by David Roy
‘So how was it?’, she said, as if fearing the answer might be too terrible for her ears. Sam pretended to have misheard.
‘The cake? It’s lovely.’ His father laughed and looked at his wife, waiting for her response.
‘No!', she said, scornfully. ‘The thing…. the war.’ It was as if ‘war’ was a bad word, something to be ashamed of, the way she said it. Perhaps she had a point.
‘Oh that. It’s fine.’ This time his father spoke.
‘So what’s going to happen? The Germans - are they going to invade? Everyone reckons they will.’ His old soldier’s interest in such things was tempered by fear for the future.
‘Don’t know, Dad. The Air Force is pretty beaten up. So’s the Army. The Navy’s okay, I think. The Germans have to get across the water so maybe if the Navy can stop them, we’ll be alright.’
‘Mr Churchill won’t give in’, said his mother, with touching faith. ‘Your father’s in the Home Guard’, she added as if one was a natural consequence of the other.
‘Tried to join the TA but they said I was too old.’
‘Thank God. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about all this’, said his Mum.
‘It’s all right. It’s just nice to be home. I’ll talk about anything.’ He drew on his cigarette and sipped on his tea - simple pleasures amplified by being at home. ‘How’s work, Dad. You must be busy.’
‘Never busier, Sam. Lots of Navy contracts. Cruisers, carriers - the Navy won’t go short. They’ve taken on loads of extra workers. It seems like anyone who doesn’t work in the shipyard, Shorts or the rope works is in the forces.’
The conversation moved from one topic to another as if guided skilfully by an unseen host who made sure that, should they not wake in the morning, everything had been covered. They chatted about life in the street, who’d joined up, who’d had a baby, Cecil Lavery selling the corner shop that had been in the family for years and then, as the fire and the conversation flickered out, they took themselves off to bed. It was over a year since Sam had slept in a proper - non-military, that is - bed.
Sam was wakened briefly as his Father got ready for work. His Mum was up too, pottering about in the kitchen making his breakfast, just as she had done since 1919. He knew the routine. He’d been a part of it once, not just a lazy observer. At nine he awoke properly and padded off to the bathroom. His Mum shouted up the stairs to him.
‘Do you want some breakfast, Sam?’
‘Yes, please’, he shouted down, knowing that she’d already started making it. She saw it as her job to make sure that no-one left the house hungry.
‘Where’s your uniform?, she said as he came down the stairs.
‘I just wanted to wear me old stuff. I wear that bloody uniform every day, Mum.’ He could see that she was disappointed by him being in civvies when she had yet to show him off to the neighbours. ‘Oh’, she replied flatly. She wasn’t one for disguising her emotions well. ‘But I can stick it on again, if we go out. Just the one time’, he said and the smile returned to her face. He sat and she fussed about pouring tea and producing an Ulster fry. Bacon and egg sizzled in the pan and the aroma of soda bread made his mouth water.
‘I remember your Da in his uniform. 1917. Home on leave from France, just like you. He was so smart.’ She smiled at him with a hint of sadness and then got back to the breakfast.
His Dad got home at six, soaked through. He looked in at Sam and said hello before heading upstairs for a wash and change of clothes. Then they all sat down for tea together just like they used to do.
‘Smells good, Pearl’, he shouted through to the kitchen and then to his son, ‘in yer uniform?’
‘Aye. Me ma, y’know…’
‘Oh right. Round to Norah’s and then round to Auntie Kath.’
‘And all the others.’
‘Aye, well she’s proud of you. So am I, for that matter.’ He leaned in, confidentially, across the table. ‘Was it rough over there?’
‘It wasn’t great.’
‘No. I remember the last lot. Bastard Germans. I think they’re worse now. They’ve got to be beaten. The Great War, I mean, when it came down to it we didn’t really know what we were fighting for. When you’re eighteen or nineteen and you’re told you should be fighting then you just go and do it - at least in those days you did. Don’t get me wrong - they deserved what they got - I’m sure of that but this time it’s a lot clearer - Poland, Belgium, Holland, France, Norway - beaten. Where does he intend to stop?’ Sam nodded, surprised at his Father’s impassioned insight. Like the other men of his generation he had rarely talked of the war and never as a braggart. It was a matter of pride amongst the stout working men of Ulster that they did their duty and made little of it, except in their own hearts. They had earned the right to remain British and, British they had remained.
‘Thing is, Da, they were hard to fight. They just over-ran everyone. The French seemed to give up just at the sight of them. They had dive bombers going in ahead of the tanks. We couldn’t even knock their tanks out when they turned up. They had more machine guns than us - everything.’
‘They’re still only men, Sam…..’, he said as his wife came in with a dish of boiled potatoes. ‘Smells great love’, he said and then as she left, ‘they can be beaten.’
‘Might take the Yanks to help out.’
‘Mmm. Not really time for that is there? It’s down to the British.’
‘So how’s the Home Guard shaping’ up?’
‘Okay. We got our uniforms and rifles not so long ago. Most of the fellas were in the first war so they know what they’re doin’. Lot of old codgers, though.’ It was clear that he didn’t put himself into that category.
He’d been to the pub a few times before with his Dad, but never as a returning hero. His Dad’s friends from work were there and others with whom he was on nodding terms. Most of the other men were habitual drinkers - family men in their own way but not keen on missing a night out. His own father was not a real drinker in their terms. There was a permanent pall of cigarette smoke from the ceiling to half way down the walls and the only décor in a plain enough building consisted of photographs of ships being built, launched or undergoing sea trials. Even the Titanic was there - Harland and Wolff’s most famous vessel - famous for all the wrong reasons.
‘So, this is Sam?’, said a tall, whisky-smelling man. His nose was pitted and red as if it had been clumsily peeled with a fruit knife. He offered a bony hand which Sam shook. The man’s grip was like iron. Sam’s Dad looked on and smiled - a little uneasily perhaps. ‘I’m Jimmy Darragh. Friend of yer Da’s. Used to be fusiliers ourselves, didn’t we?’
‘We did, Jimmy.’
‘Fourteen-eighteen. Killed a few Jerries between us, wouldn’t you say?’ Beattie senior had no clear recollection of definitely having killed a German but nodded what appeared to be an enthusiastic agreement. ‘He’s a fine-looking lad. You must be proud of him.’
‘I am. He’s had a rough time in France but at least he’s back.’
‘We’ll be needing men like him.’ The conversation rolled on in this vein until the other man took his leave to talk to another friend. Sam’s father raised his eyebrows.
‘He’s not really a friend of yours, is he?’
‘No.’
‘So….’
‘So, he’s a nut. Jimmy Darragh is an old UVF man but he’s done a lot of bad things. Most people just agree with him and say what he wants to hear. Safer that way.’ He took a drink. ‘And when he says we’ll be needing men like you soon he doesn’t mean to fight the Germans. He’s convinced that the Republic is going to invade us.’ Sam laughed. ‘He believes it - a nut.’
His parents got him a taxi back to the dock when his week’s leave was up. His Mum cried and Sam did his best not to reciprocate. His Dad was stoical, a man of controllable emotions. Sam had become depressed at the thought of returning to camp by the midway point of his leave - it was always the same, in fact only now it wasn’t just the bar
rack room he had to face. There was no doubt that they would be invaded soon and Sam on the English south coast could hardly hope to avoid becoming involved. He was in the front line of the next big battle with Hitler’s Army. And it would be the front line, of that there was no doubt - it was just that the battle hadn’t started yet.
People on the ferry looked and smiled benevolently at the young soldier but he wasn’t in the mood for basking in undeserved glory. Uniformed men were more common on the mainland and he received fewer admiring glances on the train heading south - indeed there were those who felt that the Army had let them down because the war was sure to come to their shores now rather than be conveniently fought on the continent were such things belonged. There was defeatism despite Churchill’s rhetoric to the contrary. An oldish lady in the same carriage spoke to him about the war and lent a sympathetic ear, once she had got the hang of his broad Belfast accent. When he changed train in the Midlands she wished him luck with the natural sincerity that typified her generation’s experiences and outlook. He was touched and it served to remind him, if only briefly that it was his job to defend such people - decent, honest people who would otherwise be terrified of the future. It was a perspective which was more difficult to achieve from the bottom of a shell scrape when under heavy fire.
He returned to the tented camp in the usual mood to see the usual people. Some of them were glad to see him and some of whom were indifferent …. and, as ever, those most recently returned from leave were liable for the next spate of duties. It was ever thus. Peace or war. He always had the feeling that he was being blamed for all the bad things that might have happened during his absence. It was a collective state of mind that made it so. However, some things had changed. Horsley-Palmer had gone to be replaced by a second lieutenant called Clegg, a mere boy with spots and an unhappy hunted look about his dark eyes.
HP had left under something of a cloud. Seemingly he was considered to have deserted his soldiers during the evacuation, although such a thing was never said publicly. If he had, then he certainly wasn’t the only officer to have done so. Their sergeant, unloved to the end, had been promoted and sent to the depot as a Company Quarter-Master Sergeant. Ernie Hall had been promoted to sergeant and sent to another platoon, his place being taken by Tommy Martin. Most outstanding and unexpected of all was Tony’s promotion to lance-corporal.
The platoon had a new sergeant, called Bill Hewson and Sam’s section had a new fusilier called Nobby Clark, one of several thousand of that name in the Army. They were still a man short of their complement of eight.
He walked through the gate of the camp his heart heavier than his kit bag. The sentry, an impossibly young-looking lad whom he didn’t recognise, asked him for his ID, which he showed without question. As he made his way to their company lines, Tony bounded over to him pointing at the white chevron on his sleeve and laughing. Sam shook his head.
‘I’ll tell you what. There’ll be some changes round here now that I’m in charge’, said O’Keefe.
‘Fuck off’, said Sam.
‘There’ll be less of that, for a start’, he warned.
New uniforms arrived and worn out equipment was replaced as befitted a battle-hardened, front-line regiment. The new soldiers recently arrived from the depot had an emaciated, scared look. New soldiers never looked the part and these particular examples had, for the meantime, to live in the shadow of the men who had fought in France. There was an invisible barrier, a stigma. They were unproved; of less worth than those old sweats. They had done less to earn their continued survival than the soldiers who had already fought. Oddly, many of them relished the thought of battle almost as much as the more experienced troops dreaded it. Were there a finite number of times that you expect an ordinary British soldier to risk his life? Was bravery inversely proportional to experience?
Around them new tents were put up and the camp expanded like a green rash on the Dorset countryside. An armoured regiment from the north appeared in their new Valentine Tanks and soon the camp reverberated to the sound of powerful petrol engines. To Sam, the British tanks seemed to lack the edgy purpose of their German counterparts - they were almost quaint by comparison. Nevertheless, the Valentine was a big improvement on some of the other light tanks they had seen in France and maybe they would be glad to see them trundle into view when the invasion came. The invasion. He shuddered at the thought of it. Christ. It was sure to come, just as he was sure to be there to oppose it. Why couldn’t they have beaten the Germans in France?
The Fusiliers became part of an infantry division comprising the battle-scarred remnants of other formations returned to Britain, units untested in battle and units newly raised and largely unpractised even in training for war. Armoured divisions came into being or re-emerged as new tanks became available and all along the south coast, men, trained in the Midlands and North, took their place in the order of battle. Above them the RAF fought with whatever was available as the chiefs of that service tried to rebuild their highly professional service almost from scratch. The time allocated to training across all three services was slashed and the fine workmanship of the ordnance factories was pared back to the basic. Men would learn how to fight in real battles as evolution was given a kick start - those who survived would be the best fighters.
Units of the Local Defence Volunteers, later called the Home Guard, prepared for their part in the battle. These were the fathers and uncles of the men who now formed the Army, Navy and Air Force, the former being, for the most part, veterans of the First War. The country, already toughened by the Blitz, steeped in martial tradition, waited and was ready for the fight…. but the onslaught, when it came, was devastating nonetheless.
June 7 1941
As expected the main thrust of the invasion was directed at the south coast of England. Beaches near the principal centres of population were chosen for landings - Weymouth, Portsmouth, Eastbourne and Hastings. Tens of thousands of specially trained German soldiers stormed the meagre defences under the cover of intense bombing raids on the local towns and pinpoint Stuka attacks. They swarmed from their invasion barges like deadly, single-minded ants, each one with a job to do and the pride of the German nation at stake - or that is how it felt to them. German ground commanders had radio contact with the dive bombers, these being almost instantly available to knock out any obstacle found in the path of the invaders. Stukas had also been used with great precision to disable the train network to the south coast. Messerschmitts and heavily armed Junkers 88s circled and swooped on targets of opportunity - convoys of troops, or armoured vehicles. In this way they hampered the movements of reinforcements to the battlegrounds.
The first Germans set foot on British soil (or more accurately sand) at 3.00am, minutes before airborne troops landed to the north of Southampton and to the East of Exeter. These fallshirmjager interrupted the flow of reinforcements to the beach heads, secured bridges and roads needed for the push inland and, as a useful corollary, spread alarm and something akin to defeatism amongst the general population. The sight of German soldiers on the streets of British towns was profoundly shocking in itself - the fact that they had almost seemed to come from nowhere made it even more so. Elsewhere, saboteurs had been at work destroying wireless transmitters and radar installations, although the latter in particular had been heavily guarded and some remained operational long past the point where they were able to make any contribution to the British struggle.
If the British hoped to repel the Germans on the beaches they were quickly disabused of this. Had the public been aware of how little fighting actually took place on the beaches, Mr Churchill’s rhetoric on the subject would have seemed very hollow indeed.
The sheer incongruity of the Wehrmacht’s green-grey uniforms in England and the unfulfilled hopes of the southern population for its imminent liberation cast a long, grey shadow over the whole country as the previously unstoppable German Army built up its forces. In place of tanks the Wehrmacht had to make do with the Stuka un
til a port was captured and secured for bringing the new Panzers ashore but as it was these monstrous black crows were more than enough to make opposition falter. Their shape was increasingly and despairingly familiar and the air was more or less free for them to roam like death-dealing birds of prey.
The Royal Navy dispatched from the southern ports had tried to sink the invasion fleet in the channel - arguably its historic role - but was largely defeated due to the Luftwaffe air umbrella. Warspite, Barham and Rodney were sunk, the landings took place as planned and the Navy struggled to engage the Kriegsmarine in any way which would alter the disastrous course of the campaign. The Italians, now in the war, provided something of a sideshow in the Mediterranean. Their dealings with the Royal Navy highlighted their weaknesses but their domination of the region became assured as the former withdrew to UK ports. Malta was invaded and overrun before the end of the year. Italian troops challenged the British in Egypt but no swift victory was forthcoming for them despite the fact that the defenders were short of men, materiel and, worst of all, modern air cover.
The air was blue with swearing and vehicle fumes as men ran to the armoury to gather the weapons they would need to fight the Germans. Information was scarce, rumour was abundant. Sam had that hollow feeling in his gut. There was no time for anything. There could be no sleep or food or…. his mind was a jumble of thoughts and he wondered if he alone felt this way. It wasn’t even a question of survival - that was out of his hands. It was so hard to describe…. when would this end, how could it end? He wanted to talk about it or have someone explain it to him. Was it simply reassurance that he needed? If so, there seemed precious little of that available, if the strained white faces of the men around him were anything to go by. Sam was by nature a pessimist, especially in the morning and now he didn’t think the feeling would dissipate as the day wore on. It normally did but there was nothing normal about today. He was part of a tragedy, caught up in events that he could do nothing about. And, when finally, he found himself in the truck, his webbing on, his rifle held between his knees, his helmet squarely on his head, he knew the word that described his emotions - despair. There could be no good outcome. There was no point in thinking about ‘when this is all over’, especially when that time could mark the beginning of something much worse. Could they beat the Germans? He looked at the tired, wan faces of his fellow Ulstermen and could find no satisfactory answer. The victory of 1918 seemed to belong to another type of conflict and not just to another era.