A D-Day casualty continued...

It will be years later, from my uncle Bill, that I will get to know of George’s experiences on D-Day.

His task was to shuttle back and forth from the troopship to the beach with full loads of troops. At the end of the day they were to return to England. At some time during the day their landing craft was hit and disabled and had to be abandoned.

He and his crew were to spend six weeks stranded on the Normandy beaches! During this time, under long-range German shellfire night and day, regular strafing raids by the Luftwaffe, they were used as runners and general dogs-bodies by the beachmaster, the officer responsilble for all movement on and off the beach.

As he would tell his brother, Bill, all that was bad enough, but worst of all was having to clear the dead from the beach. He just couldn’t handle it. Not sober. He and his mates regularly raided the abandoned holiday homes bordering the beach and, being France, there were copious amounts of wine and cognac to be had. In his own words, "they stayed drunk for the whole six weeks." It was the only way he could cope.

This was the start of a life-long problem with drink.

Even as a child, I would notice the difference in him when he came on leaves after his D-Day experiences. Previously, when he’d bring all his friends back to our house he’d always be the centre of attraction, the girls hanging on his every word. Now when he drank he’d become a morose drunk - the guilt of the survivor? He didn’t drink for pleasure anymore. One evening, in late ’44, in spite of the urging of his friends to "come and play cards" he sat brooding at our large kitchen range as his pals played gin rummy. Suddenly…

"Ah’ll show ye’s ah’m no scared!"

He produced a bullet from his breast pocket, placed it in the middle of the hot coals, and turned his chair round and sat, four-square, in front of the range. The room cleared in an instant - Ma dragged me under the bed - and a minute later the bullet exploded with a bang, sending hot cinders everywhere!

After the war he stayed down South but, around 1947, he re-joined the Marines for a second stint. During this time he served on the cruiser HMS Belfast in Korean waters in that campaign, thus earning himself the two Korean medals - UN and British, to go with his Second World War awards. He was still only in his late twenties. His heavy drinking continued.

He married in 1952; Joan, a beautiful girl from Rochester in Kent. He brought her up to meet us in that year. He had just left the Marines and it was the first time I’d seen him in civvies. I was childishly disappointed.

The next year he returned, alone. The civvies, especially his gabardine mac, grubby and dishevelled, his marriage on the rocks. He received little comfort at our house; he found out my Ma, at 35, was dying of cancer. He stayed two nights with us, sleeping on the floor. The last evening before he left we stood at the corner of Maryhill Road and he borrowed half-a-crown from me, "ah’m dying for a drink." With a penknife he scratched "IOU 2/6. George." on a green-painted junction box. When I returned next day from school he was gone.

Forty-four years later, in 1997, I tracked him down to Reefton.

We had a wonderful three months of writing to each other. The last time he’d seen me I was 14, I was now 58 and retired. He’d been 27 and was now in his early 70s. Sadly, just as we were getting used to being in touch again, he took the first of the series of strokes that eventually left him unable to communicate. He continued to deteriorate until he couldn’t even recognise his friends anymore.

On Saturday 12th January, 2002, I got the call from Dom O’Sullivan, president of Reefton RSA to say George had died. He was 75. Dom and his wife, Kath, had kept an eye on him all during his spell in hospital.

So, there it is. Most of his adult life was spent in Reefton. I’m sure, over the years, there are many who would work with him, or who would just know him socially, over a beer or two. There will be those who liked him, those who didn’t, those who, quite correctly, thought he drank too much.

But, I’m the only one who remembers the handsome, young marine setting off through the dismal back-courts for a night out - Jack the Lad. Not yet out his teens, and D-Day to come.

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