out, improve your appearance. Leave it to me.’ And so I did. He was being polite because I looked a fright with my sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. I don’t know how he re-touched the photo but he did. He puffed up my face so you wouldn’t know that I had lost 2 stone and was suffering from malnutrition. So there I am, looking healthy and happy in my wedding photo.
I was looking forward to my first Christmas at home for five years and enjoying it with my new wife. Even though I had been automatically transferred to the Army Reserves, I was surprised to receive a letter from the War Office instructing me to report to Portsmouth Station for postal duties. How could they do this to me? It would mean being away from home again for months including Christmas. There was nothing I could do about it but go.
I went down by train and met other chaps like me on the way there. We talked about how unfair it was to be called up again; how nobody knew or cared about us and what we had been through. We were all quite angry. There were about forty of us in the end and we got more and more angry about the situation as we waited to report for duty.
By the time the Post Office officials arrived, we had decided that we wouldn’t do the work. We agreed that it had to be all or nothing. It was no good one man saying, ‘OK, I’ll do it’; that would spoil it. So we all refused. The PO officials were worried and didn’t know what to do. They told us that we had to stay there while they went away to contact their superiors, presumably at the War Office. A while later they returned and told us we had to remain in the station until somebody came down from London the next day. There didn’t seem anything else to do but wait and see what they said. We were all used to hanging around like this and kipping down in odd spaces and corners and we did as we were told. I slept on a bench in one of the waiting rooms with my kit bag under my head as a pillow.
The next day when an officer arrived and spoke to us, we were still determined not to work and we refused again. The fellow just said, ‘OK’ and we went back home. And we got away with it. So I spent Christmas at home after all. However, come the New Year, January 1946, blow me, if I didn’t receive call-up papers again. God knows what they thought I was fit for! Well, I found out a few weeks later when I reported to Gravesend Barracks.
You only had to take a look at me to see I wasn’t A1. I couldn’t walk properly as I had problems with one of my legs and I was still underweight, and a puff of wind would have blown me away. I had a medical and was classified B2 which was ‘not fit for normal army duties’. So what duties did the CO order me to do? I had to go around the barracks picking up litter with a stick with a spike on the end. I had to clean windows (only on the ground floor as I couldn’t climb a ladder) and wash floors. Not only was it unnecessary as the place was always spotless but it was dreadfully boring and a waste of my time. I had no education, no training or anything during that time. I slept in a dormitory with a load of other men who were as bored as I was and I only went out of the barracks when I had a weekend pass to go home to see Lily. There were other POWs in there who felt like me: this was another prison sentence. Six months I spent there. Totally wrong.
After I got married, I was doing odd jobs for my family, mostly driving around fetching and carrying for the business. I worked for a while for my mother’s brother who was a farmer. He didn’t own any land but he bought the field crops and employed people to pick them and then take the vegetables to market. Does this sound familiar to you? I helped him with a bit of everything including picking and driving vans full of vegetables to Stratford Market to be sold. It looked as though I had come full circle – back where I started.
When I was transferred to the Army Reserve list, I was issued with my de-mob suit courtesy of the Central Ordnance Depot, Branston (where the pickle comes from). I chose a double-breasted suit in a pin stripe material. I was thrilled to get it, not just in anticipation of finally leaving the army but because I had never had a proper suit. I was particularly pleased to have it when my pal Laurie Neville invited me to his wedding and asked me to be his best man. I wasn’t going to let him down. Come to think of it, he was in his de-mob suit too. His wedding was a small family affair and like me he had found a good woman to set up home with.
What Lily and I wanted most of all was a home of our own. We had a roof over our head, moving a couple of times over the next few years. We lived in a rented flat over my brother’s shop and then in a rented house with a little garden my brother found us when he sold his shop. It wasn’t the same as having our own place. I wanted to find a proper job and be my own boss and save up for a house. I was still a gofer, I think they call it, at everybody’s beck and call. No dignity in that. But I wasn’t trained in anything; this didn’t help me settle back into civvy street.
I have to say that I wasn’t an easy person to live with. I got upset very quickly over the smallest thing. I was extremely nervous and didn’t like meeting people or being in a crowd; I was afraid of doing some of the simplest tasks. My father got angry with me on one occasion because I wouldn’t go and get some petrol coupons for his van from the Town Hall. All I had to do was get a form and fill it in to request a few extra gallons but I couldn’t face going out and having to talk to strangers. He kept on about it and told me off for not going, which I resented very much. I was a grown man, not the young lad I had been before the war. So that made me very angry. In the end Lily came with me to the Town Hall but my father should have understood.
I didn’t like authority figures before the war and I certainly didn’t like them after. So being told off or told what to do didn’t go down well with me. I liked being free to do things my way and sometimes when I got frustrated or people crossed me I was not very agreeable. There were times when I did behave badly. I was horrible. I would just explode for no apparent reason and shout and swear at whoever was near – usually Lily, I’m afraid.
When Brian was much older, he told me that I ought to sort this out as it was causing a lot of upset at home. I knew Lily understood but it wasn’t nice. You shouldn’t take it out on your family but I couldn’t help it. It was like a huge build-up of anger and frustration and it had to be released. I couldn’t stop. I never talked about the war and I think that had a lot to do with it. Lily did encourage me to talk about what had happened during the war, hoping to find the reason for my behaviour but I didn’t tell her. Today I would have had some counselling.
I wish I had talked to somebody about my years as a prisoner, especially about the terrible things I saw. They are as clear today as they were the day I stood by and watched a woman shot in the head; a man beaten to death with a spade and left in a bloody heap by the road. It wouldn’t have been fair on Lily to burden her with all that. The constant fear I felt, my sense of shame at my degradation and my helplessness to do anything about what I saw. These feelings affected me deeply. I was so disgusted by the way the Germans behaved that I wanted to blow the whole lot of them to smithereens. I was so angry and carried that hatred inside for a long time.
One of the best times was when Lily and I set up our own greengrocery round from the back of a lorry. Brian was born in 1946 and had started school so this was probably in the early 1950s. It was hard work with long hours but we were our own bosses and enjoyed being together. It wasn’t a deliberate act to set myself up in opposition to the family business; it just sort of happened that way.
A friend of mine who knew I was looking for work had heard about some second-hand removal vans for sale. A firm which made cough mixture – I forget the name, had gone out of business and were selling off their vehicles, including these 2-ton delivery lorries. He thought that one of those would make a nice shop and offered to show me them. He took me down to a garage in Deptford where five were displayed on the forecourt. He knew a bit about engines and looked them over and listened to them running and he picked the best one out for me. I made an offer to the salesman and I bought it for ?100 on credit over five years.
My nephews, Keith and Roy, had inherited their father’s carpentry skills and they came and helped me fit out shelving inside. I hadn’t fallen out with my big brother Alfred but he didn’t want to upset other members of the family so I rarely saw him. That was a pity. We got the inside all ship shape and I set out all the different bins for the vegetables (just like in the old shop) and stocked them up and it really looked the business.
I decided to stick to a familiar district and people I knew and set up round the corner from my old home and family shop. I gradually built up my own customers and expanded the route. I had a very loyal following and some of my old ones started coming to me instead of the shop. I’ve always got on with people in spite of being shy and if you provide a good service to the public, they trust you and you can do well. I suppose there was the idea at the back of my mind that I might get sympathy from people who knew me from the old days, who thought I had been treated badly by my relations.
And yes, I did take business away from the family and yes, they didn’t like it and tried to stop me. Somebody reported me to the council saying I was breaking the law by selling goods from a stationary vehicle in the street. So when an official came and spoke to me about it, all I did was to get in the driving seat of the van and move it a few feet further down the road. Then I decided to check with the police and went down to the station. They told me that they hadn’t received any complaints so I could carry on. Word soon got back after that: not to bother
