A WW2 Family Tribute 80 Years On - Sepia Saturday

The latest prompt  prompt image from Sepia Saturday features an American actress in the film "Valiant".       This week in the  UK  I have been watching  the events on  television commemorating the end of the Second World War in Europe - the parade of troops in  central London (including a small contingent from Ukraine), with the salute  taken by  King Charles;     a Service of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey, a tea party  for veterans at Buckingham Palace  and lots and lots of  interviews and memories  from the valiant veterans, many now over 90 years old.  

You could not but be moved  by their stories of courage, terror and hardship and also by thos

 

This is my  tribute to my father, three uncles and aunt, who served and thankfully survived the war. 

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I look back at what my father, John Weston of Blackpool, Lancashire  must have experienced  during the war.

Dad  often talked about his war experiences and I am afraid it did provoke the reaction at times of “Not the war again, Dad”. We used to tease him about being in the Intelligence Service.  It was only later that we came to realise what a life-defining period it was.  I persuaded him to write an account for me, and this combined with  photographs and letters I found after my parent's death, provided the basis for me writing a  family history narrative

 

Dad  served in the RAF Codes & Ciphers Branch and was indoctrinated into the mysteries of Enigma and the One-Time Pad code, with training at Bletchley Park and Whitehall. London.  He then became part of the Special Liaison Unit, a team of analysts formed to scan, digest, and file the German messages, and forward them to the appropriate field commands.

It was strange many years later for me to visit Bletchley Park, Britain's Intelligenve HQ, now a museum,    and the Cabinet War Rooms in London  and to know that I was following in the footsteps of my father. 

After training, Dad   was seconded to General Bradley’s US 12th Army Group HQ. He landed at Omaha Beach just after D-Day and advanced via St. Mere Eglise, Avranches, Versailles, Paris, Verdun and Luxembourg through to Wiesbaden in Germany. Immediately after VE Day, he was posted to Burma where he was on VJ Day.
 
Dad was happy to talk about his experiences, but I am sure  they were an edited,  sanitized  version with his sometimes light hearted style masking the awfulness of the task. 

We never heard about the awful scenes he must have witnessed on Omaha beach,  on the fighting in the march through France, during the winter Battle of Bulge in the depths of winter, and  on into Germany.  Dad still felt bound by the Official Secrets Act  on what he could tell us. 

 

 

Here is his account of of landing in France in 1944, just after D.Day. 

"The day came when we moved to Southampton.  There were eight of us in a team handling ULTRA intelligence.  Like many more, we were in a camp and not allowed out or to make any phone calls.

It was Sunday when we made our way in our operations vehicle to the harbour and boarded a landing craft vehicle.  We zig-zagged our way across the Channel  (to avoid enemy submarines)  and arrived off the beach at around 11pm, some distance off our landing point.  Sporadic bombing went on during the night from high level German bombers. We slept where we could on the craft.  Just as dawn was breaking,  at 04.00am the captain started up the engines (there was quite a roar) and we moved in  fast to the beach.  The ramp was dropped, we drove off.  We were in France! 

I recall seeing a large sign OMAHA as we moved in.  Engineers had blasted a make shift road up the cliff and off we set. 

The first place we made for was Saint Mere Eglise, the first village to be liberated by the US 89th Airborne Division.  It was badly bombed and the roads rutted. 

We made our way to a little village near a copse – Laval. It had rained heavily and became very humid. In a clearing the GIs had set up trestle tables to hand out meals. We had portioned trays, but the Americans just had billycans to hold the meal of chicken and peaches. There were millions of wasps committing suicide in the fruit juice.

That first night I slept in a PUP tent (one man), but during the night it poured down and around 2a.m. my tent was flooded and my sleeping bag was in two inches of water. There was a lot of thunder and some animals around went berserk. I managed to sort myself out and was on duty the next day at 8a.m.to get our equipment organized for the advance through Normandy onto Paris."

 

I had a brief time off and went into the village. I saw some small bottles of brandy in a shop – and not much else, so I bought the lot (16 bottles) – they cost around 1/8 (under current 10p.) a bottle!"

  

In a letter home dated 27th August 1944, he wrote "We went through Le Mans, and Chartres to Versailles - very little damage.  We set up shop there and we had a good hotel with peaches growing outside my bedroom window, but I could not reach them." 

On to Luxembourg  "We had a good hotel and were able to buy   some very good cakes in the town. I became friendly  with a former member of the government [Mr Battin]  and was invited to his house. He produced champagne from his cellar and served them with lovely cakes with kirsch in them"

Conditions were much tougher once the troops moved north  "It was now December 1944 and bitterly cold – lots of ice and snow. Out of the blue at 4a.m. on December 16^th came a major attack on the American front.  It was pandemonium.....the Battle of the Bulge. Anyone moving around that night not giving the correct password (which was Betty Gable), was shot on the spot......The weather did improve somewhat. We were dropped supplies of food and more important the GIs got further weapons and ammo. At one stage we  were being served up five boiled sweets for one meal!". 

This meal of five boiled sweets became an, often repeated,  apocryphal family story.  

"On to Wiesbaden in Germany  where we celebrated  D-Day.  The GIs went wild, but we took it all quietly, with coffee and doughnuts from the Red Cross post – very very nice!”

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The following story of Charles Weston, my uncle, is told in the poignant  words of my father.

"Uncle Charles was a POW on the Bridge of the River Kwai — at least it was a bridge when the hundreds of POWs had finished it. Conditions were dreadful, 100s died through lack of food, mostly slops, no solids. Charles had beri-beri, dysentery, ulcers and malaria.  After the atomic bomb fell on Japan the POWs on the bridge were taken to Singapore and stayed in Changhai jail until shipped home. 

 

My Mum and Dad never expected to see him again. In 1942 they got a card through the Red Cross — from the War Minister which read “Regret to inform you that your son has been posted missing.  My Dad packed up work and the news broke him — he was never the same again."

 

[My father and Charles  were close as brothers and had these nicknames for one another  -  "Ace"  and "Mel".  Unfortunately I failed to ask my father about the origin of the names and neither my cousin nor I  have been able to find out anything.   Were Mel and Ace popular radio characters, for instance?   I would love to know, if anyone out there has any idea? ]

 

 

"It was at Christmas 1943 that Mum got a card from the Red Cross with a few words “I am safe and well” — “Safe” yes…..”Well” certainly Not.  I was so sorry for Charles, as he arrived in Liverpool with no-one able to meet him. I was in Burma and Mum could not leave my Dad.  A lonely homecoming for a POW."

 

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 Harry Rawcliffe Danson   was my uncle on my mother's side of the family from Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire.

Harry was one of the many saved by the small ships at Dunkirk, arriving back home many days later in the uniform in which he entered the sea to be rescued.  Unlike my father, he never talked about his wartime experiences, but seeing commemoration services or documentaries on TV could bring tears to his eyes, so the memories remained very strong. He later served in North Africa and Italy. 

 

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Harry's younger brother was Billy, named after his father William Danson.  Apart from knowing he joined the navy, I know little about his life.  

 

BILLY (William Leslie Danson), born in 1915 and  named after his father, was the youngest son of William Danson and Alice English of Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire.

 

Apart from seeing photographs of him in naval uniform, I know very little about Billy, apart from the fact we shared the same September date for our birthday. More research need here.  

 

He married in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire in 1941   Louisa (known as Louie)  Cerrone  of Italian descent and they made their home in the English Midlands.  They never had a family and I cannot recollect ever actually meeting Billy  though I did speak to him on the phone occasionally.  My parents, though,   kept regularly in touch with him. 

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Peggy Danson, my aunt,  was born after the First World War - the much younger sister of Harry and Billy.   

 

In World War Two Peggy served in the WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force), with a note In the family photograph album that she was  in a Barrage Balloon Squadron in Hull, on the east coast of Yorkshire.  

 

Balloon Barrages were a passive form of defence, designed to force enemy planes to fly higher and thus bomb much less accurately.  They were simply a bag of lighter-than-air gas attached to a steel cable anchored to the ground. The balloon could be raised or lowered to the desired altitude by a winch.  The work was not without its dangers, as the heavy steel cable could at times snap, resulting in devastating injuries to the operator.  

 

Peggy met her husband there - Harry Constable,. known as Con and after their marriage in 1949, they emigrated to Australia - settling near Melbourne. In 1980 she made her only visit back to Britain.  Sadly following her death, contact with the Australian branch of the family was lost.  

 

LEST WE FORGET  

MY VALIANT FAMILY WHO SERVED IN WORLD  WAR TWO

                                                   

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Adapted from Earlier Blog Posts  

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