大象传媒

One of the saddest aspects of the Second World war is the loss felt by relatives of those who served in the armed forces.

My mother, Joan Franklin as she was, always felt cheated by the war. Robbed of the time she should have had with her teenage love, and first husband, Allan Green.

Joan and Allan met aged sixteen, they both loved to cycle and spent all their weekends and summer holidays roaming the hills of Derbyshire with their cycling club friends. We still have photographs of them out on these trips and their happiness is obvious.

They decided very quickly that they wanted to be together forever and married while still in their late-teens. They were still setting up home in Bosworth at Allan's family shop when war broke out. By all accounts, Allan wasn't a natural soldier, but he was called up early, drafted into the R.A.S.C, and by 1940 was a driver in the North African campaign. I have an album of my Mother's full of Allan's photographs. In one he is posing with his Jeep named 'Joan'. In another his friends are shown clambering over wrecked German aircraft, in others they are working on vehicle engines and recovering Tanks.

He went right through the North African Campaign, and I still have both his 8th Army shoulder patch and my mother's R.A.S.C 'Sweetheart' broach.

After three years in the desert he came home, but only for the build up to the invasion of Europe. June 1944 saw him in France, where one day he met a young boy called Bernard Prevost, who asked him for food. The friendship with Bernard lasted well into the 1970's. Allan was there for the liberation of Brussels, and we have more photo's of him and his friends with wrecked and abandoned V-2 rockets as they continued to advance across Europe.

In 1945 he was de-mobbed and came home for good. I find it interesting to compare the picture of him in 1940, fresh faced, grinning, in an ill fitting battle dress and great coat, with one of him in 1945, Sergeant's chevrons on his arm, Africa Star on his chest. It's obvious that those five years had changed him beyond all recognition.

My mother always said that Allan came back from the war changed, coarsened even. Not the young boy she had seen off at the train station so many years before.

They settled down together and in 1953 my brother was born. They were finally able to settle happily down to family life, but it wasn't to last. In 1955 Allan suddenly, with no warning died of a brain embolism.

Between the ages of eighteen and and twenty three, what most people would consider the best years, my mother and Allan had barely seen each other. Now at the age of thirty five he was gone for good.

There are, of course, far more tragic stories of loss than this one, but my mother always felt that the loss of those five precious years with Allan was her greatest personal sacrifice to the war years.

Paul Fagan

Post Script:

A further example of loss.

A lady who was a friend of my Father had a younger brother, the last time she saw him was as she waved him off at Plymouth Railway Station. He was a 16 year old boy seaman joining his ship, the Battle Cruiser H.M.S Repulse.

Repulse was sent with the Battleship H.M.S Prince of Wales to the Far East to defend Singapore. Both ships (Force Z) were sunk in February 1942 by Japanese bombers.

This lady knew her brother had survived the sinking (he was seen by other survivors) and returned to Singapore, probably to the Queen Alexandria Hospital. After that, the trail goes dead. Anyone who has studied the Far East campaign knows of the atrocities committed by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore, but after 60 years of searching, this lady still doesn't know what became of the boy she saw off on the train all those years ago...

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