I am writing this on the 65th anniversary of D-Day, commemorating the landing in France of the Allied forces in their successful campaign to rid Europe of the murderous Nazi regime.
It reminded me of the first American I met, a few days before the invasion began. My family were living in the Quantock Hills, in Somerset. American soldiers were training somewhere in the area, though we never knew exactly where.
I, my sister Wendy and my brother Clive were playing an informal game of cricket on a flat stretch of grass at Courtway. We had a few stumps, a bat and a ball, and that was enough. I was 17, Wendy was 16, Clive was 13. I suspect that Wendy only joined us because she had nothing else to do on that warm June evening. Courtway was a remote hamlet in those secluded hills; a post office-cum-shop, a corrugated steel chapel, and a few houses and cottages, a pub called The Bell half a mile distant, and that was it.
As we played our game, we noticed an American GI watching us. He was in uniform and wearing a steel helmet. He wanted to know the rules of this strange-looking game. We told him, and invited him to join in. This he did, with more enthusiasm than skill. When it came to bowling, he was inclined to pitch the ball like a baseball player. When it was his turn to bat, we had to warn him that if he connected with the ball as a baseball player would, the ball would disappear into the gorse bushes and in all probability be lost.
When we had had enough cricket, we asked him back to our cottage, and he readily agreed. Indoors, he apologised for not taking off his helmet. His head had been shaved, he told us, and he was self-conscious about his appearance. None of us could guess that 60 years later that style would be in vogue.
Because security was tight, he would not reveal his real name; because he came from Georgia, he said we could call him George. He was a good guest. He told us about his home in Georgia and his family. He played the violin, though without any professional ambition. I brought out my own violin, and George played it, my mother accompanying at the piano. What George would not do was tell us about his army activities, beyond the information that he had been called up ('inducted' was his word) like thousands of others in Franklin D. Roosevelt's determination to crush the spread of Nazism. We understood, and didn't press our questions. We all knew that the invasion was imminent, and that security was important. 'Careless talk costs lives' was a slogan imprinted on our minds from the beginning of the war 5 years earlier.
Before he left, George gave his home address to my mother, who in return gave him ours in case he felt like getting in touch at some later date. It never happened. We heard that George's landing craft had been sunk before it reached Utah Beach, with no survivors. Utah Beach was exceptionally well defended, and American casualties were heavy. We were grieved to know that George was one of them, and that so friendly a young man would never grow to full maturity and lead a normal life. My mother wept.
Three months later, I was called up, trained as a specialist radio operator and, in February 1945, sent out to France to take part in the last 4 months of the campaign. My mother was anxious: she had experienced some of the horrors of war during her time as a nurse in France during World War I. My father had also served in France, and seemed to take it for granted that that was young man did. As for myself, I was determined to 'do my bit', to do what was asked of me without complaint.
I crossed the Channel on D-Day+235, or thereabouts. Some of the men in my new unit had crossed on D-Day itself, and did not let me forget it. They were justifiably proud of their action, and felt superior to anyone who came later. One of them even, in a fit of irritation, called me a 'D-Day dodger', as if I had made a deliberate decision to avoid the danger by being only 17 at the time and working for the war effort in an aircraft factory.
After the failure of Hitler's last counter-attack in the Ardennes (the 'Battle of the Bulge'), two months previously, there was a feeling of victory in the air. But I never forgot George, his gentle manner, his courtesy, his friendliness. He had, of necessity, been trained to fight, but he was not a soldier. Any more than I was.
