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    Soldiers’ Tales: As told to the folks back home
    Soldiers’ Tales: As told to the folks back home
    Soldiers’ Tales: As told to the folks back home
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    Soldiers’ Tales: As told to the folks back home

    By Barbara Hayes

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    About this ebook

    These are stories told by the young men who were actually at war. They are their versions of what was going on as they saw it. The tales come from soldiers, sailors and airmen, from the Boer War to the 21st century.

    This is not war as shown in the movies or war as appears in official reports. This is war as it is actually fought. In wartime there are some corners of foreign fields where things happen not quite according to the official rules and maybe unknown to the Great and the Good. Those looking at the big official picture may see something quite different from what is seen by a boy in one small part of the battlefield. But these are the stories the boys told to us girls back home. They will give you a different perspective of some famous events.

    All the men who told us these stories are long dead. But before I too am dead I am retelling their tales as a tribute to their memories.
    And there is one thing that every soldier I ever chatted with said - and I think it is something our politicians and generals could well consider now. These soldiers said that whatever fancy and clever new weapons were invented from cruise missiles to tanks, the outcome of a war always depended on how many men you had on the ground. “In the end, war always comes down to being a job for the PBI,” they said. “The PBI - the poor bloody infantry. No army can ever be successful without them.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBretwalda Books
    Release dateApr 20, 2011
    ISBN9781907791116
    Soldiers’ Tales: As told to the folks back home
    Author

    Barbara Hayes

    Barbara Hayes worked on the editorial staff and spent many years writing stories and picture strip scripts for the Amalgamated Press, situated in Farringdon Street, which is round the corner from Fleet Street, London. Later Amalgamated Press became Fleetway Publications and subsequently part of the Daily Mirror IPC publishing group.Barbara was just in time to work with some of the old Fleet Street hacks in all their drunken glory before the move away from Fleet Street to modern technical respectability.She got advice straight from the lips of Hugh Cudlipp, the famous editor of the Daily Mirror, and became married to an Amalgamated Press editor, Leonard Matthews, who rose to be a managing editor and then an editorial director.Over the years she has had some 80 books and about 7300 scripts published by companies from England to Australia to South Africa to Florida and back to Holland.She likes to think of herself as an old hack writer who succeeded mainly because she always got her work in on time and the right length - but if you read on carefully you might find quite a few other hints to help you.

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      Book preview

      Soldiers’ Tales - Barbara Hayes

      Soldiers’ Tales

      and Sailors’ and Airmens’ Tales

      As told to the girls back home

      Barbara Hayes

      First Published 2011

      Copyright © Barbara Hayes 2011

      Published by Bretwalda Books at Smashwords

      Website : Facebook : Twitter

      Copyright © 2011 Rupert Matthews

      Website : Facebook : Twitter

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ISBN 978-1-907791-11-6

      Contents

      Introduction

      The Boer War

      The Great War

      Peacetime Soldiering

      World War II — The Navy

      World War II — The RAF

      World War II — The Army

      The Cold War

      Into a New Century

      ----------

      Introduction

      Originally I was going to call this book Soldiers’ Tales as told to the girls back home. But then my son kept reading the stories over my shoulder and chipping in with bits and tales he said his Grandma had told him she had heard from returning soldiers, but I seemed to have forgotten. He also said his own young friends in the armed services had given him accounts of much more modern conflicts when they returned to England. That is why this book is now called Soldiers’ Tales as told to the folk back home. I hope you find it interesting.

      I was in my late teens as the 1939 -1945 war finished and the soldiers, sailors and airmen gradually came home to civilian life. All the boys I knew and/or went out with had been in one of the armed services either during the war or on National Service. (For several years after the war finished all boys when they reached the age of eighteen were called up for two years’ military service. This could have been served safely in England or it could have involved being shipped anywhere in the world such as Burma or Malaya where local fighting was taking place.) When I dropped round to tea with my school friends, their older brothers back from the war were often there chatting with us girls. When I started work in London in the 1950s, when I was in my twenties, all the men I worked with or went out for a drink with after work — as groups of us usually did — had been in the 1914-18 war or the 1939-45 war.

      My experience was that men who had been in real bloodshedding combat never wanted to talk about it. The only time they would suddenly blurt out an account of some terrible experience would be if there had been an item of news or some one present had made a remark which this soldier/sailor/airman thought was wrong.

      Well I was there, he would say angrily — and it was nothing like that. This is what really happened.

      And then he would tell you something that you usually managed never to forget and often wished you had never heard.

      Of course in the chatting in the pubs stories were often swopped because people thought they were funny and we all had a good laugh — but sometimes it was all a bit macabre.

      There was another quite different class of stories told by soldiers to the girls back home. Sometimes soldiers do things that really upset them. They will not talk about their feelings to other men in case they are thought ‘soft’, but if they are with a sympathetic girl, they will unburden their souls to what they know will be a kind listener. When they have related it all and perhaps been told, Well, you had to do it. It was your duty. You could not have done anything else. Try not to worry about it. You did not start the war. Then they feel better and are able to start putting the war behind them. After wars girls hear a lot of these stories. My mother in law certainly did when she welcomed her husband’s brothers home on leave from the trenches 1914-18.

      So here I am going to relate to you stories told to me or to my school friends or my mother or mother in law. We only know what was told to us but we believed what the men were saying. When you have listened to enough chatter, you can recognize the ring of truth when you hear it.

      Remember these are stories told by the young men who were actually at war. They are their versions of what was going on as they saw it. Now I am sure that all the authorities at headquarters of all the services, secret or otherwise, were perfect, pure as the driven snow and correct in everything they did. But in wartime there are some corners of foreign fields where things happen not quite according to the official rules and maybe unknown to the Great and the Good. Those looking at the big official picture may see something quite different from what is seen by a boy in one small part of the battlefield. But these are the stories the boys told to us girls back home. At the very least they will give you a different perspective of some famous events. All the men who told us these stories are long dead. But before I too am dead I am retelling their tales as a tribute to their memories.

      My son has contributed some of these stories. He used to have long chats with my husband about the bad old days of war and remembers a few things that I had forgotten, or maybe my husband did not tell me for one reason or another. My son also has friends who served in the Suez campaign of 1956 or in other recent conflicts and he has written up some tales given to him by those friends.

      My son has contributed some of these stories. He used to have long chats with my husband about the bad old days of war and remembers a few things that I had forgotten, or maybe my husband did not tell me for one reason or another. My son also has friends who served in the Suez campaign of 1956 or in other recent conflicts and he has written up some tales given to him by those friends.

      Those kind enough to take the time to read this book must use their own judgement over what they believe to be true.

      Before I forget to mention it, here is something every soldier I ever chatted with said — and I think it is something our politicians and generals could well consider now. These soldiers said that whatever fancy and clever new weapons were invented from atom bombs to rockets, the outcome of a war always depended on how many men you had on the ground. In the end war always comes down to being a job for the PBI, they said. The PBI — the poor bloody infantry. No army can ever be successful without them.

      So now let us start on the stories.

      ------------

      Chapter 1

      The Boer War

      I am writing this in 2010 and I am saying that my father-in-law fought in the Boer War. Well as the Boer War was 1899-1902 you will realize how old I am and also how young you could be and still join the army back in the old days.

      By way of explanation, my father in law belonged to a Catholic family, which as was their wont in those days,

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