by Steve Holmes
‘Don’t worry,’ he called out to his parents as he walked out of the front door en route to the railway station. ‘We’ll look out for each other. You’ll see me quicker than you think.’
Georgina Holmes tried her best not to cry. It was the last thing her son would want to see. She fought the tears; she fought harder than she’d ever fought anything before and just about managed to carry it off. Ernie was 22. He promised to write to his mother as often as he could. But as Ernie turned the corner of Ashton Drive, he turned and gave a final wave. As he disappeared from view her legs gave way, not unlike a heavyweight boxer caught on the ropes with nowhere to hide. It took her husband all his strength to keep her from collapsing in a heap on their front doorstep.
John noticed the subtle differences in the house, particularly in his mother’s attitude towards him. She would hardly let him out of her sight and fussed around him like an old mother hen. John knew how difficult it was for her, having lost two sons, and even his sisters appeared to treat him a little differently. There was no name calling or teasing which was always par for the course and each week, on pay day, Mary and Alice would bring him a little treat, a bar of chocolate or a magazine. He thanked them of course but then always reminded them there wasn’t any need to bring him gifts, he wasn’t a baby anymore and he had his own wages now. He was wrong, thought Georgina Holmes. He was the baby, always had been and always would be.
Mary and Alice were lucky; although they weren’t in reserved occupation they had escaped being called up into the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, the Nursing Corps or indeed to factories further afield making munitions. Mary worked at K shoes at Lancaster and had done since she left school at 15. She had risen to the rank of supervisor and had 25 people working under her. In 1939 K shoes had been contracted to produce aircraft covers, tents, service boots, kit bags, gaiters and even RAF flying boots. Production was stepped up and an extra hour put onto the working day. The government deemed that Mary would be best placed to remain in her current employment and help with the war effort that way. John adored Mary, who reminded him very much of his mother. In fact it was as if he had two mothers at number 59 Ashton Drive.
Alice, on the other hand, was totally different to Mary, like chalk and cheese but just as special to John.
Alice took great pride in her appearance, always dressed immaculately whenever she left the house and although the smallest of the brothers and sisters at just under five foot, she carried herself high. John’s mother would sometimes have a little laugh at her expense, announcing ‘here’s her majesty a’coming’ if she spotted her in the street from the bay window of the lounge. The jackets and skirts from her wardrobe were carefully tailored, more contoured to the shape of her figure, and consequently looked more feminine than the other box-cut fashions some of her friends and colleagues wore. One particular favourite of Alice’s was a suit that many women wore during the war years. The suits were made from a tartan cloth and would later be nicknamed ‘siren suits’ when hordes of tartan-clad girls would be seen running for the air raid shelters when the sirens sounded. Alice demanded everything neat and tidy and took her tea in a delicate china cup. She positively frowned with displeasure when John and his dad took theirs from white tin mugs. John’s dad said it made no sense.
‘Give me a mug,’ he’d command. ‘Can’t get any more than a gob full out of those bloody thimbles.’
Alice, aged 23, was office manager in the accounts department of the local council. She helped set the budgets, kept essential services financed and made sure the wages were paid to the workers. Again the government thought it prudent that she stayed put in Lancaster. Georgina Holmes was luckier than most; three out of five at home isn’t bad, she thought. But as the three remaining siblings settled down to listen to the evening news from the BBC she wondered just how long it would be before she was left with two. John sat down on the rug and crossed his legs. He leant up against his mother’s knees as she put down her knitting and rubbed a weary hand through his hair.
John had to get used to being the only boy in the household. His chores were increased to make up for the fact that his two older brothers were away to war and suddenly there was only him and his dad to cut wood, bring in the coal, clean the fire and tend to the allotment. All in all John didn’t mind; he moaned occasionally but it was just a front to cover the fact that he missed his brothers so much.
John continued to swim in the Crook O’ Lune and was selected for the legendary Lancaster water polo team, arguably the top club in England. They would win every game John played but sadly travelling to events and competitions was restricted because of the war. Nevertheless it was another small release for John who desperately wanted to join his brothers fighting for his country.
John had also struck up a friendship with a local boy, Norman Shaw. Norman was quite a small lad, as were most of his family, or so Norman said. Norman lived with his parents, brothers and sisters in a very imposing three storey, four bedroomed end terrace house. It was in Belle Vue Terrace, in the Greaves area of Lancaster. The house was elevated up from the main A6 road on a terrace known locally as the Monkey Rack. It was definitely the posh end of town. Norman and John got on like a house on fire and met most evenings for a couple of pints in the Greaves Hotel after the nine o’clock BBC news briefing. The war was the one subject on everyone’s lips and Norman and John were no different. The two young men knew that the war wasn’t going as well as expected.
‘They’re evacuating the Allied troops at Dunkirk, John.’
John took a mouthful of beer, replaced his glass on the table. ‘So I heard. Probably nothing, you can’t win every battle in the war, Norm’.’
‘Perhaps not. Any idea where Ernie and James are?’
John shook his head. ‘No, heard nothing since they left their billets.’
Both brothers had written a couple of times during their basic training but the family had heard nothing since they were put on troop trains at Liverpool Lime Street Station some weeks back. Their destination was top secret.
The British Government hadn’t disclosed the full facts about the evacuation at Dunkirk, for obvious reasons. Great Britain and the Allies had been on the verge of defeat. 300,000 Allied troops were stranded on the beaches at Dunkirk. They had not eaten in days, they were low on ammunition and their dead and wounded colleagues lay all around. The might of a fully equipped and confident German Army had pinned them on the beaches and encircled them. The German Luftwaffe was ready to take off and obliterate the beaches and the bodies on them as soon as their Fuhrer gave the order. Hitler spoke to his victorious troops.
‘Dunkirk has fallen… with it has ended the greatest battle of world history. Soldiers! My confidence in you knows no bounds. You have not disappointed me.’
In the House of Commons Winston Churchill put on a brave face.
‘We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.’
He also praised the RAF. The Royal Air Force played a pivotal role protecting the retreating troops from the Luftwaffe. It was said that the sandy beaches softened the explosions from the German bombs, minimising casualties, but there is no doubt that the pilots and crews of the RAF bought the time necessary to get British, French and Belgian troops back to the southern shores of Hampshire, Kent and Sussex in order that they could live to fight another day. Between 26th May and 4th June during the evacuation, the RAF flew a total of 4,822 sorties over Dunkirk. They claimed 262 Luftwaffe aircraft.
In the wake of the evacuation of Dunkirk in the summer of 1940, Hitler’s generals proposed that the German army should invade Britain. The operation was codenamed Sea Lion but the Generals quite rightly conceded that it could only be achieved with full superiority in the air over the British Isles.
Hitler sent out the order to prepare the Luftwaffe for action with the prime objective to destroy the British Royal Air Force. The Luftwaffe was unquestionably much greater than t
heir British counterpart with much more experience too. The German pilots were well blooded in the bombing raids on Spain towards the end of the Civil War and the Blitzkrieg in France had also served them well. As the German generals addressed the key people of the Luftwaffe in Berlin towards the beginning of June 1940 they reassured them that victory would be theirs very soon. They reminded them that the German aircraft superiority outnumbered that of the RAF by nearly four to one. A slight exaggeration perhaps, but not a million miles from the truth. Goering went a step further; he estimated that it would take just four days to defeat the RAF Fighter Command in southern England. He would follow it up with a four-week offensive during which the bombers and long-range fighters would destroy all military installations throughout the country. In addition they would attempt to wreck the British aircraft industry. The campaign would start with attacks on airfields near the coast, gradually moving inland to attack the ring of airfields defending London.
The British people were gearing up for a German invasion. On 18th June 1940, Winston Churchill spoke in the House of Commons.
‘The Battle of France is over,’ he said. ‘I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say this was their finest hour.’
Over the summer of 1940, in the skies in the south of England, dogfights could regularly be seen between RAF and German fighters and the fighter airfields of the south were relentlessly bombed by the Luftwaffe. The losses on both sides were great. At one point, unknown to Goering, the RAF were on their knees, but after Bomber Command attacks on Berlin, Goering decided to turn the might of the Luftwaffe on London giving the RAF respite and much needed time to rearm. In late September the Battle of Britain had ended and Operation Sea Lion had been postponed indefinitely. Against overwhelming odds the RAF fighter command had overcome the might of the Luftwaffe. It led to another important address to the nation by Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister. He ended with the immortal line:
‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’
John Holmes rushed home every night, had a quick bite to eat and literally ran to the Roxy Cinema, which was replaying footage of the Battle of Britain. It was a ‘Movietone’ production that he sat watching as he munched through a chocolate bar, unable to take his eyes from the screen. The footage showed a group of Canadian pilots being scrambled as news of a German attack came in. The narrator proudly exclaimed that Fighter Command had already performed wonders and John watched as the Spitfires and Hurricanes roared down the runways and up into the air to engage the German aircraft. The footage switched to the air as it focused on a group of German bombers protected by Messerschmitt fighters. John knew that the Movietone production was heavily weighted towards the British successes but then again pictures didn’t lie and the film reel clearly showed dozens of clips of burning German aircraft hitting the ground with airfield fireman extinguishing the fires of German planes as the tail pieces, adorned with huge swastikas, took centre stage.
‘169 German aircraft lost in one day,’ the voice announced. The narrator said that the figures were compiled by the pilots who shot down the aircraft and an independent witness. John had to laugh; an independent witness, where would they find one of them? And still he waxed lyrical about the stricken German planes in his monotone public school voice.
‘Equivalent to twelve or fourteen squadrons, how long can the Nazis stand such losses? The Bosch got what was coming to them.’
The crews rested and played football between raids, a portable telephone on standby to warn them of the next attack. John wondered when they slept. A graveyard of Nazi hopes, the letters on the screen announced from a new film reel, this time a different production. The camera filmed a 20-acre scrap yard somewhere in southern England where the wreckage of hundreds of German planes were being dismantled for valuable scrap metal. In an incredible piece of footage the movie makers explained and detailed the tactics of a spitfire taking out a Heinkel bomber. The narrator explained the vulnerability of the Heinkel who had three gunners, one in the front, one in the rear and one underneath. The Heinkel design was poor he claimed, giving a clear arc of attack on the pilot should a spitfire come in from above at the correct angle. The guns of the bomber were effectively useless if the pilot of the Spitfire got his coordinates correct. And then the footage showed exactly the angle the pilot would fly in from. Pure genius thought John, pure genius. It was no accident that the casualties were running at around five to one in favour of the Allied aircraft. It then showed a real clip of a Spitfire doing exactly what the narrator had previously explained. The Spitfire powered in on the Heinkel and the bullets concentrated on the enemy cockpit. A little smoke poured from the cockpit, the pilot clearly dead and then the bomber burst into flames much to the delight of the assembled cinemagoers that started applauding loudly.
John returned to the cinema night after night during July, August, September and October 1940. His father claimed he was becoming obsessed, spending his entire wage packet on cinema tickets. John didn’t care and he was almost disappointed when the battle of Britain ended towards the end of October when the Luftwaffe turned their attention to British cities once again.
The two friends sat in silence for a few moments. Norman’s brother, Cliff, had also joined the East Lancashire Regiment along with James and had slept in the same billet during basic training. It only came out in a letter that Cliff sent home. In it he mentioned a ‘James Holmes’ from Skerton. Norman had brought the letter along to the pub to show John and the two friends had put two and two together. It was an amazing coincidence that the two soldiers had got on so well together, as had their two brothers back home in Civvy Street. It gave them a little reassurance knowing that they would look out for each other.
‘I wish I could be there with them, Norman; I feel so useless sat in a fucking factory ten hours a day,’ said John.
‘Me too, mate, but our time will come. Another few months and we’ll both get our chance. Will you be joining the East Lancaster’s?’
John shook his head. ‘Not me, Norman.’
‘What mob are you joining then?’
‘The RAF.’
Norman Shaw nearly choked on his beer. ‘The fucking Brylcreem Boys! I knew you were watching too much bloody footage at the pictures. The Battle of Britain is over mate, we won. You’re too late.’
Norman put his glass down onto the table, gazed across at his friend. ‘You can’t be serious?’
‘You bet I am. I’ve never been so serious about anything in my life.’
John and his dad grew ever closer, as they never missed a single night by the radio. It had become a sort of tradition. They sat together in November 1940 as the BBC announced the destruction of the city of Coventry, the Coventry Blitz as it would be known. 515 German bombers had flown over the city in an operation codenamed Mondscheinsonate (Moonlight Sonata). It was an innovative raid which would influence all future strategic bombing raids. The Luftwaffe used pathfinder aircraft with electronic aids to mark the munitions factory targets before the main bombers went into action. The first wave of follow-up bombers dropped high explosive bombs, knocking out utilities, the gas, water and electricity networks. They deliberately cratered the roads, making it difficult for the fire engines to reach fires, and determined that the city of Coventry would burn like a firestorm. The bombers dropped a combination of high explosive and incendiary bomb
s. They damaged roofs, making it easier for the incendiary bombs to fall into buildings and ignite them. They may have struck lucky that night as they scored a direct hit on the fire brigade headquarters. The city burned for three days, the firemen unable to cope. The raid on Coventry claimed over 1,000 lives, the vast majority civilian women working a shift in the factories. An incredible 60,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged. It wasn’t surprising; the Germans had dropped 500 tons of high explosives and 36,000 incendiary bombs within a few hours. Mission accomplished for the pilots and aircrews of the Nazi air force.
John couldn’t contemplate the sheer scale of destruction. For once his father couldn’t bring himself to discuss the evening radio reports. He got up from the table shaking his head and as he walked out of the door John heard him mumble.
‘Coventry…Coventry… God help the poor bastards in Coventry.’
It was the first time John had heard his father curse in anger.
Two days later John and Norman were back together in the Greaves Hotel. Norman asked why John hadn’t appeared the night before and he explained that he’d had a hastily-arranged date with Joyce.
‘What was so hasty you couldn’t meet up with your pal?’
John smiled. ‘Her parents were out for the evening.’
Norman’s brow furrowed; he had a puzzled look etched across his face. He looked over to the bar where Joyce pulled a pint for one of the regulars. Then the penny dropped.