Lamentations

Interview with a man called Vivien, who lived in the same road as me.

We were in the Tenth Battalion, the Berkshire Regiment. The headquarters was in Tilehurst. We finished infantry training on the Isle of Wight and then we were supposed to join the tanks but because the troops that were supposed to join 56 (London) Division had scarlet fever we were sent to join them in Suffolk near Bury St Edmunds. It meant we didn’t get any leave and as we went through on the train from Portsmouth, we went past Ealing Broadway, so I was so close to home. In Suffolk we joined the 56th Division. The general’s name was something Darling. In our brigade we had us and the territorials – London Scottish and London Irish. After Suffolk I had 28 days. Yes, leave. And then we got sent up to Greenock on the Clyde in Scotland to join the Highland Division.

And we went by boat to South Africa, in a convoy. It took six weeks. We were in a boat called “The California”. There was a cruiser and some corvettes. The cruiser was sunk by a u-boat. We’d got bombed up in Scotland and that was the only site of the enemy that we had over the whole journey. We had a few weeks in South Africa. We’d done PT on the boat but in South Africa we had to do route marches and it nearly killed us. And then we went in the Queen Mary to India. We had just a few days there before going on to Basra where all the trouble is now. The boat we took to Basra had been sunk and so it was a salvaged boat. The captain was a terrible man. When we got on there was this announcement that if the boat got hit the portholes would be shut and we would drown. That was our welcome on board! We got to acclimatise in Basra and then we went by lorry to El Alamein. What Montgomery did at El Alamein was incredible. You could read a newspaper at night with all the light from the bombardments.

You’re going on holiday, are you? To Sicily? You see I was in Sicily in the Army. We went to Catania. And we fought up through Sicily. Training? We had sixteen weeks on the Isle of Wight. The sergeant was a bastard on the parade ground but afterwards he’d sit on our beds and talk to us. I was just seventeen and a half.

The camaraderie in the army, particularly the infantry, is amazing. We had this Captain Wilshire who’d been a manager at Woolworth’s in Bow. And after we’d captured this position, we saw him hugging this German soldier. This German had run a fruit stall outside Woollies [Woolworth’s] but he’d gone back to Germany when his mother was ill and then the war started so he never came back. And these two they recognised each other. I was a full corporal; I had my section of eight men including a lance corporal.

I don’t know why anyone wants to go to war. If they could see what it does, what it’s like. The smell of it. Not just the people but the animals. And the Germans used to put dead animals in the wells to poison the water.

We came back from Italy through Switzerland, through the Spitser [?] tunnel on a fast train. And they’d said I’d get a home posting, which was as a sergeant, but in Stoke on Trent! So, I was going to the football game and we saw some Red Caps [Military Police] so we decided to put our hands in our pockets and they came up and told us to take them out and then they saw I was a sergeant.

Colchester! That’s a dump isn’t it? I had a foot injury from Italy so I was excused boots; I was posted to the detention centre. This Red Cap, he was horrible! He told me, “When you cross this white line you double everywhere.”. But I could be nasty too and I told him I was sergeant and he was just a corporal and I was excused boots.

I didn’t see my home in five years. Those Vauxhall Astras are popular now, aren’t they? Is that what you’ve got? Oh, a Toyota. It’s changed a lot here. I’ve been here fifty years. The thing that is different is the cars, there only used to be one in this road. And they drive so fast down here, if a child run out he’d have no chance. I called the Council and they told me to call the Police and the Police told me to call the Council. There used to be police living in those flats at the end. I was good friends with one, he left to be an inspector in Wells. It was good with them looking down the road

You missed the street party we had here last Sunday, it was fantastic. The bloke who has just turned up here said he now knows everyone in the street. I’ve lived here fifty years and I don’t know everyone. They say they’re going to do another party in a few weeks’ time.

I met the RSM, who I worked for in the second echelon at the records office in Calais, outside the Royal Albert Hall. And he didn’t recognise me but when he did he said I must come for a drink but I was on a coach and I had to catch it. I used to go to the Legion in Hanwell, but it’s so much drinking. I never liked that.

Only six from my battalion survived Anzio. I mean some of them would have been injured but you never found out if they’d survived. They couldn’t get the wounded off the beach. It was horrible. Just slaughter. I’m very sorry when I hear about these young lads getting killed today, but we used to lose two hundred in a day. They had to disband our battalion. We could choose what regiment we wanted to join and most chose the London Irish Rifles but I chose the Fusiliers.

I didn’t see my family for four and a half years. Before I went in the army I’d been going out with a girl – well I was only seventeen. When I came out of the army, she was married with a daughter but she asked me to be godfather and at the christening I met my wife. We didn’t have any children but I’ve a niece. I had a brother who was in the Navy.

Interview with Angie who lived next door to Vivien.

Oh, Viv’s brother is so different to him, he’s had three wives and he’s now living in Canada. Viv’s wife Mags was unusual in those days in that she was fifteen years older than Viv. She’d had to have have an operation and had been advised not to have children. They kept themselves to themselves. Jack [Angie’s husband] died of cancer so we’d do things.

Viv hated drinking I don’t think he ever has a drink. Him and Mags went to a wedding once and she was drinking sherry and he was so embarrassed cos she was getting drunk.

He likes watching the Remembrance on the television. He watches a lot of television, so he does.

When Jack died I went to a counselling session and there was all sorts of people there including vicars and nuns and you think those people wouldn’t feel upset by death but they're just like us and in this group you said why you were here and they said to me, “Do you feel angry with him for dying?”, and I let rip and says, “I’m not angry with him, I’m angry with God, I’m angry at the injustice of it!”. And another man said he felt the same, he couldn’t see how God could take a mother away from her tiny daughter. But it helped, just having a place to say all that you felt. It’s that first Christmas you’ve got to get through.

You know I think it’s really sad they never had children because Viv loves children and his niece and nephew live far away and they don’t really have time to visit him. But they’ve loads of money. One of them’s a lawyer in Cornwall and one’s got a house in Nice. But Viv is so tight-fisted. He says he’s saving up his money for them! He just won’t live. I say to him, “That gate’s not open yet you know, you’ve got to live!”.

Abu Ghraib prison was built by British contractors in the 1950s. Saddam Hussein became President of Iraq in 1979 and by 2001 the prison held 15,000 inmates. We don’t know what happened to most of them, but we do know that on 10 December 1999, a hundred and one of them were executed and buried in secret graves on the outskirts of Baghdad.
There were no prisoners in Abu Ghraib when the Americans took over the town in 2003. It became their largest detention centre in Iraq, and by 2004 it held over 7,000 prisoners. We know a good deal about the abuse of prisoners because journalists and Amnesty International were able to investigate with the protection of the institutions of a liberal democracy. People have, to some degree, been held to account. Seventeen US soldiers and officers were removed from duty and eleven were court-martialled and sentenced to military prison. Lynndie England served sixteen months in prison before being paroled and then discharged from the Army. The commanding officer of all detention facilities in Iraq was demoted to the rank of colonel. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the abuses when the evidence became incontrovertible. Some of the detainees have received reparations for the abuses they suffered. That is not to say that we can now assume that a liberal democracy won't carry out torture in the future – Donald Trump won support for saying he wanted to bring back waterboarding and “much worse”. Abu Ghraib should be remembered.