Authors: Vivienne Dockerty
“Well, I haven’t booked us anywhere, Irene, we might end up sleeping in a doorway. She’ll be better off kipping in the station, at least he’ll see her there.”
“Don’t be a meany, Eddie. You wouldn’t like it if I was left on my own all night. Besides, I know of a place just down the road from here. It’s not what you would call salubrious, but when aunty and I stayed there once it was nice and clean.”
“Oh, go on then.”
What else could he say? He wasn’t going to start a row when in a few days time the regiment was being sent overseas. Not that Eddie would tell her that, not when there was a real possibility he may never see her again.
So the three of them slept in a small three bedded room, with a primitive toilet consisting of a bucket and a tap on the lower landing and listened to the young wife sobbing herself to sleep under her woollen blanket.
“Well at least it was clean,” said Irene, as they stepped out into the morning sunshine on the way to find the missing husband. They had dressed hurriedly once the sun had come up and once Doreen had been reunited with her husband they intended to go to the The Lyons Corner House for their breakfast. He was there this time, had actually seen Doreen walk out with the Dockerty’s the night before, but hadn’t dared show himself, as he too had left the camp without a pass and was afraid with all the Military police around to come out of his hiding place and meet with his wife.
Irene stole an admiring look at Eddie when she heard his words. Rather than leave his wife in apprehension, Eddie had risked a court marshal to be with her.
After they had left the couple, they set off for the popular eating place, which opened early to cater for the many people from all walks of life who appreciated good food at a reasonable price. Irene having to manage on rations marvelled that it was possible to get a meal at all and was impressed with the service of the scurrying waitresses. Later they wandered around the shops together and Irene found a pair of gloves in Gallerie Lafayette for her souvenir of London.
In the evening, after spending the afternoon wandering hand in hand around a large park and doing a little sightseeing, they checked out what film was showing at a cinema in Leicester Square. They decided to watch ‘For whom the bell tolls’ starring Ingrid Bergman and purchased tickets in the circle costing three and sixpence each, expensive for a couple not accustomed to London prices. They agreed, however, as they came out of the cinema and made their way back to Lyons for their dinner, that the show had been worth every penny, based as it was on Ernest Hemingway’s book about the Spanish Civil War.
Irene had been amazed that Eddie was spending his money as if he had won a sum on the horses, but what he hadn’t told her was that his mates back at camp, knowing he was taking a big chance, but willing to cover for him, had all made a contribution towards his costs. She put it down to the fact that Eddie wasn’t a big drinker, so had been able to save his allowance for a big night out.
Feeling troubled that he was leaving his wife alone, as he really needed get back to camp in case his whereabouts were discovered and Irene had planned to travel back early next morning, Eddie suggested that she went to stay with a cousin by marriage in the Chelsea district of London. The cousin was living in a large flat in Sloane Street with friends and Isabel, Irene’s sister, corresponded with her now and again.
They located Sloane Street and found that the hallway, which the cousin invited them into, was bigger than their small house back home! Irene was made very welcome, as she had met her host and hostess on a previous trip to the capital, when they had lived on Highgate Hill. Perhaps the very hill where Dick Whittington had heard the bells tolling “Turn again Dick Whittington, Lord Mayor of London”.
Eddie, satisfied that his wife would be well looked after for the night, made his return to the camp.
However his absence had not gone unnoticed, as his expertise with the field ovens had been required and the camp had been scoured for his whereabouts, though when he saw the sergeant cook and had got the ovens working satisfactorily, much to the men’s delight, nothing more was said.
The loyalty and support of his mates touched Eddie deeply as he had never encountered men like these before.
Irene had been home four days before the news was released on the radio and in the newspapers that ‘Operation Overlord’ was to be a reality and not one of the best kept secrets of the war. The first wave of invasion troops had already landed on the French beaches.
She learnt later that her host in London was a war correspondent and he had been present at a meeting with Field Marshall Montgomery at the Savoy Hotel, only hours prior to Irene landing on the doorstep.
He had known and Eddie had known that the invasion of France was only days away!
On Eddie’s return from London, a few days before that fateful invasion in June 1944, the camp was now under canvas and the battalion was being issued with new kit and equipment.
There were visits from distinguished army officers and the men lined up for frequent inspections, but it seemed that only the officers were given something to sleep on, ordinary soldiers were expected to sleep on the ground.
Bemused by this turn of events, Eddie and a few mates scoured the area and found a pile of duck boards in a corner of the field which they commandeered. A few blankets filched from the back of a stationary lorry, ensured their comfort for that first night. However, much later that night the sergeant put his head through the tent flaps and was horrified to find them sleeping in relative comfort, especially as it was the officers’ duck boards they were lying on. They were ordered to take them to the officers’ quarters the next morning.
Not that the officers had chance to make use of them, as it was on the next morning after breakfast that the battalion was ordered to line up and march down to the dockside, where landing craft waited, rocking gently in the swell of the English channel.
There was a silence amongst the men as they stood there; only the seagulls that circled above an incoming fishing boat could be heard. This was it then. All that training, all that discipline, being deprived of their loved ones to fight this bloody war. Stomachs rumbled as the cook had been stingy with their breakfast, presumably in case of sea sickness amongst them.
There were a couple of Wrens who had been pinning army numbers on the front of the waiting soldiers’ uniforms. Eddie, trying to break the tension, though he felt it as much himself, jokingly asked one of the girls had she any food in her pockets? She ran to her billet and came back with half a leg of lamb! It still had fat clinging to it from when she had lifted it from the roasting tin. He blessed her and gave her a kiss, then jumped aboard his designated landing craft.
She had wrapped the lamb in some paper and the older soldiers in the craft, who had become Eddie’s friends, looked on the parcel with curiosity.
“And what would that be under your arm then, Dockerty?” one of them wondered, as Eddie made himself comfortable and the smell of the lamb began to compete with the fishy smell abounding.
Eddie unwrapped the parcel enjoying the incredulous looks on the various faces as they stared at its contents. Out came their knives and each cut himself a shive and there was very little left when it came Eddie’s way again. He liked to think that it took their minds off what lay ahead of them.
It was not so for the young soldier who lay huddled in a corner whimpering in fear. The men had left him alone, feeling helpless themselves, though they managed to conceal their terror of what might lie ahead of them.
Eddie shook his head and clambered across the others until he reached the young man’s side.
“Come on, toughen up,” said Eddie. “What would your mammy say if she could hear you?”
“Leave the poor lad alone, he’s frightened,” said a man from nearby, who was taking his mind off his own fear by playing a hand of cards with a couple of others. Eddie took no notice and hunkered down by the boy, who only looked to be about seventeen, a similar age to his youngest brother, and spoke to him gently.
“Look, don’t be afraid mate. You stay by me and I’ll see you’re all right. Get your gear and come over to sit with me and my pals for the journey. We’ll sing a few songs from Ireland and make you feel at home.”
The Channel had been smooth when they had first set out, but it soon got choppy as they sighted the French coast. The less hardy quailed as seasickness pangs began to sweep over them and many hung over the craft as they spewed up their stomach contents.
They were a sorry looking bunch as the Normandy beach loomed up ahead, a pleasant place to spend a holiday in peace time, but all that could be seen was barbed wire entanglements looped and trailing over the sandy shore, breached at the cost of the first invasion, and casualties waiting with the dead for ships to take them back home.
Eddie took in the situation at first glance and he moved fast, not waiting for the landing craft to move forward onto the beach. He jumped into waist deep cold water as soon as the board was let down, struggling to carry with him the collapsible bicycle he had been issued with. With his mates shouting that he’d get himself killed and that he was a bloody eejit resounding in his ears, he left the bike behind and took off up the beach because his life depended on it. He could hear the drone of a plane somewhere in the distance and he wasn’t about to wait like the others to be the subject of its aim.
Finding cover in a hole below a sand dune, which had been blasted out by a hand grenade but didn’t contain a body, he saw that the plane was a Lancaster carrying troops who were to be landed a few miles away. He looked back with relief, as his mates, who had waited until the craft hit shallow water, jumped off rather cautiously without even getting their socks wet!
Their sergeant, who had been speaking with an officer on the beach front, along with another group of soldiers that had their rifles trained on three men in German uniform who had their hands on their heads, explained whilst he sat astride his bike in front of the assembled men now standing by the wall waiting for further orders, that the captured men were German snipers. Apparently during the enemy’s onslaught only hours before, these snipers had used the cover of the empty and partially bombed out houses that lined the road to a small village and would be taken back to Britain to be incarcerated in a camp.
With mutters of, “I’d hang the buggers from that bloody tree,” and, “Bloody Jerries, they get to sit the war out in sodding comfort”, the men were put to work helping to put the dead and injured on the crafts on which they had just landed; a horrid job which made even the most hardened man in their platoon want to weep. When this was done, they got on their bikes and peddled along a narrow lane, except Eddie of course, whose bike had been carried out by a heavy swelling tide.
After an uneasy night, hidden in dug outs that they’d had to hastily dig themselves on a piece of wasteland that must have been an old rubbish tip judging by the various tins, bottles, pieces of rag and broken china that they kept digging up, the sergeant decided after all his men had been through they should get some rest, Eddie, who had an emergency ration pack with him, felt ravenous.
As they passed a field which an economical farmer had planted with alternative rows of corn and potatoes, he left his platoon, some who were peddling along the road at a slow pace as the bikes were quite small for a hefty man and others who had abandoned theirs and were ambling, and felt under the potato haulms for the small new crop. As he collected them, rubbing them with his camouflage netting to get them clean, he scraped them with his finger nails and filled up all his pockets so that he could have them cooked later.
It was a surprised Major who had arrived to regroup, whilst the men were gathering around the cook who had made a scanty meal at the roadside, with the potatoes as a supplement and was given a tasty morsel himself. Later, as he lined up the men, plainly delighted to see some of them that he had served with in earlier campaigns and had been briefed about the sad task they had had to perform on their landing, he was amazed when he got to the end of the line to find the man he thought the least likely to be standing there. He stopped short, disbelief showing in his face as he pumped the man’s hand. “My God, Dockerty, you made it!” he said. “Well done man, well done.”
Eddie felt a warm feeling growing inside him. He had been a most unwilling soldier since he had received his call up papers. He had found it had taken the utmost self-discipline to comply with all that the army had demanded of him and here he was being shaken by the hand by a fellow survivor. Eddie began to realise the true sense of comradeship which bound them all as one.
He smiled back at the Major, perhaps he had been rather good.
Many miles on, after many battles had been fought and won, the Major was still very thoughtful whenever his eyes rested on Eddie. He was heard to say on many occasions, “My God man, what makes you tick?”
As the Germans retreated inland and Captain Montgomery’s men, of which Eddie’s platoon was part, moved forward in their wake, they came to the village of Cambes, a place that was actually enclosed by two woods with ten feet walls around them, where they were told to halt as the place afforded some cover. The soldiers camped in a small copse close by, when food at that time, or rather the lack of it was presenting a very real problem.
Eddie and a lieutenant, who had recently joined up with them, went in search for food and luckily came across another platoon who were hiding out up a track that led towards a large forest. They were able to help out with a few tins of pork and a dozen eggs which the lieutenant loaded into his pockets.
The two men were making their way back towards the village when the enemy began to shell. Diving for cover, clutching his knapsack full of tins, Eddie managed to get behind a wall which had railings fixed above it and the lieutenant managed to throw himself into the nearest ditch, which luckily for him was a dry one. The shrapnel kept hitting the railings, giving Eddie some bad moments as he lay there, so when the shelling had subsided he quickly made his way to better shelter in a nearby wood, with the lieutenant rushing to join him. Eddie was about to ask the lieutenant what had happened to the eggs, as the cook began to fry the meat for the men’s suppers, when he recalled where the man had put them!