My family was fortunate in terms of war losses in that no
close relative of either of my parents was lost in any 20th century
war. That is not to say that nobody was involved in war service, but they all
survived to tell their stories.
My father was too young for World War I and his eyesight was
not good enough for World War II. His wartime activity consisted of nights on
the roof of his place of work, a branch of Lloyds Bank in Bournemouth, where he
stood ready with buckets of sand and water just in case an incendiary bomb
should land nearby. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Luftwaffe had more pressing
targets than Bournemouth and his services were never called upon.
However, his two older brothers, Frank and George, were very
much involved in both World Wars. Frank kept a detailed diary of all his
activities during both wars, and also made notes about what George was up to. I
have his summary of the diaries in front of me now.
The United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 4th
August 1914, which was only shortly after the family had moved from Poole to
Frome – the head of the family was a Primitive Methodist Minister who made many
moves during his lifetime. Frank recorded that on that day he had watched a
water polo match at Frome baths – the score was Frome 6, Gloucester City 2, and
he described it as “very exciting, the standard was very high”. He also noted
that he had no idea that the war would involve him in any way.
Frank’s call-up came in July 1916, when he was assigned to
the Royal Garrison Artillery and began his military training, most of it taking
place on Plymouth Hoe. After spending some time on Spike Island in Cork Harbour
– he described it as “wasted a month as library and post orderly” - he
undertook further training at Prees Heath in Shropshire and Lydd in Kent,
before joining a siege battery and being posted to Belgium.
He began his active service as “Battery Commander’s
Assistant” at Ypres in April 1917, but on 2nd June was wounded in
the leg by shell fragments and was sent back to England. It was not until April
1918 that he returned to France, this time to Arras, where his function, based
near the Officer’s Mess well behind the front line, was to calculate the range
and direction of the guns. As he wrote, “my fighting was done with maps, range
tables, slide rules, etc”.
He then advanced with the battery as the front moved
forward, until he was laid low with a skin infection caused by lice, leading to
a spell in a field hospital. He had just about recovered from this when the
Armistice was declared on 11th November.
So that was Frank’s war – as he said later, the first German
person he ever saw in his life was five years after the war had ended!
George’s war was a very different affair. He had joined the
Royal Fusiliers in September 1915 and was wounded, albeit not seriously, early
in 1916 and again in the summer of 1917. However, in April 1918 he took a
machine gun bullet in the chest and was not found for several hours. He was
unconscious for two weeks and only recovered shortly before the Armistice.
Both brothers served in the Second World War. Frank was in
the Home Guard at Weymouth, but George – once again – was much more directly
involved in the action.
As a reservist, and despite being 42 at the time, he was
called up in August 1939, having been promised “home duties only”. That promise
lasted until March 1941, when, shortly after getting married, he was sent to
Egypt and taken by submarine to Malta. When the Siege of Malta ended, early in
1943, he was posted to GHQ in Cairo where he stayed until June 1945 when he
eventually left for home and was able to see his 4-year-old daughter for the
first time.
So what was George actually doing in Malta and Cairo? He
never said much about it, which suggests that he was involved in some sort of
undercover work that swore him to secrecy.
And, in the meantime, his younger brother Gordon, my father,
was doing his bit on the roof of the Charminster Road, Bournemouth, branch of
Lloyds Bank. He did not have a lot to say about it either – probably because
there was not much to tell.
© John Welford
