Mum and Dad, Their War Remembered by Peter Leyland

                            Mum and Dad, Their War Remembered

 

The photographs stood on top of the dark mahogany tallboy throughout my childhood. The frame of Dad’s was made of wood, and the date on the back of the photograph is December 1944, Mum’s frame was of metal and there is no date on the photo. 

 

Mum had kept them on the tallboy long after Dad had died in 1962 from a long-term illness. I had put them away for storage following Mum’s death in 1999, after we had cleared the house.  The tallboy was taken away by a furniture recycling centre from Garston, an area of Liverpool near my home. 

 

Today, I removed the photographs from their frames and copied them so that I could post them on this site. My parents were in the RAF - Mum a WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), Dad an astro-navigator, who had eventually risen to the rank of Flight Lieutenant. He had started the war as a soldier in the Territorials and had then been sent to France to drive lorries. He had returned to England before the Dunkirk evacuation and had decided to transfer to the RAF Volunteer Reserve. He had trained in Hamilton, Ontario in Canada on an Air Observers’ Advanced Navigation course. The date is 15^th January 1942. I know all this because I kept his logbook.

 

The logbook tells me that after training he flew in Ansons, Hudsons, and Wellingtons in the Mediterranean theatre of the war with an aircrew, and that their activities from 1942 to 1945 included torpedo runs, flare dropping, leaflet dropping and dinghy searches. Once, excitingly in early 1945 ‘Supply dropping to POWs’ is recorded; another time Dad is flying in a Mosquito to Pomigliano with pilot Flt Lieutenant Roll, who is often with him on their various missions. There was a great sense of camaraderie amongst aircrews. Mum once told me that they had come under ack-ack fire on several occasions.

 

Growing up, I made Airfix models of some of the aeroplanes – Wellingtons and Mosquitos, which I loved. At first, Dad was able to show me how but as his illness developed, he was unable to move his hands and fingers, and after I reached the age of ten, it stopped. He had always been a great woodworker, making toy forts and castles for me and my brother, and sister, but this stopped too. I do still have a marquetry picture of boats in a bay which he made using a fretsaw. (Both of his brothers were carpenters.) After the war Dad worked for the Customs and Excise in Liverpool and he once took me on The Overhead Railway from The Dingle to the docks where his 'office’ was located. His job was to inspect the cargoes that came into the port and calculate import duties that had to be paid on goods like tobacco.

 

Mum had joined the WAAF in 1940, although I don’t have any detailed records of her service. She had been nicknamed "Billy" by Nana Baker because of her tomboyish outlook on life and the name stuck. It was still used by her friends and family up until her death. She had yet to meet Dad in 1940, but they did live near each other in the Walton/Aintree area of Liverpool. Mum had lots of boyfriends - one of them was Mo, an American airman, who she really liked. She had worked in the WAAF at airfields like RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and had probably met him there. Later, American airmen and soldiers used to come to Nana’s in Aintree for supper. It was all part of the drive for the English to be friendly to the invasion troops who would land on the Normandy beaches during D-Day.

 

Nothing came of Mo, however, and Mum continued in the WAAF working at different airfields. I cannot be certain but imagine she would have had typing and telephone duties. After schooling she had trained as a comptometer operator at Dunlop in Speke, Liverpool, so would have had keyboard skills. She always loved talking on the telephone, and I can still hear her voice giving our number, “Cressington Park 6065.” She was a great reader too, so I must have got my interest in novels from her: her favourite books were the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery who lived on Prince Edward Island in Canada. When I was travelling there, I visited the home of the author and bought a memoir that she had written called The Alpine Path. It was my kind of tribute to Mum.

 

Dad had matriculated at school in several subjects, particularly Mathematics, which is why he was able to navigate the aircraft as I have described. Navigation was a key role in a plane like the Wellington which generally had five crew; a pilot, navigator and three Wireless Operator Air Gunners. Dad would have been responsible in close co-ordination with the pilot for getting all of them safely home. Regarding Literature, he didn’t have any particular interest in that subject area, but I have a much-treasured school prize book that he was awarded for Maths in 1930 when he would have been 14. The book is Kim by Rudyard Kipling, beautifully illustrated, which I didn’t read until later in life; it had vivid echoes for me when I travelled to India and Ladakh in my forties; I was then about Dad’s age when he died and the thought that he would have read this amazing book fixes me in a connection with him across time and space.

Fate sent them, [Kim and the lama], overtaking and overtaken upon the road, the courteous Dacca physician, who paid for his food in ointments good for goitre and councils that restore peace between men and women. He seemed to know these hills as well as he  knew the hill dialects, and gave the lama the lie of the land towards Ladakh and Tibet.

                                                                                 The End of the Search p.404

So, there we have it. It is now 80 years since the war in which Mum and Dad were both involved came to an end. After it was over, they met through a tennis club in Aintree that Mum’s sister, Joan, was part of, and they married and moved to Aigburth, Liverpool in 1949. They had both enjoyed their time in ‘the forces’, using their skills in a cause that was greater than they themselves. This year the end of that war is being remembered across the country and, although many of those who participated have died, their children will recall and celebrate the contribution that their parents made.

References:

Kim (1901) by Rudyard Kipling

Anne of Green Gables (1908) by L. M. Montgomery

The Alpine Path (1917) by L.M. Montgomery

RCAF Flying Logbook and Certificate of Service and Release (1946) Frank S. Leyland