Open Writing

The early months of 1940 were known as the 'phoney war'. Very little seemed to be happening in France on the Western Front. Then in March 1940 Neville Chamberlain resigned due, it was said, to ill health. The general consensus amongst the public was that he wasn't doing a good job as Premier. On the outbreak of war Churchill had been appointed first Lord of the Admiralty and he now became Prime Minister.

In April Germany invaded Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. In the same month in Britain, Winston Churchill formed a coalition Government, uniting the three political parties. Events climaxed when Germany outflanked the defensive Maginot Line in France.

I remember Dunkirk because Saturday, the 15th June, was the day the soldiers arrived back at the Peninsular Barracks in Warrington. Much later, we learned Dunkirk was called Operation Dynamo. Dad said the South Lanes Regiment was lucky, because the 1st and 5th Battalions were amongst the first to be evacuated from the Dunkirk beaches.

It was exciting the Saturday the soldiers came back. We schoolgirls took our autograph books along to get the soldiers' signatures, just as if they were famous film stars. They were very brown and healthy looking and were happy to be back. When I showed my dad the book, I said they looked as if they'd come back from their holidays.

Dad looked angry and said, "Some holiday, poor sods. It was a bloody defeat and no picnic. Those boys have been through hell."

Mum said, "Bill for heaven's sake watch your language."

Dad normally never swore. He went very red and looked furiously at Mum. "What's been happening lately would make a saint swear, and anyway Nell, what would you know about fighting, for God's sake?"

Then he put his hat and coat on and left the house, slamming the door behind him. My father was wounded in the First World War at Mons. He was in the Coldstream Guards. I knew Mum was sorry for upsetting Dad, because she became quiet and I could see her eyes shining with tears.

I went and put my arms around her. She pushed me away and said, "It's alright; I know I shouldn't have said what I did. I should have bitten my tongue. He feels so useless, because he's too old to fight. But I'm glad. It was bad enough in the last lot with what he went through. It wasn't enough that he was sent back to France after he was wounded. He's riddled with rheumatoid arthritis and him only in his fifties!"

She put her jacket on and said she was going to the Co-op, but I knew she'd gone looking for him. Later, they came back together and everything was alright.

That was Dunkirk for me. Later I found out that 337,131 allied troops were saved in the evacuation from the Dunkirk beaches.

A few weeks later Dad got a job working as a batman for the man in charge of all the barrage balloons at Padgate Camp. He made it sound important. Mum said, "In a pig's ear, but anything that gets him out from underneath my feet is a good job, as far as I'm concerned." I knew that she was really pleased, because she was smiling when she said it.

He brought back a scrumptious chocolate layer cake with his first week's wages. The lady in the camp canteen made them. Dad was very happy because, at last he felt he was doing something to help the war effort.

Quite soon there remained only the three of us at home. Eve was stationed at Driffield, an airfield in Yorkshire, working with the Royal Canadian Air Force and Joan was far away in Glasgow with the army.