A Family's Wartime Experiences

My father was called up when he turned 18, a few months after the start of World War II. I do not know which unit he first joined, but he ended up serving in the 8th Army ( he was one of the Desert Rats) and fought in North Africa and Italy, including Sicily. (He never had a good word to say about Italians for the rest of his life.) My grandmother told me how he spent his 21st birthday in North Africa and somehow the silver cigarette case she had sent to him arrived intact. He never ever spoke about the War or his part in it and whenever the topic came up, especially when my brothers and I were discussing the topic at school in the 60's and 70's, he would walk out of the room. I think this was due in part to the fact that one of his friends in the unit was shot dead in front of him in Alamein. Unknown to my mother, he also threw away his war medals and any items connected to the War, so we have no memorabilia at all.

He achieved the rank of Lance Corporal but there was some kind of incident regarding the riding of a motor bike and he got demoted back down to Private. In 1944 he was back in England moving prisoners of war around in a van (my mother told me this bit) when another vehicle hit his and that was how he and my mother met as she was walking past at the time and went to help. I do remember one of the prisoners of war remained in England, having married an English woman, and owned and ran a garden centre near to where we lived. I remember every time Dad wanted some plants we went there and they remained friends until their deaths.

My mother was a legal secretary and during the middle part of the War she was sent to Duxford to work for a Wing Commander Townsend (not completely sure I've remembered the name right as Mum never spoke much about it.) She did tell me that she was billeted at Duxford as it was a bit too far for her to go home, but on her first day there the Wing Commander read all these technical notes for her to type up, but not being used to the names of airplane parts, she had difficulty in taking them down in shorthand. However, being my mother, she thought that it wouldn't matter because she would retrieve his notes when he had finished dictating them. To her horror, after he had finished he tore the notes into small pieces and threw them in the wastepaper basket. She then spent the whole of her lunch hour trying to fit them together again, when he walked back in to see her on her hands and knees. She told him what had happened (as she said, she had no choice) but he laughed and said she should have asked him to slow down and ask for verification, but she was only 17 and very nervous. He then checked her notes with her and filled in the gaps for her.

Her middle sister, who was 15 at the time, also worked in a secretarial field, but at night would go round checking that every house on her patch had no chinks of light showing. Her youngest sister, who was 10, had been evacuated to Oxford but hated it there and after six months persuaded my grandmother to let her come back home.

Both my aunts told me that when the Blitz happened, they stood on the hill near their house and watched the flames leaping about and how fierce the fire was.

My grandmother kept chickens during the War and used them to supply herself and neighbours with eggs. When the chickens stopped laying she would use them for food.

My maternal grandfather is a mystery and we have been unable to find out much about him, especially as he died before my brothers and I were born and my grandmother rarely mentioned him.He was a civil engineer by trade but during the War he was working behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia., in some kind of weapon capacity. My youngest aunt told me that he always had a small suitcase packed and left in the hall and often there would be a knock on the door. He would answer it, pick up his case and walk out the door and that would be the last they saw of him for a while. Evidently, all my grandmother said was that he would be back when his work was finished but my aunt thought that even she did not know what he was doing. She said she vividly remembers one day, being in the local sweet shop where he was treating her to some rationed sweets, when the door opened and two men in suits came in and told my grandfather they needed him to come with them straight away. He said he had to get my aunt home first and they said they would drop her off at the corner of her road, but he would have no need to get out of the car as they had already picked up his suitcase and the plane was waiting. My aunt said that after that she didn't see him for nearly a year.