Share your parents' story
I take my inspiration from another thread, where a TZUK stalwart shared his father's most interesting WWII and subsequent story.
I bet some on here have tales to tell, as related by their parents. Here is mine.
My father entered WWII with the Royal Engineers. As a stonemason his talents were recognised and deployed in making cemetery gates, though he did have spells of "real" action, mainly in the Sicily landings.
Postwar, he was employed on the maintenance staff (or so he claimed) of Netherne hospital, a huge mental health establishment in Surrey. He also had a second career as a music hall act, a Harry Lauder tribute act in fact (the family is of Aberdonian stock, Huntly to be precise). He ended his life as a self-employed builder in Liskeard, Cornwall, at the age of 52. Smoking was his downfall; he should have been buried in Old Holborn.
My mother was barking mad; she had a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. It made her life interesting to say the least.
In WWII she was a WRNS naval nurse at Devonport. The nurses' hostel at Stonehouse Barracks had a direct hit and all nurses were killed save those on duty at the hospital. How anyone remained sane after such experiences I will never know.
Postwar she worked as an immigration nurse at Croydon Airport when it was the main airport for London; just pre-Heathrow.
Then, being medically-trained and a gifted artist, she was employed as an anatomical artist, painting muscles and ligaments onto polymer resin skeletons cast for the medical education sector. The Art Dept. consisted of my mother and Dr. Tauber, brother of the tenor Richard Tauber; the siblings had fled Austria to avoid the Jewish persecution.
One side effect of this was me being supplied with a reject child's skeleton saved from the skip; the purpose was to avoid having to buy me a teddy bear or similar; I sometimes wonder how I managed to remain so normal.
We lived in a grace-and-favour flat above the skeleton factory in Brighton Road, Hooley, Surrey. When trade demanded an expansion, the company (ESP - Educational and Scientific Plastics) built a new factory in Reigate (or was it Redhill?), but they selfishly omitted to design a flat above the factory so my parents decided to make the Big Move to Cornwall. Skeletons were delivered via British Railways to Liskeard station for my mother to outwork, a fact that caused much gossip in the local community given that the contents of the crate had to be displayed on a label.
She died in 2000 following a stroke caused initially by a fall from the window of her 1st floor sheltered flat; she told me before she died that she had to jump out of the window because the complex manager was cutting the faces off the occupants and storing them on a shelf in her office. She had seen them.
Anyone else care to share?
Share your parents' story
My Dad was born in Merthyr Tydfil in 1925. Family moved to Birmingham in 1935 for I guess economic reasons and he did well at school. Volunteered for the RAF at 17 in 1943 but was rumbled and sent to Edinburgh for more training until he turned 18. Assigned to Coastal Command in Koggala Lake - Ceylon in 43/44 and seems to have served the war out there as a tail gunner in Sunderland flying boats. Much better theater of war to be in those aircraft as the Atlantic theater was a lot grimmer weather and survival stats. Boxed and played rugby and football by all accounts. Returned from the war and demobbed then got a job at Land Rover in Solihull in 1948 (whilst living in Nuneaton where I was born) when it opened, along with seemingly most of my family. Met my mum who was 9 years his junior (from Darwen Lancashire migrating south after cotton mill work affected her health) on the Land Rover works bus and all was good. Became the chairman of the Land Rover social club in the early 70’s and loved the sports, people, and a beer however in 1975 he passed away aged 49 from stomach ulcers. They had three kids and all went to Uni first generation, my brother became a university Professor, sister a master degree then country park ranger and I worked my way up in the Oilfield. Happy, loving, (albeit Land Rover centric) but not wealthy childhood so we made the most of the opportunities that came our way.
I don’t have a lot of his war records bar a few letters and photos of the squadron under the wings of the Sunderland, and of his flight crew. I didn’t ask enough about before he passed however he seemed to have left the experience with a broader world view - not to mention a love for Asian food and the Sri Lankan people. I have been to Koggala lake several times for half term vacations with the kids, but also a bit of a pilgrimage, to see where he served. The RAF base was hastily carved out the jungle but is still there, now run by the Sri Lankan Air Force but pretty much looks like a WW2 airbase .
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