Hitler and my Grandfather - Chapters 9-10

CHAPTER IX

THE RETURN TO BARNSLEY

Many times over the years my thoughts turned to a return to Barnsley to at least say “Thank you” to my wartime ‘mum’. Whilst stationed in Yorkshire with the army and working a couple times for short periods in Harrogate, the opportunity never arose.

Thirty years later in 1975, I had three days annual leave to come and I was at a loose end, no odd jobs to do in the house strangely enough, nothing. Fate was about to step in.

I called into a local tailor’s shop to see a great friend of mine who was the manager there. He had the afternoon off. I was talking to the owner of the shop explaining I was at a loose end. He asked me if there was anything that I ever wanted to do and hadn’t done. Jokingly I mentioned returning to Barnsley. “Come with me” he said and took me round the corner to the local library. He took a book out of the library and wrote on a piece of paper “The Hotel Royal” and a phone number. “There you are” he said “off you go!”

Coming out of his shop I made a bargain with myself, I would ring them and if they had a vacant room I would go, if not, forget it perhaps forever. They had a vacant room. So next day I found myself leaving St Pancras in the afternoon just after 2 o’clock and thinking to myself what on earth am I doing. If I could have got off the train then I would have done so.

I arrived at Barnsley at just after 5 o’clock and checked in the hotel. I enquired if I could have a meal and was told the evening meal wasn’t until 7.30pm so I decided to slip out and see if I could get an evening paper with a crossword puzzle in it to pass the time. Going out of the hotel and round the corner I saw a slip road and looking down it, to my astonishment saw it was Barnsley Bus Station just as I remembered it all those years ago. To get my bearings I decided to walk down to the stop I used to get the bus home from school. Sure enough, it was the same and a bus was at the stop. The driver looked at me and asked where did I want to go to which I replied “Lundwood”. He asked me which part and then a strange thing happened, a voice said “Candy Cross”. I still don’t believe to this day it was mine but it must have been because there was no-one else there apart from the driver and myself. “Cundy Cross you mean?” he said. If anybody had ever asked me that question I would never have remembered “Cundy Cross.” I asked the driver to put me off there. I reached my destination after a short ride the and everything looked very familiar. It is strange how long a journey seems when you are young yet when you are older it is quite short.

I got off the bus at Cundy Cross which was on a hill. It was a beautiful May evening. There was the old familiar smell of coal dust in the air, even though the four coal mines had closed down. Nothing had changed. Within ten minutes I was standing outside the house where I had spent three months of the war. I was dejected, my wartime ‘dad’s’ pride and joy, his green house had gone and in its place stood a small asbestos garage. They have long gone I thought, downheartedly contemplating going back to the hotel and calling it a day.

I’ve come this far I thought after a while, I might as well knock just to see if they had any information about my wartime family. I knocked on the front door, even though in the old days they used the side one. No answer, but I thought I heard movement. I knocked again and after a while the side door opened - Mrs Wines!!

I cannot put my emotions on paper. I walked up to her and said “It was a boy you wanted, wasn’t it?” (the exact words that were said when I was ‘delivered’ 30 years earlier). She looked startled and a little afraid. I quickly assured her not to worry. I asked her if she remembered the evacuee she had during the war by the name of John Hilton. Quick as a flash she replied in the affirmative. I told her I was he. It took quite a while for it to sink in, suddenly she grasped it, took me into the house and said to her husband “Who’s this Albert?” and then to me “Don’t tell him, lad” and disappeared. I stood there all embarrassed and he kept saying to me “Eeh lad, side faced you look familiar”. Mrs Wines returned with her mother and the lady who had lived next door there while I was staying there. There was great jubilation. Mrs Wines just could not grasp the fact that I had gone back to find them. She kept asking me if I was on business in Barnsley. Eventually it all sank in. She phoned her daughter but she was going to a special dinner and couldn’t get round. Mrs Wines said I bet she does come. Later that evening she did. I remembered her as a four year old girl but she was nearly middle aged now.

There was much to talk about as you can imagine. There were two strange things that came out of the conversation, firstly, if I had gone back two days later I would have missed them as they were moving to a bungalow for the elderly a distance away. The second was when I knocked on the door the first time, although they thought they’d heard a knock they didn’t answer as the only time their dog didn’t bark was when their daughter came round!

Contact had been made. I left that night intending to go back home next morning. I had to go to a florist to send Mrs Wines some flowers before I left. The florist was an elderly lady and she asked me what the situation was, birthday, wedding anniversary etc. I briefly explained and she retired into the back of the shop and brought out her husband. She told him what a lovely story I had just told her and repeated it to him. She then told me she could add to my story. Apparently as a young women during the war and belonging to a voluntary help club, she was one of the people who greeted us evacuees and looked after us in the civic centre. “I will always remember you poor little mites when you arrived, so frightened and scared” she said emotionally.

Next day I returned to see my ‘mum’ again and thank her. She told me that the day I left, all those years ago, they didn’t know if I even got home safely or whatever became of me but she said not a month went by that they didn’t think of me.

I returned several times after that and took my family to meet them. I loved sitting with Mrs Wines by the glow of the coal fire just chatting.

I was a ‘surprise’ guest for Mr and Mrs Wines’ Golden Wedding Anniversary. The headlines in the ‘Barnsley Chronicle’ read “Evacuee Returns for Golden Wedding”. On each visit I made it was evident that my dear wartime ‘mum’ was getting frailer (my wartime ‘dad’ had died a few years earlier).

Then on one visit when I said goodbye to her we both knew it would be the last time we would be together. There were tears in her eyes as I embraced and kissed her and although neither of us said anything, we both knew. My wife said later it was very emotional. It was indeed the last time I saw her. I owed her so much, God bless her.

CHAPTER X

MY WAR HADN’T ENDED

When I returned from evacuation I expected to be greeted with a cuddle and sympathy having just lost my mother because to me, it just seemed like yesterday. Of course she had died three months earlier and everybody seemed to be afraid to mention her name in front of me. I wanted to talk about her. It was stalemate. I then decided to bury all my wartime experiences in the back of my mind. Big boys don’t cry! I never talked about them.

Fortunately I have always enjoyed good health, rarely had anything wrong with me, apart from a broken ankle playing football and odd, not serious, accidents at work.

On the Sunday before Christmas 1990, a very stormy day, I came out of church and stood at the bus stop with my wife waiting for the bus. A particularly strong gust of wind seemed to hit me. My legs went to jelly, I couldn’t stand, a strange gloom came over me. It got worse, I was descending into a world, mentally, I couldn’t understand. My wife phoned my son to come and get me.

Over the Christmas holiday I became a ‘zombie’. I only spoke when necessary, which wasn’t often. I couldn’t focus on anything. Looking back now, I can only describe it as hanging on desperately by my fingertips and if I let go I would have fallen into a deep abyss.

My family were worried so as soon as possible after Christmas, unbeknown to me, my wife went to the doctor and explained the situation to her. She said bring him up to me, if he doesn’t come I will call on him. How I got to the doctors, I will never know, but I did.

I remember, luckily the waiting room was empty. After a very short time while the doctor called me in. I didn’t know what I was going to say, I had no physical pain, I just didn’t know what the matter was. “What can I do for you Mr Hilton?”. Something snapped, I burst into tears, then the whole sorry saga of the war started coming out, not very coherently.

The doctor gently spoke to me to get the facts in order. We spoke for a long time. I was beginning to feel a bit better as we talked. At the end she asked if I had ever talked about it before to anyone and I said I hadn’t. She said incredulously “You mean to tell me that you have locked this away for 45 years?”

She asked me to come back two days later after surgery hours, to talk more. This we did. She told me I must tell my family and my brother all that I told her and I said I just couldn’t bring myself to tell anybody. She said, record it on a tape so they could listen to it or write it down. Thankfully our talks had done the trick. Mentally I was much, much better. One thing the doctor said, which I hadn’t take much notice of at the time but on later reflection it proved to be a key to a lot of my troubles, was that I had never grieved for my mother properly.

Eventually I was able to tell my family a potted version of my problems which they all accepted. By now I was back to normal. Occasionally someone would mention something about the war and it would trigger of old memories but nothing serious.

In my life I have so much to be thankful for, a caring family, all that I ever wanted. I have had good health, so very important. I firmly believe that all the good things in my life have more than outweighed the bad things but somehow I can never quite get out of my mind how I was robbed of six vital years of my life from nine to 15 thanks to Mr Hitler and my grandfather.

The doctor had told me to write this down. Thirteen years later I have. I hope now I have laid the ghosts of the past and may be allowed to live out the few remaining years I have left mentally at least in peace. This is the first time I have told the whole story.

THE END

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