Intervals of Hope, page 19
There were murmurings that this entire deployment was a fake to keep German troops concentrated in Norway, and that Britain never intended to invade that country at all. As nothing was confirmed or denied when I pestered my superior officers for answers later, no one could be sure.
All I was certain of was that my first chance for action had been thwarted, and we were headed back for more training.
I was granted leave to go into London, eager to return, with the additional incentive of getting away from the endless war games for a week. But when I arrived in a city covered in rubble, sand bags and broken glass, dirt and burnt wood, dust and brick powder, explosives and bomb casings, the stink of sewage, domestic gas intermingled with sap from trees that had been cut in half, and the rooms of houses on exhibit from the effects of the bombing, I only wanted to depart as quickly as possible.
This was much the same as when I had walked the streets with Mum, Uncle Devon, and Ian after the bombing began, only the damage now was extensive and beyond the boundaries of our small neighbourhood. And now that I had enlisted for “active” service, I could peer into the faces of those who had been bandaged and crippled, to see the same fright that once overwhelmed me with a need to escape to Canada, or anywhere else that this war had not touched. These sentiments were replaced now with a desire not only for vengeance, but a paternalistic need, the requirement to protect this place and these people that I would soon be away from, perhaps fighting on the battlefields of France as my father had.
After sleeping for a few days at the Cecil Hotel, I recalled a man named Oliver who once introduced my parents to each other at the bar of this same hotel 25 years ago. There were plenty of girls here, as I understood there were then, and lots of soldiers for them. Half of the girls here, who stared at me as I walked in, might be married and not faithful to their soldier husbands; which made me disregard them, despite their obvious beauty, as an unsightly sort.
1916
Tommy, Carson, and I got to London for a week of Christmas holidays. Getting away from the trenches was a great relief as bad winter weather set in. Rain was falling nearly all the time. Our trenches had three feet of water in the bottom, and they were nearly all caved in. We waded in water up to our hips.
We got rooms at the Strand Palace hotel and went out strolling. I looked everywhere for Devon, half expecting to see him, half hoping not to. We got lost but came back all right, and I am certainly enjoying myself. It was great to be in a place where I can get a good square meal. Four of us had dinner together, and it cost $9.25 but it was certainly the best, and well worth the expense. My room alone cost 13 shillings a night, but I intended to have a good time, for it might have been my last. And when I got into a nice feather bed the first night, I thought I was in heaven. We went out to the London Tower the next day, the castle the old Kings used to live in. We saw the Crown Jewels and the gold dishes, gold swords and gold sabres, all decorated with diamonds. There was a big diamond there, the size of your fist. The valuables were all in a big glass case with iron bars all around, and everything inside was charged with enough electricity to keep the thieves away. All kinds of old guns and armour were there, some that Charles the First and Charles the Second wore. A block that was used for beheadings was on display. It bothered Tommy, but not me and Carson. We counted the chips; around fifty victims.
None of the tours cost a cent. All the soldiers get a free ticket for any place in England.
Tommy went to Glasgow, and Carson and I drank our nights away in the London pubs. As I went through the British Museum during the day, Carson slept away. I passed hours in the enormous library, called the Reading Room, wishing I could spend days or weeks there. I heard the British Museum tube station was being used as an air raid shelter for the Zeppelins, but I saw the tunnel was dusty and vacant.
I had a bunch of meat coupons, and gave them away. They were only a farce. Half the places we went to eat in didn’t want them. I also gave away a sugar card and butter cards.
I had my picture taken. The photographs would be sent to me in France. I didn’t know how they would look, as I was about half canned. Carson and I met an American traveller and another tourist from Vancouver, and we all certainly had a good time. But I felt like I had a big head the next day.
London seemed just as busy as ever. You wouldn’t think there was a war on, except for the recruiting speeches on every corner. I guess it’s coming time for conscription to start. Serbia looks a little dangerous now, and, in France, the Germans keep coming over to the British lines and giving themselves up. They don’t get much to eat and say they are sick of war, the same as everyone else.
There are two big buildings in London that were destroyed by Zeppelins. Londoners are as nervous as kids about the Zeppelins. There are big search lights all over the city and anti-aircraft guns, and an aeroplane patrol, even though the Zeppelins have only reached here twice.
Warneford, a British Flight Lieutenant, downed a Zeppelin by bombing it from above. The newspaper said the German pilot jumped from the flaming Zeppelin at 100 feet and landed safely in the bed of a convent, after crashing through the roof. Sounds like a lark.
There was another story before that in the Times about Roland Garros, the French Ace. The Times said Garros destroyed a Zeppelin by flying through its envelope. Another paper said the pictures of Garros flying his Morane Bullet through the gasbag of a Zeppelin over Paris were faked.
I’m sure people want to believe both these stories. They want to know that these airships can be taken down. Just like they fancy that the German army can be defeated and we can win this war. People need their heroes for inspiration, to drive them forward, forgetting about any embellishments.
I saw Oliver Ellwood, one of the Highgate, Ontario Boys who is married to an English girl now. A lot of the fellows are getting married to English girls. Oliver introduced me to a girl named Doreen at the bar of the Cecil Hotel. There were plenty of girls there, and lots of soldiers for them. But Doreen was different than the other girls. Instead of talking with the soldiers, she sat alone with her father and only talked to him. Her shyness was interesting, alluring I think is the word, and she was beautiful besides. Her father, a retired Lieutenant in the British Army, invited me to sit down. He told me that about half of the girls in there are married to men who are at the front. They are not being true to their husbands. It certainly is a shame the way they carry on, running around with soldiers on leave while their husbands fight. When her father left the table to get drinks, Doreen said she will always be true to whomever she marries.
“When will this old war end?” the Lieutenant asked me after returning to the table with beers.
“This old war is good for another year yet,” I said, downing some of my beer and smacking my lips. “And maybe longer. It just depends what the Russians do next spring. The amount of men lost on the Somme was awful. The part of the line I was just in is a pretty quiet place. But last spring, the French were doing some hard fighting there.”
When Doreen went to the toilet, I told the Lieutenant about a town in the German’s hands with about 30,000 civilians. The French sent word for them to get out, but the Germans wouldn’t let them, thinking the French wouldn’t attack with civilians in the town. The French, thinking all the citizens had gone, used gas.
“About a week ago,” I continued, “I was taking a walk through this place and you could see women, children and Germans lying around by the thousands, dead. And the Germans have shelled it all to pieces. Just in front of our line, about two miles, is the third largest city in France, in Fritz’s hands. Fritz and the townspeople there are working the coal mines and using the factories, and our people never shell it because civilians live there.”
Before leaving, I told Doreen I wanted to stay. I didn’t say I wanted to stay with her, but only added I couldn’t be away any longer than allowed. One potential dishonourable discharge in a family is plenty.
I walked through the city with Oliver, Doreen, and her father. We all ended up at the law courts, where we heard a divorce case. There was a lot of shouting and carrying on about everything they had done to each other.
As we were leaving, I smiled and said: “Let me tell you, that was more fun than a picnic.”
I spent time going to the London Tower and the British Museum as Pa had, only now, they were closed, boarded up and locked shut. The British Museum tube station was packed with squatters, like I had been so long ago.
The Strand Hotel was open, a luxurious palace in the city with beautiful piano music reverberating through the halls. I had not seen this place before and did not want to leave. After sitting on a couch for an hour or so, listening to the music in an area resembling an outdoor patio, a tidy young blonde woman, an employee of the hotel, approached me.
“Are you staying here?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Are you? I don’t need anything, if that’s what you’re after. I’m fine here, thank you.”
“What room are you in?”
“Room 14A. My father stayed here many years ago, and I see why. Although I figure you weren’t working here at the time. Too young and such.”
“We don’t have a 14A, sir.”
“There’s a 14A at the Cecil Hotel.”
“Perhaps you should return there, then.”
The sirens and rumbling of overnight bombing raids near the Cecil Hotel kept me awake for countless hours, making me wish I had stayed at the Strand despite the rudeness of the staff.
After packing my belongings and descending the stairs the following morning, I found a telegram telling me to report for duty immediately. My leave was over. I was being posted to barracks in the north of England, reassigned to my old unit due to the always obscure “operational requirements.”
If this was a trick by my superiors to get me into more training exercises, I would be applying for a transfer somewhere, anywhere, immediately.
After stepping out of the front door and into a taxi, I saw that the far end of the hotel was flattened. My taxi rounded a corner by a group of tenements on my way out of the city, revealing more randomized demolitions. Looking through the taxicab window at a familiar part of the Thames where I cycled in my youth, I only saw the loss of tranquillity and equanimity that once permeated these streets.
Seeing this unwarranted destruction, evident throughout the city, made me impatient to end my gratuitous holiday and get after those responsible for this mess.
After returning from leave to my old unit, I had a rank insignia which the others seem to respect; those who had previously bothered me now left me alone. I engaged in various field exercises and was assigned to command a group of twenty men and perform mock battles against other units, assaulting each other in open fields and in pre-fabricated towns at the edge of the hills. I ordered my men to proceed efficiently from house to house, leading them as we smashed imaginary windows and threw dud grenades inside to simulate flushing out life. The men appeared bewildered at my determination in the face of this illusory foe; apparently, they weren’t aware that the non-existent adversary I was fighting against was the treachery of my superiors in ordering me back here for more mock battles and training exercises.
I applied for a transfer, uncertain of where I would be sent, seeking active service. A week later, my Sergeant, a tall, thin man with a grey moustache entered my tent as I was cleaning my boots with a rag.
“Here you go,” he said, handing me a paper which I quickly read through.
I was being posted to Brancepeth Camp, near Durham in England.
“More training?” I asked.
“You wanted a transfer? You’re being transferred.”
Brancepeth Camp had huts with bunks, and everyone wore denim work uniforms. The meals consisted of boiled and tasteless potatoes, beans and tough meat that came apart in strings. We occasionally walked to Brancepeth Castle, where the stores were. I was issued with an overcoat, a respirator, two Mills Fragmentation bombs, and another pair of boots.
We engaged in drills. There was endless marching, shooting at the rifle range, weekend inoculations, bomb throwing exercises in sandbag areas, and ruminating about my father’s ennui in wanting to get to the front. This war had no fighting in France and, fit and ready and eager to go, being granted occasional leave to London, my requests for transfer to Singapore or Africa were inexplicably denied, saying that I was needed where I was. I wondered why I was needed there to fight sham battles against mock enemies, to go to countless pubs and movies in town, and to generally lead a dull life.
Then, an event came that changed all of this. I was posted, along with everyone else, to barracks by Southampton in England. Something was finally happening.
26
After several weeks in the port town of Southampton, firing at ranges, navigating through obstacle courses, hiking, running, and crawling through trenches covered with barbed wire, there was still no news about any impending attack. I was assigned to a battalion, though: British Second Army, Bucknall Corps, 50th Infantry Division, 69th Brigade. And then, one day, late in the afternoon, we loaded our gear into the back of trucks and moved close to Dover.
A few days passed, and there was a knock on the barrack door. There was no light outside, and no one was awake. All of England was blacked out to highlight nothing for overhead planes, yet lights must have been on somewhere inside the building. Had I missed my day on the duty roster? I hadn’t checked in days. Was this all my fault? The doors opened to reveal senior Officers of the British Army yelling orders. No one shouted directly at me. I wouldn’t be reprimanded; at least, not for this.
We were taken to the port in the dark of the early morning, where we were moved to tents and given a meal of hard rations: biscuits and tea. I was outfitted with a rucksack, a Mark III helmet, binoculars, a life belt, ammunition, a Bren machine gun, and a tool kit.
I was briefed along with a group of officers after we had packed into a narrow metal building. The Company Commander, Johnston, a tall officer with a dark moustache and a gruff voice, began:
“We will be moving onto boats right before dawn,” he said. “You will each be placed in charge of thirty men. You will be given maps, a compass, and told where to rendezvous. The 3rd Canadian Division, 7th Canadian Brigade will be on your left flank during the landing and the British 50th Infantry Division, 151st Brigade will be on your right. You will be landing on Gold Beach before proceeding inland. That is your objective for the first day. Your ultimate goal is the same as everyone else’s: to liberate Paris, before pressing on to Berlin.”
Heavy with the weight of our mission, we were packed onto transport carriers that rolled into darkness. The sea was rough; the air windy, cold, and unpleasant.
Johnston, seated beside me, would not stop talking of his wife and daughter back home in Wales. He was giving a detailed account of his daughter’s last visit to her grandmother’s house, during which Grandma had doled out too many sweets. Afterward, his daughter couldn’t stop talking until late into the night, unable to sleep. I had to put a stop to his gibberish.
“Remembering my trip across the Baltic,” I said, interrupting him. “I wonder if this, too, is a distraction from what’s going on somewhere else.”
“There’re rubber decoys, tanks, military transports and planes, set up near Dover where we were stationed,” he said. “It’s across the channel from Calais, France. These two port cities are closest, and Calais is the most anticipated spot for an invasion. All the rubber inflatables are diversions from the assault we’re on that’ll include a hundred and fifty thousand men, and thousands of transport vessels, warships and aircraft. Paratroopers and bombers are being sent in before us. We should have sent the inflatables in first, instead. That’d be quite the sight to see, all those dummy ships and planes floating on the horizon as the Germans look through their binoculars trying to figure it out. Then, meantime, we’d be moving in somewhere else—”
“I heard there were dummy paratroopers sent in to confuse the Germans: half-sized men with firecrackers,” a bearded Lieutenant interrupted, shouting over the clamour of the vessel’s engine as the ship rolled with the waves. “Some of the real paratroopers had trouble with their chutes opening. They were jumping too low. The planes couldn’t ascend ’cause of anti-aircraft fire. But ’cause of the bombing raids, the coast’ll surely be cleared, so we’ll be able to advance up the beaches and into the French countryside.”
“I wouldn’t be so smug,” I said, “If the paratrooper planes couldn’t put up with the anti-aircraft fire, how could the bombers?”
Along with most of the other men from the British Second Army, Bucknall Corps, 50th Infantry Division, 69th Brigade, I was seasick on the way over. We vomited beneath the seats; the boat, a steel hull without a keel and enclosed on four sides, was thrown back and forth by the wind blustering by on the overcast day of June 6th, 1944.
We studied our maps. Gold Beach was near La Rivière, and we would pass by Cruelly, moving by two major sets of roads and a river to our checkpoint at a railway line near Bretteville-L’Orgueilleuse, northwest of Caen.
We were about 10 miles out and in rough water when, as fires and smoke rose over the beaches, shells bombarding the coast from ships behind us, a group of a dozen massive American Sherman tanks floating nearby suddenly overturned. One by one, the tanks slipped silently and serenely over the edge of the landing craft, and down beneath the surface of the water. A temporary peace descended as we sat waiting for what was to come.
As we approached the horror of that beach, the whine of bullets could be heard, along with pinging impacts of flying metal on the bow of the boat. The Company Commander told us all to get ready.
