Twenty Five Million Ghosts

by Steve Aitchsmith

  I’m glad the culture was effectively dismantled by the blitz and subsequent Government policy. The traditional working class culture was shit and that’s all there is to it.

  None of this should suggest my mother was stupid. She had an enquiring intelligence that often failed to properly express itself because she lacked the verbal tools and the educated confidence to do so. When I was very young she would tell me bedtime stories she had invented but she never wrote them down.

  She should have because her written word was better than her conversational voice. She could write coherently and express ideas she would not or could not refer to when talking. She read endlessly and this enabled her to write excellently using a decent and varied vocabulary, somehow she never made that small step from written Standard English of a good quality to the spoken version. Her deeper thoughts poured out onto paper. I suspect she resented the world that had beaten her into the views she held but feared to voice it.

  So it was that we sat with long silences, my hand resting on hers, the quiet occasionally interrupted by family gossip updates and comments on local matters. This for about two hours. Her hands were fascinating; she was ambidextrous, although she favoured the left, quite literally sinister by preference I once told her but she didn’t appreciate the joke.

  Creepily, if the mood took her, she could write two separate narratives, one with each hand, at the same time. Being a little superstitious, this frightened her a tiny bit and she didn’t do it very often. Being completely devoid of all superstition I was and am fascinated by it. I’m sure it’s a known condition and it is on my very long list of things I’ll research if and when I get the time. My daughter is left handed, although I’m right handed. When she was small I saw her write a name label with one hand while drawing a decent sketch of a cat with the other. My heart melted a bit to see mum’s genes forging their slightly supernatural way into the future.

  My mother and father met just before the war. My mother was a precocious ten year old and he was a grown up fourteen. By the end of the second world war she was in her mid teens and he was nearly twenty. They had both grown up fast, he in the blitz and on the battlefields of France and Germany and she in the blitz and the home front. It defined them as people.

  My mother was prone to some depression, never treated because this was in the days when you were expected to pull yourself together and get on with it. My father was intermittently prone to rages that he quickly controlled but when I was a child he sometimes beat me. This occasional violence stopped when I was about fifteen, largely because I hit him back. When I did, he looked at me for a few seconds as a small red trickle ran from his nose.

  “Not like that,” he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Get your body weight behind it and follow through, that should have knocked me down.”

  I don’t think he realised how the violence affected me, to this day I hate violence and at the same time will engage in it without hesitation if I’m pushed into it.

  He is not a bad man and insofar as he requires my forgiveness for the occasional beating, I happily give it. There was never any permanent harm and it was never prolonged. His life had taught him to respond with force when he considered it necessary. He is a tough one, there’s no doubt about that. When he was seventy five he was mugged by a twenty five year old druggie. The mugger wasn’t exactly a physical powerhouse but he wasn’t shockingly weedy either. My dad knocked him out with a crashing blow to the jaw. Formative life in the East End and a youth spent in war will make you like that.

  A few years ago there was some sort of problem with his pension payments and I went with him to the relevant office to sort out the matter. Apparently payments had stopped without explanation. I was just there as moral support really, dad doesn’t need anybody to fight his battles for him. If anything, part of my role was to ensure he didn’t over react or become too aggressive. The prefrontal cortex deteriorates with age and so self restraint becomes less effective.

  It is said that you never know anybody until you’ve seen them drunk. In vino veritas, as they say. That’s because alcohol inhibits the behaviour control function of the prefrontal cortex. Old people are like sober drunks, they say what they mean and don’t fear the consequences. They release their real selves. My dad was entitled to his pension and he would make sure he got it.

  We sat in a council office in Stratford. The décor was 1980s bad taste wilted with age. The yellowing strip lighting was in urgent need of replacement and the whole place clearly advertised the financial difficulties of the local authority.

  It was never clear to me why the pension office was in the local council building, my dad just accepted it. It transpired that a computer glitch had cancelled his payments and he was only there to confirm his identity and then the payments would resume, with interest on the money not yet paid. Fight over, I thought. The young man dealing with him obviously thought so as well. We were both wrong.

  Taz Khan was a very clean cut, clean shaven, well dressed and intelligent young man. My guess would be that he was third or fourth generation British of Pakistani origin. His real name was Imtiaz but he made a point of telling us he preferred to be called Taz. In his home counties accent he explained that he was tasked with verifying identities in order to permit the payments to resume. The modern world is far more intrusive than the world of previous generations. Loss of national isolation in Britain has forced greater scrutiny of individuals to prevent improper claims and criminal intent.

  “I just need to confirm who you are. Just need to check that you are who you say you are, there’s no problem,” said Taz brightly. He played with a new looking Montegrappa pen.

  “I am me, there you are, it’s confirmed,” my dad responded and as far as he was concerned that was good enough.

  “I just need to prove it.” Good natured and used to people, Mr Khan would do well in life, I suspected.

  My dad shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Why? I am me. I’ve always been me and plan to be me forever. Just give me my money.”

  I glanced at Taz, offering a silent apology with my eye contact. Humans are very good at subtle and unspoken communication and Taz’s glance back at me silently said, ‘It’s OK, I’m used to awkward old sods.’ He leaned a bit on the desk and said to my dad, “I’m sure we can do this quickly, may I have your passport please?”

  My dad leaned towards him and stated, “I don’t have one. Never have had one and never will.”

  “A photo driving licence, perhaps?”

  “I don’t drive. Gave it up.”

  With several failed attempts to locate identifying documents of any sort, Taz was beginning to show early signs of being worn down. After what seemed ages of negotiation but in reality was only about twenty minutes, we arrived at a way around this; I would offer my passport, my birth certificate and make a written statement to confirm my dad’s identity. Dad even objected to this but I told him to shut up.

  A now slightly hassled looking Taz regarded my dad. Visibly out of sorts but retaining his polite and gentle demeanour he commented, “I can’t believe you don’t have any documents. You must have had something at some time, everybody needs a passport at some time. Haven’t you ever been abroad?”

  “Of course”, said my dad. I knew Taz was probably going to wish he hadn’t asked. My dad looked him straight in the eyes. “I’ve been to France and Germany.”

  “Well, you must have had something with you or they wouldn’t have let you cross the border,” said Taz as he walked into dad’s trap.

  “I did, I had a rifle and they couldn’t stop me.”

  Taz looked defeated, he slowly placed his expensive pen on the desk. “Anywhere else?” He said, sounding like a man requesting the coup de grace.

  “Canada,” my dad barked. “Before you ask, no I didn’t. We were an army collecting war prisoners to return them to Germany
. We were within our Empire and didn’t need anything.”

  As we left I shook Taz’s hand and verbally apologised. Taz smiled brightly as he dismissed the apology as unnecessary. “I love these old guys. They don’t take crap from anybody. No wonder they won the war.”

  ***

  Dad’s war

  Edward James Aitchsmith worked the bolt on his Lee Enfield and knelt on one knee, the grounded leg at an acute angle inward to provide stability. The grey shirt of the German prisoner stood out against the green grass as he fled across the field. Other prisoners in the now stationary train were shouting. The rest of the British soldiers unshouldered their weapons and made clear to the prisoners the consequences of resistance or any attempt to assist the escaper.

  “Oh shit,” Ed whispered to himself. “The bloody war’s over. The man’s scared. Oh shit, no.”

  He took careful aim. He was a good shot and at this distance it would be an easy kill. Then he just moved the rifle slightly to the left, barely perceptible but enough. He fired. The round went wide. Ed then tried to work the bolt to reload but decided it was temporarily jammed. As he tried to clear it the prisoner reached the far hedge. He turned, looked at Ed and waved. Then he disappeared into the world behind the hedge. There was no pursuit. Ed cleared the bolt, all was well now. He smiled.

  As he rejoined the train another of the soldiers smiled at him and nodded. The train guard officer approached.

  “Shame your bolt jammed, Aitchsmith,” he said quietly. “Is it clear now?”

  “Yes sir. It’s fine now. Just stuck for a moment, that’s all.”

  “Well done, lad,” the officer said. “Well done, there’s been enough killing I think.”

  As Ed went to take up his on-board position at the carriage end, a German prisoner tapped his arm. Ed looked down and the German proffered a small bar of chocolate. Ed declined, the man might need that later. The German nodded and smiled at Ed.

  “You’re a good man, Tommy,” called another prisoner in English. Others murmured agreement.

  “Enough,” called the officer loudly. “It’s over. Your man made a lucky escape, understand?”

  Everyone nodded their agreement. A few chuckled conspiratorially.

  This repatriation transport came from Canada. Some of them had been captured early in the war, others later. Ed’s company had been sent to collect them. They boarded the train at St. Malo after a slow Atlantic crossing, as if the ship’s crew were seeking to prolong enjoyment of the now safe and U boat free sailing. It was an easy job to guard these men. The Germans were going home and the war was over, there was no reason for them to cause trouble.

  As the train crossed France the happy chatter subsided a little. Some damage to villages and towns along with the detritus of battle in some of the fields focussed the passengers. Burnt out tanks and trucks, crashed planes and abandoned big guns. No bodies, though; the dead had been removed soon after the fighting moved east towards Germany.

  When the train crossed the Rhine and passed through German towns the prisoners fell silent. They whispered to each other and were visibly shocked at the extent of the damage. Whole towns completely flattened, they hadn’t been prepared for that.

  There was an overnight stop about twenty miles beyond the German border. Trains wear quickly and engineers needed to check it to make it safe for the rest of the journey. As wheel tappers and link checkers did their thing, the soldiers were briefed.

  “It’s been straight forward so far,” began the briefing officer. “Now it gets less routine and some of the prisoners will change their so far easy attitude. We will have to be more alert. It has been decided that those prisoners who come from what is now the Soviet sector will be handed over to the Russians, God help them. The prisoners will realise this soon. Be aware of what this will mean to them. The Germans murdered and raped their way deep into Russia. The Russians have repaid them in kind, with bells on and then some more. I would rather die than be subjected to Russian rage. They may feel the same, they may feel they have nothing to lose so be alert. We unload all of those going to the British, French or American zones when we reach Cologne, or rather the pile of rubble that used to be the great Cologne. They will be given the means to make their own way home. We guard the remaining poor sods until we hand them over to the Russians. That’s it. I’m sorry we have to do this.”

  “I hate them,” another soldier said to Ed. “You saw Bergen-Belsen as well as I did, more than I did. You saw what they did, those bastards. I think we should kill ’em all. They don’t deserve to exist.”

  “Then what?” asked Ed gently. “Then we’d be just like them, like the Russians. We’ve got to be better than that or this was all pointless, they have to become better than that and so does everybody else. This can’t be the future; I don’t think anybody can survive another war like this. I want to have kids one day. I’ll knock sense and learning into them but I don’t want them to have to do this, not like we did and like our dads did. Enough’s enough.”

  It’s hard to say when Edward Aitchsmith’s war began. In one sense it was the day he was born, although the actual war was fourteen years away. Three things of relevance to him happened in 1925: He was born, his father had some sliver of lung removed and Adolf Hitler published his rambling Mein Kampf.

  His father would attend hospital every year from now on, each time a little more lung would be removed, the gas induced creeping necrosis in his alveoli a debilitating memento from the first war.

  Adolf’s book, which Ed read later in life, he considered to be a remarkable piece of work. It was like the recorded thoughts of a self opinionated temper prone megalomaniac. An intelligent autodidact suffering from little formal education. The misreasoned struggle of the unguided to guide others. In a different place and time, with a different history, he might have been a good or even a great man.

  Ed’s early life was happy and not as difficult as many in the area where he lived. His home in Cartwright Street, near the Tower of London, just by where Cable Street meets the Royal Mint roads, was filled with six brothers and four sisters, all were older and most earned a good wage. His father earned well as a manager in the local gas works. His mother took in laundry and maintained the home. His was a relatively cash rich household. He was always clothed, never hungry and mainly warm.

  With so many siblings in one house there was often minor conflict. His dad would end it with his fists when necessary but mostly it wasn’t. His brothers all had some kind of military history, as did his dad. As a small child he could overhear them talking about their experiences as they got drunk. He envied them their wars, this is the common error of young boys. So often they continue the error into manhood.

  When he was about eleven he encountered a hint that trouble brewed in the background of his world. A breathless friend of one of this brothers called at the door.

  “They’re nearly here,” he said. “The Blackshirts are marching. My dad and the rabbi said I should go home but I’m going to join in the fight. Come with me.”

  The friend was Jewish, physically strong and one of several local Jewish boys intending to join with the socialist agitators in Cable Street, who planned to oppose Oswald Mosley’s ridiculously strutting but dangerous uniformed members of the British Union of Fascists.

  Every one of Ed’s brothers in the house declared they would go with him. They all left and dashed up the road. A few of them took cudgels and sticks from a cupboard near the front door.

  “I’m going, too,” declared Ed.

  “No you’re not,” said his dad and lightly slapped him around the head. “You will stay here with your mother. These are bad people coming, they’ve nearly taken over some other countries, the fools will find we’re not as easily intimidated and nowhere near as gullible.”

  As Ed sat with his mum, his dad went to the cupboard and took out what looked like a big sh
illelagh. He then strode out of the house towards Cable Street.

  Because the incident touched him personally, Ed developed an awareness of the tempest that was building. He started to read about the Spanish war and how dictators were seizing control across Europe.

  In his local area he started to observe things that before he hadn’t thought about. The local docks often hosted ships flying Swastikas. He went to the berths and watched to see what they were doing.

  Men from the ships would push large carts to Manny Cohen’s yard. Manny was the local scrap metal dealer and he was making good money from the trade. The interaction between him and the Germans seemed easy and friendly. They paid in cash and took large quantities of metal back to the ships. When the German sailors left the yard other Jewish men went to it and were arguing with Manny.

  Manny noticed Ed was watching and went over to him. He handed him a pound note and said, “Here you go, Ed. Buy your mum a present.” Manny was known locally for his generosity towards the kids. Ed was delighted, a pound was an enormous sum.

  So it was that when, in 1939, Britain declared war on Germany, Ed understood. His brothers either returned to their recent regiments or, if not on reserve, re-joined. Ed was not evacuated because his parents resisted it at this time. Ed waited in anticipation as nothing appeared to happen for months. Then it did.

  The speed of the allied collapse shocked Ed’s dad. As the country scrambled to rescue its army, Ed was told he would be evacuated now. His mum took him to a train that transported a lot of late evacuees to Weston-super-Mare where, in theory, Ed would be safe. Since he was capable of independent living he was put up in a youth hostel. There he stayed for just a few days.