was desperate to be fed and yet he would never be the one to dish it. To this day it remains incomplete, the snippets that I have gleaned from family and dipping my toes into the ocean of research sustain me.

Despite his wealth of experience Robert Coulson deemed himself to be an ordinary man, his involvement in the War he accepted as his duty and nothing to flaunt with either pride or regret. This is a sentiment that seems to reverberate across the years by his fellow comrades and is evident in so many of the handsome accounts lodged in this archive. I can only tell his story from fragments of his children's memories, from a few precious documents: Army service records, a newspaper article and through research filling in the many historical gaps. I will tell it with apologies to him for any apparent inaccuracies and with increasing reverence for him and all involved in the war. I am acutely aware that my humble words cannot ever do him justice. But, the quiet; unassuming Yorkshire man that I knew probably wouldn't want me to anyway.

Sergeant Robert Coulson or "Tiny" as he was otherwise, affectionately known (a nickname that was attributed to his Six foot One frame) spent a total of almost Thirty seven years in the Army, a lifetime these days!

In 1930, with all of eighteen years behind him, he presented his lanky frame at the appropriate place in Hull and enlisted in the Coldstream Guards. Not without disapointment I'm sure, it wasn't long before he found himself in The Sudan and then Egypt, being trained as a Soldier and for a battle that no-one expected was coming.

After a brief period of return to civilian life, that saw him still in uniform as a Police Officer and an Army reserve. Grandad took the decision to re-join the Army and enlist in the Corps of the Military Police one month prior to the British prime minister declaring war on Germany as a result of Hitler's attack on Poland - a declaration that lead most of most of the globe into the Second World War.

Brandishing the title of "Redcap" the established tradition of Soldiers that were well known for being the first in and the last out of the battlefield, he was sent to France in 1939 were he served through the campaign. I can only guess that he was at the Battle of Monte Cassino as there is documentary evidence of him having left France from Dunkirk.

His Army service records tell me that following his departure from Dunkirk he spent a period of time at home; here I can only assume that he was instrumental (along with countless others) in defending British shores from Nazi invasion. It was during this time at home that he was to be one of the first Military Policemen to gain a mention in Dispatches: on 20th December 1940 for distinguished service in the field between March and June of the same year.

It is with regret that I cannot recount why he was deserving of such a mention. My Uncle Pete (one of his sons) remembers a brief mention of my Grandad having moved a burning vehicle away from many explosives, but that could just be one one of many acts throughout his home period. My uncle Hans (one of his sons) remembers talk of Grandad being held in particular high esteem and notoriously well known in the Army for his Police skills: utilising the particular talents and and expertise gained in The Police force prior to re-joining the Army to great effect with regards to the harder edge of crime: drugs, looting, murder investigations.... No-one can tell me for sure and no amount of research has led me to a place, as yet, that can tell me exactly what it was that Robert Coulson did to warrant such a distinction as a Dispatches mention but family are right in saying that specifics are not so important, the mere fact that he was mentioned is enough.

In 1941, Robert Coulson was to find himself returning to Egypt and crossing Africa with the 8th Army Division. I assume that he must have met the wrath of Rommels desert offensive in one guise or another and I have read that the 8th Army were supposedly hanging on by the skin of their teeth, with divisions pounded and armour and artillery almost none existent towards the end. I have tried without success to imagine what a Soldier's life during this war must have been like but the way that they were equipped to do their job and the conditions that they had to exist and fight in is just beyond comprehension.

I always knew that the phrase "Desert Rat" and my Grandad were almost synonymous. He went to Italy with the famous 7th Armoured Division and became part of the British North Africa Force which I understand to have been involved in the Invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky) at the early part of the Italy campaign, the aim of which being to force Italy out of the War. After a short period of preparation for the Normandy Landings (Operation Overlord) spent on British turf, he pushed onwards with the Desert Rats through France, after landing there on D Day. Continuing to serve alongside other Desert rats he went on to take part in the liberation of Belgium and the Netherlands. Time spent in Holland saw him preparing to cross the Rhine with the intention of heading for Hamburg, where after a succesful, if not arduous crossing, the 11th Hussars (who worked closely with the 7th Armoured Division) led them into the ruined city that was Hamburg. In July 1945 Robert Coulson, along with the rest of the remaining men from the 7th Armoured Division moved towards Berlin as instructed and he took part in the famous march into the city.

A Post War Sergeant Robert Coulson continued to spend time in Germany as part of the British Army of the Rhine, the occupying forces, until he finally relinquished his "Redcap" and joined the corps he was to remain in (a corps that was to bring him back to Britain, amongst other places, and that would most notably see him as part of the Middle East land forces) until his retirement. That corps being The Royal Engineers.

There are narratives, anecdotes, fractured pieces of an incomplete memory, recounted for me by family. There are rumblings of Grandads experiences of stumbling upon concentration camps, going into them under an official capacity and witnessing the fallout of the atrocities committed in such places. There was his habit of a lifetime of wearing his watch, with the watch face on the inside of his wrist. His reasons for doing so: so that the light from the face would not reflect in the night sky into the windshield of an enemy aircraft, enabling you to transport yourself across the desert at night on your motorbike without being identified. There was the philosophical soul who would never mess with the traditions of another culture when it came to peacekeeping, most noteworthy the ones that he came to know in Africa. I recall that he had particular respect for cultural diversity probably born out of experiencing so much of it so young and his ever growing open mind.

There is the lighter side of War (if it's possible to make that statement) with an amusing anecdote recounted by my Mum. My Grandad had the fortune to find himself in charge of a "Thunderbox" when King George VI visited the troops in the desert. It was "Tiny's" job to move across the various parts of the desert that the king had moved to, whenever the said "Thunderbox" was required for the Kings use. Mum has said that her Dad had joked in later years, far removed from the task, that if he had retained and sold what had gone into the "Thunderbox" he would have been worth a fortune.

It is a running joke amongst the family that Grandad also spent more bullets putting animals caught up and injured in the crossfire out of their misery. As much as this would have been the case, we all know that his bullets will have been used for other purposes too as otherwise, how the hell did he get out of the war alive?

Robert Coulson was a fatalist, so my Mother (his daugter) tells me. He believed himself to be a lucky man because as he had so obviously faced death so many times during the many campaigns of the war and evaded it, he had been allowed the privelege to come home, embrace post war Army life and eventually civilian life along with the luxury of having a wife and family. This was a privelege that was denied to so many (too many) of the "Poor buggers" as he would have pronounced them in his Yorkshire lilt, who died in various stages of combat and didn't follow his path home.

He eventually fought another War, one that he was destined to lose. Fate tapped him on the shoulder and a ravaging Cancer got the better of him in the end. We lost him, his experiences, memories, knowledge and torments. Mostly we lost a good man!

I will never come to truly know the part of the laid back man who held so many secrets of his personal (and the countries collective) history unshared. But, I have to respect his silence and be grateful that he was part of my world at all, that I had the privelege to know him long enough for him to plant the seeds of curiosity and wonder at my feet. The memory of him whispers to me through the echoes of my own increasing years and I can only smile at the irony of the books that continue to overwhelm my burdened shelves, in the home of the girl who once hated the library.

But as time inevitably unravels before us, I am afraid. As more of the worlds remaining comrades are lost to death, I worry that the memory of the war may fade and they, along with their heroic everyman deeds, may be forgotten. That is why this archive is of such immense importance, like the men themselves, like the war itself, they (and it) should never be forgotten. For all of the worlds madness today, they remind us that there is goodness in it and despite their protestations to the contrary, these men (and women) were anything but ordinary.

I express my thanks to each and every one.

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