Child from Home

by John Wright

  In mid-September the blackout was lifted – after six long years – and the gas lamps in the street were lit each evening by a man carrying a long pole affair. We heard on Gran’s accumulator-operated wireless, which stood on a shelf in the alcove next to the black-leaded fire range, that our hero, Group Captain Cheshire, had been awarded the Victoria Cross; Paris had been liberated; the Allied soldiers were sweeping through Belgium having broken through the Siegfried line, and that the Germans were on the run. Meanwhile, Hitler’s new secret weapons, the terrifying long-range V2 rockets, had started to rain down on London. In October we heard that the first German city, Aachen, had fallen to the Allies. British troops retook Greece and landed on Crete again after an absence of three and a half years.

  As the icy winter drew on, Gran sent us to buy a stone of coal whenever word got round that they had some in, and we brought it home on a rickety bogie made from bits of wood and old pram wheels. If we had a couple of coppers we walked down to the front room of Annie Storey’s house to buy a bag of winkles in a paper bag and walked home eating them – pulling out the curled-up, snail-like molluscs with a pin. Still inclined to be moody and sullen I would sit moping for hours on the padded leather lid of one of the boxes on the end of the fender in which sticks for the fire were kept.

  Gran would sit in her rocking chair in her pinny combing her long, greying hair that reached to below her waist, repeatedly singing, ‘Come in to the garden Maud for the black bat night has flown.’ It seemed to be the only bit of the song she knew. Before bed each day she had a bottle of stout that she swore ‘kept her regular’ and helped her to sleep. She was a good cook (maybe that’s where Mam’s cooking ability came from) and she kept our bellies filled with good wholesome food, despite her meagre income. We loved her home-baked fadgies that had a flavour all of their own, the like of which I haven’t come across since, and her meat and potato pies that were very tasty and filling. We got jam (and margarine!) on thick, crusty, freshly baked bread and, if we were still hungry, we could always fill up with salted beef dripping on bread. Such a diet would be frowned on these days but at that time we loved it; we had a lot of catching up to do and were still quite skinny.

  Gran went through to Haxby to visit Harry about once a month and Renee, now a pretty and petite twenty-one-year-old, looked after us while she was away. At school my drawing ability was finally recognised and put to use as the staff prepared to put on the Christmas pantomime Aladdin. I was asked to draw and paint a long frieze, portraying the genie of the lamp, on three long sheets of paper that were then stuck together and put up high on the wall around the school hall, and I was thrilled to bits. The recognition helped to boost my selfbelief no end but I was still near the bottom end of the class when we were tested.

  In December the Home Guard was stood down but it was not officially disbanded just yet. Gran told George and me that as we were officially war orphans we had been invited to a Christmas party at the Assembly Rooms on Linthorpe Road. There was ham and fish paste sandwiches, meat pies, jelly and custard and the like laid out on long trestle tables and I thoroughly enjoyed the eats; but I hated the silly paper hats and party games when children raced around giggling, squealing and dodging the adults. I got embarrassed and annoyed when the mayoress and the other ladies in their fur coats and posh dresses fussed and petted us and ruffled our hair.

  It was nice to see the shop windows lit up and decorated on our first Christmas back home, not that we had much, but we enjoyed its never-failing magic just the same. We didn’t get many toys or clothes and by now our shoes had holes in the thin soles and we put cardboard in them to try to keep out the wet. Gran made us tasty meals, with Archie – who was looked on as the man of the house – always getting the largest portion. He ‘let the first foot in’ at New Year when the house was open to any of our neighbours who cared to pop in for a wee tot and a piece of cake. Christmas was for the children and Hogmanay was for the adults and, as the year turned, the noise from the local works and the ships’ hooters on the river was ear-splitting. The excitement was contagious and people’s spirits were higher than ever this year following the good news from the Continent.

  Enemy aircraft still appeared overhead from time to time (probably from Norway, which remained occupied) and when the siren sounded Gran hurried us into the nearest street shelter, but no more bombs fell on the area. We huddled in blankets while the adults made tea on methylated spirit stoves and had singsongs. Granny Knights sometimes had something stronger than tea, and when she sang and danced she showed her knee-length, elasticated, pink bloomers. Gran would say to her, ‘Sit down yer silly old bugger and stop showing yerself up!’ We kids thought it hilarious.

  Gran was dismayed to learn that the Germans, who were putting up stiff resistance, had made a surprise breakthrough in mid-December. The Americans had neglected to defend the Ardennes region of Belgium strongly enough, as had the French four years earlier, and the Germans were sweeping forward again in the mist and snow. When the weather cleared the Allied bombers took a heavy toll of the enemy tanks, but it took till the end of January for Germany’s crack troops to be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers and the six-week offensive came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. Meanwhile, the Allied forces were driving back the Japanese, who were a cruel enemy, and Soviet troops were advancing into Eastern Poland, and Gran’s hopes of an early release for Uncle John rose.

  So the long, bitterly cold winter passed and Jimmy and I played out in the streets, back alleys and on the Newport Bridge, where there was a steel sentry box in the shape of a policeman’s helmet. We climbed all over the flat roof of the electric powerhouse that stood beneath the iron steps that led up to the top of the approach road of the bridge. Sometimes we swam in the filthy river with raw sewage floating past our noses, but we never came to any harm. At other times we went over the river bridge to a railway bridge on the far side, where Jimmy dared me to wriggle and weave in and out of the steel girders supporting the roadway until I emerged out the other side. Needless to say, I did it pretending that I was not scared of becoming stuck halfway along it, or of falling off the narrow concrete ledge onto the railway lines twenty feet below. On another occasion we were playing football in the back alley when the ball got kicked onto the lean-to roof at the back of someone’s house, and Jimmy dared me to go and get it. So, of course, I climbed up and worked my way across the blackened top of what I thought was a solid roof, to find out – by falling through it – that it was made of glass, which had become thickly coated with grime over the years. How I survived to adulthood is a mystery, especially when Jimmy was around. George, who was now Gran’s new ‘baby-boy’, was too young to play with us and he stayed at home being spoiled and pampered.

  On a clear night in mid-February Bomber Command, with more than 1,000 aircraft, laid waste the city of Dresden. Over the next few weeks the Allied ground troops advanced and spread out along the west bank of the River Rhine in preparation for a massed crossing into the heartland of Germany, and it was now only a matter of time before Germany would admit defeat. In April Gran was shocked to learn that the advancing troops had found further proof of the rumoured Nazi death camps and crematoria. Thousands of bodies had been burned, after being stripped of their clothes, hair and valuables, with the ashes being bagged up and used as fertiliser on the land. She was worried about the safety of Uncle John, who was, as far as she knew, still a prisoner of war in Poland into which the Russians were rapidly advancing. We stared in disbelief at the horrific scenes of the skeletal survivors at Belsen on the cinema newsreels and never forgot. The shocking evidence of these Nazi atrocities only served to deepen my already bitter and intense hatred of the Germans.

  Meanwhile, as spring crept on, we played cricket and football a little further afield on the area of tarmac known as the Linthorpe Recreation Ground, or the Rec. Occasionally we walked to Albert Park, where there were wide paths and grassy areas to play on. Beside its ornate wrought-iron gates were long lists of na
mes of the World War I dead inscribed on brass panels on the white Portland stone walls. It was an exciting place to be, as well as a haven of peace and tranquillity when we were in a quieter frame of mind, which wasn’t often. On going to the larger lake at the far end of the park, we were envious of those who could afford to hire a rowing boat. We played hide and seek in a wooded, hilly area known as Bell Hill, on top of which was the base of the old wooden post that had supported the bell. It was spooky and Jimmy scared us even more by telling us the tale of young Mary Cooper who had been murdered here. I didn’t like it up there on my own, even though the incident had happened many years back.

  On the way to the park, opposite the large, impressive buildings of Forbes’ Bakery, lay Linthorpe Old Cemetery. When you looked through the keyhole of the spooky old stone building in the centre, all you could see was blackness, but Jimmy put the wind up us by saying, ‘If you look hard enough you can see daggers floating about in the air.’ Close to the road there was a very old grave with a broken stone slab, and Jimmy said, ‘If you walk round it three times and bend down and put your ear to it you can hear the spirits talking.’ On doing so I received a swift boot up the backside.

  The last of the deadly V2 rockets, which had killed and injured thousands, fell to earth in late March before the Allied troops overran the launch sites. In late April Gran was relieved and delighted when she received a telegram from Uncle John (prisoner number 220615 in Stalag 383 at Hohenfels at the foot of the Bavarian Alps near Munich). It stated that he had been liberated by the Americans and would be home on leave in mid-May. In it he wrote, ‘I wish you could have seen the boys when the American tanks arrived here. We heard them firing over the hill, and about half an hour later one of the boys rushed into the barracks shouting, “They’re here!” The poor bloke nearly got killed in the rush to get outside and see them.’

  Gran was to learn later that because he and his mate Jock had problems with their knees – which were swollen making them unable to walk far – they had been taken across Germany in cattle trucks. Thereby, they avoided the Death Marches of up to 900 miles that many of their unfortunate colleagues had to endure, including his pal Joe. Most felt guilty about being captured and imprisoned and did not want to talk about it when they got home (including Uncle John). Their suffering had been overshadowed by the horrors of Auschwitz, Belsen, Dachau and the other concentration camps with their obscene gas chambers and ovens, therefore their plight was overlooked. In May, Uncle John and the others were brought home in converted Lancasters and Anson aircraft and, on landing, he knelt down and kissed the ground. Later he was to tell Renee that, while he was a prisoner at Lamsdorf, there was often a sickly sweet smell carried on the air whenever the wind was from the north-west. It was not until later that he realised what had caused it. Auschwitz concentration camp was only sixty miles away in that direction.

  Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945 in his bunker in Berlin, and the Germans fought on for another seven days before the war in Europe finally came to an end on 8 May, with Germany being split into Russian, American and British sectors. In the divided city of Berlin the Russians built a huge wall to stop people from coming in or out. John Wade, Eric Ward and the rest of the evacuees came home from Haxby and returned to Newport Junior School, and we excitedly celebrated victory with a street party at which there was enough food and drink to last well into the night.

  Before long Gran had the remnants of her family around her again, except for Harry, who remained in Haxby until he was eighteen years old, when he was called up to do his two years of national service in the Royal Navy. John was demobbed from the army, coming home after three years in captivity to a hero’s welcome, with tears, hugs, fluttering bunting and Union flags. He returned to his old job in the Britannia Bridgeyard. Archie did his national service in the RAF and Renee, having given up her job in the steelworks when the men came out of the services, started work as a ‘clippie’ (conductress) on the hot and crowded local buses. Jimmy came to live with us at Granny Bradford’s where we slept three to a bed and grew up as brothers before going our separate ways.

  Appendix

  The following poem was inspired by a visit to my parents’ grave:

  The Family Tree

  The elder stood above the grave

  her roots deep in the earth:

  believed to aid, in days of yore,

  fertility and birth.

  A sudden blast of wind sprang up

  from out a leaden sky

  to set the branches thrashing

  and cavorting up on high.

  A pair of hearty leaves

  came spiralling to the ground,

  to settle very gently on

  the grass clad burial mound.

  As I gazed on the earthen plot

  that stormy autumn day,

  I thought of my loving parents

  violently torn away.

  On a moonlit night, as sirens wailed in 1942,

  they’d left their bed and quickly dressed,

  planning to scurry to

  the blacked-out street and the safety

  of the shelters nearby;

  as a single bomber (sounding close)

  droned loudly in the sky.

  Long, blanched beams of searchlights probed

  the gleaming barrage wire.

  There was bedlam from demented guns

  and anti-aircraft fire.

  Father, home on army leave, planned

  to visit us next day.

  Mother had the cases packed all

  set for going away.

  My brother, two, and me, aged four,

  had long since gone to stay,

  far away from the dangers

  of such a fateful day.

  They’d reached the door and turned the key

  and quickly stepped outside.

  A bomb came down; the walls collapsed:

  in each other’s arms they died!

  The loving pair – still in their prime –

  were buried in the rubble,

  as rescue workers scrabbled near

  with urgent pick and shovel.

  Now they lie in their deep dark bed,

  as in days gone by,

  in cold embrace, with souls entwined, eternally to lie.

  Ashes to ashes: dust to dust …

  We shall remember them.

  Age will not weary them;

  nor the passing years condemn …

  The essence of their mortal lives

  exuded through the ground;

  taken up by the elder roots

  and in its leaves is found.

  Tears welled up unbidden, as I

  pictured the awful sight;

  the flames; the screams; the horrors

  of that dread-filled April night.

  So many were left homeless –

  bereft, forlorn, and sad.

  Twenty-six others lost their lives

  as well as Mam and Dad.

  I recalled the sobbing boy as he

  sat upon the stair

  and his shouts of accusation

  at a God who didn’t care.

  As I stooped to kiss the headstone –

  grey, lichened, cold and bare –

  the aching void within my heart

  was, oh, so hard to bear.

  The icy rain was channelled down

  the names etched in the stone,

  salty tears streamed down my cheeks

  as I stood there – so alone.

  At that time of pain and anguish,

  the loss within me burned,

  for in my heart I knew my love

  could never be returned.

  I picked up the leaves and turned

  and slowly walked away:

  heart sad at living far from there

  and travelling home that day.

  Now many years have passed

  and time has eased the pain.

  Love of a wife and children have
<
br />   restored my soul again.

  The leaves were placed in the Holy book

  on the shelf above –

  a source of poignant memories

  of lost parental love:

  treasured mementoes till I die

  and return to welcoming arms,

  problems finally at an end,

  and rid of all my qualms.

  Our essences then will mingle;

  our spirits shall be free,

  borne upwards, incorruptible,

  within the family tree.