Page 4.

Mam had married again when I was four, to a local man, as opposed to my real Dad who came from the Midlands and who she met whilst she was in service at some rich Doctor's house. I can't remember my real Dad, of course, I was only eleven months old when he was killed, so living Dad was my Dad with no reference to anyone else. All I knew is that I had a lot of bloody relatives. There were the ones in the Midlands who belonged to real Dad, then there was living Dad's, then Mam's.

I absolutely adored all the ones in the Midlands, mainly because they spoiled me to death and I only saw them once or twice a year. When we went we stayed at Auntie Ada's, who was married to Uncle Norman, who was a steeplejack. They lived in a tiny house right alongside a canal, so close that Uncle Norman used to fish from inside his front door, in the days when there were fish in canals. The house had no running water or inside toilet but I used to love filling buckets from the black-handled pump in the yard that served the whole row of houses. I didn't even mind using the outside toilet becasue whenever I had to, I was on holiday and holidays are fun no matter what you do. I would swim in the canal in the days when you could do so without cathing every known terrifying disease. We made friends, little brother and me, with the children of another rich Doctor who lived in a big house next door. It had fantastic gardens and we all would play there for hours every day. Little brother fell in the canal once, before he could swim, and I dragged him out by his hair through a patch of nettles. He had a rash for a week.

In his younger days he never had much luck with water, did little brother. We all once went to stay with living Dad's brother in Oxford, where he ran a pub. I had never heard of the man, didn't know he existed before we went, but while we were there little and brother and me went to have a look at the river. We stood on the banks of the Thames, or is it the Isis in Oxford, watching rowing eights racing up and down the river when all of sudden the bank gave way just where he was standing, and plop!, he was gone. When he surfaced he was twenty yards away. I raced along the bank, very unusual for me because I hated running, still do, and I slid along on my belly, reached out, grabbed him and pulled him back up on to the bank. It was only years later that we realized what a close call it had been.

He passed away a couple of years ago, did little brother, at only fifty-odd years of age. Such a waste. He was a terrific guy, a wonderful family man, and the funniest person I have ever met. I miss him and I loved him, though I don't think I ever told him.

He swam almost as good as I did by the time he grew, but he didn't want to be a swimmer, he wanted to be a footballer and he was bloody good at that. Whereas, I loved swimming and just went for it after being picked out to join the Swimming Club by the man who ran the baths. Over time I would become all kinds of champion, a little fat kid who swam the stroke all wrong but who won. I loved it.

So on that first day when I came home from school and announced that I would be joining the Royal Navy, I ate my tea then went swimming. Mam didn't see anything wrong with eating first then swimming, rather than the other way round.

The Swimming Club was the social centre of my young life. Everyone I liked was a member, Mike, Zoff, Howard, Annie, Elaine, amongst others. They were the kids I looked up to but who were also part of my life. They could all swim like dolphins when I joined the Club, but I soon caught up. I practiced a lot, even on Friday afternoons when I was supposed to be at school. For years I went to school on a Friday, signed in, then bunked off at lunchtime to catch a bus back to the baths. It had several advantages. I never got any weekend homework, for starters, and the pool was empty which meant I could practice my backstroke turns which were quite difficult to do in those days. He who could do the turn, won the race. Finally, I got the undivided attention of the man who ran the Club.

One Friday I was blasting my way up and down the pool, arms windmilling, as stiff as ever, head back, legs pumping when I did a perfect shallow-end backstroke turn. Exalted, I pushed off with power, began kicking my legs, surfaced and opened my eyes. On the balcony was my Headmaster, dressed in all his black-robed glory, and Mam, just all dressed up. The man who ran the Club sat with a sheepish expression on his face. I think he was quite proud of my swimming prowess, or it might have been the fact that I never went to school on a Friday afternoon.

Anyway, that was the end of swimming during school hours.

Maybe when I joined the Royal Navy, they would let me swim all the time.

When Dad came home from the afternoon shift at the Steelworks, where he worked in the Blast Furnaces, now there's a job conjured up by someone from Hell, I told him all about my joining the Royal Navy. He nodded at me, patted me on the head and gave Mam a funny look. It wasn't exactly the reaction I was expecting. Then I realized what a shock it must have been, me dashing in and screaming it out. I decided to give them a couple of days to get over it.

Mam never got over it. She's nearly ninety now and still thinks I joined up just to spite her (it's not quite true).

Days passed and nothing more was said, the Royal Navy was not a point of discussion in our house. Selwyn and me spent hours talking about it, though, and other kids would listen in with amazement because their parents would never let them leave school. There was a law in those days that a kid at Grammar School couldn't leave until he was sixteen. There was only one way a kid to leave before that age. Join an Armed Force. But just as I never saw the Navy as an Armed Force, so I never for a moment thought my parents wouldn't let me go. They would be delighted for me. Wouldn't they?

After all, both real Dad and living Dad had served in the Army. All right, I concede that we were fighting those nasty Nazis, but a military history is important in a family and all I was trying to do was to keep the tradition going. Where real Dad was killed, living Dad survived, though it was some kind of miracle that he did.

I was at home once, on leave, and we had been for a pint and come back to watch 'The World At War' on our black and white in the afternoon. Suddenly he leaned forward to stare very intently at the images on the screen.

"What's the matter, Dad?" I asked.

For a moment he was quiet, then he lifted a finger and pointed at the screen. "That bridge is in Italy," he said, "and the ground forces had moved forward faster than the knobs at the top had realized. See those men on the bridge?" I peered forward and mumbled that I could. "Well," he continued, "one of those men is me. We are mining the bridge, we are just about finished, when this happens..."

I sat open mouthed as I watched aeroplanes swoop down and bomb the bridge.

"There I am," Dad said, as his finger followed a tiny figure as it flew up in the air then crashed back down into the river. "I went to Switzerland to get repaired."

I looked at him a new light.

"The planes belonged to the R.A.F." he concluded.

War, hey. What a bloody laugh.

He limped for the rest of his life from the shrapnel that remained in his legs and much, much later he got a war pension from a Government who didn't want to give it to him.

He'd never mentioned the War before then, just as Mam will never talk about it even now, but he chatted for a couple of hours that day and told me an amazing story.

As a young man, he'd been a bit of drunken lout, not much of anything, and when he was conscripted he was sent to a camp on the Isle Of Wight. While he was there he met a Scouser and they became friends. Together they decided that they didn't want to got to War, so they went home. They went home, scarpered, went absent without leave, deserted during a time of War. I don't think they thought it through. They stole a boat and rowed to the mainland. Dad went back to his parents and they built a hidey-hole in the coal shed, under the coal, which was never discovered. I don't know how long he'd been home, but one day the Scouser turned up on a stolen motorbike. My Gran told Dad to go out and tell him to go away, but the moment he stepped outside the Military Police rushed out from the houses on either side and got him and the Scouser. Both of them were sent to prison, but to different ones. Dad was eventually visited by an Officer who laid out his options as they now where. For deserting during a time of War. To be shot until dead. He gave Dad a moment or two to take this in, then he told him he other option. He could volunteer to join a brand new military unit being set up by the Army. And that's how living Dad became a Paratrooper. He fought with distinction and without injury throughout in North Africa, Sicily and Italy but got hospitalised by the R.A.F. Life is a bugger.