My father is Peter Stockwell Hollingworth of Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire who was 20 years of age when he went to Normandy in 1944 and was a Signalman Dispatch Rider with the Royal Corps of Signals from November 1942 through to March 1946. Dad was a Technical Dyer and Company Director in the Textile industry in West Yorkshire and his apprenticeship at the start of his career like many others of his generation was split by war service. I remember him telling me about several of his exploits and it was mainly the splendid people with whom he was privileged to serve. I mention two of these, Johnny Devon and Irvin Jagger who I knew personally as a child and one attended my wedding. These two gentlemen came over the Pennines in February 1994 through near blizzard conditions to attend Dad's funeral. Dad was an only child, so he regarded these great men as brothers. They were a true band of brothers. Irvin was delighted to tell me that he had just bought an old wartime motorcycle as a restoration project. He was sorry that Dad would not be around to enjoy helping him with this work! Also mentioned a lot in the diaries is Bob Thornley who tragically lost his life at the age of 21 in a motorcyle accident in July 1945, when like most of the population he was celebrating having survived and won the war. Dad was also close at the time to a Dutch family, the Wondergem's from Eindhoven in Netherlands who he met in 1944 and they showed him much kindness. He lost touch with them but we visited them again as a family in 1972.
Dad asked me as a child to look after his souvenirs one day, which my sister passed to me in a box. There are ID cards, Army Pay books and an ARP helmet etc., but the priceless things are these diaries. I've made a selection of date entries. The task of typing up every day would have sent me blind as the writing is so small.
I had a really close relationship with my father who was a hero to me. However there are lots of things I have learned this week as I've typed up from his tiny handwritten original diaries. Even though he's my father, I'm seeing his rather alien world, now part of our history, through the eyes of a young man in his late teens/early twenties, precisely the age my children are now. The second point I have realised in perfoming this typing task for him is that he spent three and a half years of his life constantly dismantling, repairing and restoring a range of rather tempremental motorbikes on which probably his life and that of others depended. So when I was growing up he was known in the family as Mr Fixit. Nothing ever phased him. I now know why he scorned the later sealed for life products with built in obsolesence that can't be fixed by someone with his endless patience! The last and most scary thing is that one of the diary entries refers to my Grandfather's age upon his birthday, which was four years younger than I am now!
I think that this project to capture these memories is invaluable. The internet wasn't around when Dad was alive. He certainly would though have fully approved of this wonderful method of storing the memories of his generation for those to come.
Nick Hollingworth, Wimborne, Dorset 31/1/06
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