Started 19 July 2013
When I come to think of it, I don’t remember much about Dad’s war. (I think the correct thing is to write “my dad” with a small d for dad, but Dad with a capital D when I write e.g. … about Dad’s war … as above, but please correct me if I’m wrong). After all, my memories of seeing my dad during the war boil down to his leaves and the two times my mother and I visited him where he was stationed in the UK. Everything else is second hand, mainly what he told me or what I heard from my mother; perhaps there are also a few snippets that I heard from Peter or Lisl.
Peter certainly joined the Czechoslovak army before Dad, but I don’t know when either of them joined up. Peter was with the French army in 1940, he’d have been 20 and single at the time. After the fall of France, he managed to make his way to Marseilles (that’s the folklore), or Narbonne, then Selte, with his regiment (according to what I found on the internet, see below), get a boat to north Africa and finally get to Gibraltar, from where he sent us a telegram to say he was safe. He then managed to get a plane to London. I don’t know when Peter left Vienna (where he had been working for the Gestetner duplicator company – Gestetner was a British company) or anything about his time until he got to London in 1940 or 41. Until his telegram from Gibraltar arrived, we had no idea whether he was dead or alive, he was just missing. I think I can remember seeing that telegram, it may still be around somewhere. There must have been some contact between Peter and my dad, because otherwise the telegram couldn’t have been sent to us. Perhaps Peter came to London before going to fight in France. I did ask my dad questions from time to time, but he was never interested in answering or if he did answer, it was never clear. The same with Lisl. Peter and Lisl met in London but I don’t know when. They got married in 1942 when Peter was in the Czech army, against the Czech army’s regulations. So I can only guess that Peter joined up in 1941 and my dad some time later in 1941 or 1942. But it’s also possible that Peter arrived in France with a part of the pre-war Czech army, some of which did move to France, when Czechoslovakia was broken up in 1938 with the agreement of France and Britain according to the Munich agreement. (You can find a bit about this on the internet, but what happened to the Czech army, one of the biggest in Europe till 1938, is so not well documented, or I didn’t search enough).
Here’s a quote copied from http://ww2total.com/WW2/History/Orders-of-Battle/Armed-Forces-in-Exile/Polish-Czech.htm
… “At first, the French had insisted that all Czechs serve in the French Foreign Legion, but after France’s own entry into the war an agreement was negotiated by the Czech National Committee in Paris to cancel the Foreign Legion obligation.
At the Foreign Legion base at Agde in southern France, the Czechs were formed into the 1st Czech Division, made up of the 1st and 2nd Infantry Regiments. The organisation, equipment and armaments were French, although many of the weapons were leftovers from WorId War I.
During the Battle of France the 1st Regiment (at Coulommiers) and the 2nd (on the Marne) tried to halt the 16th Panzer Division, but had their flanks turned and had to fight a rearguard action back across France: they were eventually re-grouped at Narbonne before being evacuated from Selte.”
So perhaps Peter was with that part of the Czech army that was evacuated from Selte to north Africa.
I do know that my dad first volunteered to be a fighter pilot with the RAF but he has turned down as too old, he was 31 in 1940. (There were almost as many Czech as Polish fighter pilots in the RAF, but the Poles got more publicity.) He then volunteered for the British army and was accepted but only for the Pioneer Corps, (the lads who dug the latrines in popular understanding), which did not appeal to him at all. So then he volunteered for the Czech army.
According to Wikipedia, “The 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade was created on 1 September 1943, when the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Brigade (itself originally formed as 1st Czechoslovak Mixed Brigade in July 1940 from remnants of the French Army’s 1st Czechoslovak Division) converted to armour and was re-designated as the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group (this was often simplified to 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade … )”
So my dad must have joined the Czechoslovak Mixed Brigade some time after July 1940, and transferred to the 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade in 1943. I can remember hearing that he was stationed in Northampton and Peterborough, then in Leamington Spa, then in Galashiels in Scotland. I’ve got the photograph album that my dad made up with his wartime photographs, but there are almost no dates, and only six were taken in the UK. Only one of these is dated, a group of soldiers in uniform, including Dad, labelled Czechoslovak Army depot, Southend-on-Sea, 1943.
Here it is; Dad is the fellow crouching in the middle with his thumbs up. There are thirteen names written on the back:- Karsten, Rohan, Landau? (the third and last letters may be wrong; and they seem to have accents on them), Teller, Hellman, Kohler, Panzig, Alexander, Katz, Goldenberg, Lebovic, Jakubovik, Safranek, plus my dad, making 14 people. The names are in my dad’s handwriting, so not easy to read; and seventy years old so a bit faded. I’ve enlarged the original photo a bit, but that’s made it slightly less clear.
Those names really are a mixed bag – I don’t remember Dad mentioning any of them. A few are Czech, but they mostly sound Germanic, some certainly Jewish. If you don’t know already, you ought to know that when Czechoslovakia was carved out of Austro-Hungary after 1918, it had more Germans (the Sudeten Germans) than Slovaks.
Before I forget, Dad joined the Czech army in the ranks as a private soldier and at one point he was promoted to lance-corporal and later to full corporal. (He also started in the home guard in Blackburn as a private and got promoted at least to lance-corporal.)
The first time that we, my mother and I, went to visit Dad at an army base was in Leamington. I don’t know where we stayed; perhaps Lisl organised something because she was probably living in Leamington at the time. I don’t think we went to the base, but met my dad in the town. My only memory was of going to a café one afternoon; it was a bit up-market, very crowded, and there was a sort of “palm court orchestra” playing, perhaps a piano, a violin and a cello, that sort of thing. And I remember that at one point they played, “I’ll be with you in apple blossom time”.
The only other time we visited Dad was in Galashiels. I remember that we went by train and had to change trains in Hellifield in North Yorkshire. We stayed in a B & B run by an elderly couple; there was a harmonium in the room where we had breakfast and the husband played it for us during breakfast. Hymns I think. We then were taken, by Dad I expect, to the Czech army camp and some of Dad’s mates made quite a fuss of us. I was taken for a very bumpy ride in a Jeep – you sat so high up that it was easy to fall out – and I was shown round the inside of a tank, all very hard and steely. Dad always said we went for a ride in the tank but we didn’t. Most of the soldiers we met were speaking Czech and I remember feeling very proud to be surrounded by all these friendly Czech speakers. At one time I was familiar with a good few of their names, but the only name that comes to mind now is Freddy Bodek. We went to a restaurant in the town for lunch; it was full and we had to queue for a table. When our turn came, the man, bald, pink faced, very Scottish, who was holding back the queue, called into the restaurant to announce our arrival, “Two and a wee fellow.” My parents were highly amused by that.
There’s a piece about the Armoured Brigade on Wikipedia on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Czechoslovak_Armoured_Brigade
Once we had a visit in Darwen, presumably before August 1944 of my Dad, Uncle Peter and Hans Brandl, who I mention at the end of Chapter 1 and who was also in the Czech army. (The Brandls lived in Prague before the war.) My dad must just have met him by chance.
Another memory; once when Dad came home on leave, he brought me a shell case from a Messerschmitt ME109 fighter. I don’t know how he got hold of it but it was very impressive and it caused quite a sensation in the school yard at Hollins Grove Council School. Here’s a photo/diagram of a shell fired by the cannons of ME 109s that I found on Google. It’s not identical to the one I had, but not far off; the one I had had no painting or writing on it, and you could separate the front half, which was fired, from the back half which held the explosive. The one I had was about 8 inches/20 cm long.
That’s about as much as I can tell you about Dad’s war up to the time he crossed over to Normandy in August 1944. Troops always had an embarkation leave before going abroad on active service, so I guess my dad did too. Perhaps we even went on a week’s holiday in St Anne’s on Sea with him. What I do remember is that my mother and I had our photographs taken by a professional photographer, and my mother gave him copies to have with him while he was away.
Greenwood family history 