Through France on a Cheese Sandwich

My father, Richard Woods, was born on 24^th November 1923; he was the youngest of nine children. He died, following an aneurism, on 3^rd July 2004.

While those are dates when I will always remember my father, 6^th June is probably the day on which I think of him most.

June the sixth will forever be remembered as D-Day, the day in 1944 when Allied Forces landed on the beaches of Normandy in Northern France during World War Two. Over 160,000 servicemen landed in France that day; 61,000 were British and my father was one of them. It is difficult for those of us born years after the cessation of hostilities to imagine what it must have been like to live through the years between 1939 and 1945, when war raged throughout Europe. Those of us with parents who did live through those years will have heard tales of deprivation, horror and bravery, and indeed the mundane, that were associated with those years. My father, just twenty years of age when the D-Day landings took place, was fond of telling tales of his experiences and for that reason today is the day when I will always think of him.

From what my father related of his days in the army with the Essex Regiment and the Seaforth Highlanders, most appeared to have consisted of route marches (fortified by little more than a cheese sandwich, apparently),  journeys by rail or road from one end of the UK to another, peeling potatoes in the cookhouse and cooking the sergeant’s breakfasts. Presumably at some stage some basic training must have been involved. The culmination of all of this was the crossing, in landing craft, of the English Channel.

Private Richard Woods. I think that the cap badge is the Seaforth Highlanders

If my father was to be believed, and given his character as something of a joker some of what he said must be taken with a pinch of salt, he ate all of his field rations during the sailing. This was probably unwise as he then brought them all back up again. Landing in France, the first and only time he ever set foot on foreign soil, he dug in and was pinned down by German artillery for some time. Advancing through France once the initial German resistance had been overcome, my dad would recall his unsuccessful attempts to beg or buy eggs from local farms, his knowledge of French being non-existent, but wax lyrical about the glass of calvados he drank in some long forgotten French village. Some years ago I bought him a bottle for his birthday; sadly it did not taste quite the same at home compared with his original experience.

Although he must obviously have engaged with the enemy from time to time and must have fired shots in anger, he was fairly sure he didn’t actually kill anyone. He must have come into quite close contact with the Germans at one point however as he acquired some souvenirs, in particular a German flag, helmet and officer’s firearm. Having carried these for some time, his battalion’s kit was picked up and carried by lorry. All was sadly lost when the lorry convoy came under fire from German aircraft and was destroyed, leaving him with just his rifle and the uniform he stood up in.

Fortified by nothing more than the aforementioned occasional cheese sandwich (so he said), he eventually made his way on foot into Belgium, where he was promptly shot and shipped back to England. Fortunately, his wound was relatively minor; shot in the arm, he made a full recovery but was left with an interesting scar running from elbow to wrist that remained visible for the remainder of his life.

Returning to civvy street after the war, my dad took up French polishing as an occupation but later in life worked as a school caretaker and then as a store man for a firm of pneumatic engineers. He was a man of simple pleasures; he would take great satisfaction from a glass of home brewed beer or wine and a day spent in the garden, where he kept an immaculate lawn and cultivated vegetables.  His home brewed beer, made largely from ingredients supplied by engineers from Romford Brewery, his customers at the pneumatic engineers where he worked, was potent stuff although it would have been a much smoother ale had he had the patience to allow it to mature longer in the bottle before drinking it. Now, if ever I smell hops I think of my dad.   Sadly, when he was in his sixties he developed macular generation which left him virtually blind in one eye and with seriously impaired vision in the other, to the point where once we passed within just a few feet of each other in the street without him recognising me.

His eye problems frustrated him greatly; he was always a practical person who, coming from a generation that made do and mended, was adept at repairing and making things. From scratch he made such diverse items as bookcases and secondary glazing units but such activities became increasingly difficult as his eyesight failed.

Probably because of the generation that he came from, and the family within which he was brought up, my dad was not given to frequently expressing his emotions; nor was he one for great displays of affection, but I know that he particularly loved his grand-daughters and would be immensely proud of them as they grow up.

In life, he was not a man to whom I could easily show him the affection that I felt for him. Today, as we remember D-Day, 6th June 1944, I will raise a glass to my father, smiling as I recall the stories he told of his experiences that day, wishing he was still here to repeat them in person.