Camping in our street

A paved Roman road

An officer in the Roman Army of occupation is said to have named the place where I spent five colourful and informative years of my boyhood. On seeing the whole district from a commanding rise, the officer said, "What a long ridge of hills!" From that time on the place was known as Longridge (a titbit included to add a nice historical dimension to my story).

My time in Longridge was great. I believe now that much of my character was formed during those days. It was common practice for children of one family to visit a friend or mate from other families, usually in the same street, and in the evenings. We called it 'camping'. I studied our neighbours at close quarters and learned a great deal about life this way, broadening my mind and thinking. The content of conversations within different families was an education in itself.

"I'm going over to t' Jamieson's camping for a bit," I'd say as I left the house, and crossing the street I would knock on their door and go in. "I've come to see Peter, is that all right?" "'Ee, that's alright lad, come in and sit thisself down."

If Peter was out or it wasn't convenient, I could either stay and sit with whoever was there or leave and try another mate's house. My mates would do the same when the fancy took them to do a bit of camping.
It was while playing games or chatting with whoever I'd gone to visit that my ear would tune in to what was being discussed by the adults. Unconscious learning, I call it now. When happenings local, national or in our street - ranging from quite serious to the infectiously hilarious - were brought to my attention, I'd listen and store them away in my memory. I extended my vocabulary somewhat too as I asked what such-and-such a phrase or word meant.

A great deal of what was said registered in this way, but now and then something special would cause me to listen more carefully, even to asking questions sometimes. If the adults deemed my ears too tender for the topic being discussed, they'd tactfully suggest it was time for me to leave. Which I would do without my feelings being in the least bit offended.

Sometimes I'd be drawn into conversations as if I was a member of that family. It was great listening to their past experiences, and I never tired of the varied and colourful manner in which they expressed themselves. Quite a few of these communications took the form of charades involving different body movements. Eyes would light up. Hands were slapped upon on a table or a knee. Fingers wagged, heads nodded, all with frequent stops to laugh or mop their brows.

What I particularly liked was when someone would say something and immediately ask someone else to confirm what they'd just said. For example, "Isn't that right then, what I just said, our Henry? You were there when Bert's foot went clean through that board on the stairs?" And the reply would come, preceded by the adjusting of false teeth, a tilting of the head and a squinting of the eyes, "Oh yes, that's right enough, Elsie lass." Then Henry would go on to add his own particular view of that remembrance. "By gum, the air were blue weren't it? I've never heard our Bert express hisself so clearly. A good job t' vicar had already left, eh Elsie?" And Elsie would agree before she or someone else took over, the to-ing and fro-ing conversation.

My memory of those times includes the early days of Word War II. Camping began to decline in our street then. Young men went off to work in the factories. Some would go away and reappear in uniform for a few days before they disappeared, sometimes forever. The black-out came in, and sirens wailed their warning of air raids. On one of those nights I wondered what it might have been like for the invading Roman soldiers when they first came here. What kind of time did they have, camping by the long ridge of hills? And more interesting to me, how a boy of my age would have learned about life while he was camping  there? Now that would be a great thing to discover.

Dennis Crompton © 1995

High Flight by John Gillespie Magee

I was presenting this poem, “High Flight” to a 4th form English class at Stratford High School when a senior school inspector entered (I'd been told this might happen). I nodded in his direction and continued.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

As a high school English teacher in the 1970s, I had been strolling around a school quadrangle under covered walkways. On these outdoor walls hung photographs of young men in their late teens or early twenties in uniforms of the armed services. These young men, mainly RAF or RNZAF, had faced the enemy in the skies. I found this poem tremendously moving, giving me an insight into the heart and mind of such a flyer.

Written by Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee RCAF (9 June 1922 – 11 December 1941, aged 19 years) was an Americanaviator and poet who died as a result of a mid-air collision over Lincolnshire, England, during World War II. He was serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force, which he joined before the United States officially entered the war. He is most famous for his poem "High Flight."

And below is more information on from: www.woodiescciclub.com/high-flight.htm

During the dark days of the Battle of Britain, hundreds of Americans crossed the border into Canada to enlist with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Knowingly breaking the law, but with the tacit approval of the then still officially neutral United States Government, they volunteered to fight Hitler's Germany.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was one such American. Born in Shanghai, China, in 1922 to an English mother and a Scotch-Irish-American father, Magee was just 18 years old when he entered flight training. Within the year, he was sent to England and posted to the newly formed No 412 Fighter Squadron, RCAF, which was activated at Digby, England, on 30 June 1941. He was qualified on and flew the Supermarine Spitfire.

Flying fighter sweeps over France and air defense over England against the German Luftwaffe, he rose to the rank of Pilot Officer. At the time, German bombers were crossing the English Channel with great regularity to attack Britain's cities and factories. Although the Battle of Britain was said to be over, the Luftwaffe was still keeping up deadly pressure on British industry and the country.

On September 3, 1941, Magee flew a high altitude (30,000 feet) test flight in a newer model of the Spitfire V. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck with the inspiration of a poem -- "To touch the face of God."

Once back on the ground, he wrote a letter to his parents. In it he commented, "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed." On the back of the letter, he jotted down his poem, 'High Flight'.

Just three months later, on December 11, 1941 (and only three days after the US entered the war), Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was killed. The Spitfire V he was flying, VZ-H, collided with an Oxford Trainer from Cranwell Airfield flown by one Ernest Aubrey. The mid-air happened over Tangmere, England at about 400 feet AGL at 11:30. John was descending in the clouds. At the enquiry a farmer testified that he saw the Spitfire pilot struggle to push back the canopy. The pilot, he said, finally stood up to jump from the plane. John, however, was too close to the ground for his parachute to open. He died instantly. He was 19 years old.

Part of the official letter to his parents read, "Your son's funeral took place at Scopwick Cemetery, near Digby Aerodrome, at 2:30 P.M. on Saturday, 13th December, 1941, the service being conducted by Flight Lieutenant S. K. Belton, the Canadian padre of this Station. He was accorded full Service Honors, the coffin being carried by pilots of his own Squadron."

A time of remembrance

He’d been married three years, was enjoying life with his wife and daughter, everything was going well for them…and then the war broke out. He tried to ignore the inevitable and get on with life, together with his family but knew he’d have to leave them in the end. He was just a country lad who loved the land and animals, not up with politics and such; he just wanted - well - to be left alone and to be with his family.

Of course that couldn’t be, not with his country at war; he was a man and was expected to fight. It didn’t matter where he went, there was always something to remind him; flags flying, patriotic posters in prominent places, men and women in uniform; that and the questions folk asked, without even speaking when they saw him.

His heart was heavy; something seemed to warn him not to go; on his own sometimes he’d get a kind of a premonition, though he wasn’t superstitious. A voice, warm and proud whispering, ‘You’re going to be a hero. You’ll get a medal!’ Then a different voice, cold and matter of fact, taunted, ‘Because you’re one of those warm and sensitive types, you have to realise some things; those you leave behind; those who order you to go and those who train you, won’t have to see you shoot your rifle, use your bayonet as you advance, screaming your insane head off; and in the state you’ll be in after that, well, it’s best you don’t come back. You can see that, can’t you? But then, your country will be proud of you; you’ll be a hero!’

Of course he slept badly, waking often, imagining himself staring at his own gravestone; his name standing out amongst row upon regimental row of others, neat and trim and: ‘Ready for inspection! Sir!’

...

Whether they accomplished anything by their visits to the cemetery at Cape Helles, would be hard to say; but his beloved and his daughter placed fresh flowers on the small white slab beneath his name plate each time they went. Like all wives and family members after such visits, they both left feeling drained and unutterably sad, hating the stupid waste of it all. They left heartaches and tears as well, but you can’t record those, can you?

*

A fellow member of the Returned Services Association told me this story after he’d been to take a photograph of the battlefield where the Turkish soldier and the R.S.A. chap’s friend, a Kiwi solider, fell and died. It was through one of those strange coincidences life throws up at you sometimes, that he came to know this chap’s wife and daughter and they established a firm friendship. They met in that Turkish cemetery that day and took a photograph of his grave. The inscription read simply: ‘Private Talat Demisar, aged 22 years. He did his duty’.

And from a short distance away, the haunting strains of the Last Post hung in the quiet air as the three of them remembered, together.

Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

Our mental fight: primary school and thoughts of war

It was a long time ago when folk, for the most part, lived their lives in the district where they were born, shackled by a lack of money or opportunity to venture far. A few did raise their heads above it all, saw a future in the distance and with heart rending courage, wept their farewells and left. I saw and learned these things as a young boy, long ago now, attending Stoneygate Primary School in England in the 1930s.

Our school was built of stone from a local quarry, with a sombre aspect from the outside, and with little variation inside. It had high ceilings with large windows, and in the winter the rooms were nose-bitingly cold to such a degree that the cold made my eyes ache. The threadbare hand-me-down clothes most of us wore did little to keep us warm, but as many of us were in the same state, together we stamped our feet and blew on our cold hands, and managed as best we could.

The furniture was sparse and the floor of bare boards was hard underfoot and reverberated when we moved over it, or when our wooden clogs struck the legs of the chairs or desks. The largest feature in the room was a map of the world suspended above a blackboard at the front. Areas coloured in pink indicated they were part of the British Commonwealth which we were taught that, ‘Hitler despised.’ We learnt that he told the German people that they were the ‘master race’ and were destined to rule the world. The country of Poland was invaded by German jack-booted storm troopers, strutting their way through the shattered country leaving behind them misery, death and devastation.

At school and at home we had heard about the invasion of Poland and it seemed that nothing could stop the Germans taking over the world. We heard about the defeat of our armies; and the escape and rescue of many soldiers from Dunkirk.

Eventually, Hitler stood on the shores of France and looked across at Britain, and from there, echoing Napoleon just over one hundred years ago, boasted:

‘We shall soon conquer them; they’re just a nation of shop-keepers’.

One of his generals agreed:

‘In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken’.

Winston Churchill’s reply still stirs me deep inside:

‘Some chicken! Some neck!’

I wasn’t fully aware of what it all meant as Longridge, Lancashire, was still a long way from Germany; but we did prepare for it in our way. By our feet sat a small cardboard box containing a gas-mask, which we practised putting on under our desks during air-raid warnings. All the glass in the windows were criss-crossed with gummed masking tape in the hope that it would keep most of the glass from showering down on us if bombs dropped too close. We became familiar with air raid sirens, air raid shelters, and barrage balloons floating like large sausages a little distance above us.

In small parks and recreation areas anti-aircraft guns emplacements mushroomed; some even on the tops of buildings, their long, slender barrels pointing skywards with separate searchlight units close by. Deep anti-tank ditches zigzagged through fields, and barbed wire and landmines prevented anyone from using most of our beaches. The ordinary people of Great Britain had decided that Hitler would not conquer us as easily as he thought he would.

The lesson on general knowledge in my primary school classroom had just finished and our teacher looked more serious now. None of us knew then that she had a fiancé living in Iceland and that she would be leaving to join him in a few weeks. It was almost the end of the school day and we were asked to take out our song books. We didn’t mind, we enjoyed it when she accompanied us on the piano. We sang only one song that day; it was in the back of the book and the words were by William Blake. It was more like a hymn to me and stirred my emotions deeply as we stood to sing. I didn’t need to read the words, I knew them off by heart and hidden tears sprung to my eyes after the first few words:

‘And did those feet, in ancient times, walk upon England’s mountains green?’

The pictures in my mind varied between those feet and those of German troops marching along our country lanes.

‘And did the Countenance Divine, shine forth upon our clouded hills?’

Yes, I wondered about that too. Did the Countenance Divine shine upon Germany?

It was then I noticed our teacher’s eyes moving slowly from face to face around the classroom. They stopped on various faces as we sang: ‘I shall not cease from mental fight’. Our teachers had often told us to think for ourselves. Now she was having difficulty finding the notes on the piano and I saw her blink to clear the tears away. The few who noticed, like myself, tried to carry on singing with the rest, but I found it difficult with a lump in my throat.

Our teacher had taught at the school for six years or more; time enough to know those in the senior classes and know they’d soon be serving in the armed forces. Would they get the chance to go abroad at last, all expenses paid; free at last from the shackles that bound them to the ‘dark satanic mills’ all around? (Many years would pass before I learned that the dark satanic mills Blake wrote about had a great deal to do with the abstract mind.)

No arrows of desire would these young men receive; instead of spears, they’d carry rifles. Some would descend from the heavens in billows of silk, lucky to arrive unscathed, and those who did, still had to do battle with the waiting enemy. Others would operate midget submarines to sink Italian warships anchored in their own waters. Still others would appear in their tanks as chariots of fire, making their last brave dash across the burning sands of the Middle East.

Thus did former members of schools throughout England and the United Kingdom, together with our allies, find their way to fight against Hitler’s attempt to destroy us in order to create his master race. Family members and loved ones would write to those stationed at home and those still alive overseas on active service or in prison camps. They’d pray, and mourn, and remember them at church, at home and in memorial services.

With my teacher and all of my classmates, we played our part in the war too, striving against the mental oppression William Blake wrote of, and of which we sang from our hearts so many years ago. Whatever our teacher was thinking as she struggled through the song and shed her tears I’m sure she hoped that some of us would survive and live to be free to think for ourselves.

And did those feet in ancient times

Walk upon England’s mountains green:

And was the holy Lamb of God,

On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;

Bring me my Arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In England’s green & pleasant Land

William Blake

Dennis Crompton © 1998

(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

Oh, to be older!

This has to do with men’s hair, whistling and long trousers...

World War II was only a few months away when I became aware of the older boys in our area suddenly seeming to appear more grown up. I tried to figure out why and reckoned it must be the long trousers. Yes, that was it, the long trousers made them look taller, and the trousers weren’t sloppy-looking, they had creases. How did they get those creases so sharp and neat, I mused. They did it, I discovered some weeks later, by turning the trousers inside out and rubbing a thin piece of soap down each line inside. When the trousers were turned back again, and ironed, the soap helped to create those keen edges. Neat eh? There was a problem when it rained, however; the trousers came out in quite a lather with the disastrous knack of the creases coming apart at embarrassing moments.

There was something else that drew my attention to and admiration of the big boys; they whistled a lot, and sang too, popular songs of the day, usually in groups of three or four. It sounded great and sometimes made the hairs on the back of my neck tingle, so that I enjoyed it all the more. On top of that their voices were deeper than mine, more manly I thought. I’d stop whatever I was doing just to hear them better. Then I tried to imitate them but it only made my throat sore, annoying me no end.

To crown all this off, these young men plastered their hair with hair-creams; they thought it made them look slick and they’d give me a nod of the head as they passed me in the street. When they did that, boy it made me feel good inside. I’d been recognised you see, by the big lads. I’ll nod at the younger lads too when I get older, I promised myself…oh, to be older!

p.s. And here I am turning 84 this year…oh, to be younger…

Dennis Crompton © 1995
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

Queuing

We humans spend quite a deal of time waiting, don’t we? I looked ‘queue’ up in the dictionary, being a smart arse, and found that a queue can mean one of three things: a hanging plaited tail of hair or pigtail; a line of persons or vehicles waiting their turn; or something to join or stand in.

I often did the latter as a boy, stood waiting my turn for something in a queue. I’d usually find a large lady to stand by, thankful that her frame kept most of the cold wind off me as I waited. By standing at an angle I was able to hear most of the conversations of those around her. I’d already served my apprenticeship in such matters, queuing with our family’s war time ration books for meat, sweets or whatever was going. Keep your ears open as you stand in line and you learn a lot about life and how to deal with its problems.

The first thing I learned was to look gormless. My best mate, Ted Watson, said I was a natural at it; then ‘ee always was a cheeky beggar. If you look as if you’re interested or eavesdropping, then you’d more likely as not get a cuff around your ear ‘ole or up kick up the pants. So I’d play it safe with my gormless look—mouth slightly open, dribbling a bit at the mouth (not the nose, because nostril dribbling gets you nowhere. It renders all around you speechless, and folk prefer not to talk when there’s a nostril-dribbler close by. They concentrate on humming to themselves, or moving to another queue, and in wartime England you had to be desperate to do that.)

So I usually managed to be nicely ignored as talk moved from one subject to the next, accompanied by body movements and gesturing appropriate to the topic. That really was entertaining, and was one of the reasons I didn’t mind queuing for whatever was on offer that day. There was also the business of being mothered to get through. Seldom had a day’s queuing gone by without one of the large-framed women taking it into their head to mother me, and with my gormless look I probably looked as if I needed it. I had my cheeks patted and tweaked, my hair ruffled, my coat pulled closer, and then my hair tidied back into shape again. And I’ve been hugged, several times by complete strangers, but always in an open motherly way. I’ve been pressed warmly against most bust-cup sizes, and a few hefty Queen Boadicea types required a readjustment of my spectacles, a tidy up of my hair and several minutes’ pause to get my breath back before I could resume my listening.

I’d heard about quite a few women’s problems long before I heard the word ‘puberty’; much of it was non compos mentis of course. The compos mentis bit came later for me; a complicated time full of deep sighings, clumsy feet and drifting between clouds five and six.

Here are some of the things that I heard as I queued:

• I heard that some of the women had ‘very close veins’ which was caused by having too many children;

• Poor Elsie’s husband was not able to constrain himself after a double portion of her apple dumplings. I didn’t catch what he got up to but all the ladies enjoyed a good chest-coughing, throat-clearing laugh;

• Joe’s 'prosperous gland' was doing things it shouldn’t; while Joe was taken down to the ‘ospital on one of those wheel-barrow things; ‘ees alright now, more’s the pity;

• Nora has been getting all hot and bothered sometimes with her heart ‘palpitrating’;

• Edna’s mother-in-law-in-the-best-room-upstairs ‘as gone nearly ‘inconsistent’, and it was ‘ell, what with Edna’s swollen ankles and having to run outside to the outdoor privy to empty all the bed pans if the mother-in-law got to them in time;

• Then Florie’s brother, Fred, had trouble down below and had to have something removed. (I couldn’t make out what it was because Florie mouthed the word instead of saying it. They did that a lot in those days if the thing they were talking about was anything remotely connected with sex. Sentences could have several of these ‘mouthings’ and it was a kind of code requiring a decoder which I had not at that time acquired. It made for some hilarious moments as far as I was concerned. I’d go home and repeat some of them to my eldest sister, Hilda, who collapsed with laughter at my attempts to repeat the message.)

• Edith could not afford a full perm, so she was going to have her ends done instead; it was her birthday and Joe was paying. (Beauty treatments were not up to today’s level of Hollywood type incredibility but the beginnings were there.) This was followed by a sharp intake of breath by a woman who was a cross between Nora Batty and Ena Sharples: ‘Not by Bill Wharmby with the funny eye, I ‘ope!’ and then the following words shot out like a machine-gun burst: ‘Don’t let him touch you, Edith! He’s not to be trusted. Let him get you in his front room, surrounded by his brass curling tongs, hair-dryer and perfumed hair-set lotions bought in bulk from Walter’s Emporium and who knows what he’ll get up to as you drift off for a couple of winks. No! Don’t go anywhere near Bill Wharmby; just ask the midwife Elsie Trotter how many little so and sos she’s delivered that have got the Wharmby smile. Stay away Edith!’

Bill Wharmby sounded a real bad ‘un. I'd heard enough for the time being anyway, but I could hardly wait to hear the next instalment; neither could my sister Hilda.

And now what about you? It could be quite enlightening to stand in a queue and just listen sometime, don’t you think?

Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

The long goodbye

This was written after reading the article: Up from Ground Zero, by Ted Gup, in the National Geographic, August 1995

 
When someone is bereaved, healing usually comes with the passing of time, or through faith in a religion. For some, grief may mingle with guilt at having survived while loved ones died, resulting in the bereavement being a prolonged and agonising affair. The bereavement of Mrs Shina Sonoda, a widow with four children living in Hiroshima, was to start in 1945.

The facts concerning what happened at Hiroshima at around 8.16 am on 6 August that year are well known. The pictures or films of the awesome destruction from the explosion of an atomic bomb have been seen by all, but we see at a distance; we are remote, not connected, only horrified observers of what we humans can do to each other; our feelings dependent on whether we had loved ones or close friends who suffered through the actions of the Japanese prior to the bomb.

I was in my early teens then and felt the Japanese had brought such disasters on themselves. When I married and became a father my way of thinking changed, often prefaced by the thought: How would I feel if my wife or children were in that position?

In a doctor’s waiting room recently I read an item about Hiroshima, which brought a personal aspect to the bombing, it went like this …

The air raid siren had sounded the All Clear as Mrs Sonoda’s daughter; Akiko again pleaded for the tin of tangerines to be opened, which her mother had promised she would open after an air raid sometime soon. Shima smiled as she gave her a hug: Not this time, Akiko, she said quietly. A few seconds later the bomb exploded reducing the city to a pile of rubble aglow with deadly radiation. Over 80,000 people died instantly with another 60,000 dead within the next 12 months.

As I read, the father part of me imagined I was there with my family. It was devastatingly real. I could see it! At the same time I recalled Winston Churchill, Britain’s Prime Minister at that time quoting Hosea, a prophet in the Old Testament:

‘They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’

Nothing humans can do can stop a whirlwind, we can only wait until it has passed, pick up the pieces and start again.

I imagined Shima in the midst of all that horror after the bomb. I saw her as a mother, ignoring her own needs, sobbing and searching frantically for Akiko. I heard her moans of disbelief and horror at the utter madness of our civilisation, wondering why everything all around her had been destroyed, yet she had survived and Akiko had not. All that remained was the image of her daughter in her mind.

Of course I could never really know what it was like for Mrs Sonoda, but as I read I did know that I could have been born Japanese. My name could have been Sonoda, then I would have been as they, thought and acted as they.

I read on. Tormented because she hadn’t found Akiko, she also deeply regretted that she hadn’t opened the tin of tangerines; it was such a simple last request after all. From that time on she knelt every morning at her Buddhist shrine. With her prayer she offered a tin of tangerines for the soul of Akiko and with the prayers her grief was eased a little each day.

Close to the dome of twisted steel and concrete, the picture most of us have of Hiroshima is the Peace Memorial Museum. The basement houses an index, each card detailing someone who died as a result of the bombing.

Ted Gup who brought the story of Shima Sonoda to light asked to see Akiko’s card. It records that Yoshiharo Agari was the one who found her crushed body. The card had been there for years. I don’t know if Mrs Sonoda ever went there to see those details, or ever will. If she does, her long goodbye may end at last in the city which is now called Peace.

Dennis Crompton © 1995
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

A group of low-life associates

They were bustled to the door, one of their helpers murmuring, ‘A couple of light-ales between the four of you; you’d get drunk on the smell of a bar-maid’s apron. Out with you!’ It was still only mid-afternoon as the four young men staggered across the street pushing people aside, hurling obscenities at any who objected by look or reprimand.

They were well-known in the small town of that South Wales district; where family, friends and society in general had apparently disowned them. All their fathers had been happy in being with their sons at the beginning; lovely it was too. Gareth’s father, Elwyn, had shared in changing his nappies, playing, cuddling and bottle-feeding his son. Like a boy with a puppy he was, till the novelty wore off. After that, his wife Bronwyn was often alone at night, her heart aching for his company. Her man was easily led and being still employed, part-time anyway, was the man with a bit of money in his pocket. Well, he had his pals too, see, and the booze gradually took over.

If, unbeknownst to those inside, you’d pushed through their front door back then and stood and listened for a while, you’d have understood why Bronwyn never could disown her son. Even now, with him overseas these past twenty-five years, she still felt the same, and the tears came with the anguish she felt deep inside. Gareth had tried hard at school, bless him. Would come home bursting to share something new he’d learned that day, her heart rejoicing in his infectious delight. It was different with Elwyn, Perhaps he was ashamed at his own lack of education, or maybe even jealous, but Gareth’s enthusiasm to share things with his father would be brushed aside. She’d tried to get him to understand what it meant to his son, but he was head of the house and stubborn with it.

At what point her son had gone off the rails, she couldn’t say. He hadn’t worked since leaving school; many coal-mines had closed and those still open near Corwen, in Denbigshire were down to one shift a day. Too many after the few jobs going; soul-destroying it was and the ‘low-life associates’ his father called his friends were his mates from school. Just ordinary lads on the same scrap-heap as himself, until the madness of Hitler offered them another way. Redemption, would you call it? Whatever it was, he and his friends joined up together in 1939. Howell Harris, Glyn Owen, David Rowland and Gareth Williams. In a few short months they’d learned to obey orders and march in step, use a rifle and bayonet, throw hand-grenades and die doing it in a farm orchard, West Germany, one warm spring day in 1945.

Sometimes, Bronwyn gets out the letter from Gareth’s commanding officer. It’s not a long letter but it takes her time to read it through her weeping. Then she walks down the street and looks at their names engraved in stone on the monument. Stone! There’s cold and lifeless for you. And over in Germany you can read the names on the monuments to their war dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if over half of those named, of whatever nationality, were at one time like Howell, Glyn, David and Gareth numbered amongst the low-life associates where they lived.

Ironic at times, life, isn’t it?

Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)