Child from Home Read Online Free Page A

Princess’, and he spoiled her rotten.
    Gran’s eldest son, John, was twenty years old and was serving his apprenticeship as a plater at the Britannia Steelworks, a large, steel-plate rolling plant in the Ironmasters District. In February of the previous year he had joined the Territorial Army attending meetings in the Drill Hall every week and going on weekend training camps. The part-time soldiers were known colloquially as ‘the Terriers’ or, as some said, ‘Saturday Night Soldiers’. Uncle John had joined chiefly for the excitement, the sense of adventure and the glamour of the uniform, which seemed to attract the girls. The extra money was also very welcome. In late autumn 1939 he received a letter from the local office of the Ministry of Labour and National Service, stating that he was now liable for conscription into the regular army and was to report for a medical examination. Small but strong, he passed A1.
    Soon afterwards his call-up papers – with a four-shilling postal order to cover his travelling costs – were delivered. In the meantime, Gran fed him well, as like most women of the time, she considered it her duty to wait on the men hand and foot. Uncle John was just one of the thousands being mobilised and in early February he made his farewells. Travelling with several other young men to the army barracks at Richmond, North Yorkshire, he swore the oath of allegiance; ‘took the King’s shilling’, was read the Riot Act and became number 4390218 with the rank of private. After being vaccinated he was issued with a uniform and kit, which included two enamelled tin plates; an enamel mug; a knife, fork and spoon, and was put into the 5th Infantry Battalion of the Green Howards.
    The recruits were broken down by hard work and strict discipline before being built up again into an efficient fighting unit. They learned to work as a team, which was to stand them in good stead when they eventually went into battle, and as an unmarried private he was paid just fourteen shillings (70p) a week plus bed and board. Each week during the long basic training he managed to send part of his meagre pay to his mother. A few weeks later, following the outbreak of war, he was sent on embarkation leave. He sailed from Southampton as part of a naval convoy – with a fighter escort overhead – bound for the French port of Cherbourg. It was too dangerous to take the shorter, more direct route to Calais through the Straits of Dover, as the ship would have been within the range of German bombers. The 5th Battalion of the Green Howards then moved up to the Belgian border that had seen so much bloodshed during the First World War.
    Gran’s other sons, Archie and Harry, were aged thirteen and eleven years old respectively. Her other daughter, twenty-six-year-old Hilda, and her son Jimmy, were living with Gran’s younger sister Ruby, having left Hilda’s Irish Catholic husband, John Nolan. His faith frowned on mixed marriages at that time and throughout her turbulent and unhappy marriage there had been prolonged and bitter conflict with much ugly name-calling. Gran, who was a forthright God-fearing woman, declared, ‘I’ve got no time for the Nolans with their hypocrisy, boozing and excessive religious humility, and John’s mother is a hard-bitten, intolerant, religious bigot. I’ll never forgive her for bawling after them in the street “I hope you die in your bed and rot in hell you Protestant bitch!” just after their marriage in the Register Office. She called Jimmy a bastard – because to her mind the marriage was not legal – saying, “If you are not married by a priest you are not married at all”.’
    There was a fair amount of resentment of the Irish at that time as there had been more than a hundred IRA bombings on the British mainland. Aunt Hilda had fallen for John Nolan’s smooth talk and they had married in 1934 –