CHAPTER 15
I opened the back door and stepped back two years. The smell was the same, but the colours seemed just a little more worn than I remembered.

“Mam! I’m home!”

She hit me like some great tidal wave, squeezing and kissing, crying and trying to talk at the same time. Dad simply stood in the doorway to our back room, smiling and fiddling with his pipe in what I realised was his way of holding his own emotions in check.

“Let the lad go, Lil. Son, welcome home. And bloody well done”

Mam sniffed. “Language, Sidney!”

Dad laughed. “I am sure Gerald here has heard a lot worse than that, pet”

He looked me up and down, and his voice changed. “Seen a lot worse too, I’ll bet. Come on, son. Lil, get kettle on. Happen he’s had a long journey. Right, lad?”

In more ways than one. I dumped the kitbag and settled into the familiar sofa as Mam busied herself in the kitchen, cups clattering away as she sang some stupid song or other.

“Mam!”

“Yes, love?”

“Got a bag of sugar and some other bits in kitbag!”

“Bless you, son!”

I looked over at my father. “Got some photos as well, Dad. Some aren’t for Mam’s eyes, aye?”

“You’ve grown, son. Aged, I mean. I… it were bad, weren’t it?”

“Aye, Dad. You know what it’s like. But it’s over now”

“It were meant to be bloody over in 1919, but it never is, is it? You all right?”

I thought about that one for a few seconds before replying. “No, not really. How is it for you, Dad? Do you dream?”

A shadow went over his face. “Every night, son. Every night. Your Mam, well, look. Talk down pub later, aye?”

Mam came in just then, and she had the best china out, together with some fish paste sandwiches she had cut up into triangles, and so we left the subject alone for later discussion. Mam only needed to know that I was home and I was safe.

“Mam, did you see that tin box in kitbag when you got the sugar?”

“Aye”

“Can you pass it us? Got some pictures in there, show you who I were with”

Ernie had spent some of our stay in Colchester getting extra prints done of his Leica shots, and they were the best record I had of our time together. I sorted them out quickly, some being a bit too much for a welcome home.

“That’s the crew, Dad. Ernie got one of the other drivers to get this shot. That’s Bob, our sergeant, commander, aye? Me on left, Ernie, he’s our loader, good lad, he’s the one on my left. Wilf were our bow gunner, on right, and that’s Harry, our driver”

I paused. “Wilf went when an anti-tank round went through his position. Got a lad called Bill in for him, after, well, first replacement didn’t last too long”

I sipped my tea, which had too much sugar. “Harry went as well”

Leave it at that, I thought, but Dad saw something in my eyes. He said nothing, though, just squeezed my shoulder. I continued passing the photos around.

“Ah! This isn’t one for Mam’s eyes, I think. We were going down this big German road, and it were like two whole roads, one for each direction, aye? And in the middle it were German soldiers, surrendered ones, marching the other way, as far as you could see, and we had some lads from Hull in the wagons behind us, and, well, they decided to show Germans what they thought”

It was a remarkably clear picture, a line of naked arses hanging over the side of the lorry. I had missed it before, but among all the downcast German faces one head was up, glaring at the East Ridings and making a very rude gesture. I passed it to Dad, and he burst out laughing before looking at Mam.

“Shall I? Oh, all right, then. Here you are, Lil”

Her own laughter was almost as raucous.

“Ernie’s camera, that one. Got it from a German truck we shot up”

From a dead German we shot up, I meant, the camera miraculously undamaged in the midst of the wreckage and blood.

“Ernie’s getting wed next month, Dad. Up in Thirsk. He wants me as best man”

“Then he has a good head for mates, son. Be just right, that, with timing. Give you a month to get your feet back on ground before you find yourself some work. New world, now. New country”

“Dad, I haven’t exactly come out with a trade, have I? Not much call for a gunner in Yorkshire these days, is there?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You worked with machinery, aye? Happen as boatyard will probably want lads who know how to use a spanner. I’ve already had a word”

“Dad…”

“No, son, I’m not setting out your future. You’re a man now, more than many older lads will ever be, those that sat it out at home. I’ve lined you up with something that can tide you over till you decide what you want to do with your life, because your life starts now. All of that is over, aye? Finished. Now you get to be Gerald Barker and not a number”

Mam sniffed. “And not a name on a headstone for us to grieve over, and that’s God’s honest truth”

Dad nodded. “Absolutely right, Lil. Now, son, Mam’s got a rabbit for tonight, so sup up, go and get settled into your room, and after we’ve had us tea we’ll take a walk down the Boatman. That suit you?”

“Aye, it will”

We ate, and Mam gossiped about lads I’d been to school with and girls they’d wed, and apart from the general conversation about friends, comrades, I noticed that neither of them asked any sharp questions, certainly nothing about the things that woke me at night.

Feeling shabby in my demob suit, I walked with Dad down to the end of the street and turned right for the pub. Twenty yards from the door, he stopped me.

“Son, you don’t have to talk about it, but you have to. Sorry, that sounds all daft. What I mean is that you will want to talk about what you saw, but you can do it in your own time, aye? Happen…”

He drifted off, looking past me into something from his own youth, then shook himself.

“Gerald, I understand. I had some… experiences I have never talked about, aye? Never found right man. Never wanted to hurt your Mam, either, and, well. There are things men have to do, and they are not for women to know about. You’re dreaming, lad?”

I looked him in the eye, and all I could see was concern for his boy, for me. “Aye, Dad. I… look, we saw some things, one place, and the only one of us who saw it all...”

He waited, so patiently, till I could get it out.

“Our driver he were. Lovely man. Shot himself on boat back to Harwich”

He was silent for twenty, thirty seconds, and then began speaking in a low voice.

“I went over there in seventeen, son. Right into bloody retreat, a complete shambles. Germans got stopped somehow, then it all sat for a while until we were rolling them back, but it were still hell. Watched a mate drown in front of me, drown in mud. Nowt I could do. All of us, we all saw things like that. You won’t remember, of course, but I married your Mam in twenty-two, and best man were my old pal, my mate, Bert Ainscliff”

He paused again. “Bert shot himself in twenty-six. He’d been buried twice by shell bursts, bloody big mortars Germans had in their lines. Always a race to get a man dug out before he suffocates, and all the time you’re watching for another of the bloody things to come sailing over, cause you could see them, they came that slow, and then you had to guess which bloody way to run, and Bert left a note, and all it said was that he was sorry and he just wanted to be able to sleep. So, son, you talk when you need to. I’m here. I wasn’t for Bert”

Suddenly, and without any warning, he stepped forward and hugged me, just for three seconds, then let me go.

“Let’s get those ales in then. Happen you’ll have a bit of a thirst on”

Heads turned at the bar as we walked in, mostly older men but with one or two younger ones mixed in. Demobbed or reserved occupations, I didn’t care. I was home, and there was proper beer. The barman called over to Dad.

“Hello, Sid, and who’s this?”

“This is my boy Gerald”

“As I live and breathe, and you were nowt but a lad! Where’ve you been?”

“Stupid bloody question, Joe. Lad’s been off with tanks in Germany”

“Lucky boy! Better than being out in open, all that steel around you”

I had to say something. “Aye, suppose it is, right up to when it catches alight. Pint of Sam Smith’s for you, Dad? Two please, Joe”