"Up at 5.45 a.m. preparing for home going. Received pass etc & left camp in lorry at 9.15 a.m. Left Beaconsfield Station on special train at 10 a.m. & arrived at Marylebone about 10.35 a.m. Caught taxi to Bill's home in Plaistow ............."
And so, at 4.30 p.m. on this day seventy one years ago, my dad arrived home at last to his wife, May, in Paper Mill Lane, Claydon, near Ipswich, Suffolk.
They had married on 31st March 1941 and four months later, he had set sail in the Rangitiki, amongst 2,000 troops, for active service in WW2.
He continued to keep his diary until the end of June 1945 and recorded:
reunions with family and friends;
visits to the cinema
several treatments at the dentist
doing some gardening
looking after the dog
meeting up with his sister, Betty
What a strange transition it must have seemed!
p.s. After I had composed this, a memory popped into my mind of a wooden toy I had when I was little. It was a butterfly on a wheel with a long handle and when I pushed it along the butterfly's wings moved up and down. I remember my mother telling me it was made by a German prisoner of war.
It's been great to know that so many of my 365 friends have been interested enough to follow these extracts.
I find, looking back, that I've posted quite a few diary extracts during my four years on 365. Refs to just three of these:
http://365project.org/quietpurplehaze/just-another/2014-04-20
http://365project.org/quietpurplehaze/365/2014-08-02
http://365project.org/quietpurplehaze/365/2014-08-11
© The Second World War Experience Centre.
© IWM (5193) 1981.
Julia, thanks, didn't know that about the Rangitiki.
Peter, thank you. Good luck for the photos! (The Spitfire, of course, was produced just down the road from us.)
Fav.
Throughout my life I've known several men (including my dad) who fought in the War (and one German woman who was imprisoned, and after the War moved to America), but none of them would talk about it much at all - and writing their experiences in a diary would have been out of the question.
Several years ago I also met a young Persian woman from Iraq ...She had been told all her life that WWII never actually happened, and that the concentration camps were a lie devised and spread by the Jews (!). She stared in disbelief when I told her that I knew people who had actually seen them and experienced the war.
Anyway, thank you for treasuring your dad's documents and sharing them with us!
Beryl, thank you for your interest in my dad's diaries and for the fav for today's photo. I'm glad I made the effort to do this.
I read your comment with interest. My dad said he started his diary out of 'sheer boredom'. What came to me were 3 brown paper covered exercise books with the account of his wartime experiences and then after he died this last little daily diary was found. So I think he wrote day by day and then composed the story from them. I think it must have been helpful to write stuff down (I certainly find it so) but he did not speak much about his experiences afterwards. When he was 61 he gave an interview to the Imperial War Museum and was then able to speak about the unspeakable time he had after the bombing of Dresden: he and fellow PoWs were sent in to help clear up the devastation as their work camp at a cement factory was at Cossebaude a few miles away. That was probably the worst experience.
Beautiful capture, love the lighting, focus and beautiful bokeh. Fav and follow!