Citizen Survivor Tales (The Ministry of Survivors)

CITIZEN SURVIVOR

TALES

Maryanne Coleman was a popular journalist who worked for The Ministry during the 1940s. While under the guise of a reporter for The Southern Herald, her role was to interview a variety of survivors of ‘The Great Tribulation’ which had plunged Britain into chaos. She travelled throughout Britain speaking to a wide assortment of characters and those who had come to the attention of The Ministry and to collate information, both overtly and covertly, on the current state of the nation.

Although her interviews were later recovered, Maryanne herself went missing. Her fate is currently unknown. It must be conjectured that one of the interviewees was involved in her disappearance.

Here then, is a collection of ten of Maryanne’s most interesting, amusing, bizarre, frightful and compelling interviews.

Copyright © 2016 Richard Denham

All rights reserved.

www.keepcalmandsurvive.co.uk

CITIZEN SURVIVOR

TALES

Prepared by
Richard Denham

Issued by

The Ministry of Survivors

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RICHARD DENHAM

Richard Denham is the author of the
Britannia
series of books, co-written with best-selling author M. J. Trow.
Britannia
is set during the fall of Roman Britain and the descent into the Dark Ages. Richard specialises in World War 2 propaganda.
www.britannia-series.co.uk

ILLUSTRATIONS

Internal illustrations by M. J. Trow.

COVER IMAGE

Credit:
The National Archives, ref. INF3/174

THE VETERAN

THE WIDOW

THE REVEREND

THE HOUSEWIFE

THE ENTREPRENEUR

THE VISCOUNT

THE POLICEMAN

THE STARLET

THE HUNTSMAN

THE PARTISAN

Dear Sirs,

The following accounts you are about to read were collated throughout the 1940s by the journalist Maryanne Coleman who at the time of writing was in the employment of the Ministry of Survivors. Coleman was part of a department known as the ‘community cohesion unit’, their role being to gauge levels of morale and resolve among individuals and communities in the aftermath of the Great Tribulation both overtly and covertly.

We have collated ten of her most interesting interviews with a varied selection of Citizen Survivors throughout Britain for the purposes of posterity, reference and future data analytics. Coleman’s introductions and comments as printed in the news at the time are included (redacted as required to meet the current security needs) to provide as full a picture of the time as is thought necessary. Redactions are not shown – anyone with full clearance can apply to this office to see the originals, though it is only fair to say that permission is unlikely to be granted.

Please note, these accounts are
not
for public dissemination and to distribute them, knowingly or unknowingly, to anyone below silver clearance will be considered an act of treason.

The fate of Coleman is unknown but if she is still alive she must be considered an enemy of His Majesty and reported to the relevant authorities
immediately
. Failure to do so will also be considered an act of treason.

Please view case file 43/5453/GBS for her information and last known whereabouts.

Yours faithfully,

Agent Steed - 2565

THE VETERAN

Name: William Sponge
Location: Nottingham
Occupation: Unemployed (veteran)
Threat level: 3
Article clearance: Silver
Case file: 57/4356/GBR
 

William Sponge is well known to many readers of these pages as a survivor of the Battle of Brighton. He was blinded during that battle and was also severely injured. He now sleeps rough at Thoresby Colliery, where a community of unwaged veterans and others has developed. He is luckier than many as he is eligible for charitable donations from the WVS and the John Bull Co-operative Society. Interviewing Mr. Sponge is never easy, as his memory is sometimes just a thought unreliable – however, many people choose to be generous in their assessment of the veracity of his claims and he is probably one of the richer denizens of the Colliery community. I met him in a nearby pub; as this paper does not give fees for interviews, he insisted on a drink before he would speak to me; however, once he gets going he is difficult to stop, as the interview below may show.

How did you end up stationed at Brighton?

I won’t lie, when I was told that my unit was going to be stationed at Brighton I was absolutely delighted. On most days, it felt more like a holiday than a posting. I visited Brighton when I was a boy once with my family in the summer, so this really was about as lucky as it got.

The evacuation of Dunkirk had happened two years earlier; I was there, and it seems like a lifetime ago. I was injured during the evacuation, nothing brave I’m afraid, no fighting the SS hand to hand, I simply slipped as I was climbing a rope onto a trawler and managed to do in my leg, leaving me with a permanent limp. The war had never really started for the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) and our evacuation was treated as a victory, which I suppose in some ways it was.

After the horrors of Dunkirk, the main bulk of the BEF pulled back to Crawley. Due to my injury, I spent a bit of time at Cambridge military hospital in Aldershot and was then posted to Brighton about four months later. A lot of my unit had injuries or other conditions that meant the brass thought they were not physically fit, but as our job was manning static defences such as pill-boxes and bunkers and patrolling the beach-front it didn’t really matter. It would be unfair to think of the lads as ‘lesser soldiers’. It takes a lot of discipline to be vigilant and man a post day in day out in a lovely seaside town where two years have passed. My favourite posting was on a Vickers machine gun with another lad in sandbag defences along the sea front. Not only did I have company and someone to chat with but we’d often get talking to the locals who’d fill us up with tea and cakes. The smiles we got from some of the ladies too made it all worthwhile.

It’s fair to say it wasn’t a complete jolly. The beach had been closed off and littered with landmines and wrapped in barbed wire soon after Dunkirk. ‘Brighton Rock’ was our name for the defences that to us were unbeatable. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated as Brighton was an obvious target for any invasion by Jerry.

Was there much fighting in the build up to 1942?

Aerial bombardments did happen, however, the formations, the Dornier bombers, Messerschmitt’s and Focke-Wulf fighters, which the lads had some brilliant nicknames for, came from across the channel usually passed straight overhead towards London or wherever they were going. The deafening drone of a squad of fighter planes is unforgettable, but, in a morbid way, there was something almost exciting about it, that the action was happening elsewhere, to other people.

There was one time that will always stick with me, it was during the afternoon and people were going about their business walking up and down the promenade. A few dozen German planes flew over, people had almost become oblivious to it as we were rarely the target but we were the target that day. The Germans dropped their bombs, I didn’t see the damage I was in a fortified base at the time, which was actually a requisitioned hotel overlooking the sea and the bombs fell behind us but I sure as hell heard them.

The planes though, rather than going back across the sea, made several runs, it must have only been five minutes but it felt like a life-time. They fired their machine guns down the promenade, and my God, did I see that! You can’t even put it into words, to see people who were a few moments earlier chatting, being torn apart by machine gun fire. Although death is death, there is something indiscriminate about a bomb which is hard to explain, but for these civilians to be targeted made my blood run cold. When the fighting had stopped and the noise had died as the planes left, there was an awful silence in the town, a silence of only a few seconds, but I’ll always remember it. Then the noise of the dying and injured sounded out, there must have been a hundred bodies that I saw littered along the promenade. My unit was assigned to assist with getting the injured to safety and disposing of the bodies, it was the worst night of my life. After that, the drone of fighter planes stopped being exciting and became the inescapable sound of dread and terror.

How did that raid affect things?

Things became a lot more solemn and serious after that. Where before the brass turned a blind eye to a few things, they were now breathing down the back of our necks every day. My unit was to keep a constant lookout and make hourly reports to our officer’s post, which was a mile or so inland. We were trained constantly on how critical our task was; if the Wehrmacht got a foothold on the coast, they would then be able to pour in from there and threaten all of England. I must be honest though, me and the lads went through the motions, but the idea of them actually invading was unimaginable. We had been bombed by planes on and off, but that was it. Maybe our posting, two years without firing a shot in anger or Brighton itself had made us soft, I don’t know. What on earth would Jerry want with Brighton, we’d say, it has no real strategic importance, no real industry, no threat. If there is fighting, surely it’ll be in Portsmouth or Southampton. Hindsight is a wonderful thing they say. There was a point where Jerry was flying more and more planes, always past us, but there was a week of very intense attacks inland. I remember our Captain speaking to us – you could always tell when he was worried because he would chain-smoke – he told us to be on our guard and prepare for an attack by sea any day. I think that is something that sticks with me, me and the lads didn’t know and weren’t told anything, and I wonder how much the brass actually knew as well, but questions like that are beyond my pay grade.

What happened the night before the attack?

I was in a fortified hotel along the seafront, there was me and another, Jonesy, on a Vickers machine gun. There were other lads scattered throughout the building and all along the sea-front. Some of them had elephant guns and artillery and mortars were all behind us inland, so we felt ready for whatever was coming. The order had been given for civilians to evacuate the town a few days before, but most people seemed to ignore it, and there was only so much we could do if they were that adamant on staying. I will remember that night overlooking and overhearing soldiers ordering civilians off the beach-front, most of them going peacefully, some being forced into the back of vans. Lots of planes were flying overhead that evening, and there was just enough light to make out the shape through Jonesy’s binocs, they were four-engined, so possibly bombers or even parachutists. It turned out to be the latter, because at about one in the morning when I was eating from my mess tin, the Sergeant burst in on our room, which had been a guest room, and told us that the Germans had in fact landed men further inland and beyond our positions but we were to stay put, as there were reports of the Kriegsmarine gathering across the Channel.

The next few hours were the longest of my life, I was nervous, shaking, my mouth was dry and it sounds funny, but I wanted
something
to happen, just to break the long wait, that was the worst part, waiting for something you didn’t know was going to happen or not. As the sun began to rise Brighton beach slowly came to light with its barbed-wire, hedgehogs and sandbags and beyond that as the fog cleared, one, two, ten, then hundreds. The whole sea seemed to be lit up with a grey wall, these were German ships and they were coming our way.

There is a saying in the army that all plans fall apart as soon as the first shot is fired, and that is completely true. Planes were flying back and forth overhead, some ours, most theirs, but we were oblivious to that, believe it or not. It was the ships we were focussed on, and then the bombardment started.

You see the flashes on the horizon from the warships, and the noise, the noise of the shells approaching you in the air, like a gas blowtorch, you could actually see them fly above us, exploding a hundred yards or so behind us. Each salvo seemed to get nearer to us. The noise, it’s something you can never explain, it’s not just a noise, it shakes you, the building, your bones. It was maddening, a few shells hit our hotel, the shockwaves punched the air out of our lungs. There was no let up, no chance to regain your thoughts, no time to see what was happening in front of us, it was relentless. The internal walls between the guest rooms had been smashed through by my unit so we could get to each other quicker, it was a very surreal sight, being able to see three or four rooms along in either direction. A few of the men were obviously screaming their hearts out, not that you’ve have had a chance of hearing it. Most of us remained calm, or at least gave the impression we were. Jonesy was shaking, and I noticed I was too. I remember one of the lads of the ground floor couldn’t take it, I saw him run out of the front door down the sea front and, I do not exaggerate, he was torn apart by hot shrapnel, his torso ended up thirty feet from his legs, there was steam coming off both parts of him. Horrible stuff.

The seafront curves slightly, and I was able to see one of the hotels nearly half a mile down the line take a direct hit, despite the sandbags and other defences, the whole front of the building came off, like a lid on a tin on sardines, and ten men must have fallen out to their deaths too. It was only then I realised how pathetic our defences were, other men were in bunkers, we didn’t have a chance.

Then there was a silence, it seemed like an eternity but it must have been just a minute or so. It gave us long enough to gather ourselves and prepare our weapons and return the sandbags to the window that had been knocked off by the shockwaves. At that point I think it hit us, where was the RAF, the Royal Navy? Were we really the first line of defence against this unstoppable wall of battleships? The whole sea was now alive with landing craft, as far as the eye could see in both directions. Men were shouting orders, but they were muffled and incomprehensible, our eardrums hadn’t recovered. It’s moments like that when you realise how lonely a battle is.

Our artillery and heavy guns began to fire from inland, but it seemed pathetic compared to what was coming at us, whether many of them had been damaged in the salvo I don’t know but it seemed to me at that time they were like peashooters, falling harmlessly into the sea. As one of the landing craft approached, though, it did take a hit, and ended up in a way that it floated rear first into the sea, I could make out the figures of men still alive, sliding downwards, trying to clamber over those who were dead, as they all sank to the sea. I could tell by their helmets they were Germans, if it needed to be confirmed at all.

I remember my Sergeant grabbing me by the shoulders ‘Get ready! Don’t shoot until the bastards are in the water’. And with that, one, then two, then dozens of landing craft began pulling up, and men climbed out into the water, wading pathetically it seemed at walking pace at chest or neck height. Jonesy took the ammo belt and that’s when I began to open fire.

This was the first time in the War you shot in anger? How did it make you feel?

It sounds odd, but I think you detach yourself from it, you have to. The whole thing seemed very clinical when I think back, I would strafe left and right, watching the first row of men in the water collapse into the sea, they were in no position to fire back and at this point I almost felt sorry for them. Particularly the few who just stopped in the water at head height, perhaps hoping I wouldn’t notice them. As groups of them made it onto the beach, I began to be more selective in my fire, firing in short bursts to conserve ammunition. I think Jonesy wasn’t doing well, I remember him screaming at the top of his lungs in his thick Welsh accent for more ammunition, but no one appeared able or willing to help him. The Germans started hiding behind the hedgehog defences, but these devices are too thin to offer any real protection, and I was able to strike limbs easily.

I remember one sad sight of a German soldier, a medic I think, who simply rose to his feet and threw his white helmet to the ground in frustration as the man he was attending was littered with bullets. I did not fire on him, but someone else did a few moments later, his chest burst in a hail of bullets.

Our sea-front defences gave it a good go with what we had, the odd landing craft was sinking after being shot from further in land and the odd plane was crashing due to FLAK fire or our fighters but it was just a numbers game really, for every soldier I’d take down, two more would appear somewhere else and there were simply too many. As some of them started advancing up the shingles, the odd soldier would be blasted into the air, twisting in bizarre circles as they hit a mine. It was only when the first German soldier managed to sprint to the ground wall of our building and out of my sight did I first fear for the worst.