Then in May 2010, at the age of 91, I got my first passport and I went abroad.
* * *
I am looking out over the sea from the top deck of the Cross Channel ferry. This is the second time I have been on my way to France. The first time the only documents I needed were my call-up papers, army pay book and a clean driving licence. His Majesty King George VI waived the need for a passport. Now I am returning in very different company.
The film crew have been very good to me. It’s chilly on deck and Peter has a blanket ready to put round me if I feel cold as soon as Nick has finished this bit of filming. I have to look out to sea and look as though I am remembering April 1940 when I boarded the troop ship at Southampton. I don’t need to act. The emotions are real. I remember it as though it was yesterday.
Peter Vance and Nick Maddocks from Testimony Films have arranged for me to visit Dunkirk and they will film me walking on the beach where I should have been on 27 June 1940 and probably drowned or been shot to pieces. They are taking me to a road near Abbeville where I am going to retrace the route I took the day my convoy met the German tanks and troops. It won’t be the exact spot where I was captured but I am feeling the same goose bumps and cold sweat I felt all those years ago when I was shit-scared facing those hundreds of enemy soldiers.
How wonderful at my age to have new experiences and new memories to store away! My good friends and neighbours Allan Jones and his wife Jan, are travelling with me and Allan has borrowed his son’s video recorder and is filming me being filmed. I’ve never had so much attention since the film company contacted me about taking part in a documentary for the Yesterday Channel called Dunkirk: The Forgotten Heroes marking the 70th anniversary of the evacuation from Dunkirk.
How many people get the opportunity to go back and relive important moments in their lives, however painful, to share with others who are interested and also want to learn what it was like? All that has happened to me recently has been amazing. I have good people around me, friends and family who care about me. And that’s a wonderful thing to be able to say. This is what keeps me going. I have no Lily and I have no Brian to keep me company any more.
I wouldn’t have been on television or have been approached to write a book if Allan hadn’t suggested that I join the National ex-Prisoner of War Association (NEXPOWA). He had heard some of my stories about my experiences during the war and he thought it might be good for me to join and meet other people – give me a new interest. He was worried about me because I was in a pretty bad way after I lost Brian in November 2006 followed by Lily, ten months later in August 2007 – as he said, I was going downhill rapidly. I lost a lot of weight and was very withdrawn.
My wife and son were the world to me. They left such a big hole in my life after their deaths that I couldn’t see the point of going on. Why I was still alive? It should have been me that died. I had always thought of myself as lucky but my luck had finally run out. I had nothing really to live for – or so I thought.
Through NEXPOWA I met Terry Waite CBE at the Imperial War Museum North. I was representing the Association and Terry was opening the Captured exhibition in May 2009. We got on well and were talking so much as he was waiting to go on the platform that he missed his cue and had to be rushed on stage. I was thrilled when Terry Waite agreed to write the Foreword to my book.
The TV documentary brought me a lot of attention. Lots of people saw the programme (and it’s still being repeated now) and I was interviewed by newspapers and magazines. This is how Dee La Vardera, a writer from Wiltshire, heard about me and made contact. Allan recorded me on my return trip to France and posted it on You Tube and more people saw that.
I have been to local schools to talk to children and twice visited USAF Lakenheath to address their annual National POW/MIA (Missing Action) Recognition Day. The second time was in September 2010 and I was privileged to be presented with an award from the Air Force Sergeants’ Association Chapter 1669 ‘with endless gratitude’. I accepted this on behalf all those who didn’t return.
I made another trip abroad with Allan in August 2010 to visit Ypres and the Menin Gate. Allan had arranged with The Last Post Association for me to lay a wreath at the evening ceremony. I felt it was a great honour and privilege to do so and I was meant to deliver the oration ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning we shall remember them.’ There were nearly a thousand people there and I was so overcome with emotion that I said that I couldn’t do it. Fortunately, one of the Standard Bearers from the British Legion stepped in to read it.
After the bugle fanfare, the wreath laying began and it was my turn. The band was playing The Lord is my Shepherd and I was near to tears but I managed to cross the road under the Memorial Arch, clutching Allan’s arm. I climbed the twelve steps up to the dais and the area where wreaths and tributes are left on three metal shelves. I laid my wreath which was dedicated to ‘My fellow POWs who did not make it back from Stalag 20B’. I returned to my wheelchair without breaking down completely.
After the ceremony people came up to shake my hand and thank me; many had read my wreath. One man said, ‘Thank you for what you did for Australia,’ I really appreciated it. Nobody thanked me at the time. When you think how I was treated after the war it’s fantastic today to have people who weren’t born until after the war showing their appreciation. You can see the ceremony on You Tube. I don’t know who has seen it but it’s wonderful to think that people around the world can go online and watch the film clip and remember.
I was also interviewed and filmed by Stephen Saunders from ASA Productions who was working on a film about ex POWs’ experiences in prison camps and on the Long March home. The three-part documentary called The Long March to Freedom is to be broadcast on UKTV Yesterday in autumn 2011. I am pleased that more people will learn about this neglected part of our wartime history. As the press release says, ‘a truly touching and unbelievable story of survival and hope.’ Yes, that sums it up well.
My phone has never stopped ringing with family and friends enquiring about what I am doing next. I love talking to people – that’s why I was a salesman. And I tell them stories of my war time experiences if they are interested. People kept saying to me, ‘You ought to write it all down’ and so I have, thanks to the patience and hard work of Dee. Even my hairdresser treats me like a celebrity and says, ‘I’ll buy a copy when it’s out.’ I have promised to sign one for him.
I have loved every minute of it. It’s got me talking about all the things which I kept hidden for most of my life. Yes, it has made me go over some very painful memories but they only upset me for a short while. I have thought a lot about my old pals and what a help and comfort they were to me during our years together. I remember the good times we had together after the war. Laurie and Sid came over to watch cup finals on my television. Sadly, I lost touch with Sid but remained good friends with Laurie until his death in 1988. His son Robert is my pal now and phones and visits me regularly.
Jimmy Sellar is the only one left. As I described earlier, I drove up to Scotland once to see him in his highland cottage near Inverness. Lily, Brian and I stayed and we ate mutton stew together in their cosy little kitchen. We still exchange cards at Christmas and I ring Jimmy from time to time. I hope that when he reads my book he feels that I have done justice to that part of our lives which we shared.
I am so thrilled that people will be able to read about my life. I am only an ordinary chap from Barking in Essex but I did live through extraordinary times and survived against the odds. A lucky man. I always wanted people to know what had happened to me and other men like me and what we suffered. I want people to remember those who didn’t come back but were left behind, buried in shallow graves or left where they fell. I want youngsters to understand about the past so that they don’t make the same mistakes as others did.
* * *
I saw some terrible things during the war and I didn’t think I would ever see anything else as bad. But watching my son Brian di
e of cancer was the worst thing to happen to me.
Charles at home with his award presented ‘With Endless Gratitude’ by AFSA Chapter 1669, National POW/MIA Recognition Day, 17 September 2010.
I am glad that my son had a good life and was successful in all the things he loved doing. Lily and I wanted him to have a good education which he did; he went to Liverpool University and studied engineering. We wanted him to have a good job which he did; he became a manager at Severn Trent Water Authority. We were pleased that he followed his dreams which included studying music, playing jazz piano and writing a book. He became a significant figure in the world of model train engineering with his hand-built replicas. He was good at everything he did; he was very patient and meticulous, a perfectionist. All his good qualities were certainly inherited from Lily, not from me.
Lily wanted to be a professional singer but her mother had other ideas, so she always encouraged Brian with his music. He used to go up to London to study music with a violinist from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and continued making the two-hour journey every week when he moved back to live with us in Kidderminster. Lily used to travel with Brian to his gigs all over the country and enjoyed hearing him play piano in his jazz trio, Mosaic. He wrote a book, Modern Jazz Piano: A Study in Harmony and Improvisation, which is still regarded as the definitive text book on the subject.
Dee with Charles, Kidderminster, May 2011.
My friend Allan entered Brian’s name on the search engine on his computer for me and showed me all the entries on my son. There is a marvellous obituary to him on www.gonetoosoon.org and he has 5 star reviews on Amazon for his jazz piano book which still sells in America. That would be good if I could get reviews like him with my book. Goodness, wouldn’t Brian and Lily have been proud of me! I wish they were alive to read about my life and the things I couldn’t talk about which happened to me during the war.
I never thought I would write a book. Never dreamed it would happen to an ordinary fellow like me. It’s been a wonderful experience. I have cried a lot and laughed a lot with Dee as I told her my life story and dug deeper into my past. As we put all my thoughts and memories together down on paper and put them in order, it has been like doing a huge jigsaw puzzle spread out on the dining room table. Lily and Brian loved doing them. Me, I never had the patience.
First you find a few pieces of sky and grass and position them at the corners. You pick out more and put them in the right place and see the picture grow, filling out to meet the edges. You go away and leave it for a while and then come back and try again, adding more and more until you only have the last few pieces in your hand. Where do they fit together to complete the picture? Ah, yes! There and there. It’s done – and there’s not a piece of the puzzle left behind.
Plates
Private Charles Waite, Queen’s Royal Regiment, October 1939.
Winnie in the family shop c.1930.
Family business card.
Charles, aged nine, on the delivery vehicle with his brothers Reginald and Alfred.
Charles aged twelve with Peter the dog.
Waite family at Reg’s wedding, 1933. Charles carried this photograph throughout the war.
Back row: Leonard (20), Doris (22), Muriel (16), Alf (28), Winnie (18), Marjorie (26), Reg (24).
Front row: Elsie (11), William and Alice (parents), Charles (14).
Lily’s parents, Alf and Ada Mathers.
Lily Mathers, 1938. Charles carried this photograph throughout the war.
The BEF lands in France. How many of these men would make it out of Dunkirk?
Up to their necks in it. A human chain from shore to ship at Dunkirk.
Stalag XX (20)B stamp on the reverse of the photograph of Lily.
Copy of Charles’s signed admission card to Stalag XX(20)A dated 26 June 1940 (International Red Cross).
Red Cross advertisement. A Surrey vicar ‘adopted’ Charles as his own POW and sent cigarettes in bulk, useful to barter with for food.
A Red Cross parcel issued to prisoners of war.
Piles of food packages at the International Red Cross warehouse in Geneva, in a photograph probably taken late in the war. (Library of Congress)
A Hilfswillige (volunteer helper) armband printed with the words: ‘In Service of the German armed forces’. These were worn by Russian prisoners of war, used by the German Army for slave labour.
Charles’s PoW camp dog tag No: 10511 issued at Stalag 20A Thorn.
Private Charles Waite on the Stalag 20B farm, 1941.
‘I cannot dance’ camp letter from Charles to Winnie and Bert, 5 April 1942.
Tommy Harrington’s letter to Winnie, 22 January 1944.
Letter and envelope sent from camp, March 1944.
Envelope received from home, April 1944.
Group camp photograph, 1941 (GB 1373). Charles stands third from right in the back row, Jimmy fourth. Heb is first from left in the front row, Laurie third.
Group camp photograph, 1942 (GB 557). Heb stands first from left on the back row, Charles fifth. Laurie is in the middle of the front row.
‘The Russians are coming.’ It was the successes of the Red Army that created the suffering of The Long March.
Notes written during The Long March on the back of Charles’s camp propaganda postcard.
Notes and map written in the New Testament received on the Long March, 28 January 1945.
‘God Help Us’ Letter, January–April 1945.
Example of lagergeld – camp money.
Charles’s Army Book 64 – Soldier’s Service and Pay Book – which he kept with him throughout the war.
Lily in an ATS group photograph, taken while she was stationed at Slough, 1944. She is in the second row from the front, fourth from left.
Receipt for Lily’s engagement ring, 13 June 1945.
Charles and Lily on their wedding day, 25 June 1945.
Charles as best man at Laurie Neville and Connie’s wedding.
Lily, Charles and Brian, Cliftonville, 1949.
Lily, Charles and Brian, 1950.
Brian models for Dolcis Shoe Shop advertisement, Romford, February 1951.
Lily sewing, c.1980.
Charles on train to York, 1980.
Brian’s graduation, Liverpool University, 1968.
Brian with keyboard c.1980.
Charles at ‘Captured: The Extraordinary Life of Prisoners of War’ exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North, May 2009.
Charles with Terry Waite, CBE at the opening of ‘Captured: The Extraordinary Life of Prisoners of War’ exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North, May 2009.
On the road to Abbeville. Charles in France with Testimony Films, for the documentary Dunkirk: the Forgotten Heroes, Discovery Channel, 2010.
Charles attends a Buckingham Palace Garden Party, July 2010.
Charles with Allan M. Jones at USAF Lakenheath, September 2010.
92nd birthday visit to the National Memorial Arboretum, 8 May 2011.
Charles with niece Valerie Wood, left, and her sons Martin & Christopher at wreath laying at the NEXPOWA Memorial Gates.
Reisenburg, Kreis Rosenberg from Bildarchiv Ostpreussen.de.
Colonel John T. Quintas (left), 48th Fighter Wing commander, with Charles and ex-POW Tony Hawkins after a ceremony honouring prisoners of war and those missing in action, USAF Lakenheath, September 2011. (Courtesy USAF, photo by Airman Cory D. Payne)
‘The Last Ordeal’ by Doris Allan.
Copyright
Title page: Charles Waite on his return to France, 2010.
First published in 2012 by Spellmount, an imprint of
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2012
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© Charles Waite with Dee La Vardera, 2012
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uthors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Survivor of the Long March Page 22