Week 36.09

Tendring Topics……on line

A lifetime ago!

I shall be posting this blog onto the Internet on Wednesday 2nd September 2009. Seventy years ago that date fell on a Saturday. The postman pushed through the letterbox of my home in Ipswich an OHMS envelope addressed to Gunner Hall E.G. Its contents informed me that ‘His Majesty King George VI had been graciously pleased to embody the Territorial Army’. I was instructed to report, in uniform and with full kit, to the Drill Hall, in Princes Street, Ipswich forthwith.

The 67th Medium Regiment RA’s first guns – iron-tyred 6in howitzers with limbers – intended to be horse-drawn! The distinctly unsoldierly way in which we are clambering all over them suggests that we – and they – had only just arrived at Roedean. These antique weapons were replaced by new limberless and rubber tyred howitzers when we left Ipswich.

The summons wasn’t unexpected. I had not long returned from two weeks at a Territorial Camp at Roedean (in front of the famous girls school), Brighton. There we had been introduced to our guns, ancient iron-tyred 6in howitzers with limbers, that may well have played a part in the defence of Mafeking. Back in Ipswich I had found the Public Health Department, where I worked, in turmoil. As a result of the worsening international situation, and in expectation that another world war would begin with massive air attacks, first aid posts were being established all round the town, ‘black-outs’ were being prepared for windows and the office phone had to be manned day and night to receive and pass on the news that ‘the balloon had gone up’.

In 1939, this building in Elm Street, Ipswich, housed the Council’s Public Health Department

Call-up, when it came, was quite a relief! However my parents, who had seen their young warrior off ‘to the war’ in the morning were somewhat surprised to see him trudge home again, still with full kit, in the evening. Having called us up, the army clearly hadn’t much idea what to do with us. The 67th Medium Regiment R.A., which I had joined early in the New Year, was a newly formed territorial regiment, comprising volunteers from Ipswich, Felixstowe, Woodbridge and the surrounding smaller towns and villages. Billets were found for those called up who lived outside Ipswich while we Ipswichians were billeted in our own homes, our parents receiving a welcome billeting allowance. And there we stayed ‘learning our trade’ until the spring of 1940 when we entrained for Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire and prepared to join the British Expeditionary Force in France.

The following day, Sunday 3rd September was a day that changed my life forever. Yes, I know that that was the day on which Britain declared war on Germany, beginning a conflict that was to cost millions of lives and bring devastation to many thousands of towns and villages in Britain and throughout Europe. Many of my comrades in the 67th Medium regiment RA would lose their lives and most of those of us who survived would spend three years in captivity in Italy and Germany.

The beginning of all of that was, of course, going on in the background. What changed my life forever on 3rd September 1939 was my meeting Heather Gilbert, an Ilford schoolgirl who had been evacuated with Wanstead County High School to Ipswich, to escape the anticipated mass bombing of the London area. Heather is no longer with me, but she has been in my thoughts at some time or another on every single day of the seventy years that have elapsed since I first met her, and I am sure that she will be will remain in them until my own life ends and, as I fervently hope, we are reunited.

Heather and I, as we were in September 1939

On our first (or possibly our second) date. I was in the army and can't remember whether we were allowed to wear 'civvies' off duty -or whether I was defying an order not to! After the photo was taken we 'went to the pictures' and saw 'Stagecoach', now recognised as a 'classic western' featuring a very young John Wain

She was almost-sixteen and still at school. I was just-eighteen and newly in the army. I am quite sure that her school had been evacuated to Ipswich by mistake. They remained in the town for only two weeks, but it was long enough for us to form a lasting attachment. We corresponded regularly throughout the war. After she had left school we met on rare weekends when I was given some leave and my unit was sufficiently near London for me to visit Ilford. Within a couple of days of my returning home from Germany in 1945 we were engaged. We married on 27th April 1946, just four days after my discharge from the army. Our marriage lasted for sixty years, Heather’s life ending three years ago, a few months after we had celebrated our diamond wedding anniversary.

Last week I mentioned in this blog the tear-off calendar, with a quote for each day, that we had in our barrack room when I was a POW in Germany. Here is another quotation that I have remembered over the years, from the poet Goethe I think:

Lieben und geliebt zu werden, ist das höchste Glück auf Erden.
(To love and to be loved in return, is the highest happiness that there is in this world)

I have found that to be abundantly true.


Outside Gants Hill Methodist, Church, Ilford on 27th April 1946. We had to wait nearly seven years for this happy day.

Where there’s a will there’s a way!

I don’t get to Mistley very often. It is the ‘other side’ of the Tendring Peninsula and well beyond the range of my mobility scooter. I always enjoy going there though. Last Saturday (22nd August) my son and daughter-in-law, Pete and Arlene, drove me there. We parked on the quay and had a very enjoyable lunch overlooking the Stour estuary at the Quay Café.

The last time we were there, months before, the fence along the edge of the quay hadn’t been completed. Furious local residents were trying to prevent this with parked cars and lorries. They didn’t succeed. The fence has been completed and I have to say that it does look neater than it did. It is no better loved though locally. Posters everywhere demand ‘Free the Quay!’

It was high tide and a sailing barge, the Centaur of Harwich, had taken advantage of the high water to moor at the quay. It carried passengers and was involved in a ‘mini-cruise’ from Ipswich, down the Orwell to Shotley, then up the Stour as far as Manningtree, pausing at Mistley on the way, and then back again. It must have made a very pleasant excursion.

‘The Centaur’, moored at Mistley Quay. The ladder giving access from the ship to the quay can be seen just to the left of the figure.

Surely, you may be thinking, it couldn’t have been much fun stopping at Mistley when that unloved fence will have prevented landing. Not a bit of it! Where there’s a will there’s a way. Look at the picture and you’ll see that just to the left of the figure is a strategically placed ladder that gives access to and from the Quay. Using it is, of course, just a little more hazardous than simply striding across on a gangway. Which is odd when you consider that the fence, the cause of all the trouble, is supposed to have been provided ‘for health and safety reasons’.