Most weekends, I used to go out with a group of friends, working fellows like me. We used to put a shilling or two a week into a kitty and when we had enough we would decide what to do. A favourite activity was going up to London by bus or train and catching a pleasure steamer from Tower Pier down to Margate. I remember sailing on the Golden Eagle, the Royal Eagle and the Medway Queen. We had a marvellous time. Funny to think, years later, that many of these boats were requisitioned for war work. While I was being detained at Herr Hitler’s pleasure in East Prussia, they were travelling up and down the Thames, sweeping for mines or ferrying evacuees from the East End to the coast; and even into the English Channel to help with the evacuation of Dunkirk.
A return ticket cost about five shillings and we were happy walking round the decks, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the change of scenery. Day trippers with a bit more money paid extra for a deckchair and sat outside or in an enclosed lounge area. There were kiosks selling food and drink and there was a posh dining saloon with waiters in uniform but I never saw the inside. If we fancied it, we followed some of the other fellows ‘to see the engines’ as they called it. The bar was situated near the engine room and there was a lot of drinking during the trip and some very merry people by the end. I never got drunk as I only drank lemonade or ginger beer.
After we arrived and docked, we usually had a couple of hours at the seafront, strolling along the Promenade, enjoying an ice cream or paddling in the sea with our trouser bottoms rolled up. Sometimes we went off to Dreamland Amusement Park where there were rides and sideshows but that could get expensive and it was all a bit of rush not to miss the boat home. At other times, back in Barking, when we had less money in the kitty, we went to the cinema and ate fried eggs on toast in a cafe or fish and chips wrapped in newspaper while sitting on the quayside and then larked around town.
One long weekend, which stretched over the whole of Easter, my pals and I went round to a friend’s house in King Edward Road. His parents were away so we decided that it would be fun to have a party and stay over. The obvious thing to do was to let all your pals know and make sure that some girls were invited. There were six of us fellows and eight girls, friends from work or church, someone’s sister; you know the sort of thing. It was only a small terraced house so it was cosy, you could say, but we moved from room to room, chatting, listening to music on the wind-up gramophone and my pal on the piano accordion and eating and drinking. We didn’t make much of a mess but I remember being the one tidying up afterwards, putting things back where they belonged.
I suppose that, by today’s standards, our behaviour was pretty tame. The lads didn’t go in for binge drinking like now, although some of them used to get a bit merry. A few smoked but I didn’t until I became a prisoner of war. I began smoking seriously when the tins of cigarettes started arriving in the Red Cross parcels. I remember receiving a load from a vicar in Surrey who adopted me. I don’t know how this came about, whether he drew my name out of a hat for some ‘Help a Soldier at the Front’ appeal in his parish, I never found out, but he used to send me 400 cigarettes at a time. Of course, I didn’t smoke them all. I used some for bartering for extra rations from the German guards.
It was at the house party that I met Lily. As soon as she walked into the front room, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had lovely brown eyes, beautiful long black hair and a wonderful smile. She was always smiling, even though, I learned later, she didn’t have an awful lot to smile about. She was a little shorter than me and was wearing what I call a ‘teddy bear’ coat, with a furry texture, and a pink scarf. I didn’t even notice the others girls.
We started chatting and she seemed to like me. For the whole of that long glorious weekend she hardly left my side except when she went to the kitchen to help make sandwiches with the other girls or they went off to bed upstairs at the end of the evening. I could have walked home each night as it was only fifteen minutes away, but I didn’t want to miss seeing as much of Lily as possible. I slept downstairs on cushions on the floor and dreamed of Lily.
What I liked best was walking and I used to go down to Barking Creek where I watched tugs and fishing boats and gulls squabbling overhead. The further I went on, away from the mills, timber yards and gas works, the more desolate it got out near the marshlands. I used to watch herons flying out of reed beds and listen to distant shipping horns. We walked there that weekend. I was happy keeping with Lily, talking and laughing, getting closer to her while the others went ahead or off on their own. Even though I was shy and usually careful about what I said, I felt I could talk to Lily; she was a good listener.
Lily was a seamstress and worked with her sister. In her spare time she loved dancing and she used to sing with a band. She wanted to be a properly trained singer but her mother Ada wouldn’t let her. You crossed Ada Mathers at your peril. Lily had to learn a trade. She was very good at dressmaking and made all her own clothes (except the teddy bear coat, of course) and continued to do so all her life. She made all our Brian’s clothes when he was growing up. Clever girl.
I have a photo of Lily when she was about 17, here, now, by my side. She is wearing a pretty floral blouse, with three fancy buttons down the front, which she designed and made herself. I have treasured the photo all my life. It was one of my most valued possessions, surviving the labour camps and The Long March home. Lily, always there by my side.
Ada wasn’t really to blame for wanting her daughter to have a good trade like dress-making, what she thought was the best for her daughter and the family. We were living in difficult times and every household was counting the pennies. My father, too, thought that earning your keep was more important than following your dreams. Like me, Lily had ambitions which weren’t fulfilled although she continued singing with the band until the war broke out. Later, when we were married, I loved hearing her sing around the house, even though I have a tin ear, and I was pleased that our son, Brian, turned out to be musical.
Lily didn’t say much about her parents and later on, when I found out more about them, I could understand why she didn’t want me to meet them. After that weekend we met regularly, spending our free time together so that I saw less of my pals and more of my girl. I borrowed the family car from time to time when my father let me and I took Lily for a drive around town, or into the country, proud to be seen with my beautiful girl but she never wanted me to drive her home.
I brought Lily to my home a few times, when my parents were up in town and Winnie and Elsie were there. We would sit and talk, have tea and then I would walk her back to Barking Station, get a platform ticket and see her onto the train. It was sad every time I said goodbye to her. If it was hard then, imagine what it was like for me during those five years of captivity without seeing the face of the one I loved and hearing the voice which made my heart miss a beat.
It was a shock, I’ll admit, the first time I saw where Lily lived and met her parents. She couldn’t really put it off any longer as we had been seeing each other a while and were pretty serious. They lived in Stratford, what I called West Ham, in a rather run-down area in a very small mid-terrace cottage with two bedrooms, a tiny garden at the back and an outside toilet. Lily slept downstairs in the front room so she didn’t have a place to call her own.
Alf, Lily’s father, was a cooper who repaired barrels for local breweries. He used to get these huge whisky casks brought in on the horse-drawn carts. When they arrived in the yard, he and his mate lifted them off and turned them over onto blocks of wood to drain the dregs into a bucket underneath. You would be surprised how much liquor came out of one of those casks. They would strain the whisky through a lady’s stocking set up on a tripod to filter out any impurities, such as dirt and grit which had collected inside. It was then decanted into empty White’s lemonade bottles. Alf made himself a special wooden suitcase, lined with cloth, to carry two of these bottles in and out of work each day. No wonder he used to fall asleep drunk every evening and Ada had to help him to bed.
One day he was coming home from work and was so drunk that he fell down the steps in the bus, the suitcase broke and a shard of glass got lodged in his arm. He didn’t feel a thing and refused to go to hospital. However, he was taken there in the end to have it seen to and was kept in. I visited him in New Cross Hospital and saw how he was bruised from waist to feet. He still didn’t feel a thing and protested ‘Fuss ’bout nowt.’
Lily’s mother, unfortunately, wasn’t much better. Ada wasn’t a very nice person and took no nonsense from anyone. She was a cook in a pub and worked long hours for low wages. But that didn’t put her off spending every spare penny (and more) on the dogs. She was never happy unless she was having a bet. She even pawned her son Alfred’s best suit, the one he wore on Sundays and to go courting. Things were rough at home and I know that one of her sisters married early to get away from the rowing and Lily left home as soon as she could.
Lily and Charlie, Charlie and Lily, whichever way you said it, it was the same: we were a couple. We had been going out together for about 18 months, still enjoying going for walks, to the pictures and the occasional dance but I wasn’t keen on that. Two left feet, that’s me. Lily would try to get me on the floor but when I resisted, she would go off and have a jitterbug with some other fellow. I didn’t mind because I knew I would be hopeless even if I had wanted to have a go. At other times we would just sit at home, snuggling up and enjoying being together. I was saving money and Lily was putting things away for her bottom drawer. No actual plans for marrying had been discussed and, with war looming, our minds were concentrating on what was happening around us and what it all might mean for the future. Would I be called up? Where would I go? What would Lily do? So, the night Lily told me it was all over came as a real shock. What on earth had happened for her to say this? Had she got cold feet or met someone else?
I was at Lily’s place one evening, a terraced house she had moved into as a lodger. She had met a woman by chance at the bus stop one evening after work and they had got talking. Lily said she was unhappy at home and mentioned a recent unpleasantness with her mother. This woman offered her a room in her house; her husband was a butler at Buckingham Palace and was rarely at home. Lily was lucky to find somewhere nice to live. I was sitting quietly in the small armchair in her little bedroom as I did three or four times a week. It was cosy with the curtains closed, the lamp on and we could forget the world outside. Lily was very quiet and just sat there on the edge of her bed and I knew something was up.
‘Have I done something wrong?’ No answer. ‘Lily. What is it?’ And then those words, spoken so slowly.
‘Well, I’ve been thinking.’
There was a long pause. I could hear people passing in the street, singing and laughing. ‘Someone’s happy,’ I thought. ‘Don’t say anything,’ I said to myself and then out loud, ‘Don’t say anything else, Lily. Please, don’t.’
She sighed and said, ‘I’m sorry, Charlie, but I want time to think about us a little bit more.’
She’s found somebody else, I knew it. ‘Do you want me to go?’
‘Do you mind?’
That was it, I had to go then. ‘If that’s what you want I’ll leave.’
I got up slowly, leaned over and kissed her goodbye on the cheek. There was a terrible lump in my throat so I couldn’t have spoken even if I had wanted to. I went downstairs, out the front door, shutting it slowly, down the path, shutting the gate slowly too, hoping all the time Lily would come out and call me back. I walked to the end of the road, looking back all the time to check if her light was still on. No light. I walked on to the bus stop, thinking she would run after me. I waited. I could hear the sound of a piano playing in a pub nearby and people laughing, and the far-off rumble of a passing train but no voice calling me back.
My mother was still awake when I got in. Once she had heard the back door go and my footsteps coming upstairs, she could close her eyes and go to sleep. But I couldn’t sleep that night thinking about what had happened and wondering what I had done wrong. All alone now. A terrible feeling.
I hadn’t seen Lily for weeks, maybe for a couple of months or, should I say, she hadn’t seen me. Because during that time, I have to confess something. I followed her and secretly watched where she was going. I missed her but I admit that I also wanted to know if she was seeing somebody else. Once I followed her all the way up Stratford Broadway to the Town Hall where she met some fellow outside and they went in to a dance which was on there. I didn’t go inside but she did the same thing the following week. Well, that’s it, I thought.
Then one evening she suddenly appeared. I was returning home with my brother-in-law, who was staying with us. It was very dark as we walked from the station as half the street lights were off. Bert saw somebody waiting at the top of the road and as we got nearer I heard my name being called.
‘It’s Lily,’ said Bert, ‘you go on, I’ll make my own way back,’ and he made himself scarce.
‘Lily,’ I said rushing towards her. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘I thought I’d missed you.’
I could see she was shivering. ‘You’re freezing cold,’ I said as I touched a hand. ‘You’ve got no gloves.’ I took hold of both hands and warmed them with mine. She bent forward and a lock of her hair brushed my cheek and I breathed in the familiar scent of lavender soap. We stood there for a while just feeling the reassuring presence of each other again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. ‘So sorry, Charlie,’ and she put her arms around me and gave me a big hug. Oh, how I had missed that!
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What happened?’ Whatever it was it didn’t really matter now. ‘What was it? What did I do wrong? Tell me and I’ll try and put it right.’
She stood back a bit and said, ‘You can’t dance, Charlie.’
What did she mean, can’t dance? Was that what this was all about? ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know I’m no good at dancing. It’s just that I’ve got two left feet.’ I looked at her and smiled, ‘But I can learn, Lily. I’m sure I can, if you want.’
Fortunately for me, Lily saw past my failings and realised she loved me for what I was. I hoped I would make a better partner in marriage than I was on the dance floor. I was lucky, so lucky that she gave me a second chance. I did try to learn to dance years later after we were married. Lily had talked me into taking some dancing lessons but it wasn’t any good and I still have two left feet.
As war approached everybody was getting jittery with the news of Hitler’s invasion of Poland. So on 3 September, when the inevitable announcement came, it was a kind of relief. We didn’t have a radio but word got round quickly about Chamberlain declaring war on Germany. My mother was upset and cried. The last thing she, or anybody else who had lived through the last war, wanted was another one. There was talk about the call up of young men between 20 and 23 years old. That upset my mother and sisters too. It was just a matter of time. My birthday was in May so, as a 20-year-old, I was expecting my papers any day.
When my army call up papers arrived on 18 October telling me where I had to go register, it was a blow when I realised that I wasn’t going to join the regiment I had requested. Everybody had to fill in a form sent from the Ministry of Labour and National Service, asking us ‘to express your preference’ and I wrote down, ‘to join the Royal Corps of Signals.’ My school friend, Ronnie, had just joined them and had gone off training not far away. I was looking forward to following him and having a pal around to make it more fun and less frightening.
I imagined that I would be learning Morse Code and how to use a radio transmitter; how to install and repair telephone lines and useful skills like that for the front line boys. I did not want to be in an infantry regiment whose main purpose was sticking bayonets into other men’s guts. It was not that I didn’t want to do my duty or was going to shirk my responsibility but I just didn’t want to have to kill a man, any man, somebody with a wife and children. Why should I kill him?
I honestly believed that there was a choice when I filled in the form. I am in where I want to be, ready to serve my King and Country. I am not afraid of hard work and I want to learn new skills. I will do my job as well as I can and we will all be home by Christmas.
3
All at Sea
There was no choice. I was put in the Queen’s Royal Regiment, an infantry regiment, well known for its fighting abilities. It was wrong of them to give you the idea that you had a say in what happened to you. It was one of the first (and there were to be many later on), examples of the helplessness I felt at being in the hands of authority, powerless to decide your own destiny.
I was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 7th Company which was made up of regulars, volunteer reservists (territorials) and conscripts. A lot of us, especially the conscripts and the young officers, didn’t have a clue what to do and we never had any real training. It was the Phoney War; and things hadn’t got going properly and we felt as though we were just playing at being soldiers.
I had to report to an address in East Grinstead which turned out to be premises above a furniture store in the High Street. I met another fellow on the train who was going there, and we eventually found it round the back of the building up some stairs. It was musty and damp inside and looked as though the place was used for storage and had just been hastily cleared. There were a dozen or so there already and we joined a queue to register at a desk. Gradually more arrived, until there were about thirty of us by late afternoon. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do except sit and wait. One chap said, ‘I fancy going out for some cigarettes. Anybody want to come?’ A couple put their hands up and were about to leave when we heard the sound of heavy boots coming up the stairs.
Survivor of the Long March Page 3
