If your family don’t understand you or don’t have time for you, it’s good to have somebody you can talk to. At school it was important to have friends; life was better if you had pals to play with and have a laugh. Friendship was a life saver during my years as a prisoner of war. I wouldn’t have survived my time in the labour camp or on the Long March home without my pals – Jimmy, Laurie, Sid and Heb. You need people to share things with, to look out for you, to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No, that’s not a good idea.’ There were a couple of occasions when they literally saved my life.
Ronnie was a school pal who lived in a little village down Barking Creek. There wasn’t much to do there so Ronnie used to hang around my place and we would go and play in Greatfields Park opposite my house or go down to the quayside and watch the tugs coming up the river and throw stones at seagulls. During term time, he passed my front door on the way to school and, however early I was, he was there waiting for me and we would walk on together.
For some reason he always brought me food – a bit like my POW pal, Jimmy who was a gamekeeper before the war and a dab hand at finding eggs or stray chickens to supplement our meagre rations in our camp. Whatever Ronnie brought for his lunch, whether cheese or paste sandwiches, even a slice of cherry cake, he had some for me too. I don’t know whether he had told his mother that I wasn’t fed properly at home, but I would happily eat whatever he gave me on the way to school or keep it for later.
Sometimes, I told Ronnie to go on ahead because I had an errand to do for my mother and he certainly wouldn’t have wanted to accompany me on that. I dreaded hearing the words: ‘Charlie, can you drop this off at Grandma’s on your way to school?’ Unfortunately, I passed the bottom of Harrow Road where my mother’s parents lived.
‘Oh, no!’ I said, ‘not me, please.’ I looked around for Win or Muriel but they had vanished. I hated going over there. I was afraid of Grandma Edwards who never had a good word for anybody, especially little boys.
Knock on the door, wait to hear the footsteps. Shuffle, shuffle. I knew it was Grandma because Grandpa was at the market. He was a farmer who had made his money during the First World War selling potatoes to the Army. Her first words were, ‘Your cap’s not on straight,’ or ‘Stop slouching.’ She was always finding fault. She never said anything nice or that she was pleased to see you. Mind you, after having had 21 children, 14 of whom survived, I expect she was worn out by it all and didn’t have any patience left for the likes of me.
I didn’t like people telling me off or telling me what to do, especially at school and I couldn’t wait to leave. I wasn’t a scholar anyway. I remember when my father got into trouble with the School Attendance Officer, or ‘Board Man’, who used to go round people’s houses checking on absent and truant school children. I had been off school for a while with influenza and had just had my fourteenth birthday in May. I was meant to go back to finish the term but I couldn’t see the point and refused to go.
‘All the other boys will laugh at me,’ I said. When I saw the Board Man coming down Movers Lane or when Muriel spotted him first through the shop window she would warn me, ‘Charlie, Charlie, Board Man’s coming!’ I would run out the back and into the long storage shed where we kept the stock. I would get right down in the straw behind the sacks of potatoes and wait for the all clear.
This happened on a number of occasions and, in the end, my father got into trouble because he couldn’t make me go to school. He had to appear before some of the Board people.
‘You have failed in your parental duty, Mr Waite, to ensure your son’s attendance at school. We have no choice but to impose a fine on you,’ they said.
He had to pay up and to his credit my father never punished me or hit me. Many fathers, and some mothers too, were pretty free with the backs of their hands or with a slipper. You only had to look at some of the poor mites in my class, with bruises on their arms and legs, to know what they had to put up with. I was lucky that my father wasn’t like that although he did believe in punishing his children. I remember Alfred telling me how dad had once punished Reginald for stealing.
Reg worked for a radio shop on the corner of Ilford Road and he rode a tricycle, like the ones used for selling Wall’s Ice Cream. He used to deliver accumulators – the rechargeable batteries used by people who didn’t have electricity. They were hired out to people for sixpence a week and Reg used to deliver them and collect the money. One day he decided he would not go back, ditched the bike and pocketed the money. The shop owner came round to our house in the evening asking after Reg but father didn’t know where he was. When Reg finally turned up, he told my father what had happened and admitted that he had spent all the money. My father was furious and immediately went and repaid the shop owner the missing money. Reg lost his job, of course, and had to spend a night locked in our shed.
So I was lucky and got away without any punishment for truanting. Not going back to school until my birthday was my way of rebelling against my father. You’re getting your way about me working in the shop, I thought, so I’ll get my way about not going back to school. That evened things out between us.
What I really wanted to be was a policeman like my father’s brother. I always had it in the back of my mind, hoping and praying that I would grow a bit more and a bit more every year. I knew that I wouldn’t get to the right height so it was always going to be joining my parents in the shop. Times were tough in the 1930s and everybody had to pull their weight and my father expected me to do the same. So I left school at fourteen with no qualifications and started working full time as an assistant greengrocer in the family business.
One thing I hated was being out front, dealing with members of the public. I was nervous serving customers and preferred being out of sight, working out the back cleaning up, unloading vegetables into the separate storage bins for potatoes, carrots, onions and so on. I unpacked the fruit boxes and arranged them on display out the front before we opened up. I tidied up, swept and cleaned the floors. I didn’t mind rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty. For a short period we tried selling ready-weighed packs of vegetables which I bagged up in advance but people didn’t seem keen on them. They preferred asking for ‘a pound of potherbs’ which meant a selection of different vegetables picked out for the stew pot and put in their baskets.
My parents liked to get away from the shop for a break and their treat was to take a tram up Ilford Broadway and go to the Hippodrome. Every fortnight or so, they would go to a film or see a variety show there. I was left behind to look after the shop when they went off to see the latest Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or Marx Brothers film. I was about fifteen and didn’t mind being left on my own. I had my beloved Alsatian, Peter, for company so I felt happy and safe. He was a good friend to me and I was devoted to him. It was Reg who got me the dog from one of his customers. He was an unwanted pet, one of those Christmas presents which some kiddie had tired of. I could do anything with Peter. He always obeyed me and I was the only who could deal with the fits he had. When he died, I went out on my own and buried him on the marshlands.
I was always hungry, so when my parents went off up town, I enjoyed cooking up a little treat for myself. One of my jobs was to clean out the potato bins and I used to rummage through the contents looking for the tiny potatoes which collected in the soil at the bottom. I took them through to the kitchen, brushed the dirt off and washed them under the tap. I fried them up in a small pan on the stove in a bit of butter. Lovely grub.
Strange to think that ten years later I would still be hungry but this time literally starving, and eating potatoes again in completely different circumstances. I was trying to get home from Poland, walking all that way across Germany. In order to survive we had to look for food anywhere and everywhere. I remember searching an empty pigsty, desperate for anything to eat, and finding tiny potatoes in the filth and muck on the ground. I gathered them up, washed them in a stream and then cooked them on a piece of tin over an open fire in a bombed-out f
actory. Lovely, lovely grub.
Even though life was tough when I was growing up, there was plenty of food about. Our usual grocer was up at Blake’s Corner but when Sainsbury’s opened a new store in East Street in 1923, my mother shopped there too. I would walk up there on my own, clutching her grocery list. I thought it was the most beautiful place with its white tiled walls, shiny counters and uniformed staff. Its pyramid displays of tins and packets and the smell of ham and spices. I loved watching the butter men in their straw boaters cutting slices of butter off huge blocks. They slapped them into shape with wooden paddles, popped them onto the scales; they were always exactly the right weight for the customer.
I loved running errands, working in the shop and being on my own. I have always been of a nervous disposition and, to be honest, the war made me worse because I was frightened all the time. Frightened of what was going to happen to me and frightened of the awful things I saw. When I came home I found it hard to settle back into home life and the business. Everybody else had moved on with their lives but I still felt like the family errand boy and worse, I was afraid of my own shadow.
I have always been a hard worker, willing to learn. When you are on your own you have to pick things up quickly. And that is what I did and always have done. I was used to being around horses on the delivery round and I watched my brothers clean out the stables and put down bedding. When Alf and Reg were too busy at weekends to do it, they would ask me to go over instead. The two horses were kept at Harrow Road at the back of my grandparents’ place. They were stabled at the side of the house in an outbuilding like a garage with big double doors, along with the two carts. Today you wouldn’t be allowed to have a horse living right on your doorstop in a suburban street.
As I got more confident with the horses, I was allowed to take them one at a time to the blacksmith on the other side of town near the Quay. The first time I did this I arrived at the house and crept round the side and into the stables, trying not to make a noise. I opened the doors quietly and then moved the carts out. I didn’t want Grandma Edwards to hear me and come out and give me an earful.
We didn’t have a saddle so I got on the horse’s back, put a halter over his head with a piece of rope attached and just went off. The roads were busy and buses and cars were trying to overtake and I got in a real mess every few yards trying to control him. The poor thing got upset at the honking and kept turning sideways, pulling on the reins. I was trying to keep hold of the horse and pull him back straight and it took me ages to get him to the blacksmith’s.
The smith was waiting for me in the yard. He was a big chap with whiskers and dressed in a leather apron. I apologised for being late and told him what had happened getting across town. He looked at the horse, then looked at me and shook his head. ‘Where are the blinkers? You’ve got to have the blinkers on?’
How stupid of me! ‘They’re in the stable,’ I told him.
‘Why didn’t you put them on? The horse hasn’t got anything over its eyes, poor wretch. Didn’t know which way to go.’
‘I never thought,’ I said feeling very stupid. I never did it again. That’s how you learn from your mistakes. So I said to myself, ‘Charlie, you’re fourteen. You’re doing a man’s job now. You’d better wake up and get things right in future.’
2
Always by My Side
When I was seventeen years old, all I wanted to do in life was learn to drive. I thought it was a manly thing to do. I didn’t have proper driving lessons, well nobody did then, but I had a few lessons from a friend who worked for a haulage contractor. He worked nights helping the night watchman who did odds and ends like repairing punctures. They had a large fleet of lorries, all sizes and weights, and he taught me to drive on an old Standard car which had been turned into a truck. It had a gate-change gear box which was the world’s worst to drive, never mind for somebody learning. Nothing like a modern gear box. You couldn’t just slip it into gear; you had to double de-clutch which was really hard to do.
As soon as I had my seventeenth birthday, I sent off for a provisional licence. When I got it, Alfred offered to take me out in his rather clapped-out 10cwt black Ford van. There was a broken window in one of the back doors, no driving mirror on the left hand side, and no L-plates. On one occasion, Alfred had a bad thumb and decided to go home early from the shop back to Dagenham. His van was outside and I said jokingly, ‘Come on, get in the van. I’ll drive you back.’
And so I did. I got in and drove off fine, reached the top of the main road, turned right into Longbridge Road and then out of town towards Dagenham. It was dusk and I was driving along when all of a sudden I saw a policeman ahead, walking along the pavement on the edge of the kerb. He was wheeling his bicycle in the road and he turned round at the sound of our engine. He saw us coming, stopped pushing his bike, leaned it against a lamp post, stepped out into the road and put his hand up for us to stop.
As soon as I saw him, I pressed my foot down slowly on the brake and we came to a halt just in front of him. The policeman started to walk round to me in the driving seat.
‘He’s going to ask to see my licence,’ I said to Alf. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Just keep smiling, lad,’ said Alf.
‘If I show him, he’ll see it’s provisional. And we’ve got no L- plates.’ I wound the window down an inch and forced a smile.
‘Excuse me, sir. Do you know you’ve only got one front light on?’ the policeman said. Then he walked round the passenger side front wing and touched the little light which decided to come on after all. He came back round. ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ he said, ‘must be a loose connection. But get it seen to as soon as you can.’ We drove off and luckily we got away with it.
Now all I needed to do was to take my test, pass it and get out on the road legitimately before I got into real trouble and found my luck running out.
It was important for me to pass my driving test. I had never passed any exams at school and wanted to prove to myself that I was good at something. This was something for me, not for my father or my brothers. I wanted to get out on the road and be my own boss, at least for a little while, even if it was only going to market or delivering potatoes to another shop.
I had a few more lessons with my friend in his truck with the awkward gear box and then borrowed Alfred’s van for the morning and went off by myself to the Test Centre in Romford. I was used to driving in and around Barking but there was much more traffic and different obstacles to negotiate in Romford. I was worried that I would get lost or take the wrong turning.
I met the examiner outside the centre. He was a very formal looking man, a bit like Neville Chamberlain, dressed in a dark grey suit and a black homburg hat. He checked my provisional licence and insurance before we even got in the van. As we sat inside, he asked me questions on the Highway Code and I had to show him I understood the correct use of signals. I wound down the window, put my arm out and did left and right, and up and down, as commanded.
When I finally drove off, he gave instructions such as ‘Go straight on,’ ‘Turn right at the junction,’ and ‘Keep left here,’ that sort of thing. I was keeping my eyes on the other cars and the bicycles, clutching the steering wheel while working out when to change gear. I was nervous and forgot that I was driving Alf’s van and not the vehicle with the peculiar gate–change gear box and got a bit confused. What I did was to take my right hand off the wheel, lean across, nearly into the lap of the examiner, in order to get a good grip on the gear stick which is what I was used to doing.
‘What are you playing at?’ said the examiner and banged on the dash board with his clip board. I braked sharply and stopped and the examiner nearly hit his head on the windscreen. I apologised about my attempts at double-declutching and explained about the other vehicle. He looked at me a bit odd but said. ‘All right, Mr Waite, you can proceed now.’ That’s it, I thought, my licence down the Swanee at the first attempt.
We went on a bit more until we came to a roa
d which went up an incline. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Hand brake on.’ Then he got out of the van and disappeared round the back. What’s going on? Now I’m on my own in the car. A couple of seconds later, he got back in and said, ‘Pull away, please, and then stop on the hill.’ I did as instructed and then he did it again – jumped out and went round the back. What he had done was put a match box behind one of the rear wheels so that if the car slipped back, when I was doing my hill start, he would know. Fortunately, he found the matchbox still standing up. After an emergency stop and reversing in the road he signed a bit of paper and handed it to me. He told me that I had passed.
Having my driving licence felt wonderful and gave me a real sense of freedom. Out on the road, window down, wind in my hair. This was better than roller skating behind the bus as it comes roaring round Ripple Road, down the hill and into Movers Lane. There’s ten-year-old me, hanging on for dear life to the rail at the back of the bus, ducking down so that nobody can see me, as we sail past my house. Yippee! And letting go as the bus slows down at the corner and I come skating to halt outside the Park gates. Freedom again.
I had my driving licence now and I felt I could do anything although the reality was that I was very limited. I could drive my brother’s van on my own and when my father bought a car, I became the family driver as he didn’t have a licence. Most Sundays I took my parents out somewhere for a change of scenery. Sometimes I was allowed to borrow the car and I would go off on my own. Of course, as a young fellow who had just started courting it meant I could boast to my friends, ‘I’m taking my girlfriend out for a spin in my car this weekend.’
* * *
It was Easter 1938 when I first saw Lily Mathers. I didn’t know it at the time but it was love at first sight. I was coming up to eighteen and like any young man, just wanted to enjoy myself and have a bit of fun. I wasn’t looking to get serious with a girl or get married but I felt we had something pretty special early on, Lily and me. I couldn’t stop thinking about her and knew that I wanted to be with her; I thought she felt the same although we didn’t talk about it. I assumed we had an understanding but things don’t always go according to plan.
Survivor of the Long March Page 2
