大象传媒

My father, Henry William Tyrrell (always known as "Harry"), was in the 2nd Batallion, Kings Royal Rifle Corps at the outbreak of WW2. Formerly a territorial, his regiment formed part of the 'diversionary' force at Calais immediately before the evacuation at Dunkirk. Unlike the troops at Dunkirk, the defenders of Calais were not evacuated, mostly being either killed or captured.

Out of ammunition and with his rifle full of sand (and, if you've seen the painting, "The Defence of Calais" by Terence Cuneo, you'd understand why!) my father was taken prisoner when Calais fell. On the march through the German lines, Harry and his mates were struck by the lack of mechanised transport possessed by the Germans. They all felt that, had they known the real situation of the Wehrmacht, they could have given the Germans "a bloody good hiding".

He never forgot the reception they received when they first marched into Germany at Aachen. So bad was the treatment they received at the hands of the civilian population that my father, thereafter, never forgave the people of Aachen. Years later, while travelling across Europe, we were forced to go into Aachen for petrol. The petrol pump attendant tried to engage my father in conversation but (he confessed later), it was all my father could do to stop himself from hitting the pump attendant.

According to my father, on the march across Europe, many soldiers died of the effects of dysentery. It seems the Germans simply didn't feed them. What made it worse was the smells of cooking on those occasions when they marched through towns and villages. The march ended for my father at a coal mine in Silesia, southern Poland. He estimated that only about 250 made it to the end of the march. It seems he only survived because of his robust physical condition (apparently, my grandma had been feeding him particularly well to build him up after he had his appendix removed!).

It was while he was down the mine that my father lost his thumb when his hand was smashed between two coal trucks. He told me that many workers died in those mines, very often as a result of infection from relatively minor wounds received while underground. My father had a narrow escape when, having come off his shift, the next shift (250 men) were all killed as a result of an explosion. Apart from a single Englishmen, the dead were all Poles; my father's shift was all-English. He never forgot seeing the bodies lined up on the ground as they were brought out.

When my father injured his hand, his first reaction was to get out of the mine immediately. He almost died from blood poisoning, spending three months in a hospital as a result. During this time he learned German, subsequently becoming very fluent. Always a scholar, in later years he used to read poems by Goethe and other German writers.

When he recovered, Harry was sent to Zabreh in Czechoslovakia; this was some time in 1943. Zabreh, then known by its German name of (I believe) Hohenstadt, is in northern Moravia, the eastern province of what is now the Czech Republic. There he met my mother, Anna Horvat. The first thing that struck her about him was how sad he looked.

Housed in a small camp of 15 or 20 men (allied soldiers of all nationalities, so it appeared to my mother), the prisoners in my father's camp were put to work as labourers in a pottery in Zabreh. A converted pub(!), the camp itself had only two guards. Although this seems a ludicrously small number, it begins to make sense when you realise that, in those days, Czech towns often had sizeable German populations (it was not unusual to find one village with a German population while the next village was all-Czech). Zabreh was not unusual in this respect: it would have also had a German garrison.

The camp was at the other end of the town from the pottery so, every day, Harry and his mates would march through the town each day for work. The popular image of PoWs wearing assorted items of apparel didn't apply here; these men looked after their uniforms and tried to present themselves as soldiers should. According to my mother, it was a fantastic sight watching them march each day and slightly unreal in that they always seemed to march as if they were on a parade ground. My mother says the other PoWs seemed to show my father an unusual level of respect which was what brought him to her notice.

Towards the end of the war, some of my father's camp-mates escaped to join the partisans in the area. Harry stayed behind because of my mother. He may also have stayed for other reasons. As the Germans retreated, they took their PoWs with them resulting in the death of many along the way. At some point, a dozen or so dead Russian soldiers were deposited in the mortuary in Zabreh and left there, apparently for some time. Eventually, my father and his mates were given the job of burying them. This seemed to affect my father very badly; for some time afterwards, he was constantly washing his hands and it seemed to him that he couldn't get rid of the smell of the bodies.

Despite the escapes of some of his mates, my father still appears to have been allowed out, at times unsupervised. When Zabreh was liberated, he was walking along the road towards town alone with my mother. Some German soldiers, pursued by Russians, came running down the road towards them, apparently intending to escape into the hills. According to my mother, bullets were flying both ways. My mother became very worried when she realised that Harry's uniform resembled that of a Russian and she was scared that the Germans would shoot him, thinking him a Russian. Thankfully this didn't happen and the soldiers all ran past them.

The Russians were all Mongols and, to a man, drunk almost all of the time. According to my mother, they would steal paraffin from sheds and out-houses to get drunk on. My mother always felt she was lucky not to have been raped by them (many Czech girls were).

Thus the war ended for Harry Tyrrell. He stayed with my mother's family and married her on 4th June 1945. Like many brides across Europe at that time, she wore a wedding gown made from a parachute. Harry flew back alone to England after their honeymoon in Prague, Anna following four months later. Having been away from Harry for so long, when the time came she didn't want to leave: her mum had to almost force here onto the plane! She still likes to boast about the fact that she flew in a Dakota. She still remembers how wonderful her first taste of fish and chips was and how astonished she was that it was never rationed.

Harry and Anna lived in West London (in Greenford, Southall and Wembley) for many years, producing seven children (John, Ivan, Anne, Vera, David, Mark (me) and Simon). Sadly, Vera died at two days old. Together with Anne and David, she was one of the 'Coronation Triplets' (so called by the press), being born in 1953.

Over the years, we have returned to Zabreh to see my mother's family on countless occasions, one trip coinciding with the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Thus, my mum and dad witnessed a Russian invasion TWICE!

Harry died in 1991. He lived just long enough to set eyes on his first great grandchild and to find himself singularly astonished at the CNN TV coverage from Baghdad as it was attacked in the first Gulf War.