During his first few months, he’d already seen more death than most men had in their whole lifetime. It wasn’t just the horror of seeing your buddies being killed in no-man’s-land; it was the sights and smells of the trenches that got to you. The decomposing bodies gorged on by rats with overflowing latrines, and always the stench of creosol or chloride of lime, used to stave off the constant threat of disease and infection. In addition, the lingering odour of cordite and rotting sandbags that you couldn’t hide from. It didn’t stir a lot of merriment that Christmas morning.
As George huddled with some others around a fire, he was aware of the growing silence. The usual crack of rifles and the dull thud of Howitzers and mortar shells had gradually ceased - then he heard singing. The strains of Christmas carols came across with the early morning mist. Someone started playing a mouth organ amongst cheers and laughter.
With the opposing trench only forty yards away, George clearly heard Christmas greetings shouted in German. Both sides applauded the mouth organist at the end of a carol. A sort of unspoken truce began to materialise. Then, the unbelievable happened; George Anscombe couldn’t believe his eyes. German and British soldiers began to climb out of their trenches and walk towards each other in no-man’s-land. George followed in his small group. Some of them brought wood and built a large fire.
Shaking hands and exchanging greetings with Germans made George feel embarrassed. To think, the day before they’d been trying to kill each other, and now it was like meeting old friends down the pub.
After sharing out some early morning rum and schnapps rations, a game of football was decided. They used helmets for goal posts as English and German sides kicked around a ball made of rags tightly bound with string. With the final score discretely forgotten, they exchanged chocolates and cigarettes.
George, like some of the others, had received a Christmas hamper from his family as well as a British Army 'Princess Mary Box'. This was filled with chocolates, butterscotch, plum pudding, cigarettes, tobacco and a picture card of Princess Mary herself. There was also a copy of George V’s greeting to the troops:
May God protect you and bring you safe home.
The slap on the back surprised him. As he turned, a bottle of schnapps was offered with a hearty laugh. George took a swig and said,
‘Danke - danke,’ the only bit of German he knew.
‘My name is Otto Gottlieb,’ said the German in perfect English as he thrust his hand out with a smile.
‘George Anscombe. _Pleased to meet you,’
George shook Otto’s hand. He had never met a German before and was surprised how fluent he was.
‘Your English is good, where did you learn?’
Otto, a blonde, short, stout fellow in his late twenties, leant against the remains of a tree and sucked on his meerschaum pipe - a Christmas present along with chocolate and coffee to the men of the Fourth Army from the Kaiser.
‘Before the war, I worked in London for four years as a waiter at the Savoy Hotel.’
‘Wow! The Savoy Hotel,’ George exclaimed. ‘I bet you must have seen some fancy things there.’
‘I could tell you a story or two about that place, and the goings on.’
From that moment, as they huddled together with the others in their winter boots and coats, Otto held George captivated with his fascinating stories of the famous hotel. For a while, the war was forgotten as they chatted in between sharing chocolates and cigarettes. As day turned into evening, it got colder, so they moved nearer to the fire. The singing and the drinking continued late into the night.
Then it was time to say their goodbyes. While everybody shook hands and hugged, they knew they would be back to killing each the following day.
Just before he said farewell to Otto, George took from his tunic pocket a small fancy box containing a pair of silver cufflinks. He opened it and offered him one of them. Otto picked up the cufflink and saw the name G. ANSCOMBE engraved on it.
‘They were a leaving present from my parents a few months ago. Might sound stupid, but I’m sure they bring me luck; I’m still alive so far,’ he chuckled. He added quietly with emotion, ‘I want you to have one of them, so you have the same luck as me.’
Otto looked at it in his hand then clutched it tightly.
‘I will always keep it with me. Perhaps, if we ever get through this, one day I can give it back to you.’
They hugged each other for the last time and went their separate ways.
*
At twelve years of age, Jack Anscombe longed to be a Spitfire pilot. He was tall for his age, like his father had been as a boy, with the same wavy fair hair, blue eyes and clean cut good looks. Sometimes, alone in his mother’s bedroom in front of her full length mirror, he would lick a pencil and draw a moustache under his nose and tuck his school ruler under his arm like an RAF swagger stick. He’d look at himself and pretend to give a briefing in a posh officer’s accent to an imaginary crew for the next raid over Berlin.
It had crossed Jack’s mind to wear some of his dad’s old clothes, fake his age and try to enlist in the RAF. However, deep down he knew this little excursion into fantasy would probably meet with trouble somewhere along the way, and a hard slap from his mum.
Watching the dog fights overhead during the summer of 1940 and reading his new Biggles annual, had really fuelled Jack’s enthusiasm. For the moment though, he had to make do with his second-hand Raleigh bicycle. Still, the compensation did have some rewards.
During his paper round before breakfast, at the top of Churchill Avenue where he delivered, making sure there was nothing coming up the hill, he pushed off. ‘Meeeeeeow-vroom! Meeeeeeow-vroom! - rata-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.’ Jack gave it all the sound effects as he raced down the hill wearing his school blazer and grey short trousers with legs splayed out and the near empty newspaper bag floating like a kite behind him. With his imaginary canons, he strafed a long column of marching Germans and quite a number of tanks. As he slowed at the bottom, a slim good-looking woman in her early forties wearing an apron and dark short hair with a fashionable side parting came to the front gate. It was his mum.
Violet called out,
‘Jacky, what have I told you about racing? If you fall off, don’t blame me. Now get indoors, and wash your hands for breakfast or you’ll be late for school.’
With a disgruntled groan, he wheeled his bike into the hall, took off his newspaper bag and raced upstairs to the bathroom. First, though, he had to have a peek.
Jack made his way to his room and opened the biscuit tin under his bed. There it sat amongst all his other shrapnel collection. It was still hot when he found it over the park the previous evening. With glowing pride, he picked up the 20.mm spent cartridge shell of a Messerschmitt Bf 109. He looked it over then put it down again. That could be worth a lot of street cred in the playground, he thought. But he decided to leave it where it was. His eyes fell on the cufflink. It was his father’s cufflink. Jack rubbed his finger over it fondly and thought of his dad.
*
Jack remembered that terrible afternoon in June when he’d come home from school. There were strange people in his house. His mother Violet had been in tears being comforted by neighbours. In her hand, the telegram that she’d received. When Violet had looked up and seen him, she had tried to brighten her face. While someone had made a fresh pot of tea, she had taken him upstairs out of the way, somewhere private to try and explain.
She had sat him down on his bed with a small cardboard box by her side. Jack knew something bad had happened.
‘Jacky, I’ve got something to tell you.’ With a handkerchief she dabbed her eyes again. ‘It’s about your dad.’ She swallowed hard then said, ‘He’s been killed in action.’
His mum showed him the telegram:
POST OFFICE TELEGRAM
O.H.M.S.
9TH JUNE 1940
MRS. V.ANSCOMBE, 214, ARAGON AVENUE, NORTH CHEAM, SURREY.
D
EEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU OF THE DEATH OF YOUR HUSBANDSERGEANT GEORGE ANSCOMBE E/SR 357221 KILLED IN ACTIONAT DUNKIRK ON WAR SERVICE
LETTER FOLLOWS
BRIGADIER T. SWANSON.MILITARY RECORDS/WAR DEPT
George Anscombe had remained a reserve after the first world war. By doing so, his regiment had been the first to see action with the British Expeditionary Force in France.
Jack had stared at the telegram then looked at his mum. He’d tried to say something, but the tears had come first. He’d buried his head in his mother’s lap, sobbing, while she stroked his hair.
After a while, the crying had subsided to some sniffs and coughs. He’d wiped his eyes on his school cardigan sleeve. His mum had smiled at him and said,
‘They sent his possessions with the telegram.’
She’d tipped out the contents of the box. Amongst some Arsenal football programs, a silver snuff box, a broken watch, a cigarette lighter and a briarwood pipe, she’d picked out a silver cufflink.
Holding it out to show him, she’d said.
‘Your dad said he gave the other one away as a Christmas present to a German soldier during the last war, when they had that truce or something.’ She pondered for a moment, ‘For some reason it always meant a lot to him. Anyway, he would have wanted you to have it; a little something to remember him by.’
She had placed the cufflink in his hand.
Seeing the engraving, G. ANSCOMBE, at that moment it was the most precious thing Jack had ever had.
‘You can keep it in your special tin,’ she had said.
*
‘Breakfast, Jacky, hurry up,’ his mum shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
‘Coming,’ he yelled back. He put the lid back on the biscuit tin and shoved it safely under his bed.
The next day, Jack got up extra early. He couldn’t sleep. It was a beautiful morning when his mum pulled the curtains at six-thirty. His window faced east and the sun streamed into his bedroom. Jack didn’t mind getting up early in the summer. The paper round saw to that. In the winter though, it was a different story with the cold, dark mornings. His mum had to shake him silly before she saw any positive movement. Still, the little bit of money he got delivering papers was handy. It went towards some comics and gobstoppers and provided bargaining power in playground swaps.
He had to be at Jessop’s the newsagents by 6.50. After a quick wash, quicker than his mum would have liked, he got dressed and wheeled out his bike, munching on a digestive from the biscuit barrel.
By 7.40, pedalling fast, he was nearly done. As usual, he made sure to make his own road the final delivery stretch. All his last twelve papers were for houses at the top of the hill. That meant he could go into spitfire mode down Churchill Avenue in time for his breakfast, or, as Biggles would say after a quick sortie over Berlin, “Back home for tea and medals.”
Just as he shoved the last newspaper into the letter box, the air-raid siren went off. It wasn’t unusual; they’d had safety drills before. At school, everyone got under their desks but if he was at home, he and his mum used to get into the Anderson shelter at the bottom of their garden and listen out for the all clear.
On the radio he heard that London had been bombed and they were talking of evacuation for mothers and children. But at the moment, he’d only seen the dog fights with their mass of white trails and the aftermath of hot shrapnel he and his friends had found on the ground.
Jack looked up into the clear blue sky as he swung out into the road. Not a cloud in sight and just the weather for dive-bombing a battalion of German troops. With the bag swung behind him, he got himself into an attack position. Making sure all was clear down the hill, he checked behind, then pushed off.
This was going to be a good one. No headwind or parked vehicles for cats to spring out from. Jack got his head down and was pedalling like a bat out of hell. Faster and faster he raced, his legs a blur to anybody he passed, then the sound effects came, ‘Meeeeeeow-vroom! Meeeeeeow-vroom! - rata-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.’ Jack knew this was his fastest ride yet.
The noise came from nowhere; he felt an enormous rush of hot wind and smelt burning oil, then a tremendous roar. In that instant he sensed a lorry behind him, the prickle of fear on the back of his neck forced him to arch his head round. In a fleeting glimpse above him, Jack saw the distinct yellow nose and under cowling of a Messerschmitt.
Karl Gottlieb, aged 21, a Gefreiter in the Luftwaffe based in France, was on his fourth mission flying his Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter. He, with the others, had escorted the bombers from Le Havre airfield across the English Channel to London.
In the ensuing dogfight, he’d got lost and taken a few hits around mid-fuselage, although it was nothing that couldn’t be patched up. Now he was on a high. Karl had spotted what he thought was a motorcyclist at fifteen hundred feet up. He had the dispatch rider lined up in his sites perfectly. As he dived and got within range, he opened up with his four 7.7mm machine guns.
For Jack, all hell broke loose. Bullets strafed him from both sides down the hill, he felt the shingle from their ricochet sting his legs and face. One bullet struck his saddle stem and nearly threw him off. He was going faster than he’d ever been; he wanted to get away anywhere but here. Thinking he was going to die, he shouted for his mum. His tears, cold from the head wind, were streaming down his face, but his cries were lost in the canon fire and the Messerschmitt’s screaming engines.
In those split seconds when he suddenly realised it was a boy on a bicycle, not a dispatch rider, Karl shouted in horror,
‘Goot-Gott-im-Himmel!’ He yanked the joystick up and just missed the rooves of the oncoming houses.
Jack had lost control of his bike and was hurtling towards the crossroads with his newspaper bag flung out behind like a torn parachute. He was in a state of shock and wailing. Suddenly, a Charrington’s coal lorry swung around the corner straight in front of him. Jack’s eyes bulged with terror; this was going to be the end. The driver saw Jack,
‘Jesus Christ,’ he shouted and swerved to his left. Jack clipped the lorry, veered across the road, mounted the pavement, crashed into a wall and somersaulted over his handlebars into Mrs. Robinson’s front garden. He ended up in her prized Rhododendron bush.
Jack lay there on his back looking up into the clear blue sky. He couldn’t feel anything; he was totally numb. I must be dead, he thought. Mrs Robinson had been at the window when she had heard the plane attack. She quickly came out and stood over him.
‘Are you OK, young man?’ she asked.
‘I’m not dead, am I?’ he said looking up at her. Jack was confused.
‘No, you’re not dead, young man, but you’ve just demolished my Rhododendron.’
‘I’m sorry; my mum will pay for it.’ Jack, convinced now he was still alive, was getting some feeling back into his legs.
‘Can you move yourself?’ she said. ‘Can you get up?’ Mrs Robinson offered a hand and pulled him to his feet. ‘I’d better get you indoors and ring for an ambulance in case of concussion, also get a plaster on that knee and forehead of yours.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, a bit embarrassed. Jack looked down and saw the blood running into his school sock. Then he felt his forehead. There was blood on his fingers and he winced at the sting. The shock was wearing off; he was beginning to feel his injuries. He raised his leg as the knee began to pulsate with pain.
The low flying noise of a plane and gunfire had brought people out of their houses. They were talking and pointing in the direction of Mrs Robinson’s front garden. Some walked over and stood there staring at him.
One elderly man asked,
‘You alright, son?’
Jack told him excitedly, ‘
I was attacked by a German; a Messerschmitt. Did you see it?’
‘I certainly did, Sonny,’ he said, ‘you’re a very brave boy.’ He picked up Jack’s bike and saw the saddle stem. ‘My God, you had a near miss there.’ He showed the o
thers where the bullet had torn into the tube. ‘Just shows you what bastards they are, attacking innocent children.’ They all murmured and nodded in agreement.
Everyone started to crowd around Jack’s bike and some of the women put a hand to their mouths in shock. Someone else called over,
‘You’ll be in the papers for this, my lad; standing up to a Nazi Hun.’
Jack heard a frantic woman shouting as she pushed her way through the group.
‘Dear God, is he all right? Is he alright?’
It was his mum.
‘Your lad’s a little hero, Mrs Anscombe,’ a neighbour said to her. ‘Doing his paper round while being shot at by that Hitler mob.’
Another neighbour commented excitedly,
‘That lad of yours deserves a bloody medal.’
Gradually through his immediate pain, Jack was beginning to like what he was hearing. He even stuck his chest out a bit; this could be worth quite a bit of cred at school.
His mother thanked Mrs Robinson for tending to his cuts and not to bother with the ambulance as a neighbour had offered to give them a lift up to the hospital to have Jack checked out.
After two hours of waiting, which included a small torch being shone in his eyes and a bar of chocolate his mum let him have because he’d missed his breakfast, Jack finally emerged with a large bandage around his head and knee.
When he got home, he looked in his mum’s wardrobe mirror. The bandages could have been campaign medals as far as Jack was concerned. Then he looked a little worried.
‘As long as Mum lets me wear them to school to show me mates,’ he mumbled.
*
On the journey home to Le Havre airfield, Luftwaffe pilot, Karl Gottlieb, was beside himself. ‘I killed him - I killed him, I killed the little boy. God forgive me, what have I done?’ He closed his eyes; all he could see was the boy in front of him on a bicycle in his machine gun sights. Karl gripped the joystick and wept. He’d killed an innocent child because of his recklessness, and he was going to have to live with that for the rest of his life, no matter how short that might be.
From A Poison Pen: A collection of macabre short stories Page 23