大象传媒

My father was a miner, an occupation that exempted men from military service but he was an army reservist, and decided to join his regiment. I recall the bustle about the house as he packed a few things into an attache case, mainly his shaving-gear from the scullery window-ledge, ready for departure, in response i imagine to a wireless announcement of mobilisation. It was Friday, 1st September, 1939. He had already gone by the time the postman, in a three wheeler van, delivered call-up papers the next day. My clear recollection was helped by the fact that he gave me a ride up the lane, a big treat for a six-year-old. On 3rd September, after church, we listened to the declaration of war at 11.00 a.m., by which time Dad was well and truly mobilised en route for the Maginot Line.
He came on leave once, by which time we had moved to the posh council house, (gas and electricity as well as a bathroom!), which they had been waiting for pre-war. The next time he left France, a fortnight after when most of the British forces had withdrawn at Dunkirk, he boarded the ill-fated 'Lancastria', which was dive-bombed and sunk before leaving St. Nazaire on 17th June, 1940 with about 6,500 on board, of whom only 2477 survived. Not much later, whilst 'assisting the civil power' in one of Plymouth's devastating air raids, he and another soldier helping an old lady to a shelter were caught by a bomb blast. I remember sitting with my sister on the edge of mother's double bed as she read us a letter which half-way through said, "I am continuing this in pencil because I am in hospital....." He was never completely fit thereafter. The other soldier and the old lady were never found.
We saw more of Dad in the latter stages of the war, when for a time he was posted as a staff instructor to Stafford Home Guard and later as a Quartermaster Serjeant-Major servicing a camp for returning liberated British P.O.Ws. He was demobbed in June 1945 and went to work in a Wolverhampton factory. There he made the acquaintance of a number of German P.O.W.s. At Christmas that year, to the great disgust of many of our neighbours, (most of whom had spent the war in lucrative 'reserved occupations'), we entertained two of them to Christmas dinner. A third dined at my aunt's and joined us in the afternoon. As it was a special occasion we had a fire in the 'front room'. I shall not ever forget the experience of sitting round that fire and the tears of homesickness that flowed as they sang "Stille Nacht". They had been prisoners for four years.-I have always treasured my father's wonderful example of Christian forbearance.

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