Читать книгу Sherlock's Squadron - The Incredible True Story of the Unsung Heroes of World War Two - Steve Holmes - Страница 8

The modern world is still living with the memories and indeed the consequences of World War Two, the most titanic conflict in history. On September 1st 1939, Germany invaded Poland without warning, sparking the start of the war. The clues and undercurrents, however, had been bubbling since the early 1930s.

John Holmes listened with interest to news reports from the BBC World Service prior to 1939. He was the youngest of five children, son of William and Georgina, and he sat in the comfortable, clean and tidy lounge in the Skerton area of Lancaster as the family huddled around the radio.

It was difficult to describe John’s feelings; his excitement, for want of a better word. Something told him that a major war was inevitable and not only that, despite the fact that he was still a schoolboy, he instinctively knew that he would play a major part in it. He knew where his destiny lay. His destiny lay in the sky. He was simply fascinated by the images of the RAF fighters and bombers – especially the bombers, clumsy looking, hulking, gigantic pieces of machinery. He wondered what law of nature made them defy gravity and propelled the huge beasts up into the sky.

Life prior to 1939 was pleasant enough for the Holmes family. John’s father William was a joiner who worked at the prestigious Waring and Gillow furniture manufacturer. It was a respected occupation and paid well. Whilst not rich, the Holmes family would probably be described as bordering on the middle class element of pre-war England.

Little did William know at the time, but ultimately as the war in Europe escalated the factory would be handed over to war production making ammunition chests and interior fittings for aircraft. Therefore William Holmes never went to war as he had a reserved occupation. Naturally he advised his son to follow in his footsteps or at least get a trade, preferably one that would keep him out of the war they all suspected could break out soon. John heeded his father’s advice as always and tried to do as he suggested. It was expected and John respected his father’s wishes, a sign of the times perhaps.

John would think about life and work and war as he swam in the River Lune, which was less than five minutes’ walk from his house. This was John’s escape, the greatest pleasure in his life. He was at one with nature as he struck out against the fast flowing river. It was a challenge battling against the water – and of course against the cold. In the height of summer the River Lune was cold enough, but in winter it was positively Arctic. It mattered not. November, December, January and February John would still discard his clothes above the ramparts where the tidal river from its inlet at Morecambe Bay became a fresh water river.

It was a four-mile walk from the weir adjacent to his house to the beautiful spot at the Crook O’ Lune but it was four miles that John never tired of and when he got there it was always worth it. It gave him time to think, time to imagine; a place where he could lose himself in a daydream. The four miles never felt that long and every so often he would look up and gaze into the clouds. That’s what his Mum would say to her neighbours every now and again. ‘Our John… always has his head in the clouds.’ And in a strange sort of way she was right, though John wasn’t about to tell her the exact reason why his head was in the clouds quite so often.

John became a very good swimmer and developed a strong physique for someone so young. The Crook O’ Lune had to be his favourite spot in the whole world. He’d leave his clothes behind a bush where no one would find them and, dressed only in his underpants, dive into the dark waters a few feet below the bank. He’d swim several strokes underwater. Slow strokes, until he was sure that his body had adjusted to the cold and he hadn’t died from a heart attack (as his mum sometimes warned him he would). Then he’d resurface and open his eyes and take in the beautiful scenery that seemed to explode in front of him.

Someone had told him that the Crook O’ Lune was painted by the famous artist JMW Turner, the so called painter of light. And of course John went along to his local library and looked up the English Romantic landscape painter, because if the Crook O’ Lune was good enough for Turner then it was good enough for him. John first spotted the painting in an obscure book that a kindly librarian had ordered in for him especially. Turner’s painting of Crook O’ Lune, looking towards Hornby Castle, took John’s breath away. He sat on the same banks as Turner had many years ago and he wondered – no, he knew – that Turner had the same feeling of being at one with nature in this beautiful place.

In 1937 John left school and took up an apprenticeship as a fitter at a local Lancashire mill. He maintained and repaired the huge machines at the mill and at first took great interest in the mechanics of every single one, priding himself on his ability to diagnose specific breakdown problems. He still found time to swim in the Crook O’ Lune despite the long hours his new employer insisted he work and, to be truthful, once he’d learned and mastered what he needed to know his heart was never in it. This was not what he wanted to be, it was not where he wanted to be.

Nevertheless John took on board his new-found responsibility and confessed he felt good about contributing to the Holmes family budget. Their standard of living seemed to improve slightly, his mother able to treat the family every now and again. It was 1938 and after the evening meal John would huddle around the Emporic four valve radio that took pride of place in the lounge, listening to world developments that appeared to be gathering at an unstoppable pace. He listened along with his father and his brothers; James and Ernie, while his mother and sisters, Alice and Mary, busied themselves with the chores around the house.

It was mid-September 1938 when John came home to his favourite meal of the week; ham, egg and chips. It wasn’t the fanciest meal on the Holmes menu but his mother’s chips were to die for and ham and eggs were surely invented to compliment Georgina Holmes’s culinary masterpiece. It had been a tough day at work for everyone; was John imagining it or were the employers demanding a little bit more recently? The family tried to avoid the one topic on everyone’s mind but John kept glancing at the kitchen clock, willing the hands round to nine o’clock when the BBC would broadcast a detailed account of international world affairs. He noticed his father with one eye on the clock too. He tried to shake the word ‘war’ from his mind and his mother scolded her boys each time they mentioned it, but even she realised that world events were being influenced by a certain man called Adolf Hitler. John’s brother James spoke.

‘Chamberlain’s over there now Dad, talking with Adolf Hitler. He’ll sort him out, Dad, won’t he?’

John was all too aware that at 23 years of age James would be the first of the brothers to be called up if war broke out. James enjoyed family life in Skerton and his job as a store-man in the town’s biggest department store. He had a little bit of money in his pocket and a pretty girlfriend, enjoyed a few beers at the weekend and dancing at the local Roxy. He didn’t want to go and fight this fellow Hitler.

‘I certainly hope so, son,’ his father said. ‘I certainly hope so.’

On 15th September 1938, as William Holmes and his sons sat listening to the world news, there was a collective sigh of relief as Neville Chamberlain announced that Adolf Hitler ‘appears to be a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word’. It was what everybody wanted to hear. Hitler was an honest chap after all. Georgina Holmes breezed into the lounge polishing a large dinner plate with a tea-towel.

‘You hear that, Mum?’ said Ernie. ‘Hitler’s given his word to Mr Chamberlain.’

Georgina Holmes gave a half-smile. The look didn’t convince young John. He was only 15 and far too young to be called up into the armed forces, but he was already plotting the future. Hitler couldn’t be trusted; John didn’t know why but he knew. He had seen the pictures of him in the newspapers and hated everything about him right down to his silly little half-moustache. And he had seen him on the Pathé news reels at the picture house in the middle of the Saturday afternoon matinée, banging his fist on the rostrum he spoke from while he ranted and raved in a language John couldn’t understand while thousands of soldiers yelled ‘Heil Hitler,’ with their right arms pointing to the sky.

Every time John heard the man speak a shiver ran the length of his spine. It wasn’t a shiver of fear; it was adrenalin because John Holmes knew that his life in the mill wouldn’t last long and destiny would take over and pitch him into conflict with this evil man. He knew that Hitler wasn’t to be trusted. He wanted to invade Czechoslovakia, the radio announcer had said, that’s why Chamberlain had made the trip to Germany along with other heads of state. The theory was that if Hitler was made fully aware that other countries opposed his invasion plan then he would have to back down. John knew Hitler wouldn’t back down, he would invade Czechoslovakia – and after Czechoslovakia, where next?

The radio announcer said goodbye and asked his listeners to join him at the same time the following evening. John was tired and said his goodnights to the family. He spent twenty minutes reading before drifting off to sleep. The book fell to the floor with a thud. John had read the book from cover to cover several times but his interest never waned. It was a book on aviation, The A-Z of the Aeroplane. He had picked it up several weeks before at the local church jumble sale. John dreamt that night. He dreamt of soldiers and of conflict and he dreamt about Adolf Hitler. He was looking down on the German Chancellor from a great height as he shouted and gesticulated to the masses. John looked down on him through the clouds. He could not shake off the unmistakable drone of aircraft engines echoing in the background of his dream.

Later that month Chamberlain was back in Germany. In London, on home soil, Winston Churchill warned of the futility of appeasing Adolf Hitler.

‘The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion,’ he said, referring to Hitler’s wish to invade Czechoslovakia.

The conference had been chaired by Adolf Hitler with Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Britain’s Neville Chamberlain, and France’s Edouard Daladier discussing German demands on Czechoslovakian territory. At the end of the two days the Munich Agreement was signed. It allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland portion of Czechoslovakia. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said ‘I believe it is peace for our time.’

The Holmes brothers and their father sat in their familiar chairs as the announcement was made. Ernie breathed a sigh of relief while James busied himself polishing his shoes for the next working day. William Holmes was quiet, almost stoic. John drained the last of his tea and walked through to the kitchen. He washed the cup and placed it onto the drainer.

‘I’m off to bed,’ he announced, before kissing his mother gently on the cheek. And as he climbed the stairs wearily he mumbled to himself. ‘Czechoslovakia… where next?’

Events in Nazi Germany were gathering pace. The public school tones of the radio announcer almost faltered as he detailed an event known as Kristallnacht, night of broken glass. The Nazi authorities had orchestrated a nationwide protest against the Jews in Germany and Austria. It followed the murder of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, killed allegedly by Herschel Grynszpan, a French Jew in the German Embassy in Paris. Jewish homes and synagogues were looted and burned. Hardly a Jewish shop or business survived the bricks and petrol bombs of the fired up mob. By the end of the night 91 Jews were killed and by the end of the week 20,000 had been taken away to concentration camps.

Christmas came and went. Georgina Holmes had made a real effort that year and John wondered if his mother suspected it might be their last together as a family, at least for a while. James, Alice, Mary and Ernie all had good jobs but their mother was well aware that every one of them was liable for call up should war break out.

On the stroke of midnight on December 31st, 1938 turned into 1939. It was a time for good cheer, a little alcohol and best wishes for the year to come. The Holmes family sat together in the well-kept lounge of their semi-detached home in front of a roaring log fire. It was a bitterly cold evening and a fine covering of snow lay on the cobbled streets outside. Ernie’s girlfriend Dorothy was there and a young man called Jimmy, who had his eye on Alice. James had brought a couple of friends back from the pub and the assembled group sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’. William sat in his big comfortable armchair by the fire. He was nursing a whisky and looked on with approval at his sons and daughters happy smiling faces. He’d given his youngest son a bottle of best bitter and although not quite the most wonderful tasting drink in the world, John had been only too happy to join his older brothers and sisters and enjoy his first drop of alcohol.

‘Just the one now, John,’ his father had warned him and John had nodded before taking a long drink. The alcohol kicked in immediately, making him feel light-headed, a little giggly even, but he was happy to be a part of the adult crowd. The lounge seemed particularly dark that night, probably something to do with all the bodies blocking out the light from the fire and the standard lamp that stood in the corner of the room. If it had been a little lighter someone may have noticed the tears that ran silently down his mother’s cheeks.

It was early spring 1939 when John began to notice the very visible signs that the country was preparing for war. The workforce at the mill had been reduced significantly and young men from the age of twenty one were disappearing at a rapid rate of knots joining the Army, the Navy or the RAF. Some joined up voluntarily, some were conscripted, they had no choice yet no one seemed to object.

Hitler was still in the news and some hacks from the press were suggesting he was hell bent on world domination. They mentioned something about a white supremacist Aryan race; blond-haired blue-eyed individuals, powerful, tall, strong and athletic. John almost laughed as he thought about the man whose vision this was… a five foot eight, unhealthy-looking Austrian with black hair and dark eyes. Hardly the perfect role model.

The radio was still the favoured place to congregate after each evening meal and now the men of the Holmes family were joined by the ladies of the house. One evening John’s father announced that his factory had had a visit from the men from the War Office. They were to stop making furniture for the foreseeable future.

‘Then what will you be making?’ John asked.

‘Oh there’s plenty to make, son, plenty of stuff needed for the war. Waring & Gillow have furnished ships and boats before, lots of famous ones like the Lusitania, Heliopolis and the Queen Mary.’

‘So you’ll be fitting out ships for the war?’

William nodded. ‘Pretty much so. The upholstery department will lend a hand too, making kit-bags, tents and camouflage nets. It’s nothing new, the same thing happened during the Great War, we even made wooden propellers for De Havilland DH9 aircraft.’

John knew all about the De Havilland DH9, there was even a picture of it in his aircraft book. To think Dad’s factory had made those propellers. Ernie and James, Alice and Mary all detailed the changes that had occurred in their own workplace, their factories and offices. James and Ernie talked about how they wouldn’t hesitate to join up if it came to all-out war with Germany. John wished he was just that little bit older. Almost on cue the familiar music of the BBC World Service permeated the room and the Holmes family fell silent.

The station played a recent speech by Adolf Hitler. It was in German, of course, and the translator let the tape play for a few seconds before interpreting.

‘Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist’ he said, ‘The glorious German troops now occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia.’

The invading German Storm-Troopers had annexed Bohemia and Moravia too. This was all in violation of the Munich Agreement of the previous year. The dulcet tones of the broadcaster announced that needless to say the British and French governments had protested strongly. Several days later Neville Chamberlain told the Cabinet that continuing negotiations with Adolf Hitler was impossible.

William Holmes spoke. For the first time John’s father acknowledged that war was inevitable. His statement took everyone by surprise, not least John.

‘We’ll be at war within three months,’ he predicted. ‘Mark my words… everyone will be at war on a scale we’ve never seen before.’

His words would become strangely prophetic.

‘Who’ll be at war?’ John asked.

William Holmes leaned across and ruffled John’s hair.

‘Everyone, son… everyone in the whole damned world.’

And so they sat night after night. They listened to Hitler demanding the return of the Polish Corridor and Danzig and they listened to the BBC as they announced that German troops had occupied the city of Memel, which was situated on the border of East Prussia and Lithuania. Poland warned Germany that any attempt to seize Danzig would mean all-out war. They listened with admiration as Chamberlain told the House of Commons that France and Britain had declared they would stand by Poland and support Polish independence.

It was early June and John continued to swim in the Crook O’ Lune. On this day in particular he was recalling the words of Winston Churchill as he wrote in a magazine called The Collier. John had studied the words in the magazine during a trip to the barber shop in Lancaster town centre. Churchill had said that unless there was a change of regime in Nazi Germany, war was inevitable. The Germans were spoiling for a fight, he wrote. He went on to say that the war would undoubtedly start before the end of the year. John powered on up the river stroke after stroke drawing inspiration and energy from the words he had heard Mr Churchill speak of late. There was nothing finer than when the BBC announcer introduced a speech by Winston Churchill. Whilst he had nothing personal against Mr Chamberlain it seemed that Churchill knew how to stir up a little emotion, ruffle a few feathers and he talked sense. He made the hairs on the back of John’s neck stand on end.

John swam longer and faster than he could ever recall swimming before. As he climbed from the water he was out of breath and after a minute or two the cool river water mingled with his perspiration. He walked down to where he had hidden his clothes, dried himself off and changed, then made his way up to the mill preparing for another long and monotonous day. As he walked through the gates he sighed and wondered how long it would be before he could say goodbye to the place. He looked up to the sky as always and said a silent prayer.

On August 22nd 1939 Hitler authorized the killing ‘without pity or mercy, all men, women and children of Polish descent or language.’ By the end of the month the Royal Navy was put on full alert and Army and Navy mobilisation commenced. The conscription age was lowered to age 20.

Hitler received the Polish Ambassador to Berlin, mainly to appease Mussolini, who was trying to establish a peace formula. The talks lasted no longer than a few minutes. Hitler had already made up his mind to invade Poland. He declared to his generals a few hours later that at 4:45am on 1st September 1939, the German Armed Forces would invade Poland.

On 2nd September Neville Chamberlain issued an ultimatum to Nazi Germany that Hitler must withdraw his troops from Poland with immediate effect. Chamberlain would broadcast live to the nation the following day.

John could hardly wait to get home on September 3rd 1939. His work that day had been shoddy, like many others he was unable to concentrate or focus on the task in hand. After all, it’s not every day that your country is on the brink of war. His supervisor understood and sent him home early. For once he wasn’t hungry; for once his mother understood and didn’t scold him for leaving good food on his plate.

They sat and waited for the appointed hour. William, Georgina, James, Alice, Ernie, Mary and John sat in a stony yet deafening silence. The radio crackled into life and the commentator announced that they were going across to the House of Commons. It seemed like a poor connection, a little distorted but after several seconds Neville Chamberlain spoke.

‘This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.’

Chamberlain paused for dramatic effect or was John just imagining it.

‘I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’