Prisoner of Dieppe Read online

  By the third day the weather had calmed and regular army routine resumed. We started every day with PT exercises on deck. And we had a full schedule of daily inspections, stripping and cleaning of weapons, and drills. The army was determined to keep us in fighting shape. But the officers were a little more lenient than usual and there were no Kewley types on board, luckily. In addition to our platoon from the Royal Regiment, there were men from the Essex Scottish of Windsor, Ontario, the South Saskatchewan Regiment and the Fusiliers Mont-Royal from Montreal. We would all be stationed together in England as part of the 2nd Canadian Division. I tried out my high-school French with a couple of the Fusiliers and usually got an answer back in English.

  Mackie’s cabin was the preferred hangout spot for the Royals on D-deck. He was the most popular guy in the platoon. I didn’t play cards or smoke, so when I dropped in there, I sometimes felt like his annoying kid brother. I was glad that nobody smoked in my cabin, which I shared with five others including Pullio. Remembering the smell of Kewley’s tobacco breath was enough to put me off cigarettes for life — one of the few things I can thank him for.

  When the ship was lurching, I found that lying in my hammock was the best place to be. I was happy to spend my off-hours there reading the paperback books I’d picked up in a second-hand store during my final leave at home. I’d even found an old travel guide to London and was marking off the places I most wanted to visit. I only hoped Hitler’s bombs wouldn’t destroy Westminster Abbey or the Tower of London before I could see them.

  On our sixth morning, I looked through our tiny porthole and saw land in the distance. During PT exercises on deck, green hills topped with heavy grey clouds came into view. The ship’s bow was pointed towards what looked like the mouth of a large river. Before long I spotted the grey stone buildings and church spires of a seaside town. It reminded me of Largs, a place we’d gone to for holidays when I was a small boy. Steamer excursions from Glasgow went down the River Clyde in summer — people called it “goin’ doon the watter” in Glaswegian slang.

  After PT was finished I said to Mackie, “Those hills remind me of Scotland. We might be going up the Clyde.”

  “You think so?” he said. “I’ll find out.”

  He went off and chatted to one of the ship’s crewmen — Mackie knew everybody on board, it seemed — and then came back.

  “Yup, it’s the Clyde,” he said. “We’re supposed to land in a place called Goo-rock.”

  “Gourock, right,” I said, pronouncing it correctly. “It’s near Greenock, just down the Clyde from Glasgow.”

  “Well, Allie,” said Mackie, throwing his arm around my shoulder. “The two Scotsmen are going home!”

  “Aye, aye!” I replied, sensing his excitement. I looked forward to writing to my mother about being back in Scotland.

  As we walked down the gangplank in Gourock, some of the local women had hot tea and sandwiches waiting for us. I told a couple of them that I’d been born and raised in Glasgow. “You sound a right Canadian now, son,” one woman said, “you’ve lost your accent.”

  We then marched to the train station and boarded the train for Glasgow, from which we took another train south. People stood in the windows of houses along the railway tracks and waved white pillowcases to welcome us. Although it was a grey November day, the Scottish countryside was green and “awfa bonnie,” as my mother might say. Mackie kept pointing at all the ruined castles — becoming quite the proud Scot, all of a sudden.

  We didn’t get to Aldershot till the wee hours of the morning, and then we were marched quietly through the town to one of the huge red-brick barracks that could hold a whole company.

  Mandora Barracks

  Aldershot, England

  November 15, 1940

  Dear Mum:

  Just a note to let you know that we’re now in Aldershot, England, after taking the train down from Scotland. (We sailed right past Largs where we used to go on holidays!) Aldershot has been a big army camp since Queen Victoria’s day. The barracks are barely heated and we are all freezing! Every morning for inspection we must fold the blankets on our bunks in a special way with a second blanket tied around it. On top of that we have to put out our boots with the soles facing upwards so they can check that the hobnails are clean and shiny. Over here the army sure has its own way of doing things!

  We’re less than an hour by train from London, so I’m looking forward to seeing the sights when I get some leave. But don’t worry, I won’t go there when the bombs are falling! I hope to get up to Glasgow, too, when I can get a seven-day pass, and will write to Aunt Lil to let the relatives know I’m coming. If you see Mackie’s mum, you can let her know that he’s doing fine. (I don’t think he’s the world’s best letter writer.)

  Much love to you and to Elspeth and Doreen. Tell Elspeth I haven’t found her a boyfriend yet. She wouldn’t want an English one — they all have scary bad teeth!

  Yours,

  Alistair

  CHAPTER 4

  LONDON PRIDE

  November 28, 1940

  “Come on, Allie, run for it! Run, run, run!”

  Mackie was hollering from the window of the train as I sprinted down the platform. The conductor blew his whistle and the train began to move, so I ran even faster. When I finally reached Mackie, he opened the door and pulled me in and I fell panting into a seat beside him. Murphy grabbed my bag and tossed it into the netting of the overhead rack.

  “Fartley kept me right to the last minute,” I gasped between heaving breaths. Fartley was our name for Sergeant Hartley. He wasn’t a bad guy, really, just a stickler for the rules. And it wasn’t his fault I’d made a sloppy showing at inspection that morning. I’d stayed up reading with a flashlight the night before, paging through my London guidebook to choose all the places I most wanted to see. I’d awoken in a groggy state and hadn’t made the folds on my blankets exactly knife-sharp. My boots, too, could have used a little more spit and polish.

  “Sergeant, make sure this man is given extra duty!” Lieutenant Whitman had called out during inspection after breakfast. (Whitman was from Toronto but he had studied at Cambridge University, where he’d picked up a phony English accent that earned him the nickname Twitman from us.)

  Extra duty on our first two-day leave! I could have kicked myself. Sergeant Hartley set me to work polishing the brass doorknobs in the barracks. Mackie and Murphy were getting impatient waiting for me, so I told them I’d meet them at the station for the 10:15 train.

  After they left, Fartley told me I had to clean out the ashes from the coal-burning grates that barely heated the barracks. This filthy job took most of an hour, so when I was finally dismissed I had to wash up and make a mad dash through the town to the train station.

  As I settled into the seat and my breathing calmed down, the train picked up speed. We could see into the windows of the houses and tenements close to the railway tracks. Some still had their blackout curtains drawn. Every home in Britain was required to have long, black curtains to shut out any light that might help the Luftwaffe find their targets during night bombing raids. Since Hitler’s Blitz had begun in early September, bombs had been dropping on London almost every night. Aldershot was only 40 miles from London and we could sometimes hear the distant crump-crump sound of the bombs and the rapid ack-ack of the anti-aircraft guns.

  As the train came closer to central London we began to see bomb damage. It was eerie to look into apartment blocks that had been half blown away and see rooms with flowered wallpaper and pictures still on the walls. The train suddenly went into a long, dark tunnel and within a few minutes we were beside the platform at Waterloo Station. We piled out of the train and pushed our way through the crowds in the concourse to the main entrance.

  “Let’s walk to Trafalgar Square — it’s not that far,” I said.

  Following the map from my guidebook, we took a bridge across the River Thames. I pointed out the Houses of Parliament downriver. The sun broke through the November cl
ouds as we walked into Trafalgar Square — which was swarming with pigeons! Before I knew it we were posing for tintype photographs with pigeons sitting on our arms. Just like typical tourists! Oh well, I thought, I can always send my photo home to my mother and sisters. I suggested we walk up the steps of the National Gallery that faces onto the square. From the portico we had a perfect view of Nelson’s Column, a tall granite monument with a statue of Admiral Nelson on top. The great naval hero of the Napoleonic wars looked down on a city that was once again at war. In the sky behind him floated cigar-shaped barrage balloons, designed to deflect low-flying enemy planes. Buy National War Bonds had been painted on the base of the monument, and the square’s famous fountains had been turned off. To three young men from the colonies, however, this was the grandest sight we had ever seen. Here we were at the heart of the British Empire, at the centre of the world, or so it seemed to us. We stood there quietly for a few minutes.

  “Piccadilly. How about we check out Piccadilly?” Murphy said, breaking the silence. “That’s where the girls are supposed to be.”

  “We can always do that later, Murph” I said. “Don’t you want to see Buckingham Palace?”

  Grudgingly Murphy tagged along as we walked across Trafalgar Square and through the gates of Admiralty Arch onto a wide boulevard called The Mall. I remembered seeing newspaper photos of crowds lining this grand avenue to see the king and queen in their golden coach during the coronation procession in May of 1937. My mother had taken us to the cinema to see a film about the coronation. (“The queen is Scots, you know,” she had told me more than once.) It seemed hard to believe that a German plane had recently flown right up the Mall and bombed Buckingham Palace, destroying the chapel.

  As we approached the palace we saw the giant monument to Queen Victoria in front of it. I pointed out the royal standard flapping on the flagpole, and explained that it indicated that the king was in residence. The king and queen had chosen to stay in London despite the bombing and this had won them special affection from Londoners. Sandbags surrounded the palace’s wrought-iron gates and there were lots of jeeps and soldiers nearby. We peered through the railings and I pointed out the balcony where the royal family often stood to wave to the crowds.

  “Doesn’t look like they’re gonna ask us in for tea,” groused Murphy after we’d stared at the windows for a while. “How far is it to Piccadilly from here?’

  “The pubs are closed now, Murph,” I said a little impatiently. “We can always go there later. You have to tell your mum you saw Big Ben.”

  Mackie followed me with Murphy behind as we walked down a street called Birdcage Walk. It ran beside St. James’s Park and we could see the tower of Big Ben and the spires of the Houses of Parliament through the bare trees of the elegant park. When we finally approached the Parliament Buildings, we saw that high rows of sandbags with rolls of barbed wire on top surrounded them. But they still were very grand and impressive to us. We stood and waited to hear Big Ben chime and it sounded just the way it did before the noon news on CBC radio. The Germans had tried to bomb Big Ben and its tower was a little scarred, but the huge clock still kept perfect time.

  We then went on to Westminster Abbey right next door. This ancient building had been bombed recently as well, but luckily only the courtyard had been damaged. I spied some of the memorial plaques to famous people on the walls and began reading them. But I soon sensed that Mackie and Murphy were getting bored. Murphy had a so-what-am-I-doing-in-this-old-church? expression on his round face. I took them to the chapel that held the tomb of Queen Elizabeth I, but even the great old Tudor queen lying there carved in marble, holding her orb and sceptre, did not impress them.

  “Well, maybe the Coronation Chair … ” I began to say but Mackie interrupted.

  “Uh, Allie,” he said, “Murph and I were just thinking —”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I know you guys have had it. Well, I can always come back …”

  “No, no,” said Mackie. “You stay. You like this stuff. We’ll catch up with you later. We’ll be at the Hammersmith Palais tonight. We can meet up there.”

  “Oh, sure, sure, that’s fine,” I said as they made a hasty beeline for the door. The Palais was a big dance hall that all the soldiers talked about. I figured I could get there on the Tube, the London subway system. I felt a little let down that Mack and Murph wanted to go off without me. But then I thought, Well, okay, maybe this is better, now I can explore London on my own.

  I asked a guard where I’d find the Coronation Chair.

  “Oh no, son, that’s been taken away for safekeeping,” he replied. “Bombs, you know. And we can’t let Jerry ’ave it.”

  To think of the chair in which England’s monarchs had been crowned for over six hundred years being destroyed — or taken off to Germany after an invasion — that was shocking, even to a Scot. Under the seat of the Coronation Chair lay the famous Stone of Scone, on which Scotland’s ancient kings had once been crowned. King Edward I had brought the stone to England in 1297 to show that he had conquered the Scots. And the Scots had resented it ever since. I remembered my father reading to me about William Wallace and Robert the Bruce and all the great kings of Scotland. I’d wanted to touch the legendary Stone of Destiny, as it was called, for my dad’s sake. Perhaps I’d inherited my love of history from him.

  Oh well, there was still the Tower of London to see.

  “If you’ve come to see the jewels, Canada, they’re not ’ere,” said a young soldier with a friendly face and a strong Cockney accent.

  “Beg pardon?” I said, finding him hard to follow.

  “The Crown jewels — they’ve taken ’em away. I think you ’ave ’em, or so I’ve ’eard,” he replied, nodding at the Canada patch on my arm.

  So Britain’s fabulous crown jewels had been taken from the Tower of London to be hidden from Hitler. Could they actually have taken them to Canada? I wondered. Clearly, the Brits really believed that the Nazis might be about to invade.

  “Oh, okay,” I said to the soldier. “But can I have a look at the Tower?”

  “Can’t go inside. But come on, I’ll show you round. I’m off duty for a bit,” he said, opening the heavy wooden gate.

  Alf, as the Cockney soldier was called, told me he was with the Royal Fusiliers who were stationed in the Tower’s Waterloo Barracks. In a few minutes we were inside the outer walls and standing beside a massive stone fortress with four turrets.

  “That’s the White Tower,” said Alf. “Lots of famous people were locked up in there.”

  I looked up at the tiny windows and thought of Queen Anne Boleyn taking a last look out before her beheading on a May morning in 1536. As if reading my thoughts, Alf pointed to the battlements and said, “They say the ghost of Anne Boleyn walks up ’ere some nights. I can show you where she got the chop, if you like.”

  We walked around to Tower Green, where so many people had died on the scaffold. There was a huge black raven sitting on a post. Alf told me his name was Grip and that he was the last of the famous ravens who had always lived at the Tower. The others had all died since the bombing began.

  “We ’ave to take good care of ol’ Grip ’ere,” said Alf. “’Cos it’s believed that so long as the ravens remain at the Tower of London, England is safe from invasion.”

  “Gee, I hope Hitler doesn’t know you’re down to your last raven,” I joked, but Alf looked at me unsmilingly.

  “Bloody Jerries. We might ’ave a visit from ’em tonight with those clouds clearin’,” he said as he looked up at the sun that was heading towards the horizon.

  On my way out we walked along the river side of the Tower so I could see Traitor’s Gate, once the much-feared entrance for prisoners arriving by boat. I thought of the young Princess Elizabeth being taken there in 1554 on the orders of her sister, the queen remembered as Bloody Mary. Elizabeth had thought that she would face the same fate as her mother, Anne Boleyn, but instead she was released after eight weeks, then proclaimed quee
n when Mary died four years later. I thought back to the marble effigy of Queen Elizabeth I that I’d seen only hours ago in Westminster Abbey.

  After saying thanks and goodbye to Alf, I walked across the Thames on the castle-like Tower Bridge and saw a brilliant sunset from there. On the other side of the river I ate some beans on toast and a jam tart with a cup of tea at a workman’s café. (A lot of the Canadians complained about English food, but I didn’t mind it. It reminded me of my mother’s cooking.)

  After supper, I crossed back over the Thames on London Bridge, humming the famous nursery song about it falling down, falling down. I wondered to myself if that song was known in Germany and whether the Luftwaffe might be planning to make it come true.

  I had thought I might take the Tube out to Hammersmith to meet up with Mackie and Murph at the Palais dance hall. But when the sirens began sounding, I realized the Tube would likely be shut down — the Underground stations became shelters during air raids.

  People started streaming towards one.

  “Come on, Canada!” a woman in a headscarf called out to me. “Best ’urry on down to shelter.”

  I followed her to the station entrance and joined the others descending the stairs below a red poster that said Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution WILL BRING VICTORY. But that advice didn’t seem necessary for this station. All along the platform people were cheerfully sitting or lying on blankets and chatting to each other as if it were a friendly neighbourhood gathering place. Down at one end, two boys were playing harmonicas and a few people were singing and clapping along with them.