大象传媒

My earliest memory, at the age of two and a half, was of my father getting his call up papers in 1941; I remembered the words 'Call up papers' because they must have been repeated so often in my hearing. I was sitting on the kitchen floor behind my mother, who was working at the sink, when my father appeared at the back door and made the announcement. I suppose the emotion of the moment must have somehow transmitted itself to me.

I think, however, an earlier memory is lodged somewhere in my sub-conscious, in the form of the sound of a diving Stuka dive bomber which still sends a shiver down my spine if I ever hear it on film. We lived in Brentwood in Essex, less than twenty miles from London, where I was apparently frequently rushed, babe in arms, by my parents to the Anderson Shelter in the garden of our home during the battle of Britain and the blitz and they would sometimes pause and watch the Spitfires, Hurricanes and ME 109s writing vapour trails in the sky as they fought overhead.

The next memory I have of my father was his coming home from the army on 'Embarkation leave' I heard that word a lot as well. By that time my mother, my elder brother and I had moved in with my mother's parents and sister in a detached bungalow a couple of miles away. My brother slept in my aunt's bed and I slept with my mother in what was called 'The lumber room'.

When I awoke one morning there was my father at my bedside in army uniform with a rifle from which he miraculously fired a piece of chocolate for me. As sweets were rationed I can only imagine that this 'Miracle' had been aided in some way by the fact that my Grandfather owned a shop, which sold confectionery.

Victory.

The years passed and I grew up with the language of war and its privations but one day the war in Europe was at last over and the peace which I had so often heard about became a reality. VE day was warm and sunny and I was in bed with measles when my mother came in and announced that the war was over except in Japan. There were people in the street, churches that still had bells were ringing them, and ears were glued to wireless sets, though I do not suppose for one minute that the solemn, sonorous tones of John Snagge would have had even a hint of gaiety when he read the news.

There was laughter and smiles everywhere and union jacks and bunting was hung on house fronts and across the street and my mother said that my father would be coming home. It was more than a year later before he finally arrived, I had watched people hang messages of welcome on house after house like,'Welcome home Len'and 'I love you darling'.

In the mean time we looked with fascinated horror at the pictures of the victims of Nazi concentration camps and, after VJ day, to the pictures of starving British troops in Japanese camps and murmured sympathy to relatives of theirs whom we knew.

Demobilisation.

I was getting impatient to see a father whom I could not remember after nearly five years, in fact we had moved back to our old house before he arrived, I was seven and my elder brother was eleven. My mother did not hang any flags out for him, she was not that sort. I first saw him when he arrived home on demobilisation leave with a friend, he was tanned and in uniform and wreathed in smiles, he kissed us all, I was not used to being kissed by a man, and he spoke with an Irish accent.

He brought presents, a white silk parachute that he was hoping to use in some way, a beautifully carved wooden Italian donkey and cart that he had bought from a German prisoner with cigarettes in the prisoner of war camp at Altamura in Italy. Two china dogs and two cast metal models of statues of St Peter he had bought in Rome and a rosary blessed by the Pope.

He wanted my mother to play the piano for him and his friend but she would not. I felt sorry for him, he was so jolly and he wanted to show her off. The visit was brief as he had to go back to be demobbed.

The next time he came, some weeks later, he was in 'civvies' as he called his clothes. I met him at the door with a broken clockwork model of the 'Coronation Scott'. I was hoping that he would mend it as I imagined that was what fathers were for.

Battle memories.

We heard many stories of his experiences which he never tired of telling people, how he knocked out Jack Dempsey's sparring partner going out to Africa on the troop ship.

How he was smoking a pipe while on guard in the western desert and, when surprised by the officer commanding the guard, he had put it in his pocket and the officer said, 'Fall out soldier you are on fire'.

He spoke of the flies in the desert and the smell of the dead, about eating 'bully' beef and biscuits, of not being able to wash, how the troops looked forward to their mail, how he wrote letters for some of them, how they would cry at bad news from home. How the Catholic Padre said Mass on the back of a lorry.

He spoke with the greatest admiration of Field Marshal Lord Montgomery, under whom he served, and the great respect that the eighth army had for General Rommel and the German Afrika Corps.

He loved the Italians when he landed there, the children who were starving would stand near them when food was being served and the troops would share their meals with them.

The Italians would try and jump on the back of the army lorries in the streets and once when my father was driving German prisoners of war he gave one of them his rifle to scare the Italians off, a punishable offence no doubt but it worked. One of the prisoners said to my father "Why do the British soldiers swear so much?"

In Rome the British soldiers were assembled and told that the Roman Catholics could fall out for a general audience with the Pope, he laughed because almost all of them fell out.

He said that sometimes he was ashamed of the behaviour of the British troops in Italy. He told my sons and me two more stories, in an almost confessional manner, some forty years later when he was suffering from Parkinson's disease just before he died.

He was driving along a desert road in North Africa when a South African half track vehicle sped past him and suddenly cut in front of him such that my father became angry and swore at him, then shortly afterwards the half track went over a mine and blew up killing the driver, who had saved my father's life.

In Northern Italy he was driving a lorry full of hungry troops along a road when they saw a small field of potatoes so he stopped and they pulled them up and ate them then a woman came along crying and said that they had eaten all the food that her family had to eat.
"But we were so hungry" my father said unable to disguise the sorrow in his heart at what he had done.

Strangers.

When my father came home I did not know him and he did not know me and I was soon to learn that his discipline was much harsher than my Grandfather's. I was not used to it. My Grandfather died when I was twelve and it was like losing a father.

My younger brother was born within a year of my father's return and he became the apple of his eye. My elder brother and I never enjoyed a similar relationship with him, we were forever different.

I shed many tears as I helped carry my father鈥檚 coffin in Ireland, though I was never close to him, because of that it could be said that the mark of the war is still upon me.

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