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Seventy-five Years Ago Today....(and eventually Eighty!)

ChrisM

Super Moderator
Staff member
Seventy-five years ago today, 6th March 1943........

I'm not doing much, really, just mucking about. I should be at school - Sandwell School in Streetly - but I've had measles and although I'm better I'm not allowed to go back yet. Not that I'm too bothered about that! So here I am, peering around the half open door of our garage, down the drive towards the gate and the hawthorn hedge which is the barrier between us and the Chester Road and the whole outside world. Mum is in the house somewhere, doing whatever she does there; or else getting ready for her W.V.S. shift or even for the weekly meeting of local housewives. They get together to knit mittens and scarves and balaclavas for the troops. Knitting and nattering, in other words. Probably talking about their sons or husbands who are far away. I sometimes go with her, if I'm not at school. One or two of the houses have lovely gardens which I can explore until tea is ready. We often get cake.

To be honest, I don't know exactly which day I am doing this, and it may not be precisely March 6th. I know it is not Sunday because the driveway is empty – the family Ford Prefect isn't there and so Dad is at work (he is allowed a small petrol ration) - and I have an uninterrupted view of the gate. Although I suppose he is often not there on a Sunday as well. That's because of Home Guard business. It is not a Monday either, thank goodness, as then the garage would be full of steam from the gas wash-boiler and the smell of bed linen being laundered, the dolly being swung backwards and forwards as fast as possible by my mother. It's jolly hard work and she has a funny expression on her face while she does it. And then the mangling. I have to keep my fingers right out of the way while this goes on. So it could be any day around now although it might even be a little bit earlier.

I am vaguely aware of what is going on in the outside world. I know that beyond our gate the world is a dreadful place although I shan't know just how dreadful it is until I am much, much older. I know that almost all of Europe is in the hands of the Germans and that life for the people there can't be imagined. These days I am always careful not to be seen to be picking at my food as otherwise I get the usual lecture - which I hate - from my dad: "If you were in Europe now you would probably be picking food out of dustbins...." It's always enough to make me clear my plate and that's a habit I shall never lose.

There are things I know about and others I don't. I know that it is the aim of every single German and Japanese to bump me off and if it is the Japs I know it will involve torture as well (because everybody knows that and often, when we go on our bikes to the Avion cinema in Aldridge, the films prove it). Such horrid things come to me in bad dreams every now and again. I know that the RAF is attacking German cities and factories every night because that is what the BBC News (read by Alvar Liddell - or "Alvanidell" as the name sounds to me) keeps on telling us. I know there is a lot of fighting in Russia as well - they are always talking about the River Don on the wireless. And in North Africa. And I know that the life I am leading is absolutely normal. I can't remember much about what it was like before; and I most certainly can't imagine what it'll be like when it's all over, if it ever is. I don't worry about much. There is nothing extraordinary about what is going on. It's just normal life. If I had a bit more imagination I would know that the grown-ups aren't relaxed at all.

What I don't know, and perhaps it's a good thing, is what is happening day-by-day. Yesterday the RAF lost 14 aircraft and their crews bombing Essen. Today is the start of a running battle in the North Atlantic between two convoys and 20 U-boats: 21 ships will be sunk over the next 14 days, against just one submarine. We lost 14 ships last week. Since the beginning of the year around 100,000 Jewish people have been deported to a place with a funny name. It's called Auschwitz. Ten days ago the first of some 23,000 gypsies arrived. Around now they are starting to build something huge at Birkenau which is next door. They'll do this very, very quickly because it is slave-labour which is doing all the work. When my mother, far into the future, learns about these places, and all the others, she will always call the people who were sent there "those poor wretches".

What I don't know either, but perhaps the grown-ups are starting to feel it, is that the tide is just starting to turn. I and most of my fellow Brummies haven't had to spend a night in an air-raid shelter for ages. And Bomber Command is getting busier and busier. They are always talking on the wireless about "last night's raid on the Ruhr". Rommel has been forced back after defeat at El Alamein last October and is becoming trapped between the British 8th Army who are chasing after him and the British and American armies which landed four months ago in Morocco and Algeria. It looks as though the Afrika Corps has had it and Rommel himself will return to Germany before the end of this week. The German 6th Army was finally destroyed last month at Stalingrad and the Soviet armies are getting stronger and stronger. And in the Far East, after all of last year's disasters, the Japanese are starting to be forced back. To me, though, what I know of this - and I only know bits of it - is all just day-to-day stuff.

I am still idly looking down the drive. Then to my amazement a figure appears on the other side of the gate. It is a soldier. I quickly recognise him. It's my 20-year-old brother. He comes through the gate and walks towards me with a broad grin. I shout to my mother through the back door. He shouldn't be here. We only said good-bye to him a couple of weeks ago. He had been home on what everyone called Embarkation Leave. I had been told that that was it, he was going far, far away and I shouldn't expect to see him again for goodness how long. And now here he is, back again.

Graham (otherwise known as Bill) has now been a soldier for 8 or 9 months. He is in the Royal Artillery. He had wanted to join Bomber Command but they wouldn't have him. His eyesight wasn't good enough. I bet Mum and Dad are a bit relieved! For exactly two years up to June last year he worked and trained at the side of our dad in the local Home Guard platoon based at Little Aston Hall stables, which they said was still full of the smell of horses. Then he was called up into the Royal Artillery. First of all he went to Church Stretton. On a lovely Sunday at the beginning of July we all paid him a visit there and Dad took some pictures with a bit of colour film carefully kept from pre-war. There he is, below, facing an unknown future with a cheery grin and a Woodbine.

After coming up the drive and greeting me in the garage there are embraces with Mum who has arrived all excited at the kitchen door when she heard me shouting for her. He explains why he has arrived unexpectedly. He has been able to convince his Commanding Officer that measles can be quite a serious illness - he himself had a bad time of it. So what about a bit of Compassionate Leave? The C.O. falls for it and now my brother looks at me, all hail and hearty, and perhaps, just perhaps, feels a tiny twinge of conscience. But there we are, and, well, a couple of days at home are not to be sneezed at.

Forty-eight hours later it will be good-byes again, this time for real; and off he will go, back down the drive, back to Woolwich and back to an unknown future. In a few days after he leaves us he will be on a troopship casting off from Avonmouth and sailing for an unknown destination.

Bon voyage, Our Kid!

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(to be continued later in the month, if anyone is interested)
 
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smashing read chris....looking forward to the next instalment...ps i can see the likeness between yourself and your brother

lyn
 
Also look forward to the next chapter. It prompted me to reach for a draw and pick up the pay book of my late uncle.

I note that he was discharged as he could not fulfil the Army physical requirements.......seems a strange way to put that he had lost his right arm in North Africa!

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how lovely to have your uncles pay book pedro...these things are so precious

lyn
 
A bit of time has passed since my brother set off down the drive with a backward glance and a raised hand of farewell. Probably two or three weeks in fact. Measles spots have long since been forgotten. It is now Monday 15th March 1943. Laundry day for my Mum but I haven't been there to see the frantic activity.

I think about my brother a lot. But I can't say that I'm worried about him. I leave such things to the grown-ups. I am sensing some tension in the air but my parents don't burden me with their worries.

If I were to think about it I would realise that everyone seems to have worries of one sort or another in these extraordinary times - extraordinary to them, that is, but quite normal to me. Mr. Bacon next door has been stuck on Malta for the last three years and his daughter, who was born just before he left, only knows him from a photograph on a bookshelf which she chatters to while her mother looks anxiously out of the window for the postman - and please, please, may it not be the telegraph boy who knocks on the door. Mr. Behague on the other side of us is in the AFS and disappears for long periods to serve in cities other than Birmingham when they are under attack. Mr. Woodward over the road is never seen and is somewhere or other on the high seas in the Royal Navy. Mr. Bullock has also disappeared, probably to the Far East, and won't be seen again for years. And Mrs Milburn, a lady in Balsall Common who writes every day in a diary (which obviously I don't know about at the moment), has survived months of worry when her son in the 1/7 Warwicks disappears during the retreat to Dunkirk in May 1940, and then over the following weeks and months is rumoured to be a prisoner, then rumoured to have been wounded, then found to be in a permanent prisoner of war camp from which a letter, finally, in January 1941, comes from him confirming that he is OK. Mrs Milburn notes on the first of this month how glad she is that there has so far been no snowy winter to cope with. On the 4th she reports a dreadful tragedy in a crowded tube shelter in London the previous night when someone slips on the steps and in the ensuing chaos 178 people are suffocated or crushed. Last Friday she quotes the February air raid casualties figure: 252 killed and 347 injured in the south-east, south and south-west. Birmingham seems still to be getting away with it. The war ebbs and flows in Russia and North Africa, good news, then bad and then ..... There can't be too many people around without some sort of worry. Grown-ups, that is. I'm OK.

This isn't to say I don't think about my brother a lot. My Dad took a picture of us during the February Embarkation Leave and the film has now been developed. It was taken at the end of our garden overlooking fields which much, much later will be buried under the houses and gardens in Kingscroft Road, Streetly. I look quite proud of him - which I am.

While he was home, Dad and he must have had a conversation, based on my brother's eight months of military experience and what our father learned on the Western Front, exactly 25 years ago in the spring of 1918 before he was wounded and sent home. They agreed two things. The first was that each letter from the family at home or from my brother abroad would be given a serial number. In this way each side would know when something had gone missing. The other thing was that a private code system was agreed. In this way, from time to time, my brother could let the family know where he was at that moment. This is to get round the censorship to which every soldier is subject: each letter passing through the censor's hands and even a hint of any information of that type being snipped out. As of today I don't know anything about this. But very quickly I shall become aware of it and that will always surprise me in the future – that I was trusted with knowledge of something which could get my brother, and perhaps the whole family, into very serious trouble indeed.

But that is for the future. Today we have no idea what is happening to him. I have just got home from school. There has been nothing in the post.

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It's Thursday 18th March 1943. Things have been going on much the same. I have been becoming more aware of my parent's worries. Especially those of my mother. In our kitchen, just to the side of the gas stove, there is a coat rack, a jumble of outside coats and scarves. Mum, Dad and I are in the room. Mum is cooking. Suddenly her feelings get the better of her and we hear her say how much she longs for news, any news, so that she knows he is all right. I see her bow her head and bury her face into the clothes hanging against the wall. Dad, the strong one despite whatever he himself is feeling, utters some consoling words and puts his arm around her shoulders. It is the only time in the whole of the war when I see my mother cry. At that moment I start to realise that grown-ups can feel.

Then, yesterday, I got home from school and everything had changed. A letter had come from my brother. I expect my mother had telephoned my father the moment it dropped through the letterbox. What it exactly says I don't know. It is Ser. No. 1 from his direction. Whether it contains any coded information about his whereabouts, I don't know either. But he is OK and that is all anyone wants to know. And I have to say that I am a bit relieved myself. Can't speak on behalf of my 15-year-old sister, Sheila (see image), who is constantly irritated by both her brothers, the elder one we are talking about and her younger one, me, but I suspect she is pretty pleased as well.

The letter's arrival prompts an immediate response that evening from my father. Hope I'm not forced to put pen to paper too. Hate having to do that, don't know what to say and someone, like a big sister, stands looking over my shoulder making sure I am doing it tidily and not making any blots. Have a birthday in three weeks time which will involve thank-you letters to aunts and cousins - just how many letters is a six-year-old expected to write? They should be rationed. Dad on the other hand has no such reluctance:

17 March 1943 No. 1​
Dear Graham,​
We received your letter No. 1 today (19 days in transit) and are very glad to note you are OK up to and including 26 February. We were particularly pleased to get this even though the news is somewhat scanty. Mother has been keeping a stiff upper lip but has been worrying about you so write as frequently as possible and by the quickest possible route.​
(We were lucky enough to have a family holiday in the summer of 1941 in South Devon where we met evacuees from Ladywood. My parents later found another farm venue a bit closer to home, near Tintern, and I think that we had a short spell there both in the autumn of 1942 and again in spring of 1943. How lucky I was!)
Your letter reminded us both of our last family holiday together in 1941 at the Farm and your disappearance on the return journey. We are going to the farm again at Easter for a few days break, all things being equal, and I believe the Wards (old friends of my parents, also Home Guard and living in Middleton Hall Road, King's Norton) are also coming down to the same area. Sheila I believe will stay next-door. I hope this holiday will set us up again – Mother is a bit below par and I'm not feeling too hale and hearty.​
(Dad was responsible for much of the copper and brass strip and sheet production at Kynoch)
Works about as usual – the present problems are mainly concerned with constant and far-reaching changes of programme which always is a bit of a headache for a production man.​
(Dad had been an enthusiastic member of the Home Guard since June 1940. He built up the Streetly/Little Aston platoon over the previous almost three years but in the early part of 1943 this was decimated by the transfer of most of the men to a heavy anti-aircraft battery in the neighbourhood. Seventy-five years and a technical revolution means that we can now see them online; copy and paste into Google ....No. 5 Platoon, "B" Coy. 32nd Staffordshire (Aldridge) Battalion 1943....to view ).
Home Guard about as usual but has hotted up considerably the last week. We have been given a new operational role 2/3 miles to the west and rather involved it is. The A.A. men have all gone and are settling down in their new jobs with a fair amount of growsing. We have got a big stunt on this weekend which will be 24 hours actively on the go as far as I can see. We had a film show at Company last night and I finished up with a talk on the new job and the weekend stunt which may be a bit worse than the usual military mess-up – new weapons, new men, new ground. I am sticking with the Company and turned down last week two offers of command of other Companies, one at the works and the other at the old "C" and "F" Company area, both broken-down units and a lifetime's work to get straight again.​
(Dad goes on to talk about some of the young men in the neighbourhood, most of whom were probably H.G. before their call-up)
Geoffrey Hall goes tomorrow to the South Staffs, Dodd has been on embarkation leave. Nevitt was home for a short leave in midshipman's uniform – no other news of personalities except C*** is marked Grade 4 and so apparently will be sticking with us. M**** had medical last week and also in Grade 4.​
Put the car into Cutler's last week for that rattle in the clutch to be put right and asked him to have a look at the engine. The rattle was nothing – just a stone wedged between the torque tube and the chassis – but he overhauled the engine and I expect to get a bill shortly equal to the National Debt.​
All are okay and send their love. Chris is back at school with no ill effects after the measles. Spends most of his time annoying Sheila. Expect they will all be writing today and tomorrow. We are all thinking about you constantly.​
All the very best, old chap. Hope the Crossing is not too exciting.​
Your affectionate Dad.​

When will I know where my brother is and what he is doing?


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brilliant read chris and a smashing photo:) i take it that is your mom and bro on left and is that you hiding behind your sister ?

lyn
 
brilliant read chris and a smashing photo:) i take it that is your mom and bro on left and is that you hiding behind your sister ? lyn

Dear Auntie Lyn,

Thank you very much for your letter. I said yesterday that I hate writing letters. But Mum says I have got to reply to you because you have said some nice things and have asked me a question. She says it's just good manners but then, it's easy for her, she hasn't got to write the letter.

So here I am, sitting on a cushion on one of those uncomy upright chairs at our dining table. Mum has put a dip-in pen and a piece of paper in front of me, got a bottle of ink out and taken the cap off it. I have got to WRITE TIDILY, BE CAREFUL WITH SPELLING, DON'T MAKE ANY SMUDGES OR BLOTS and, above all, DON'T KNOCK THE INK BOTTLE OVER. So I have got a lot of things to think about. And I really want to get this done quickly so that I can go outside before the snow melts.

Yes, in the picture there is Mum, my brother Graham and my sister Sheila. I am there as well near to my sister. I am mucking about. I do quite a lot of mucking about. Mucking about is fun. And nice. I don't know why grown-ups don't muck about themselves. They might enjoy it. The picture is when we went to Church Stretton last July to see my brother.

There is another picture from that day which I haven't shown you. That's because it's a mess. I'll tell you why. My dad is very proud of his camera. It's in a leather case with a long strap which goes over his shoulder. It's called a Kodak. When he wants to take a picture he gets it out of the case, clicks a little catch on the back of it and out pops what he calls bellows with the little glass thing which he calls a lens at the end of it. He holds the camera steady against his chest, looks down into the viewfinder, cups his hand around the front of that so that he can see whatever he is looking at, especially when it's sunny, and then tells us to keep absolutely still. It's sometimes a long wait while he twiddles something else and it's hard work to stay still and keep a grin on your face for all that time. Finally, when he's ready, he clicks another little catch somewhere near the lens. Then we can move again. A film is expensive, Dad only gets 8 or 12 pictures out of it and you don't want to be the person who ruins this one.

Now, the trouble with this is that the person behind the camera, Dad, is never in any of the pictures. So, on that day last summer, he tells my sister to take one of the rest of us. My sister is a very clever girl – she knows lots of things that I don't – but what she doesn't have is three hands. And you need three hands to hold the camera steady, keep the sunlight out of the viewfinder and click the catch all the same time. At least, that's what she tells us she doesn't have when the film comes back after being developed and the one she has taken is all fuzzy. (I love my sister very much. At least, I think I do. But she is very bossy-abouty and it's nice when, for a change, I can remind her that she has made a mistake. She doesn't like that).

I am sending the picture to you. It's not very good. But it shows me again, mucking about. I haven't learned how to do a lot of things yet. But I'm an expert in mucking about.

It's my birthday next month. In case you send me a present, I'm sending you a thank you now. It will save me having to write you another letter.

Lots of love.

Chris

PS Mum says I ought to say thank you as well to the other kind people who have said nice things about me.

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Good to see you didn’t blot your copybook. What a contrast to today when millions of pictures and videos are taken with mobile phones!
 
what a lovely reply chris....thank you....you mentioned church stretton which has just switched a light on in my head...i will have to check but i am sure someone gave me some old black and whites from there which i know i have not put on the forum....i must go and check this out and let you know as i could be wrong

lyn
 
Another week has gone by. Today is Monday 29th March 1943. Wash day for Mum. I haven't broken up yet for the Easter holidays. Easter isn't until 25th April this year.

Nothing much has been happening to me although in the big outside world, which I don't know a lot about - or at least I don't at this moment - it's a different story with a lot of fighting near Kursk in Russia and also in North Africa where the Afrika Corps and the other German forces are not yet beaten. And with the RAF getting more and more active.

At home, everything seems to go on as usual. Did the air raid siren go recently and was it enough for Dad to decide that my sister and I should sleep downstairs? I can't really remember. We certainly haven't been down into the air raid shelter in the garden with its mustiness and smell of paraffin fumes for a long time. But now and then I'm told to sleep downstairs, on the floor in a sleeping bag. How does Dad judge it to be the right thing to do? My place is on the floorboards at the foot of our grandfather clock. We've had this tall thing which stretches right up to the ceiling for a couple of years now. It belonged to my grandfather so it was my grandfather's grandfather clock! Grandpa was bombed out of his Handsworth home and his health never really recovered so that he died a few weeks later. I sometimes lie there in the dark, feeling warm and comfy, and I listen to the drone of a lone aircraft as it goes slowly on its way far above. I wonder who is in it and what they are doing and where they're going. They sound so lonely up there. No bombs fall and it was probably one of ours anyway. Slowly the drone fades away and we are back in silence again, apart from the steady ticking of grandfather's clock.

The news from Tunisia is a major source of worry to Mrs Milburn in Balsall Common. Good news always seems to be followed by disappointment. But, as she tells her diary, there are consolations. She has had a letter from an officer who is back in this country having escaped from the POW camp in Germany where her son, Alan, has been held for nearly three years. He is able to tell her a lot about how her son has been getting on. And the day before yesterday: " A pleasant morning about 11 a.m., when the grey skies cleared and the sun came out, warming up the world. I enjoyed biking to the butcher........ Many spring flowers were seen in London today, now that the ban on the sending of flowers by train has been lifted. There are some things people badly need, and flowers do keep up the spirits of townspeople in their wretched bombed cities. I am so glad they can have them. Our forsythia, daffodils, violets and flowering currants are all out now – not many daffs yet, but opening day by day".

My dad writes to my brother today. He tells him the home news and also what he's been doing with the Home Guard, and also what he did last weekend which, for once and very unusually, was a free weekend with Home Guard duties having been cancelled. He has a busy life, unlike mine which, as I have said before, usually consists mainly of "mucking about". Apart from school, that is, where my nose is kept to the grindstone. This new letter is Serial No. 2. What I am not sure about is whether Dad knows exactly where Graham is, which is at some place in Tunisia or whether it is just a general idea that it's North Africa. Apart from anything else the last line of the address to which this letter goes is "B.N.A.F." which is presumably British North Africa Force. I suppose that is what can be called "a clue".

But my brother is OK, so far, and that is all that matters. There is still a feeling of relief at home. But the world remains full of dangers, for him and, I suppose, for all of us. But that's the way it is, has been for years, and will probably always be. I can't imagine it ever being anything else. It doesn't really worry me. Except that it WOULD be nice to have a new Dinky Toy.


29th March 1943 No.2

Dear Graham,

We received your very welcome letters Nos. 3 and 4 this morning. No. 1 was received about one week ago and No.2 is missing to date. Awfully glad to get news so quickly of your safe arrival. Mother was wildly excited. She had been worrying a lot particularly after reading the German claims of U-boat sinkings in the Atlantic.

Glad to note the trip was uneventful. Nobody who has not sailed the seas can realise the vast spaces. I think I only saw one ship during four Atlantic crossings. I suppose we shall have to wait the full news until we meet again. You certainly are doing a spot of travel!

Everyone at home is fit. Mother has had what appears to be an abscess in her face but this is getting better again. Sheila and Christopher are in the pink. There's not a lot of news of home. We have had your bedroom decorated and it looks very posh. Gardening is in full swing with beautiful weather and I was for Digging for Victory the whole of the weekend. I planted early spuds etc.

Numerous people have been asking after you – all the Home Guard and a number of people at the works. Home Guard is about the same. We had a very full weekend exercise yesterday week, we took over defence of the 'drome (Walsall Airport) and had a very wearying weekend – no sleep and on the go the whole time. It was a big stunt with about 10-20,000 Home Guards engaged. A usual military mess up. So to make up, cancelled all parades yesterday and start again tonight at Battalion conference and films tomorrow. We have a new lot including the German action films of France, Russia etc. I'm night manager tonight at the works but that will have to wait till I'm through at Aldridge. Thursday I've to give a talk to the officers and NCOs of "A " Company on German tactics and the Battalion are asking for me to give ambush demonstrations to officers of the Battalion in about two weeks time. So am getting pretty busy, at works and outside.

Home news is very scanty, practically nothing to report. I had a number of panel meetings on Friday and so took the opportunity to take Mother to lunch. Sheila continues with her Youth Club activity. Geoffrey Hall has gone to the South Staffs Young Soldiers Battalion. Dodd has gone abroad. Nevitt is home on indefinite leave, Winter goes in May, Underwood is in the Warwicks and was home on a weekend leave a week or so back. The anti-aircraft contingent are now officially transferred, 82 of them, and are getting on well with their training. Naylor has become a proper commanding officer and I believe spends most of his time taking salutes on the gunsite. Ramsay is fed up but I believe the majority find the work interesting. We have a very sorry crowd of oddments left but they worked splendidly on last week's exercise. By the way, the R stunt is working well. (?)

Headline news in brief. You should no doubt know what's happening in your corner. Over here nothing much moving except in the air. Berlin had a bashing on Saturday night, 900 tons of bombs in half an hour. We lost nine. They were out again last night, Friday was Duisberg and Essen had it good and proper a week or so ago. They are taking it all right now. There was a raid on north-eastern England and south-eastern Scotland two or three nights ago. 25 planes over, eight shot down.

I will send a parcel in a post or so with the things you want. Do you want any money sent? Let me know means to send it. Very interested to hear of another example of how the Jerries have picked that country clean of foodstuffs. Like a plague of locusts as usual.

What does G.B.D. stand for? (Part of the new address) By the way, I think it desirable to use this air letter service as much as possible as ordinary post takes so long. Glad to note you are keeping sober and presume you found out during your visits to France that you can't drink wine like beer.

All send love – write again quickly and by quickest route. All the very best, old chap, and look after yourself.

Your affectionate Dad

Eventually I shall know a lot more about what my brother saw and did in these few weeks of March 1943. But today I know nothing. I am still six, for another few days at least, and my knowledge and imagination can only take me so far. I can see in my mind's eye men in khaki uniforms with rifles and ships carrying hundreds of them and aircraft dropping bombs and the sort of big gun which my brother operates. But I cannot even begin to imagine what life is really like for a young man in the army, about to go into battle for the first time in a country I haven't even heard of until now.

I shall never really know, because I shall never have to do it myself.

Lucky me.



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another lovely read chris...can you tell us who is in photo....i am only guessing that is your mom on the left and you sitting on the running board..

lyn
 
Lyn,

Thanks. To the rear, 1939/40 Ford Prefect, before it started to rot away which it did steadily up to the early 1950s. In front, 1927 sister, 1899 Mum and 1936 me. Although my sister looks very grown up, this has to be March/April 1943 when she was still 15 - or 1944 at the very latest. No date stamping of photos in those days and one has to rely on clues - but I'm fortunate to have any images at all.

Chris
 
It's Monday 5th April 1943.....

Tomorrow, Tuesday the 6th, my brother joins his Royal Artillery gun battery and prepares himself to go into action for the first time. Of course, I know nothing of this at the moment. All I know is that he is somewhere in North Africa, having got there safely a week or two ago. Nor do I know what his journey was like. I shall have to wait a long, long time to know all that.

But if I wait long enough, I can read all about it. This is what he said about the journey, written 58 years after the events he is telling us about.

(After the 48 hour pass on compassionate grounds to see my brother)....
it was back to Woolwich for the final few days before detecting signs of imminent departure. We were still able to get out into central London but the opportunities for such activities were clearly numbered. We made the most of our remaining chances to visit such evil dens of vice as the Windmill Theatre ("We Never Closed") and stoically awaited the worst that could befall us.

All the transient personnel were divided up and allocated to drafts, each of a sizeable number of people, maybe 200 or so. There were signs of administrative chaos: for instance, I was amongst those issued with full tropical kit in the "It Ain't Half Hot, Mum" style, complete with baggy khaki drill shorts and pith helmet. By the next day thinking by senior minds had changed and it was all handed back in again, not without some feeling of relief – our eventual destination would probably not now be India or Burma.

My group was transported the short distance to a dismal railway station, Blackheath, I think, and boarded a special train to Bristol where, at Temple Meads, there was a change of train for the final few miles to Avonmouth. There, the ship was alongside the quay and we went aboard without delay. The rather elderly vessel had once been in service on a Dutch line and was of a respectable size, maybe 20,000 tons or so. We settled down as best we could to conditions that were a new experience altogether. The overall impression was one of severe overcrowding: not surprising when troopships were obviously designed to operate at maximum efficiency, that is, to cram as many individuals into a given space as was physically possible.

The accommodation decks contained long tables arranged transversely, and wooden forms for seating along either side. Here the men would sit for meals, six or eight a side and those seated furthest from the ship's side would fetch the rations, sufficient for the whole table, from the galley where they would be issued in bulk in a large metal utensil. Those seated near as the portholes would become increasingly anxious as the food was passed along the table, diminishing as it was transferred to plates. During darkness the ship was fully blacked out and even a lighted cigarette on the open deck was strictly forbidden. Above the mess tables, hooks were provided and from from these, hammocks were slung...................

After boarding, on the same evening we slipped out into the Bristol Channel, headed north through the Irish Sea and joined the convoy somewhere between the Clyde and the Irish coast. By next morning there was no land to be seen and we sailed on for several days. On asking a crew member where we were, the answer came: "In the North Atlantic Ocean" which was fairly obvious although I doubt whether he knew much more than that.

During the voyage which must have lasted about 10 days we were all given tasks and I was put with a party cleaning and degreasing rifles and similar small arms stored in a deep hold somewhere right down in the bowels of the ship. No portholes down there and the contours and timbering were reminiscent of the inside of a large rowing boat. Stints of several hours at a time became routine and one tried not to think of the consequences should an enemy torpedo strike us in that area. The weather conditions were good for that time of the year and as the days passed it became noticeably warmer as we turned southwards. Eventually the course shifted to an easterly direction and early one morning the Rock of Gibraltar could be seen on our port side. Continuing with the North African coastline frequently in view we eventually reached our destination, Algiers. We were fortunate in that the entire voyage had been devoid of any evidence of enemy action, apart from the occasional whoops on the destroyers' sirens and the night-time flashes from their signal lamps as they busied themselves in and around the convoy. However the lull ceased abruptly during the late afternoon as we entered Algiers harbour and the Luftwaffe arrived on the scene to try and cause mischief. During the raid all non-essential personnel were confined below decks where little could be seen of the action. A few hours later all was quiet and we disembarked.

(After several days in Algiers)..... they entrained us for the lengthy journey to the then railhead at Souk Ahras, some 800 miles from Algiers. There I said farewell to my fellow travellers and proceeded alone to my posting, 10 Battery of 17 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery who kindly sent along a vehicle to pick me up. The rear area for the battery, known as the waggon lines, was sited in the little town of Teboursouk and that is where I joined them, on Tuesday 6 April 1943. The following Saturday, 10 April, I moved up to the main Battery position, in hilly country north-west of Medjz-el-Bab.

The Battery had been in heavy action not long previously and helped to repulse a determined enemy attack near a village called Bou Arada. This had involved them firing at close range over open sights. Casualties were significant and had included those suffered as a result of a direct hit on 10 Battery HQ command post: this was almost certainly the reason for my posting there.

On the first day I was standing outside this command post with some of the others when there was a sudden rushing, whistling sound followed by a sharp thud nearby. Looking around I saw that everybody else was lying prone, having thrown themselves to the ground on hearing the missile. Again I must have been fortunate: it was a dud shell but the story illustrates the kind of lesson that one learned very quickly!..................​

I think I love my big sister. Well, Mum tells me I ought to. She is nine years older than me and VERY clever. She knows lots of thing and when I haven't been annoying her she can be very kind and will tell me what she knows. It's a long time ago that she told me that the earth is round, "like an orange". And when we went to Blackpool I looked out to sea and could actually see the curve and this proved she was right. Peacetime, which she knows all about, intrigues me. I asked her the other day whether in peacetime they still have news on the wireless: "Oh, yes, when ships sink and things like that". And she tells me something I can hardly believe. Sometimes the wireless will tell you what the weather is going to be like TOMORROW! How can this be possible? But she is my big sister and knows everything and so she must be right.

But the trouble with Sheila is that she sometimes thinks she is my mum, especially when we are both at school. She is so clever and knows so much and I usually lose any argument I have with her. I think in this picture I have just lost another one. She certainly looks pretty satisfied. Mum is as cheerful as ever. I don't remember being ticked off by my dad for trying to spoil his happy picture of the three of us. So perhaps he was feeling a bit of sympathy with me. Us blokes have to stick together. This picture was taken at the same time as the one of us by the car. And I look pretty miserable in both.

Perhaps it was just a bad blazer day.....

It's my birthday the day after tomorrow and I'm getting a treat. That'll cheer me up no end.

SACMFMWindyridgeFrontDoorposs1946img425crop.jpg
 
It's Monday 5th April 1943.....

Tomorrow, Tuesday the 6th, my brother joins his Royal Artillery gun battery and prepares himself to go into action for the first time. Of course, I know nothing of this at the moment. All I know is that he is somewhere in North Africa, having got there safely a week or two ago. Nor do I know what his journey was like. I shall have to wait a long, long time to know all that.

But if I wait long enough, I can read all about it. This is what he said about the journey, written 58 years after the events he is telling us about.

(After the 48 hour pass on compassionate grounds to see my brother)....
it was back to Woolwich for the final few days before detecting signs of imminent departure. We were still able to get out into central London but the opportunities for such activities were clearly numbered. We made the most of our remaining chances to visit such evil dens of vice as the Windmill Theatre ("We Never Closed") and stoically awaited the worst that could befall us.

All the transient personnel were divided up and allocated to drafts, each of a sizeable number of people, maybe 200 or so. There were signs of administrative chaos: for instance, I was amongst those issued with full tropical kit in the "It Ain't Half Hot, Mum" style, complete with baggy khaki drill shorts and pith helmet. By the next day thinking by senior minds had changed and it was all handed back in again, not without some feeling of relief – our eventual destination would probably not now be India or Burma.

My group was transported the short distance to a dismal railway station, Blackheath, I think, and boarded a special train to Bristol where, at Temple Meads, there was a change of train for the final few miles to Avonmouth. There, the ship was alongside the quay and we went aboard without delay. The rather elderly vessel had once been in service on a Dutch line and was of a respectable size, maybe 20,000 tons or so. We settled down as best we could to conditions that were a new experience altogether. The overall impression was one of severe overcrowding: not surprising when troopships were obviously designed to operate at maximum efficiency, that is, to cram as many individuals into a given space as was physically possible.

The accommodation decks contained long tables arranged transversely, and wooden forms for seating along either side. Here the men would sit for meals, six or eight a side and those seated furthest from the ship's side would fetch the rations, sufficient for the whole table, from the galley where they would be issued in bulk in a large metal utensil. Those seated near as the portholes would become increasingly anxious as the food was passed along the table, diminishing as it was transferred to plates. During darkness the ship was fully blacked out and even a lighted cigarette on the open deck was strictly forbidden. Above the mess tables, hooks were provided and from from these, hammocks were slung...................

After boarding, on the same evening we slipped out into the Bristol Channel, headed north through the Irish Sea and joined the convoy somewhere between the Clyde and the Irish coast. By next morning there was no land to be seen and we sailed on for several days. On asking a crew member where we were, the answer came: "In the North Atlantic Ocean" which was fairly obvious although I doubt whether he knew much more than that.

During the voyage which must have lasted about 10 days we were all given tasks and I was put with a party cleaning and degreasing rifles and similar small arms stored in a deep hold somewhere right down in the bowels of the ship. No portholes down there and the contours and timbering were reminiscent of the inside of a large rowing boat. Stints of several hours at a time became routine and one tried not to think of the consequences should an enemy torpedo strike us in that area. The weather conditions were good for that time of the year and as the days passed it became noticeably warmer as we turned southwards. Eventually the course shifted to an easterly direction and early one morning the Rock of Gibraltar could be seen on our port side. Continuing with the North African coastline frequently in view we eventually reached our destination, Algiers. We were fortunate in that the entire voyage had been devoid of any evidence of enemy action, apart from the occasional whoops on the destroyers' sirens and the night-time flashes from their signal lamps as they busied themselves in and around the convoy. However the lull ceased abruptly during the late afternoon as we entered Algiers harbour and the Luftwaffe arrived on the scene to try and cause mischief. During the raid all non-essential personnel were confined below decks where little could be seen of the action. A few hours later all was quiet and we disembarked.

(After several days in Algiers)..... they entrained us for the lengthy journey to the then railhead at Souk Ahras, some 800 miles from Algiers. There I said farewell to my fellow travellers and proceeded alone to my posting, 10 Battery of 17 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery who kindly sent along a vehicle to pick me up. The rear area for the battery, known as the waggon lines, was sited in the little town of Teboursouk and that is where I joined them, on Tuesday 6 April 1943. The following Saturday, 10 April, I moved up to the main Battery position, in hilly country north-west of Medjz-el-Bab.

The Battery had been in heavy action not long previously and helped to repulse a determined enemy attack near a village called Bou Arada. This had involved them firing at close range over open sights. Casualties were significant and had included those suffered as a result of a direct hit on 10 Battery HQ command post: this was almost certainly the reason for my posting there.

On the first day I was standing outside this command post with some of the others when there was a sudden rushing, whistling sound followed by a sharp thud nearby. Looking around I saw that everybody else was lying prone, having thrown themselves to the ground on hearing the missile. Again I must have been fortunate: it was a dud shell but the story illustrates the kind of lesson that one learned very quickly!..................​

I think I love my big sister. Well, Mum tells me I ought to. She is nine years older than me and VERY clever. She knows lots of thing and when I haven't been annoying her she can be very kind and will tell me what she knows. It's a long time ago that she told me that the earth is round, "like an orange". And when we went to Blackpool I looked out to sea and could actually see the curve and this proved she was right. Peacetime, which she knows all about, intrigues me. I asked her the other day whether in peacetime they still have news on the wireless: "Oh, yes, when ships sink and things like that". And she tells me something I can hardly believe. Sometimes the wireless will tell you what the weather is going to be like TOMORROW! How can this be possible? But she is my big sister and knows everything and so she must be right.

But the trouble with Sheila is that she sometimes thinks she is my mum, especially when we are both at school. She is so clever and knows so much and I usually lose any argument I have with her. I think in this picture I have just lost another one. She certainly looks pretty satisfied. Mum is as cheerful as ever. I don't remember being ticked off by my dad for trying to spoil his happy picture of the three of us. So perhaps he was feeling a bit of sympathy with me. Us blokes have to stick together. This picture was taken at the same time as the one of us by the car. And I look pretty miserable in both.

Perhaps it was just a bad blazer day.....

It's my birthday the day after tomorrow and I'm getting a treat. That'll cheer me up no end.

View attachment 124343
ChrisM
Keep them coming, this could be up for the booker if you carry on like this. There has to be a book there somewhere

Bob
 
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