A few years back my Father gave some fishing gear to my Son Adam and said that he was "repaying a debt". Apparently his Uncle Ted Girling was serving in the army during the war and based in India when he received news that his fiance back home had run off with an American serviceman (Yes my American friends, hang your heads in shame!! you had a reputation for that kind of thing you know "Over Paid, Over Sexed and Over here"). Anyway, in a bid to probably do away with himself he joined the Parachute Regiment and was promptly dropped into Arnhem. I understand that he spent two weeks living in a cellar eating pickles before he was taken prisoner. Whilst a prisoner he eventually got a message home telling his parents to give his fishing gear to my Father. Hence, giving my Son some fishing gear, was his way of repaying that debt.
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I'm still trying to find out more about Great Uncle Ted. I think he was imprisoned in Dulag Luft Wetzlar near Frankfurt.
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As an aside joining the Paras probably saved his life as the company he served with in India was completely wiped out.
WRITTEN BY MY FATHER: BRIAN CHARLES HUNTER
16th September 2012
A DEFINING WARTIME EXPERIENCE:
It was a cold and biting London winter in an early year of the 2nd World War. For some months, my mother, father and I (aged 7) trundled with our bedding every night the 2 miles to my grandmother’s house, in order to seek refuge from the constant bombing, by sleeping in the corrugated iron Anderson shelter, partially buried in her small garden.
For several weeks, because of the intense cold, the entire family had forsaken the dubious safety of the garden and we 3 had been sleeping under a table in the living room: that is, with the exception of one particular night that will be forever etched in my memory.
To comprehend the dynamic forces at work that night, one must firstly understand the nature and character of my father.
An extremely humble man from a poor working class family, he was a gentle person who allowed more forthright associates to make decisions for him. Indeed his innate diffidence was a light hearted family joke, sensed and somewhat resented by me at that early age.
This particular moment however was a defining time of destiny for my father and all the family.
I see him clearly to this day, some 60 years onwards; a man suddenly galvanised to instant command, his small frame standing in the doorway with the hall lighting creating an aura around his being.
His authority that night was absolute: he demanded; yes demanded in a manner that would brook no argument, that everyone went immediately out in the cold to the garden shelter. Even his 2 brothers, who had never been in the Anderson before, were persuaded by the strength of my father’s will.
Just 10 minutes afterwards: a whistling sound, a tinkling of glass; no big explosion; the shelter tilted violently in the ground and there was an all-pervading smell of escaping gas.
My childhood memories of that moment are of my grandmother wailing “My poor house,” ARP wardens shouting “Don’t get out yet there’s still one unexploded” and the front room gas fire being incongruously but neatly deposited at the canted shelter entrance.
The remainder of that night was spent lying on the road under the cover of a reinforced brick built shelter.
Investigation at daylight showed the house to be completely destroyed and the centre of the bomb crater exactly in the position of the table under which my mother, father and I would otherwise have been sleeping.
As a family in London, we were fortunate during the blitz to survive other catastrophes by eerie and providential circumstances, but none that could not be explained by not being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The luck of the draw that dictated the fate of all Londoners in those dangerous times.
For the remaining 30 years of his life, my father was a humble, shy and gentle man, given to diffidence and quite prepared to let others make decisions on his behalf.
He never again achieved the cataclysmic metamorphosis of character necessary to acquire the overwhelming power of command that he undeniably possessed that defining blitzkrieg night 60 years in the past.
When thinking of my 3 sons and 5 grandchildren, my mind often strays to what would not have been, had events happened differently that night.