"I wasn't even twenty in 1942. But thanks to the RAF, I knew more about how to kill a man than I knew how to make love to a woman."
From the struggles of the Greatest Generation, the modern Welfare State was born only to be destroyed by neoliberalism over the last three decades. To forget that past is to live in a purgatory of centrist politics that only benefits the few./
The creators of much of our literary, journalistic and cinematic popular culture are from the upper middle class or society’s entitled set. They have moulded a myth about Britain during the Second World War that was cast from their privileged position in society.
My father’s experiences in the Second World War were not about being patriotic or dutiful. They were about surviving it and returning to a peacetime that included the construction of a modern Welfare State. It’s evident that the reason why our working class history during the Second World War was rewritten by popular culture is to keep us obedient in an increasingly unequal and authoritarian society governed for the benefit of its top income earners.
Your support in keeping my dad’s legacy and me alive and housed is greatly appreciated. With rent day approaching your assistance is always welcome. if you can please subscribe because it literally helps pay my rent. But if you can’t it is all good because we are fellow travellers in penury. I have also added a tip jar for those who are inclined and able to.
The Green And Pleasant Land
Chapter Thirty-Four
In October, my unit was informed that we were going to North Africa after we had finished training at White Waltham.
A rumour circulated we'd be in the desert and part of a newly formed mobile front-line signals regiment within a couple of months.
The talk around the mess tent was- we were going to North Africa to make former Luftwaffe airfields- recently captured by the army, operational for the RAF.
It made sense because our sergeant kept talking about how he wanted to toughen us up to withstand any combat that might come our way.
Looking back, it amazes me that despite our grumblings, Britain's youth accepted that death in war was just a fact of life during WW2.
I guess it wasn't that strange because- for centuries; peasants and workers had taken their lot of servitude as the order of things in the world.
It was beyond my pay grade to understand why; if my unit was destined for the desert, I had to learn how to forge across a river with a rope strung overhead.
But in the downpours of autumn rain, we were marched to a river bank and told to cross it with a rope strung taunt above the water.
I'd wrapped my foot around the suspended rope to become like a marmoset gliding on a jungle vine. I shimmied slowly across the river whilst my sergeant yelled from the opposite bank.
"Get a move on Tarzan. Or Fritz will shoot you dead."
On other days, we trained at target practice with Lee Enfield rifles, followed up with bayonet drills.
I charged at straw men tied to wooden planks that we had been told had raped our women folk.
My hut mate Clementine displayed a homicidal delight in bayonet practice. He destroyed and disembowelled his straw man Nazi as if it were the real thing.
We learned hand-to-hand combat but did it- as if we were boys fighting over scrap wood for bonfire night.
Soon after, I and the others in my unit were taught how to toss live grenades into trenches where we were to pretend the enemy was waiting to kill us.
It was an easy task. We stood in a safe zone barricaded with sandbags. An NCO expert in munitions ordered me to stand above the parapet, pull the pin, and hurl the grenade forward into a ditch. Once thrown I crouched down behind the sandbags and waited for the explosion.
On my first attempt, I was a natural at it. The lad who followed me was not as lucky.
He hit his mark. But the grenade failed to explode in the trench where it lay. Nothing would have happened had the man just stayed put. He didn't- feeling like he failed he left the safety of our sandbagged enclosure to investigate why his handiwork had not exploded as it should have.
The Sergeant yelled at the soldier to "Get the fuck back, here." But the lad either didn't care or didn't hear the command to return.
The soldier jumped into the trench where his unexploded hand grenade sat. All of a sudden, there was an explosion and then- screams like when I killed the pig with Bill as a boy came from the trench.
The soldier lost an eye and much of his face without ever engaging the Nazis.
After perfecting, forging inconsequential rivers, target shooting, bayoneting straw men and tossing hand grenades, the RAF rounded out my squad's military preparedness by teaching us how to drive lorries in convoy.
One morning, we stood at attention until a slow-moving Leyland lorry, built in 1917, pulled up beside us.
The vehicle stopped in a jerky fashion with steam brewing out of its bonnet.
An NCO hopped from the lorry's cab and bellowed; we had 72 hours to learn to drive the beast behind him.
I hadn't even learned how to use a telephone because my family was so poor, and now I was expected to master that contraption in three days.
The NCO gave me vague information about how to use the clutch, accelerator and brake.
Its gears were manipulated with a cumbersome lever that could have changed gears on the Titanic. The clutch was located at the base of the floorboard. The driving column was an enormous wheel, and the lorry had no suspension. Once, the beast started and lurched forward, it felt like I were Steamboat Willie from the Buster Keaton film.
The Leyland bounced from one side of the road to the other as if it were a drunk lurching home after last orders from the pub.
Days, later, we learned how to drive in a convoy. Thirty Leyland lorries showed up, and chaos erupted on the roads around our base.
We were so new to driving in traffic, that there were collisions, dogs struck and ditches with a few wrecked lorries in them.
I knew my time at White Waltham was almost over because Sergent Green said to us, following our training, that there was no Christmas leave because we were bound for Egypt.
It was a strange time to become a young adult. I wasn't even twenty in 1942. But thanks to the RAF, I knew more about how to kill a man than I knew how to make love to a woman.
For me, rent day approaches like the headlights from a truck with an unsteady load on its trailer. It leaves me stuck in the middle of the road, transfixed by it, or perhaps I am too tired to react this time and jump out of its way.
A yearly subscription will cover much of next month’s rent because I need only 4 to make it for September. But with a few days left, it is getting tight.
Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co-morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost-of-living crisis times. So you can join with a paid subscription, which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it's all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John
