MUM 'S WAR MEMORIES 4

MY FATHER

My father was born in August 1904 so he was 35 years old when the war started and it was generally assumed he wouldn't be called up, but in 1940 I ran home for my dinner one day from Welholme School and my father came home. My mother said "There is a letter for you". I could see she looked very worried so I sat very still and quiet whilst he opened the envelope. My mother said 'What does it say?" I can still see my father's face. He said "His bloody Majesty welcomes you into his Armed Forces". This was the only time I ever heard my father swear, he was such a quiet, gentle man. My mother burst out crying and although only eight years old, I realised this was serious. My father had told me that his father had been killed in the First World War. He was gassed and had been sent home to die. I have since found out he died on the 10.07.1917 aged 39 years. My grandmother had six children I believe, my father being the eldest so he had lied about his age, said he was 14 when he was 12 and went deep sea fishing to provide for the rest of the family. (He later told me he was sick the whole trip). It must have been on his mind if he would come home!

Just two weeks after he went into the Forces he came home again on embarkation leave. We didn't know where he was going but he ended up in Egypt in Cairo as a cook. Because he had been to sea and had worked in a fish canning house they sent him in a lorry to Alexandra Dock to buy fish for the British troops, but he told me after the War he didn't recognise one fish and had no idea how to cook any of them!

He also told me that an officer who had studied Theology at Oxford Uni before the war asked him to accompany him on a camel trip across the desert to St Catherine's Monastery where he said he had seen a room full of skulls and showed me some photos; they travelled for three weeks having saved their leave up.

So my father went to Egypt and we were one less in the household, the bombs kept falling, food became scarcer and life generally bercame very hard.