Charles Waite - Survivor of the Long March

‘Mr Moore, tell me, does this mean I’m on the scrap heap?’

‘Oh, no, not at all. You carry on with what you’re doing.’

So I did. For a bit longer.

Lily knew what was going on. I told her about the meetings and she said, ‘We’re settled here, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, we are. I told them I wasn’t moving.’

They kept asking me and I kept saying no. It was on the third or fourth occasion that the roll of bank notes appeared. I was sitting opposite the director again when he pushed the money across the desk. ‘Have a think about it,’ he said.

On that particular day Lily was busy repainting the garage doors when I pulled into our drive just before midday. She only had to look at my face to know what had happened.

‘Oh, no, they’ve asked you again, haven’t they?’

‘Yes, they had me in the office first thing.’ I showed her the bundle of money. ‘Look what they gave me.’ I’d had a quick look at it in the car and reckoned there was more than £50 in notes (worth over £600 in today’s money). I took Lily’s hand. ‘It’s all right, I’m not taking it.’

The next day I returned the money without saying a word. I thought that would the end of it and they would get the message. I don’t know why, but they were persistent buggers and the next time they asked me I said yes. It was Lily’s decision. I think she realised that they must have thought an awful lot of me the way they kept offering me this and that incentive to move. She thought that a change might be good after all. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. We moved to Kidderminster in 1972 and I have lived there ever since.

I never wanted an office job or to be a boss or tell people what to do and fortunately that continued. I worked hard finding my way around a different part of the country and slowly built up my business with a whole new lot of customers. The Essex Boy was getting used to Brummie and Black Country ways. Lily and I worked awfully hard in those days and we only took short holidays or had days out. We enjoyed gardening and spent our spare time worked together on our patch at the back. Lily had the ideas and the artistic flair, and designed the layout and chose the plants while I provided the muscle. You know me –good with a fork and spade.

When I retired they held a party for me in the Birmingham depot. I was presented with a carriage clock which sits on my mantelpiece and is still going and keeps good time. Lily received a beautiful bowl of plants and a bouquet. She was very popular and had also worked for a while in one of their depots helping with the daily orders. I left the company at the right time because a year later they were taken over and everything changed. I was lucky.

I think it was about this time that my niece Ann Broom (my second eldest sister Doris’s girl) paid me a visit. We got talking about the family and were sharing memories of childhood and growing up.

‘What did you do in the war, Uncle Charlie?’ she said and asked if she could see my medals.

‘What medals?’ I said, ‘I haven’t got any.’

‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘Everybody who served in the war has them. Even Auntie Lily.’

We had never received our service medals – the 1939–45 Star. In addition I should have had the War Medal 1939–45. I thought we both deserved them considering what we had gone through. Ann found the address for me and I wrote to the MoD Medal Office in Glasgow with our details. A while later a package with a Droitwich post mark arrived. It was only a few miles away where the medals were struck. They came in two little boxes and I thought somebody had sent us some wedding cake. When I opened them there were our medals nestling in tissue paper inside, not a piece of iced fruit cake. I wouldn’t have minded that as well.

I didn’t have any reason to wear my medals back then but I put them away somewhere safe. I am proud today to wear them on Remembrance Sunday and at any function or occasion I attend where it is appropriate.

There were changes when I retired. I was spending more time with my family which I liked. I was always happiest when it was just the three of us. It was Lily and Brian’s turn to do what they wanted and I wanted to support them now their interests. Lily still loved sewing and enjoyed making things for friends. Her aprons and cosmetic purses were very popular and she decided to take a stall at a local craft fair. She was very successful and we started going regularly to these and bigger shows all over the place. I was happy taking a back seat, apart from doing the driving that is. Lily didn’t need me to do any selling as her goods just flew off the table by themselves.

Brian spent a lot of his free time on his hobby which was replica model train building. He started showing his models which he made from scratch in his workshop, engineering every piece by hand. He exhibited at model railway clubs and fairs in school halls and at venues like Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre. I accompanied him to his shows and enjoyed helping him set things out and chat to the people who came to look at his exhibits. Not that I knew much about the details, dimensions, gauge etc of the engines. Bit over my head. Being with Lily and Brian kept me busy and out on the road yet again.

Lily and I never travelled abroad. Lily didn’t like flying or going on boats so we always holidayed in this country. We never needed passports. However, Brian loved travelling and went all over the world and learned to speak French fluently and a bit of German. I would have loved to learn German. That is one of my regrets from all those years as a POW that I never learned more than a few words and phrases of German. I have tried to learn a bit on my own but it’s not easy.

Then in May 2010, at the age of 91, I got my first passport and I went abroad.

I am looking out over the sea from the top deck of the Cross Channel ferry. This is the second time I have been on my way to France. The first time the only documents I needed were my call-up papers, army pay book and a clean driving licence. His Majesty King George VI waived the need for a passport. Now I am returning in very different company.

The film crew have been very good to me. It’s chilly on deck and Peter has a blanket ready to put round me if I feel cold as soon as Nick has finished this bit of filming. I have to look out to sea and look as though I am remembering April 1940 when I boarded the troop ship at Southampton. I don’t need to act. The emotions are real. I remember it as though it was yesterday.

Peter Vance and Nick Maddocks from Testimony Films have arranged for me to visit Dunkirk and they will film me walking on the beach where I should have been on 27 June 1940 and probably drowned or been shot to pieces. They are taking me to a road near Abbeville where I am going to retrace the route I took the day my convoy met the German tanks and troops. It won’t be the exact spot where I was captured but I am feeling the same goose bumps and cold sweat I felt all those years ago when I was shit-scared facing those hundreds of enemy soldiers.

How wonderful at my age to have new experiences and new memories to store away! My good friends and neighbours Allan Jones and his wife Jan, are travelling with me and Allan has borrowed his son’s video recorder and is filming me being filmed. I’ve never had so much attention since the film company contacted me about taking part in a documentary for the Yesterday Channel called Dunkirk: The Forgotten Heroes marking the 70th anniversary of the evacuation from Dunkirk.

How many people get the opportunity to go back and relive important moments in their lives, however painful, to share with others who are interested and also want to learn what it was like? All that has happened to me recently has been amazing. I have good people around me, friends and family who care about me. And that’s a wonderful thing to be able to say. This is what keeps me going. I have no Lily and I have no Brian to keep me company any more.