I have written before on my blog about my father's wartime experiences. Dad, John P. Weston, served in the RAF as a Code and Cipher Clerk in a Special Liaison Unit , attached to the 12th US Army, led by General Bradley.
For Christmas my daughter gave me a unique present - she sponsored a brick in her grandfather's name, on a new Codebreaker Wall at Bletchley Park, north of London, which became the centre for British code breaking operations during the Second World War - and is now a visitor attraction and museum.
Dad often talked about this experiences and I am afraid it did
provoke the reaction “Not the war again,
Dad”. We also used to
joke about him being in the Intelligence Branch. But later we came to realise
what a defining period it was in his life.I persuaded my father to write down his memories and Dad's own words form the basis of this family history narrative supplemented by letters written to my mother in 1944 and
photographs from the family collection.
It was only much later that I came to realize that Dad's sometimes lighthearted style was a sanitised version that masked the awful wartime scenes he must have witnessed.
I did send away (at some cost) to the Ministry of Defence for Dad's service record, but
it proved to be a disappointing contribution to this story, being little more
than a list of dates and meaningless abbreviations. As the covering letter said "The
record was compiled at the time of his service and contains very little detail
of his postings and movements".
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Dad was calleded for an interview with Group Captain Fred Winterbotham where he was told "You are being considered for a very secret job".
Dad was appointed to the Special Liaison Unit for training at Bletchley Park and the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, London. He was seconded to General Bradley's US 12th Army Group and in June 1944 was with them when they landed at Omaha Beach just after D Day.
"On the Monday morning 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 and we were in France!
The first night I slept in a tent but during the night it poured down and my sleeping bag was in two inches of water. 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!
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.........."
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!
Onto Paris, where Dad was stationed at Versailles and experienced a warm welcome from Parisians.
"I was stopped by a Frenchman who said in English “RAF Sir? My name is
Joseph Calmy. I was the Shell agent here before the war”. I offered him
cigarettes and he then invited me to a building and gave me a bag full
of Chanel perfume, toiletries, powder and cream – it lasted Mum for
years. I flew back with it when I got some leave in March ‘45. We
ended up in a café and went through some rush curtains into a back
room. In a few minutes a man and a woman came in carrying a bag, which
they unloaded to reveal eggs, butter, meat, grapes and champagne. I had a
meal of steak with a large bunch of grapes. When we came to leave it
was as if I was walking on air – I floated out of the café!"
Dated on the reverse in Dad's writing
Paris - Sept. 12th 1944
From Paris, Dad moved onto Luxembourg where he became friendly with a former member of the government and they remained in contact for many years.
"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 16th came a major attack on the American front. It was pandemonium...... This was the Battle of the Bulge. We carried thermite bombs in a
safe in our operations vehicle to be used to destroy our codebooks and
machines. We had rifles fully loaded with us at all times.......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. supplies. 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.
The advance on Germany continued
"We cracked a signal from von Runstedt to Hitler, which read, “Our troops are exhausted, we have little fuel, we are retreating”. After this we moved north of Luxembourg to Malmedy on the west bank of the Rhine... On March 7th
1945, there was great excitement in our operations vehicle. We learned
that a railway bridge across the Rhine at Remagen was still intact – the
charges had failed to explode. A US infantry battalion rushed across
the bridge to the east bank.
I crossed into Germany at Trier. I recall that
vividly. Patton’s tanks were ahead of us and were nearing the Rhine. His
engineers threw a pontoon bridge across and we followed. I was driving our
operations vehicle – there were GIs on the bridge with machine guns, urging me
to push on quickly in case of air attack. We made it and an hour later drove
into Wiesbaden to what had been the Luftwaffe’s former HQ.
It was then April 1945.
"V-Day arrived. The GIs went wild,
but we took it all quietly, with coffee and doughnuts from the Red Cross post –
very very nice!”
From Germany, Dad was posted to the Far East. " In Burma things were moving to a close. I was there at the ceremony in Rangoon when the Japanese capitulated. I was based at the university. We were always short of tea, which seemed odd in that part of the world, but there was plenty of cocoa. I also had a ration of one bottle of gin and one of lime juice a month. I used to drink that under my mosquito net at night watching the insects run up and down the wall".
"I had a short break in
Bombay before sailing on the "City of Asia" for home. I was in charge of a deck of some 200
men. We eventually arrived at Liverpool
on Christmas Day and went to a camp at Birkenhead. Then I caught a train to Blackpool and arrived
home by taxi at 2pm.
"One of the first things I
did was to cradle you in my arms – you were shy – no wonder!" MY WAR HAD ENDED!"
This has been a very enjoyable and at times moving project to read again Dad's own words and create a post on his war memories. I am now even more proud that my daughter has made this further tribute to her grandfather by adding his name to the Bletchely Park Codebreakers Wall.
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