Soldiers queuing on the beach at Dunkirk. Harry’s probably on this picture, somewhere

Burma

After a period of recovery, Harry was sent to Burma. The Warwicks weren’t directly involved in the early phases of the Burma Campaign, but some soldiers, such as Harry, were co-opted to support the 36th Indian Infantry. By now, he’d been moved from a constant frontline combat role to a transport driver role, driving a truck around, mainly away from the worst of the fighting, although occasionally skirmishing with the Japanese. His stories about Burma were always good value for money in the Monica. He once got given the job of driving a female entertainer around and, as part of that, had to help the Military Police in protecting her. At night, she’d be in her tent whilst Harry and the MPs used to take it in turns to sleep outside on guard duty. Another job he got was driving the ‘clap wagon’, which he hated. He said they always used to interrupt his day off on a Sunday, wake him up and get him to drive all the squaddies who’d caught venereal disease in the various Burmese brothels. They had to be rounded up and taken to a field hospital for their injections, which made Harry really angry because, as he put it “…those dirty bastards had behaved like animals, they should have been left for their cocks to rot off, and I was expected waste my free time driving them around…”. Sorely grieved by the loss of his precious afternoon’s kip, Harry would make a point of hitting every pothole and crater he could find on the way to the hospital. The men, who would be sitting on hard wooden benches in the back of the truck, their festering nether regions festooned with clusters of weeping sores, would be shouting and swearing at him for mile after mile. They never forgave him, nor he they. A less entertaining duty was to follow the combat troops through the jungle, cleaning up after them. The Gurkhas and the Americans were doing most of the dirty work, with both outfits recognising that the Japanese were being absolutely evil with their prisoners, so retaliating in kind. This was all very much against the terms of the Geneva Convention, but many of the soldiers in Burma felt bitter that they were the ‘forgotten army’ and so, to a certain extent behaved with a lack of concern for their enemy. Harry said that the Gurkhas couldn’t see any point in taking prisoners miles from anywhere in the middle of a jungle, they’d only be an encumbrance, and also resented having to waste a bullet, so more often than not they’d simply behead the Japanese with their Khukuri, in fact somewhere in my house I’ve still got the Khukuri they gave to Harry as a momento. The Americans on the other hand, seemed to relish wasting as much ammunition as possible and would blaze away wildly at the jungle in the hope that they might find a few Japanese hiding in the undergrowth. Harry and the transport crews would come in to clean up after the Ghurkas and Americans had advanced. They would pile up the rapidly rotting, often beheaded, fetid and maggot-infested bodies, pour petrol all over them and cremate them, making sure to collect any ID they could find for transmission to Field HQ and from there, presumably on to Japan.

US Marines with Japanese skulls as trophies

Normandy

He got back from Burma in late 1943, although the campaign carried on quite happily without him for another couple of years. He said he never missed it.

Then, early in 1944, he was ordered to report to the South Coast of England. Things were about to get even worse: “…we were stationed about thirty miles inland, but even there the lanes were absolutely clogged with military vehicles and there were thousands of soldiers from all over the world sitting around, waiting. It was obvious something big was on the way, obviously an invasion, but we weren’t allowed to know anything or go anywhere, just stay in camp, bored stiff and anxious…”

On the night of the D-Day landings, they were all piled onto ships and sailed off into the darkness. It was a rough crossing and quite a few men were vomiting, a combination of seasickness and fear. It was pitch black. The ship dropped anchor in the darkness.

“…the sky had begun to lighten a bit, I think it was about three or four o’clock in the morning, something like that. Suddenly there was a terrific noise from behind us. We put our heads up out of the boat and could make out the shapes of a long line of battleships moored abreast, they seemed to stretch right across the horizon. They all opened up at the same time and the sky was full of shells screaming overhead. The smoke made it go dark again. Then the Germans started returning fire and before long we were told to climb down into the landing craft. We found ourselves sitting in a little open boat, scared shitless with artillery going off all around us. I was frightened, but more than anything else, I was just bloody angry. Furious. I’d survived Dunkirk, lost Jim and survived the Japs in Burma. Why was I in the middle of all this? I never thought I could get lucky a third time, especially in the middle of fighting like this. Why do it always have to be ME? I’ve done my bit, let some other bugger put his life on the line, just for a change. I couldn’t see how I would survive this time around, so I decided to keep my head down and stay out of trouble.

We got onto the beach, it was chaos – the beach was too small and overcrowded with dead and wounded blokes dropping everywhere and bodies floating in the sea, bullets screaming past, explosions going off. Nobody knew which direction we were supposed to be going, apart from away from the sea, straight towards the machine guns. I found a big shell crater in the sand, about ten feet deep, and slid down into it to try and gather my thoughts and work out what to do. I decided to stay in the hole until all the fuss had died down a bit. Hadn’t been there long when another bloke slid in, he had a West Country accent, sounded a bit like a country bumpkin”.

He said: “Where are we?”

“Dunno, mate. Somewhere in France, I suppose. Maybe Calais, something like that. I never wanted to come back to France, been here before and didn’t like it”

“What you planning to do?”

“Sit tight here for a while and see how it develops. It all looks a bit dodgy up there at the moment. I don’t want to be a dead hero”

“Yeah, best thing to do. Fancy a cup of tea?”

“…The West Country bloke got his stove out of his backpack, dried it and eventually got it lit. We had a cigarette while the water boiled…”

“…Then an officer appears at the edge of the crater. A proper Chinless Wonder public school type with a plum up his arse…”

“Come on, you men, get up out of that damned hole. You’re needed up here”

“…Without saying a word, hardly acknowledging the officer’s presence, the West Country bloke picked up his rifle and shot him. The officer sort of grunted and fell back. We lost sight of him over the rim of the crater. I was stunned, horrified. The bloke couldn’t give a toss whether the officer was alive or dead. So there I am, in the middle of a raging battle, sitting in a hole with an armed murderer…”

“After a short silence, the West Country bloke says:”

“Kettle’s boiled, let’s have a cuppa”

“..We had a cup of tea and a couple of fags. Didn’t speak much, I never asked him his name or what regiment he was with. Eventually, after a few hours, things quietened down and we decided to climb up out of the hole. The officer had died, but there were bodies all around, so he was just another casualty. We decided to head off in different directions and shook hands…”

“Look after yourself, Brummie Boy. Keep your head down, stay safe and take care now”

“You too, mate”

“I was glad to see the back of him”

“…It was getting pretty quiet on the beach by now, but I could still hear gunfire. I found a Beachmaster trying to sort out a traffic jam of vehicles in the middle of all the chaos…”

“Do you know where the Warwicks are?”

“They’re over there, about half a mile away”

“What? Where all that gunfire’s coming from?

“Yes, they’re trying to link up with the Canadians on the next beach. The Germans are holding them back at the moment. It’s quite a fierce battle going on”

“Oh bloody marvellous. Not this all over again. I suppose I’d better go and help out”

“…Once I was safely out of sight of the Beachmaster, I slowed down and walked very cautiously to where the gunfire was coming from. It was getting quiet by the time I got to the Warwicks, the Germans were being bombed and strafed by Mosquitoes, so we were able to hold back until the RAF had finished hammering them. The fighting went on for a day or so, but then the Germans were beaten back and began to retreat inland and from then on for a couple of weeks it was really just a case of walking for miles, staying alert and occasionally exchanging fire with a few demoralised stragglers until we got to Caen where our tank boys had a proper scrap with the German panzer divisions who kept us holed up for weeks before we broke out…”

Storming the beach at Normandy © dlgroupmedia.com

And so Harry survived the War. He came back to England and vowed never to set foot on mainland Europe again. Mom eventually persuaded him to go with her to Brussels for a few days, which he enjoyed, but he never really had the heart to travel abroad, he’d much rather go to a Butlin’s holiday camp for a fortnight. Whilst he was always quite happy to discuss the War over a few pints in the Monica and whilst he always gave a totally unvarnished account of his experiences, he never showed any interest in commemorating it. I suppose having seen his best mate get killed, driven the Clap Wagon, burned the bodies of beheaded Japanese soldiers who were most likely just normal people like him, and had to spend time in the middle of a raging battle sharing a hole in the ground with an armed murderer, there was never a great amount of the old ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ in Harry’s world. I don’t believe he ever bothered to collect his medals, once telling me that:

“…Well, it’s not as if I volunteered for it all, did I? I was conscripted and just did my duty. I can understand blokes who had chosen a career in the Forces wanting to get together and reminisce, but blokes like me, who would never have been there if they hadn’t been called up, well it’s just a bit daft, isn’t it, Col? They don’t need to show off in public to remember their mates who died. I don’t need to show off my memories, it’s private, something I do in my quiet moments, nothing to do with anyone else. War’s not something to be commemorated, it’s bloody vile. People should put it down to experience and get on with the rest of their lives as best they can. As for Remembrance Day, it would be more meaningful if all the politicians placing their wreaths were made to wear sackcloth and ashes for the occasion”

Butlins

As previously mentioned, Harry like to go to Butlins holiday camps for his holidays. There was a reason for this – Butlins were great at organising entertainment for kids, so Harry, a single parent, could send his two kids off on the various organised entertainments that the camp arranged and have some quiet time to himself. In other words, he could have a holiday as well.

He was very much stuck into this routine and so persuaded Mom to go with him, although it really wasn’t her type of thing. After the first couple of times, they asked me and my girlfriend Janice if we’d like to go with them. Janice and I were very young, so what they proposed was that Harry and I would share a chalet whilst Mom and Janice shared another. We agreed to go along. We went to Skegness.

Naturally, once we got there, Janice and I took every opportunity to slip away for some ‘quiet time’ together. We’d go to one of the chalets and climb into one of the single beds. Harry and Mom would pretend they hadn’t noticed. One evening, we were in the chalet quite late at night when they came back, giggling. They said “You’ve got to go and have a look at this – about three chalets down, a couple are having a proper good go, but they’ve forgotten to close the curtains”. Of course, Janice and I went rushing down the row of chalets to have a good gawp at the unfortunately unaware couple, still ‘at it’. I was surprised at Mom being so open-minded, you don’t expect your mother to behave like that, it was a real eye-opener.

Chalets at Butlins Skegness © Butlins Memorabilia

Getting Down with the Kids

My rabble of long-haired teenage layabout mates all loved Harry. He was, in his own way, unconventional. One time, Janice was cooking a curry. She always liked to do things properly, by the book, so she was cooking with ghee. Harry comes strolling into the kitchen:

“…Bloody ‘ell, is that ghee I can smell? I thought it was. I haven’t smelt that stuff since I was in the jungle. We used to have Indian cooks who were expert at working with meat that had gone off in the heat. They used to curry everything to kill the germs and used ghee all the time. I’ll have a bit of that curry, if you don’t mind, Jan…”

We had my 21st birthday party at mine and Janice's flat in Stechford. My degenerate mates were sitting on the stairs, rolling joints. Mom was in the kitchen chatting with someone when she realised she hadn’t seen Harry for a while, so she went hunting, only to find him sitting with Caff and Dunc, cheerfully puffing away on a huge spliff they’d rolled and filled with Moroccan Black. Harry was telling them his Burma stories and how they’d used hashish to while away the time spent in the jungle and calm their nerves in what was generally a very tense environment. Mom just sighed and left him to it.

Living in Sin

One day, it would have been about 1978, I popped over from Stechford to visit Mom. She seemed nervous, on edge. Eventually, she blurted it out:

“Would you mind if me and Harry got married? We’ve been thinking about it for a while, but Harry doesn’t want to do it unless you, Ian and Cynthia are OK with it. He doesn’t want you to think he’s trying to take the place of your dad”

“Of COURSE I wouldn’t mind, you silly old sod. You make a great couple and he’s a lovely bloke. For God’s sake Mom, if anyone deserves some happiness it’s you and Harry after what you’ve both had to put up with in your lives. Just get on and do it”

So, the wheels were put into motion. Mom put her house on the market and found a buyer quite quickly, although there was a chain, so it wouldn’t be a quick sale. She started to give away some of her possessions and moved in to live with Harry in Stockland Green. During all of this process, a really strange thing happened; Cynthia went to some sort of séance or spiritualist show with a friend from work. She thought all that kind of stuff was bullshit, but went along anyway, just to be sociable. Knowing Cynth, I can only presume there must have been free drinks there. The Medium went (or pretended to go?) into a trance. In the midst of all this, she came out with “I’ve got a man called Fred here. He says to tell your mom not to worry about the piano. It’s absolutely fine”. Cynthia, sitting in the audience, and as Small Heath streetwise as ever, never let on that Fred was her dad, she kept quiet and wondered whether she’d been set up by someone as a practical joke. The next time Cynthia saw Mom she told her about the Medium. Mom went pale and said “I’ve been thinking about selling your dad’s piano. There’s not really room for it at Harry’s and no-one ever plays it any more. I hadn’t told any of you about this, though, because it just all feels so wrong and I can’t decide what to do. That piano was Fred’s life. Really, I’d like one of you three to have it, but that doesn’t seem to be an option. It’s been keeping me awake at night, worrying, feeling guilty”.

We told her to sell the piano, so she did. She got ripped off by a dodgy piano dealer from Digbeth who only paid her a fraction of what it was worth, it was a double framed overstrung under damped piano with an absolutely marvellous mellow powerful tone, not the usual ‘tinkety tonk’ tone you get from an upright. It sounded more like a grand piano than an upright. It weighed a ton!

As Mom ramped up preparations for her marriage, relations between her and Aunt Leah deteriorated. Leah had always had an easy ride, living at Mom’s house for twenty years, but now that Mom was selling up, she would have to find a place of her own. This was frightening for Leah, who would have been in her 70s at the time. Leah had never liked Harry, although she had no real reason not to, he was always affable and relaxed. Harry knew that Leah resented his presence, so used to tease her something terrible. For example, one winter’s afternoon after a heavy Sunday lunchtime session at the Monica, me, Harry and Cynthia were lolling around in the living room, they were both smoking and we were watching something on the TV. With a mischievous twinkle in his eye, Harry said to Cynthia: “Hey Cynth, watch this” and then called out to Leah who was in the kitchen “Leah, for God’s sake, will you come and put some coal on this fire, woman. We’re bloody freezin’ in here”. Leah came storming in, in full Dandy Nichols Mode, called Harry a bone-idle pig and threw some coal on the fire. Harry just winked at Cynthia who was quivering and biting her lip as she tried not to laugh.

Mom and Harry were rubbing along well until, quite out of the blue, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. His condition deteriorated very rapidly, but Mom decided to try and make sure he was in his own home for as long as possible, so she concentrated on nursing him. One afternoon, she was downstairs in his house reading the newspaper while he slept upstairs. She heard a noise and went to see what it was. Harry was standing unsteadily at the top of the stairs, calling for her. She went up, but just as she reached him, he collapsed and toppled into her arms. She managed to break his fall and ended up sitting on the stairs, cuddling him as he died. It was a sad end to what had been a very hard life. He deserved better. Much better.

Mom and Harry never quite made it to the altar, but I always refer to him as my stepfather, because that’s what he was to me, in all but name. I’m proud to have had him in my life.

Why not buy a cup of coffee in memory of Harry? He’ll be looking down on us both from Heaven, probably with a fag in his hand.