8
Postcard Home
Post early for Christmas, that’s what they tell you nowadays. It’s a pity that my family didn’t think of that during the war because I usually got my Christmas cards and letters in February. Of course, my family didn’t know what was going on where I was and I didn’t tell them.
We only had a fortnightly allowance of four or five sheets of camp writing paper and one card, and with so little space you didn’t want to waste your words. All anybody wanted to know was that we were OK and we wanted to know the same about them. So messages both ways were simple and cheerful. You couldn’t have said what you really thought anyway.
Letters were censored. We had to be careful what we wrote and anything directly about the war was avoided so we sometimes tried to sneak things in. I wrote to my oldest brother Alfred, about the time of the invasion of Sicily, saying, ‘I was pleased to hear about Auntie Cissie,’ which was supposed to be my code. When I got home, I remembered to ask Alfred about it and he said that he hadn’t received that particular letter. I wasn’t surprised.
I had a lot of family to write to and some of them wrote back regularly. I’m sorry to say that my father wasn’t one of them. He only wrote twice, possibly three times, in all those five years. In one of his letters he told me that he now owned two cars – an Austin A40 and a Rover, and he promised me one of them when I returned after the war. That was nice, I thought, something to look forward to. I missed driving.
Sad to say, once I was home he never mentioned the car again and I never got one. As I found out, even after all I had been through, nobody in the family was going to give me a helping hand. I missed out on all those years when they were building up the family business, having children and buying their own homes. In the end, I had to make my own way in the world with just Lily by my side.
Lily, mum and my sister Winnie were the main ones who wrote. Winnie kept all my letters to her and Bert, her husband, which was good as I can read them again and think back to what was going on at the time.
6 September 1942
Dear Win & Bert, I have not heard from you for a long time & I wondered if it was because I do not write myself. I am sure you understand that my writing material is rationed and I like Lily & Mum to hear from me as often as possible so I apologise for not writing. Cheerio for now. Love Charlie xxx
9 January 1944
Sorry I cannot write more often but as you know writing material is limited and naturally it is my wish to correspond with Lily and Mum as often as is possible … PS just received your cigs. Your Loving Brother Charlie xxxx
But the truth is that my letters don’t tell me much now about what was happening to me and what I really felt. All they show is that I was worried about everybody at home, particularly my mother. I didn’t want to upset her after all she had been through. A month or so after I left for France to go to war, she received a letter from The War Office: ‘We regret to tell you that your son is missing in France’. My poor mother! It was quite a while before she got another letter telling her that I was alive and safe, and a prisoner of war; that was all it said.
Later on she was given the address to send letters to me but I don’t expect she had a clue where or what
It was fantastic returning to camp at 7 o’clock in the evening or maybe 8 in summer, everybody gradually coming in from their various work detachments, tired, dirty and hungry, to be greeted by the cry, ‘Mail up!’ We were so excited. It meant so much to us to get post from home and we would rush to collect what there was for us. Letters used to arrive all together so you could have a bunch of half a dozen to put in date order so you could read them in sequence and make sense of the news. You didn’t want to read about of the arrival of a new nephew before you had even heard that your sister was expecting. And you read them over and over again and looked after them, folding them carefully each time and putting them back in your shoebox. Each one was a life saver.
I was very upset when I threw all my letters away soon after setting out on The March in January 1945. I kept two envelopes, one from my mother and one from Lily, that was all. We could only carry essentials such as food and clothing. Lily’s letters were special to me and I wish I still had them now she’s no longer with me.
I always felt sorry for the lads who didn’t have anybody to write to when I collected my bundle and took it back to my room to read in a quiet corner. It was a comfort to see familiar handwriting and to read family news, how everybody was and what new additions there were to the family:
18 July 1943
Dear Winnie and Bert, Pleased to hear the good news and I hope you are both satisfied. (I would be) I expect to hear from you soon. You said you did not want another fireman in the family so if you should find even one too many, I’ll change. Keep smiling and remember everything comes to those who wait. Cheerio. Loving Brother Charlie
20 November 1944
All the kiddies will be getting grown up now and I look forward to seeing them all. Cheerio for now. All the best. Keep smiling Bert. Charlie xxx
It was good hearing about what people had been doing; whether or not half of it was true didn’t matter. I felt better thinking that everything was carrying on as normal back home:
5 April 1942
It’s nice to know you all go to dances and I wish I were able to. (But I cannot dance). Cheerio for now. Your loving Brother Charlie xxxx
21 September 1942
Have you a tandem also or do you ride a scooter. Thank Marjorie for her letter. I hope you all receive letters from me. Loving Brother Charlie xxx
But what was I meant to write? What news could I tell them? ‘Today I shared a bath with Sid and got an extra slice of bread.’ Or ‘Hurt my hand yesterday, breaking up rocks in the quarry.’ I certainly couldn’t have told them ‘Watched a man being beaten to death today’. I didn’t tell them about such things then, nor after the war.
As far as other communications went, we had postcards we could send – not quite ‘Wish you were here’ ones from the seaside. They were camp photographs which had been made into postcards. This was standard practice in POW camps, part of the ongoing German propaganda campaign and went on throughout the war. They were a way of showing everybody at home how well the Germans were treating their prisoners – all those rows of young men, smiling at the camera, trying to say ‘Cheese’.
I don’t think my family received any of the cards but some survived my journey home. The back of one photograph came in handy, as did the inside pages of my New Testament, to make notes about the things I saw and did on The March. I thought that if I didn’t survive maybe somebody would find the card and know what we had gone through.
