Survivor of the Long March

by Charles Waite

  I stood on the edge of the kerb outside the station looking for a tram. Traffic whizzed by so fast that I was frightened to cross the road. I was looking for a tram but I didn’t know that they had been replaced by trolley buses. I saw one on the other side of Broadway gliding by with ‘Barking’ written on the back. Damn it! I could have been on that and been home in a jiffy. So I plucked up the courage to cross, dodging between cars, vans and bicycles. The stop was a few hundred yards away and I decided to wait for the next one.

  A bus drew up and the conductor was hanging off the rail at the back. As I got on, swinging my kit bag on ahead, he said, ‘Steady on, mate,’ and ducked.

  ‘I’m sorry but I haven’t got any money,’ I said, showing him my travel warrant.

  ‘Not valid on this, mate. Sorry.’

  I thought he was going to refuse to take me. I told him who I was and where I had come from and just enough about my long journey back across Germany for him to take pity on me. He picked my bag up, put it on a seat inside and said, ‘You get in and sit there. Nobody’s going to turn you off.’

  When we got to Barking station he helped me off, carrying my bag across the road and put it down against a wall. He shook my hand and said, ‘Cor! Haven’t I got something to tell my missus when I get home.’

  I started walking, taking in familiar sights: the junction at Ripple Road, pubs, shops and the Park. I had imagined walking down Movers Lane many times over the last five years. I passed a woman I knew who was sweeping the front step. She looked up but she didn’t recognise me. All she said was, ‘Oh, another one home.’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ and walked on.

  When I got to our little row of shops with the newsagents, grocers, our greengrocers and my aunt and uncle’s butchers, I was expecting (or hoping) to see all the family out in the street waiting for me. A bit of a welcome home. Of course, when I got nearer and saw the blinds down in the shops and the closed signs up, I remembered that it was Monday and they didn’t open. What a pity! They had probably gone out for the day somewhere and missed my telegram. I knocked on the door just in case but there was nobody home. I wasn’t worried so I tried next door at Auntie Elsie and Uncle Joe’s.

  Their shop was shut but I tapped on the little glass window in the front door and after a few minutes I heard footsteps. The door opened and Auntie stood there, looking at this strange man in uniform on her front step. Then the penny dropped and she just stood with her mouth open, speechless.

  ‘Yes, it is me, Auntie Elsie. It’s Charlie,’ I stood outside holding my kit bag.

  ‘Who is it?’ Joe called out from the back.

  Elsie still hadn’t spoken to me but shouted back, ‘It’s Charlie. Alice’s boy, come home.’

  ‘Well, don’t leave him standing on the doorstep, woman,’ Joe shouted from the back. ‘Bring him in.’ He appeared in the hall in his shirt sleeves and no collar. ‘Come on in, lad. Come on in,’ and he put his hand out and shook mine so hard I felt my poor bones cracking.

  I followed them into the back parlour where three of my girl cousins were sitting at the table. Of course they had changed a bit since I had last seen them, as had I.

  ‘Look who’s here, girls. It’s your cousin Charlie.’ Gwen and Joyce, the older ones, got up and came round to give me a hug. Little Jean followed; she’d been just a toddler when I had last seen her.

  ‘When will they be back?’ I said, indicating next door.

  ‘Your parents. Didn’t you know? They moved out to Leigh-on-Sea,’ Joe said.

  ‘Bought a house. Your dad still works in the shop,’ said Elsie.

  I told them I hadn’t received any letters for at least six months so was out of touch with the family.

  ‘Never mind that. What about something to eat?’ Joe rubbed his hands together. ‘You look as though you could do with a good square meal inside you.’

  I nodded. ‘I could eat a horse,’ I said.

  Joe laughed. ‘Sorry, no horse but I could do a nice rump steak or some tasty sausages. What you fancy for your tea?’

  My mouth was watering. ‘A pork chop, please. That would go down a treat,’ I said and Joe went off next door.

  Elsie put the kettle on in the kitchen and the girls kept me company. It was lovely to hear their girlish chatter and giggles. Joe went into his cold storage room to check what he had and came back with two enormous pork chops, lovely and pink with a thick ribbon of fat on the side of each one. Sadly, I only managed to eat a couple of mouthfuls. I wasn’t used to eating meat or anything much really, and my poor stomach couldn’t take it – or my teeth. I had to be careful what I ate for a very long time.

  What happened next was that Joe rang one of my brothers with the good news of my safe arrival home and asked him to come round and pick me up and take me to Leigh. All I remember is that on the way there I was looking out of the window taking in everything. We stopped at some crossroads and right on the corner was a big dairy company shop and I could see the window display with a huge cheese on a stand in the middle.

  I said, ‘Cor, look at that! There’s us been crying out for food all this time and you’ve got cheeses the size of a house.’ But you know what, it was a dummy and there wasn’t much real cheese around anywhere. Everybody at home was struggling with a ration of 50gms per week, and there I was one night, 1000 miles away, stuffing my face with huge chunks of cheese stolen from the railway truck and a load of horrible rats eating the rest.

  We reached my parents’ home which was a fine mid-terraced house in what was known as ‘the good part’ of town. When my mother opened the door and saw me she was lost for words. She wrapped me in her arms and held me tight for a very long time. My father shook my hand, patted me on the back and took me into the front parlour. When my sister Elsie saw me she burst into tears and ran out of the room.

  * * *

  Lily and I were reunited on the platform at Leigh-on-Sea railway station. I nearly missed her getting off the train as I didn’t recognise her in uniform. She was given compassionate leave and had come straight from Slough where she was stationed. She was about to be made a sergeant in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). Her third stripe was waiting in the office for her to collect and sew on her uniform, when I re-appeared.

  Lily made a life of her own while I was away, working to support herself and be independent. She wrote to me and told me about what she was up to so I knew a bit about her work. She was always a hard worker and a year or so after the war broke out she left her job as a seamstress and applied for war work. She was a fitter at a Spitfire factory out somewhere in Hertfordshire, fixing fire guards (special protective windscreens) to cockpits. They were designed to help protect pilots from the serious burns which many suffered when their planes were shot down. That was a good thing to do. Always clever with her hands, my Lily.

  She joined the ATS in May 1943 and soon after was promoted to Corporal and put in charge of a whole hut of women. She was involved in training girls for their various jobs in supporting the work of the army. She learned to drive on a little Austin motor and became a staff driver. She took officers out to meetings just like me in France. She was so well thought of that one of the officers said that she could come and work for her after the war. And now I had come back to spoil everything.

  Lily didn’t run away in horror when she saw me. She rushed towards me and we fell into each other’s arms. We hugged and kissed and that was it. She said nothing about how awful I looked or how thin I was. She didn’t say that she didn’t love me any more and didn’t want to marry me because she had met somebody else. She just said, ‘Oh, Charlie,’ and looked at me with her big brown eyes and smiled her lovely smile, ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

  Three weeks later I took her to a branch of Herbert Wolf, the jewellers, in Oxford Street and bought her the biggest engagement ring I could afford. Buying Lily a ring meant a lot to me. I had always felt guilty about the gold signet ring my mother had given me, which I had exchanged for half of loaf of bread with a German
guard. A ring is a powerful symbol of love. Once I put the ring on Lily’s finger, I hoped she would never take it off.

  I have the receipt in front of me dated 13 June: ‘Diamond cluster ring (18ct) £38/10/-.’ That was a tidy sum back in 1945 (£1000 in today’s money) but only the best for my dear Lily who had waited so long for me. Thanks to my army pay being paid into my bank all those years, and my mother returning the money I had transferred to her account from the camp, I didn’t have to borrow money from anybody.

  And that was how it was to be all our married life, our 63 years together. Lily and I made our way in the world together without help from anybody.

  When the family turned their backs on me – well, you know what families can be like, I had to look after myself. What is it that most families fall out over? Money. And my family was no different. I had been promised various things by my parents such as a car when I came home, but more importantly, to take over the family business. In the end I got neither and was pushed out. Completely. I did feel it was wrong. I had been away for five years and missed out on everything. Everybody else had jobs and their own houses and families; I was starting from scratch and had to make my own way. Left behind again.

  When my parents died a few years later, my brothers and sisters suggested we took it in turns to have Elsie, our invalid sister, to stay for two or three weeks at a time. I told them that I wasn’t willing to take my turn. Lily and I hadn’t been married long and we wanted to be on our own with our young son Brian. We agreed that I would offer one of my brothers a sum of money to take my turn, quite a substantial amount it was. He said ‘Yes’ to begin with. Unfortunately he was pressured by the others not to accept it even though he could have done with the money. So the family stopped speaking to me. How about that!

  The funny thing is that Elsie would probably have been better off if we had all chipped in to support her in a little flat on her own somewhere to give her some independence. Years later some agreed that it would have been a better idea. Although in the end she did hold down a job as an auxiliary nurse and she married when she was fifty to a widower. Sadly she died a few years later.

  No point in dwelling on these things. Water under the bridge. Pity that everybody takes sides in family disputes and goes along with the majority. All the hardships I faced on my return made me a stronger person and made Lily and I determined to do things our way and make up for lost time.

  We got married on 25 June 1945 in a registry office and my eldest sister Marjorie and her husband Stan Wood were our witnesses. We walked from the registry office in Stratford East along Broadway to Lyons Corner House where we had tea and cakes. That was our wedding reception. Then we went back home which was Lily’s parents’ flat in a tenement block in West Ham. It had stone steps all the way up and a lift which smelt of urine and rarely worked.

  It was a quiet ceremony for obvious reasons. I told Lily that I couldn’t face a church wedding with everybody there. I was a bundle of nerves and just wanted to hide away, not stand up in front of a whole church full of people. Lily understood. ‘If that’s what you want then that’s fine by me.’ She was wonderful over that.

  I’ll tell you something fantastic. After we had posed for our wedding photograph, the chap came up to me and said, ‘It’s entirely up to you but I can make you look better.’ I didn’t understand what he meant. ‘I can fill you out, improve your appearance. Leave it to me.’ And so I did. He was being polite because I looked a fright with my sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. I don’t know how he re-touched the photo but he did. He puffed up my face so you wouldn’t know that I had lost 2 stone and was suffering from malnutrition. So there I am, looking healthy and happy in my wedding photo.

  I was looking forward to my first Christmas at home for five years and enjoying it with my new wife. Even though I had been automatically transferred to the Army Reserves, I was surprised to receive a letter from the War Office instructing me to report to Portsmouth Station for postal duties. How could they do this to me? It would mean being away from home again for months including Christmas. There was nothing I could do about it but go.

  I went down by train and met other chaps like me on the way there. We talked about how unfair it was to be called up again; how nobody knew or cared about us and what we had been through. We were all quite angry. There were about forty of us in the end and we got more and more angry about the situation as we waited to report for duty.

  By the time the Post Office officials arrived, we had decided that we wouldn’t do the work. We agreed that it had to be all or nothing. It was no good one man saying, ‘OK, I’ll do it’; that would spoil it. So we all refused. The PO officials were worried and didn’t know what to do. They told us that we had to stay there while they went away to contact their superiors, presumably at the War Office. A while later they returned and told us we had to remain in the station until somebody came down from London the next day. There didn’t seem anything else to do but wait and see what they said. We were all used to hanging around like this and kipping down in odd spaces and corners and we did as we were told. I slept on a bench in one of the waiting rooms with my kit bag under my head as a pillow.

  The next day when an officer arrived and spoke to us, we were still determined not to work and we refused again. The fellow just said, ‘OK’ and we went back home. And we got away with it. So I spent Christmas at home after all. However, come the New Year, January 1946, blow me, if I didn’t receive call-up papers again. God knows what they thought I was fit for! Well, I found out a few weeks later when I reported to Gravesend Barracks.

  You only had to take a look at me to see I wasn’t A1. I couldn’t walk properly as I had problems with one of my legs and I was still underweight, and a puff of wind would have blown me away. I had a medical and was classified B2 which was ‘not fit for normal army duties’. So what duties did the CO order me to do? I had to go around the barracks picking up litter with a stick with a spike on the end. I had to clean windows (only on the ground floor as I couldn’t climb a ladder) and wash floors. Not only was it unnecessary as the place was always spotless but it was dreadfully boring and a waste of my time. I had no education, no training or anything during that time. I slept in a dormitory with a load of other men who were as bored as I was and I only went out of the barracks when I had a weekend pass to go home to see Lily. There were other POWs in there who felt like me: this was another prison sentence. Six months I spent there. Totally wrong.

  After I got married, I was doing odd jobs for my family, mostly driving around fetching and carrying for the business. I worked for a while for my mother’s brother who was a farmer. He didn’t own any land but he bought the field crops and employed people to pick them and then take the vegetables to market. Does this sound familiar to you? I helped him with a bit of everything including picking and driving vans full of vegetables to Stratford Market to be sold. It looked as though I had come full circle – back where I started.

  When I was transferred to the Army Reserve list, I was issued with my de-mob suit courtesy of the Central Ordnance Depot, Branston (where the pickle comes from). I chose a double-breasted suit in a pin stripe material. I was thrilled to get it, not just in anticipation of finally leaving the army but because I had never had a proper suit. I was particularly pleased to have it when my pal Laurie Neville invited me to his wedding and asked me to be his best man. I wasn’t going to let him down. Come to think of it, he was in his de-mob suit too. His wedding was a small family affair and like me he had found a good woman to set up home with.

  What Lily and I wanted most of all was a home of our own. We had a roof over our head, moving a couple of times over the next few years. We lived in a rented flat over my brother’s shop and then in a rented house with a little garden my brother found us when he sold his shop. It wasn’t the same as having our own place. I wanted to find a proper job and be my own boss and save up for a house. I was still a gofer, I think they call it, at everybody’s beck and call. No dignity i
n that. But I wasn’t trained in anything; this didn’t help me settle back into civvy street.

  I have to say that I wasn’t an easy person to live with. I got upset very quickly over the smallest thing. I was extremely nervous and didn’t like meeting people or being in a crowd; I was afraid of doing some of the simplest tasks. My father got angry with me on one occasion because I wouldn’t go and get some petrol coupons for his van from the Town Hall. All I had to do was get a form and fill it in to request a few extra gallons but I couldn’t face going out and having to talk to strangers. He kept on about it and told me off for not going, which I resented very much. I was a grown man, not the young lad I had been before the war. So that made me very angry. In the end Lily came with me to the Town Hall but my father should have understood.

  I didn’t like authority figures before the war and I certainly didn’t like them after. So being told off or told what to do didn’t go down well with me. I liked being free to do things my way and sometimes when I got frustrated or people crossed me I was not very agreeable. There were times when I did behave badly. I was horrible. I would just explode for no apparent reason and shout and swear at whoever was near – usually Lily, I’m afraid.

  When Brian was much older, he told me that I ought to sort this out as it was causing a lot of upset at home. I knew Lily understood but it wasn’t nice. You shouldn’t take it out on your family but I couldn’t help it. It was like a huge build-up of anger and frustration and it had to be released. I couldn’t stop. I never talked about the war and I think that had a lot to do with it. Lily did encourage me to talk about what had happened during the war, hoping to find the reason for my behaviour but I didn’t tell her. Today I would have had some counselling.

  I wish I had talked to somebody about my years as a prisoner, especially about the terrible things I saw. They are as clear today as they were the day I stood by and watched a woman shot in the head; a man beaten to death with a spade and left in a bloody heap by the road. It wouldn’t have been fair on Lily to burden her with all that. The constant fear I felt, my sense of shame at my degradation and my helplessness to do anything about what I saw. These feelings affected me deeply. I was so disgusted by the way the Germans behaved that I wanted to blow the whole lot of them to smithereens. I was so angry and carried that hatred inside for a long time.