Chapter 1

Love at a Distance

If you had a choice of when and where to be born, and no one has, you would not have selected western Europe in 1946. The continent was ruined, with German prisoners starving, concentration camp victims struggling to survive and millions homeless. From London to Berlin, towns and cities were shattered, with their historic buildings bombed and burned to rubble. Come the winter, Russians would live without heating or plumbing in terrible cold. This desperate, surreal landscape resembled the nightmares of Bosch, Blake and Tolkein. My arrival at Redhill hospital in Surrey, on 11 August 1946, was a least bad option, except for the freezing conditions to come in 1947, when the country disappeared beneath snow and ice for months on end.

My father (Chris), serving with the Royal Corps of Signals in North Africa, had little thought for this devastation when he began a passionate correspondence with my mother (Bessie) in 1942. As the surviving letters reveal, he was convinced they would survive the Germans and the war, even when the V2s were falling on London. 'We are meant to be...' he wrote. Bessie was eager for this love at a distance and responded warmly.

Born on 12th January 1914, the fourth child of Herbert and Amy Barker, Horace Christopher Barker (Hol to his parents; Chris to everyone else) was brought up in North London and retained all his life the austere habits of the respectable poor. My grandfather, Herbert Christopher Pemberton Barker, born in Derby on 8th November 1879, claimed that he was the last of 21 children. The family Bible records another Herbert Pemberton Barker, born on 9th July 1877, who was probably still born. Herbert's birth in 1879 was never registered, so when he came to join the Post Office (c. 1912) one of his sisters had to make an affidavit.

Almost bald from the age of 30, Herbert had a three inch scar on his head, which he said was caused when his drunken woodworker father returned home one night, kicking him as he lay asleep on the floor. He once described a playground game where one side called out 'German sausages, are you ready? Shoot, bang, fire!' In later years he told Chris that he had a brother who had emigrated to the United States, becoming a senator (whether local or national is unknown). Chris remembered a family holiday with Uncle Charles (b. 1871), another of his father's brothers, who was a miner in South Wales (Maes y Cwmmer), later killed in a pit disaster.

As Chris wrote of his father (6.7.44), he 'really grew up without any idea of home life. Until he met my mother he hadn't any sympathy or kindness shown him. His father was a drunken wretch, his mother died at his birth. He spent some of his time in the workhouse, ran away a number of times, had a really hard life which "made a man of him", but also prevented him acquiring some of the gentler habits which "home" does induce.' Herbert spent some years as a cabin boy on boats trading with Hamburg before finding a form of security in the British army.

As an apparently stern and unbending cook-sergeant major during the Boer War, Herbert Barker was commended for his 'outstanding efforts in caring for the needs of 17,000 men and horses'. He was one of those besieged at Ladysmith and later named his eldest son Herbert Redvers Barker (born in 1906) in recollection of General Sir Redvers Buller, who had relieved the town in 1900. He served variously with the Army Service Corps, the Northumberland Fusiliers and the West Yorkshire regiment. He was twice mentioned in dispatches and had five military medals.

I do not know when Herbert met Amy Rose Bickell, the daughter of Samuel Bickell, safe maker, and Elizabeth Bickell, but it seems likely that they were married shortly after the end of the South African War, c. 1904. Elizabeth was Samuel's second wife and the sister of his first. Amy later told her son Chris that his grandmother, Elizabeth (see photo), was the illegitimate child of a clergyman from the Warboys area, near Huntingdon. Amy herself was born on 18th November 1881, at 70 Cator Street, S.E.15. There were suspicions that she may also have been illegitimate. The Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act was passed in 1907 and removed the legal obstacle to this type of union.

The 1901 census records Samuel Bickell, safe engineer, aged 67, living alone with three daughters at 70 Cator Street, Camberwell. Born in 1834, he appears at this address in the 1871 and 1891 censuses. His place of birth is given variously as Exeter, Devon and Exeter, Essex. The eldest daughter, Annie, is shown as a single laundress, aged 36. Fanny (aged 26) and Amy (aged 19) were both born in Camberwell and worked at Samuel Jones's gummed paper factory .

Amy was found to be hard of hearing when young. Chris remembered her as 'a quiet, unexcitable person, whose hearing difficulty sometimes stopped her being involved in domestic controversies'. She had several half brothers and sisters, amongst whom Aunt Lizzy was the most memorable. She ran a chimney sweep business, a car hire firm and a garage, all in the Archway Road.

Amy and Herbert added another son, Archie, to their family in 1907, a daughter, Rosie, in 1911 and finally Chris was born at 10 Courtney Road, N.7 in 1914. During the Great War my grandfather served in India and then Mesopotamia, sending home this card from Basra in 1917 (see below).






Like other soldiers of that period, he discovered that Lloyd George did not keep his promise to build 'Homes Fit for Heroes'. As a result, the six members of the Barker family and grandmother Elizabeth moved to a privately rented, three bedroomed house at 9 Hartnoll Street, N.7 that was part of a slum cleared in the 1920s. Domestic arrangements were primitive. The rent was fourteen shillings per week. They were rehoused in a modern council house in Flexmere Road, Tottenham, N17 in 1927 and were pleased to discover that it had a bathroom. Grandmother died in St John's Infirmary, N19, shortly before this move. Herbert settled down between the wars to work as a postman, while Amy cared for their children. At one time he was attached to Brockley Sorting Office, and later Holloway Sorting Office. He remained a postman, but sometimes collected coins from telephone boxes, and acted also as Inspector of Messengers.

Chris was sent to Drayton Park, a typical London elementary school, a ten minute walk from where he lived.

The original Victorian building, with separate entrances for boys and girls, was replaced by new premises in 1927. Chris attended from age 5 until 14. All the teachers in the infant school were 'ladies'. Each morning the children had to show the teachers two pieces of cloth, one to clean their slates and the other to use as a handkerchief. He never forgot these two pieces of rag, provided by his mother from an old bed-sheet. The children learned their tables by chanting the numbers. Chris became a monitor during his last six months in the infants and had to help the teacher collect the slates and clear up.

At 7, he advanced to the elementary school, known to all as the 'big boys'. There were no girls and no lady teachers. The head was Mr Yabsley, whom Chris described as a 'quiet and respected figure'. Mr Frome, a young, mainly geography teacher, attracted the attention of the children who were not listening by 'very accurately throwing sticks of chalk at them'. Mr Hayward taught English, including the parts of speech and subdued Chris by telling him that he was 'Barker by name and Barker by nature'. Sixty years later, Chris wrote an account of his school memories for his grand-daughter Irena, entitled 'If I remember rightly...' My father's memories provide an interesting benchmark for my own experiences in later years.

The school must have been fashioned from one large room, because our classrooms were 'open plan', with partitions between them. We never seemed to be worried by other classes. I don't remember how our day started, but every evening the classes joined in hymns before leaving. One started 'The day thou gave us, Lord, is ended/The darkness falls at Thy behest' but I don't remember the rest. Everyone joined in the 'going home' singing, but at the more serious times, those who could not keep in tune were kept in one place and given books to read. We were called 'grunters', a large class. A new head came a year before I left and introduced algebra to the lessons. When the 'grunters' were given algebraic problems to solve instead of reading Stirring Tales, their numbers declined. But I remained a Barker.

My first, my only, school party, was one for Victory after the Great War, which must have been held soon after I started school. Given a banana - to me an unknown fruit - I slipped it into my trouser pocket to take home to my Mum. When I arrived home it had turned into liquid, half stuck to the pocket and half to me. But every year there was a stirring event, Empire Day, when we marched round the playground, waving the Union Jack and singing 'God Save the King' and other songs. One was about the Prince of Wales, 'God Bless the Prince of Wales!' I sang '...and let the prairie echo...' not knowing until many years after that I should have sung '...Let the prayer re-echo...' I think that the then Prince of Wales had been on a tour which included going to Canada where he saw natural surroundings and it was the 'prairie' I was conscious of.

On one occasion a boy named Shrimpton and myself decided we would have a friendly wrestle. The head teacher caught us and did not believe us when we said it was only a friendly joust. Each of us had three strokes of the cane. The first one hurt but not so much as the grievance that we weren't believed. We never had dunce's caps, though sometimes children were selected to be made fun of. When I was about 13 and hadn't been able to solve some puzzle, our Headmaster said 'With a forehead like yours, you should find it easy'. When I got home I looked in a mirror, but I never understood what he meant.

Each week we had two 'outings'. One was to go to swimming lessons at the baths, to which we walked, crocodile file, about a quarter of an hour each way. The other was for carpentry, though this could not have been more more than a few years. The teacher there was Mr Colliver, the only teacher I didn't like. To command the attention of his class, he threw wood at offenders. If you didn't understand, he shouted at you. I must have gone home unhappy one day, and my mum found out why. Next day, my Dad, who had been a sergeant major in the army and was a match for anyone, went to see Mr Colliver, who thereafter subsided into quiet tones whenever I was around.

I had friends at school, but they were not very close. I was the only boy who came from the other side of the Holloway Road, which our parents then thought was busy and dangerous to cross. It was mostly horse traffic for a long time, though traffic lights started to be installed (I think) about then.

Once a year we took an examination, and usually one boy would leave for the grammar school, and might some days be seen walking in his school uniform.
I must have liked school, because once, after tea, having been to school in the morning and in the afternoon I went again to find the gate locked. I had a small pocket-knife, a very valuable possession, and it could be sharpened by rubbing against a stone in the school and I think the knife had 'required' sharpening that day. There were no school meals or anything of that kind, though a nurse came once a year to see, by running a comb through our hair, whether we had fleas. We were at once ashamed and indignant when my sister Rosie came home with a paper saying that she was 'slight two'. In one class I sat next to a boy called Fowler, who told me about sex.

We had pencils for the first few years in 'the big boys' but then went on to ink. My third finger always had ink on it from the pen. The pencils were always well chewed at the end. They had 'LCC' on them but I don't think we knew what that meant. We used them until they were very small. Teachers used blackboards a lot. The dust from the chalk couldn't have been harmful. I never remember being cold. The school was probably well-heated by the standards of that time. Very few private homes would have had radiators.

There were prizes. I received, 'for good work', fairy stories like 'The Magic Cakes' and 'Wonder Tales from Many Lands'. 'Deeds That Won The Empire' and a beautiful New Testament came my way. I obtained swimming certificates for managing to get to the other side of the bath (ten yards) and for thirty yards. I had three certificates for 'Scriptural Knowledge' but such knowledge as I had never lasted.

About nine months before I was 14, we moved from Holloway to Tottenham, about four miles away. I did not change schools because my Dad had determined that I was to follow the footsteps of he and my elder brother, leading to the Post Office. At the new school they only accepted children who were in the highest standard (Ex 7) and had I gone there I should have been placed in a lower class which would have meant that I should not have qualified to step, as I did, on the lowest rung of the Civil Service ladder.

So on March 8th, 1928, I started as a Post Office boy messenger at the Money Order department, Manor Gardens, London N7. A 48 hour week of six days brought a wonderful reward, for then, of 13 shillings and 4 pence.

Chris's leaving certificate, dated 26th January 1928 and signed by a new headmaster, Mr Palmer, declared that he 'attended...for eight years, leaving at Christmas 1927. He was a thoroughly reliable boy, honest and truthful, and a splendid worker. His conduct throughout was excellent: he was one of the school prefects and carried out his duties well. He was very intelligent'. And that was it. He had shown himself to be 'very intelligent' and 'a splendid worker', so it was obvious that he had no need for secondary education and would be well adapted to the task of delivering messages in the Money Order department.

This was the depression and that is why Herbert Barker insisted that his sons join the Post Office. Bert, eight years older than Chris, became a boy messenger and then a sorter. Archie, the second son, was too short for the post office and worked at his Aunt Lizzie's garage for about ten years. Eventually he found a vacancy as a motor mechanic at the Post Office stores department and became secretary of the local branch of the Post Office engineering union. When his turn came, Chris was sufficiently tall to clinch the job. Herbert 'eased my entry into the "plum" job of indoor Boy Messenger'. Later, he remembered his duties with affection:

To obtain prescriptions for the ailing staff of the Money Order Department, I often travelled with a wicker basket from North London to the Chief Medical Officer, in King Edward Street. On every run in the official bus there was an hour to wait, and I mostly spent it excitedly fingering the hundreds of second-hand books in nearby Paternoster Row. Sometimes I'd stray as far as Farringdon Road, where the railway side was entirely lined with stalls.

In 1930, aged 16, he was highly placed in the GPO/Civil Service general examination and was sent to the Post Office training school. There he learned the morse code and typing. With thirty others, he enjoyed eight months of lectures and visits to branch offices, including Smithfield, old Throgmorton Avenue and Lombard Street. In those days, apparently, 'dominoes were dominant. City staff seemed to be mainly standing by for the evening crowds'. As a 'guinea pig' on this new training programme, he met the Assistant Controller of the London Postal Service, A.K. Chalk, whom he later invited to contribute to a union magazine. Mr Chalk obliged with a piece entitled 'The More We Are Together' and advised his readers to 'never forget that Authority can be incredibly mean to the unorganised individual'. Chris said that he learned from Mr Chalk that the official side was not a solid phalanx and that Union representatives were not alone in 'the fight for right'.

Now properly qualified to be a Postal & Telegraph Officer (P&TO or counter clerk), Chris joined the Eastern District of the London post office, where he worked for another 44 years, including military service. He was a member of the Union of Post Office workers and took an active part in the junior section, achieving success with his well-phrased contributions at meetings. He organized a holiday party to Jersey in 1934 and attended summer schools at Ruskin College.

Early on, he discovered that his real strength lay in journalism. He wrote for various union journals for over 60 years. In January 1932, as the elected editor of The E(astern) D(istrict) Junior, he adopted a stance that became his hallmark: 'Our success or failure depends almost wholly upon you. We are fighting for a great ideal - Postal Unity - and will carry on, in the Eastern District, the fight against those who seek to destroy it'. In February he reported that the UPW junior section membership was approaching 300 and that a new enthusiasm 'has been sweeping the districts with splendid result'. He declared that 'the Union stands for all that is good in associated effort. It stands for comradeship as well as the unity of all grades, for the welfare of the small group and the big battalion, for the best for each grade, by and with, the help of all grades'.

His regular diary in the London Post in the 1940s and 1950s reads like George Orwell's column in the Tribune, As I Please. Amongst his post office contemporaries in London he became a celebrity, widely perceived as principled, witty and awkward. He campaigned for a single union to represent clerks, sorters and postmen; was passionate about equal opportunities for women and was a scathing critic of communists in the union and Labour Party. He was among those attempting to roll marbles under horses' hooves at anti-Franco demonstrations and on one occasion paid for a leaflet to be printed.

With everyone earning and saving, this was a period of prosperity and success for the Barkers. Brother Bert, a bachelor still devoted to his parents, had bought a car and was saving for one of the newly constructed (1937) semi-detached suburban villas available in Bromley, Kent. When my grandfather retired in 1939, he loaned Bert £200 from his gratuity, providing the extra cash needed for the purchase. The whole family moved to 161 Ridgeway Drive, just in time for the war. Bert joined the army immediately and paid his father back a pound a week from his army pay and the balance of civil pay he received while on military service.

Meanwhile, Chris was placed on the list of reserved occupations because of his qualifications as a teleprinter operator. He later said that he had never been required to operate a teleprinter in either the Post Office or the army, with the exception of a single occasion in Athens, 1944, when British Air Headquarters Greece was under fire and surrounded by communist partisans. Lieutenant Pinkstone shouted: 'Sing a song, Barker!' Unfortunately communications had been cut off and my father's rapid morse beats were in vain.

Although he was strongly anti-fascist, Chris made no serious attempt to fight Franco or Hitler when volunteers were needed. He was content to live in London through the Blitz, serving on the post office counter and helping with fire-watching duties at a nearby telephone exchange. After the war he never talked about this period in the front line, when he travelled on the southern railway each morning, half-expecting to find that his office had been reduced to rubble overnight.

Conscripted in 1942, Chris received military training at Osset in Yorkshire. He left England in March, 1943 and after a long sea voyage via the Cape arrived in Cairo in May, 1943. This was just in time to earn his Africa Star, which was unclaimed until many years later, when he realized that veterans with medals made more convincing peace campaigners. He knew his brother Bert's army address with Middle Eastern Forces (MEF) and applied to join him. Regulations permitted an elder brother to claim a younger and so the pair were side by side for much of the following three years. From September 1943 they were at Bu Amud, near Tobruk, as members of 30 Wing, Air Formation Signals, which together with 10 Line Section looked after RAF communications for a few hundred miles of the southern Mediterranean.

Chris resigned himself to a peaceful life as Signalman Barker, a keyboard operator with Middle Eastern Command. The military regime was kindly and tolerated Chris's imperfections as an unlikely soldier. He was better at explaining weapons drill to other soldiers than handling firearms himself and the sergeant got him to do the talking when senior officers came to check progress. He enjoyed many games of chess under the moonlit desert sky and seems to have had plenty of free time to write long letters home to his friends and family. One of these, addressed on a whim to a London counter acquaintance, Bessie Moore, changed his life and eventually made mine.

This first letter was addressed to 'Nick and Bessie' and seems to have been one of many designed to maintain contact with members of his pre-war post office circle. Only this couple were no longer a couple and Bessie was unhappy that she had invested so much fruitless energy in a friendship that had not changed her spinster status. Recently disappointed by his own pre-conscription girlfriend, Chris was not slow to grasp this heaven-sent romantic opening. In five hundred surviving letters written between 1943 and his release from the army in 1946, Chris expresses tenderness, longing, barely restrained passion and other emotions that seemed to escape him in 'real life'.

Only 15 of Bessie's letters survive, 14 for the period December-February 1944- 1945, and 2 others (July & September 1945). She was, however, equally prolific, writing long, perceptive accounts of the home front and life in London. Chris explained what happened in a letter (28.6.84):

For the first and last time we discussed our mutual exchanges in about 1950, when Mother said that hers must be destroyed. I don't know that we talked about mine. We were different people then, but I know that Mother's original viewpoint would be stronger now. I burnt her letters (though I have found a few amongst mine in the present excavations) and my own, a couple of hundred, I suppose, were put in the loft where they remained for thirty years, coming down when the 'kiln room' ceased and became an eloquent example of all my muddles and confusion....much of the writing is purplish personal, to the Nth degree, not to be read in our lifetimes.

The couple adopted a numbering system so they could track one another's mail. Chris's side of the correspondence often begins with joy at having received a particular letter from her and develops by responding to the thoughts, feelings and anxieties she has described. Although he never ceases to be practical and realistic, there is no doubt that the correspondence also met emotional needs I suspect he would have tried to deny, face to face. Both my parents were to me transparently emotional, passionate people but their feelings were under such adamantine self-control control that it is a surprise now to read these open statements of their shifting war-time emotions, written long ago. Their love for one another was so complete, always, that it was difficult for my brother and I in childhood and adolescence to relate to each of them as a single person. Even so, this early love at a distance was, perhaps, the best because they found one another through their ability to write about what was really important in life and to imagine a happy future with home and children. As Chris wrote: 'When I think of "us", I look forward to our "Home" atmosphere, which doesn't depend on the material things or whether one has hot and cold in the bathroom. It depends upon our love, flowing between us, uniting us.' (6.7.44)

Bessie Irene Moore (Rene or Renee to her family and some friends; Bessie to Chris and other friends) was born on 26th October 1913, 23 months after her brother Wilfred, and spent her early years at 11a Surrey Road, Peckham Rye. There were two other boys, neither of whom survived infancy. I have less information about my mother's family than my father's because neither she nor her brother Wilfred talked or wrote about their grandparents and they said very little of a biographical nature about their parents. By the time I was interested in recording memories of my family and tracing their antecedents, my Uncle Wilfred was dead and my mother had descended into dementia and could not even recall my grandmother's name.

Her father, Wilfred Moore, was born on 15th August 1884, the son of Edwin Moore, boot maker, and his wife, Mary Moore (nee Musgrove). They lived in Camberwell, at 103 Avenue Road, Walworth. The 1901 census shows the family in another house, 243 Beresford Street, Newington, in the borough of Southwark. By this time, Edwin was aged 49, his occupation was recorded as boot maker and his place of birth as Lambeth. His wife's name is given as May C., perhaps a corruption of the 'Mary' shown on Wilfred's birth certificate (1949 copy). She was aged 51 and her place of birth is stated as 'Gloster, Cheltenham'. Two sons are listed, Leonard, aged 18, a brass finisher and Wilfred, aged 16, a telegraph messenger. There were also two daughters, Edith, aged 19, who was a 'book folder', and Elsie, aged 14. All four were born in Walworth.

My father wrote a note (1999) to the effect that Wilfred became a postman in the East Central district, served in the Great War and retired as an overseer in charge of a south London sorting office. He received the Imperial Service Medal, for 45 years service, in October 1944.

Bessie's mother, Elizabeth, is recorded in many photographs but I have struggled to trace her through the national records of births, deaths and marriages, while the census returns have yielded no certain identification. I visited her grave at Greenwich which lies very close to the site of Kidbrooke School, the great comprehensive to which I should have gone if I had been a girl. She died of a brain tumour in St Alfege's hospital, Greenwich, on 21st May 1942, aged 54, and was buried beneath a piece of war-time funeral masonry that is now broken and illegible. A place with her in the cemetery was reserved for Wilfred but in the end he was cremated. This age and date of death suggests that she was born c. 1888. Wilfred married Elizabeth in the autumn of 1911, very shortly before their son's birth on 22nd November.

Elizabeth Amies registered the birth of one of the children, and this encourages the idea that the missing maiden name is Amies. Unfortunately, the 1901 census does not include a Norfolk-based Elizabeth Amies of the right age (i.e. 3/4). At this moment, therefore, all I know of her history and character is no more than an echo of a few simple remarks made by my mother before I left home. She came from Norfolk; she was employed rolling cigars by hand before her marriage; she was painfully shy; her death in 1942 devasted Bessie, who so wished her mother could have known her children.

The two photographs above, taken by studio photographers with their cumbersome plates in late 1911 or early 1912, have long fascinated me and illustrate some of the problems involved in family life and our knowledge of family life. In the first, my grandmother Elizabeth sits in an elegant Edwardian outfit, gently touching my Uncle Wilfred, who is mounted on a pedestal like a trophy or object of worship. Her gaze is fixed on him and belongs as much to the design of the hat as to the lens. The painted waves behind seem to lap up to the edge of the picture and detach mother and baby from the busy world. The baby's expression is serene and he seems to stare at us from a remote distance. But it is my Uncle Wilfred as I never knew him, a tiny, enshrouded baby from a lost, pre-war age.

The second photograph is an intimate portrait of a young family. My grandfather wears a fashionable moustache and a straw boater, as if he were freshly returned from an evening at Renoir's Moulin de la Galette. My grandmother is poised at his side on a wrought iron bench, their arms brushing against one another and their hands almost touching. She wears a light, elegant jacket and a lace blouse that hides her throat. Her dark, wide-brimmed hat is decorated with a twirl of chiffon and casts no shadow on her open countenance. Elizabeth and Wilfred are almost smiling, their eyes bright as they return the caress of the camera. Wrapped in his Christening gown, Wilfred junior looks away at an angle and occupies a separate space in the composition, as if he were super-imposed on his mother afterwards. They seem a perfect Edwardian family, almost icons of past time.

But these people are so close to me in my imagination that I feel the strangest desire to climb into their picture, impossible as it obviously is. I knew Wilfred senior for 20 years and had the warmest affection for him. I have a picture of us thirty years later, a grandfather holding a small, happy boy aloft in the garden. Wilfred junior was an alternative father, around for my first 46 years, smiling or quietly complaining about my Barker energy and impatience. He corrected my grip on the cricket bat and made Christmas into a fabulous world of soldiers, guns and games. I see too his mother, this wonderfully kind and beautiful looking woman who never had a chance to be a grandmother.

As I write, I experience pangs of loss, nostalgia and regret but suspect there is a deeper puzzle. These people helped make me what I am. The quirks of their lives have had unending consequences for me. Their DNA is imprinted in mine. I lived for 20 years in their house, using their plates, cutlery and furniture. But as my ignorance of the details of their lives reveals, we have been scattered by the winds of the last century to the point where none of us knows where the others began or ended.

Our life capsules spin at painful speed towards and away from even our friends and the closest members of our family. We catch parts of one another, disclosed fragments of a greater whole, before hastening to another time and place. We think the years have gone but we ourselves are lost to each other in the end. The intensity and individualization of the twentieth century has contributed to people's sense of loss and disbelief, experienced when they are forced to acknowledge that they know almost nothing of their own location or origins, never mind that of the universe. Family history, so popular today, seems to reflect an inner craving for knowledge of our family and ourselves that can never be satisfied, a frantic, forlorn pursuit of details that can never tell us what we most want to know. We know this, more or less, but persist, our curiosity convincing us that the journey, not the arrival, matters.

Our next glimpse of my grandfather, a handsome young man in a boater, is at an unknown convalescent home, about five years later. He stands in a military hospital tunic next to the nurse on the far left of the photograph. She seems very tiny beside him. On the right of this faded print a soldier can still be seen, not quite blanched from the record, sitting in a wheel chair with a stump where his leg should be. This is a distant, haunting, ghostly world made familiar by Remembrance Day films and the war poets. Wilfred Owen, who knew about war-time convalescence through his treatment for shell-shock at Craiglockhart hospital, paints a scene like this in Disabled:

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,-
In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands;
All of them touch him like some queer disease.

Wilfred, no. 377595, 8th London Regiment, served in France and was seriously wounded during his apparently brief time in the trenches. According to my mother, he suffered shrapnel injuries and came close to losing his leg. A good surgeon saved it from gangrene, operating several times on his chloroformed patient. My grandfather spent many months in hospital and afterwards convalescing. He never spoke to me about his experience as a soldier and invalid. He died before the 1970s, when there was a revival of interest in veterans' stories.

Eventually we began to realize that these men were shaken less by shells than by the horror of what they saw and were asked to do. At the time, however, a soldier with a 'blighty' wound was considered fortunate. My grandfather's injury and the length of treatment that accompanied it probably saved his life. Wilfred Owen was less lucky. Dr River's talking-cure was good enough to get him back to the mud and shells in time to be killed on the Sambre canal, just before the Armistice in 1918.

The left-hand photograph below shows my grandfather at home on leave with his family, possibly as part of his convalescence. He wears a hospital tunic of the type that injured soldiers of the period so much disliked. The children's clothes and appearance are consistent with a picture taken in 1916 or 1917, when Wilfred junior would have been 5/6 years old, and Bessie about 3 or 4. I suspect the right-hand picture is a studio portrait, taken before the newly enlisted private travelled to the front. He wears the standard serge uniform of the period and seems little changed from the 1911/12 Christening, while Bessie and Wilfred are dressed as infants.















At the end of 1918, so far as Elizabeth and Wilfred were concerned, the war was over and they had survived. Aged 34, Wilfred resumed work with the London Post Office and received a war medal (1919) and a pension in compensation for his damaged limb. He continued his sporting interest through cricket and bowls, into which Wilfred junior was gradually inducted. Bessie later remembered watching week-end cricket matches but it is not clear whether her father remained an active sportsman. By the 1950s, when I knew him properly, he played bowls to a high standard, had no trace of a limp and never complained of discomfort. By then a widower, he was also silent about grief and sadness. So, untutored and unaware, my brother and I lived our self-absorbed, Child's Garden of Verse type of childhood.

Bessie first went to school at Ivydale Road but never commented on her experiences there. Unlike her brother Wilfred, who attended a central school in Camberwell, she won a London County Council (LCC) scholarship and transferred to the County Secondary School, Peckham in 1925, aged 12. She is the only member of our family to have won a scholarship or to have studied at a grammar school. She said later that she was disappointed to find the lessons very similar to those at her elementary school. Her best friend Kath, with whom she remained in close contact for the rest of her life, paid fees, though not in full. There were many other scholarship girls in the class, as she discovered when a teacher asked them to identify themselves.

A keen reader and library user from an early age (Little Women was her first real book), she became a less self-conscious version of Ursula in D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love, although she was quietly determined not to be a teacher. To judge from the entries on her School Certificate, the curriculum was traditional, with a strong gender bias. In Midsummer 1930, aged almost 17, she passed the University of London General School Examination in Scripture, English, History, Geography, French, Mathematics, Physics, Singing, Gymnastics, Needlework, Cookery and Drawing, with credit in Geography, Arithmetic and Drawing.

Influenced by her brother, who had progressed through the GPO/Civil Service general examination to become a postman at the Western District Office, Bessie decided to leave. She had to see the headmistress (A.M. Ashley) with her mother but resisted entreaties that she should continue into the sixth form and aim for teacher training college. Bessie commented years later that: 'She could only talk about teaching and I didn't want to be a teacher.' Her choice was not influenced by financial considerations, since the family was by this time reasonably prosperous. She took the Civil Service examinations and became, like Chris, a postal and telegraph officer. She worked in female-only offices in the South Eastern, Western and West Central districts.

She always spoke with great affection of her years on the Post Office counter, sharing Chris's view that it was the finest possible life, filled with human incident and variety and dedicated to public service. As Chris put it many years later:

To succeed on the counter you must have not merely a certain technical ability to add and subtract, to tear stamps as though you are not wearing boxing gloves, to handle notes and coins as though they were not your own. You have to be a diplomatist, psychologist, marriage guidance counsellor, citizens' adviser, a discreet and artful dog. In pursuit of the Knack you will learn that the customer is not always wrong, and that it is possible for you to make a mistake.

Bessie had 'the knack' and never expressed regret that she had not 'gone on', although she always placed a high value on education. She was combative about the unfair treatment of women but her education and Post Office grade were, in fairness, superior to those of her father and brother. At times she saw herself as oppressed by the men in her family - father and brother when young; husband and sons when married.

The family album pictures an idyllic life between the wars, with Bessie as a young, single woman enjoying the company of her brother and her friends. She had walking holidays in Scotland and the Lakes and went to the seaside with her family. At some point they moved to 387 Belle Grove Road, Welling, in Kent.

She read widely, especially authors who identified with the dilemmas faced by women. She loved George Bernard Shaw and was devoted to his plays. She kept a commonplace book, copying passages that appealed to her. This extract from the Preface to St Joan captures something of Bessie's own outlook:

If Joan had been malicious, selfish, cowardly or stupid, she would have been one of the most odious persons known to history instead of one of the most attractive. If she had been old enough to know the effect she was producing on the men whom she humiliated by being right when they were wrong, and had learned to flatter and manage them, she might have lived as long as Queen Elizabeth. But she was too young and rustical and inexperienced to have any such arts. When she was thwarted by men whom she thought fools, she made no secret of her opinion of them or her impatience with their folly; and she was naive enough to expect them to be obliged to her for setting them right and keeping them out of mischief.

Her opinions were not always consistent, however. I have inherited 24 volumes of Bessie's 1928 calf-skin edition of Kipling, whom she admired very much. But as Chris pointed out, rather forcefully:

Ten years ago you were admitting that he was an Imperialist and revelling in the fact. Now you are sending me articles purporting to prove that he wasn't and yourself seeming to query the uses of the creed. I admit that I am not so familiar with Kipling as with Shaw, but I invite your examples of things they have in common. I do not hold 'Jungle Tales' against Kipling but I do say that as a social force he was and remains dangerous, since he succeeded in elevating Imperialism to something akin to a virtue ... I know jolly well that Kipling never wrote 'John Bull's Other Island' and never could ... Your desire to go to India is in reverse to my present keen feeling to keep away from it!

Bessie was a young but established counter clerk, aged 25, when the family moved to 27 Woolacombe Road, Blackheath, SE3 in 1938. The photograph opposite shows the semi-detached home as it appeared in an estate agent's brochure in 2006. Wilfred Moore purchased a 99 year lease on the property, on 26th April 1938, from the Earl of St. Germans and Kidbrooke Park Estates Limited, for the sum of £835. The rent on the lease, which was scheduled to expire on Christmas Day, 2032, was £8.00 per annum.

Bessie lived in this house from 1938 to 1945/6 and from 1947 until 2000, a total of 60 years. It became the theatre of her dreams, the centre of her particular form of civilization, to which she would return from holidays and visits to town with renewed energy and pleasure. I think of her there still, busy creating an exotic garden, reading a biography of Elizabeth I, or firing the kiln to produce another enamel for a family member or friend.

The 1937 photograph on the right shows Greenwich Cemetery (where my grandmother is buried) and the now vanished fields of Kidbrooke that lead down to the houses in Broad Walk, just visible near the horizon. The name Kidbrooke is Anglo-Saxon and means 'the brook where the kites were seen'. In those days the heavy clay soil and the three streams running through it made the land unattractive for settlement. The area remained predominantly rural until after the First War, although Kidbrooke station opened in 1895 and there was Victorian development to the north and west. The building of the Shooter's Hill by-pass (now the A2) produced a surge of house-building in the 1930s. Growth was very rapid and covered the extensive farmland until only sports fields and the village green remained. Even this was lost when the Rochester Way (A2) Relief Road was built in 1988.

The Kidbrooke Park Estate type C house, as shown in the original advertisements below, was not identical to Bessie's new home. In later years she would comment that no. 27 was unusually large and well-equipped. The main reception room, for example, was 15' 11" x 13' 2" and other rooms were proportionately larger than those shown for Type C. But the layout followed the almost universal format of the semi-detached house built throughout Britain, especially between the wars.

The Moores, like the Barkers at 161 Ridgeway Drive, were part of a significant inter-war migration from the Victorian city, especially in the London area. Suburban railway lines and arterial roads extended ever more deeply into the countryside. By 1936, 350,000 houses were built each year. Approximately 4,300,000 were built in total between the wars, 2,700,000 of them in the 1930s. The occupants of these new, suburban villas were employed in a wide range of occupations, but mainly reflected the growth of employment in transport and communications, especially in banking, insurance and a range of new industries.

My family was part of a dramatic increase in non-manual, middle class employment from 20.3 per cent in 1911 to 30.4 per cent by 1951. There were three non-manual wage earners at 27 Woolacombe Road. At 161 Ridgeway Drive, there were four. There was enough money to 'pay off the mortgage, save up to buy a car and take the family for a fortnight's holiday in Bognor even if it left few margins for other luxuries' (Oliver, Davis & Bentley: Dunroamin, p. 14).

As Oliver, Davis and Bentley suggest:

'The expanding middle class formed the bulk of those who purchased homes which became manifestations of their new property-owning status. Each semi-detached house was called upon to demonstrate in unmistakable terms to the other occupants (and particularly to parents and relatives) that they were now far removed from any image of the poverty in which many had grown up'.

The design, decoration and names of the houses embodied their purchasers' aspirations but this new found prosperity was also 'affluence on a shoestring', with few able to afford servants, the true mark of middle class status in the thirties. This generation of suburban dwellers, to which my parents and their families belonged, was engaged in a process of social transformation that offered new identities and opportunities to experiment with new tastes and interests. Geographical and social mobility came together as the sites of working class culture and struggle were left behind and a better life beckoned.

My mother's family had arrived. When it was completed, Woolacombe Road was an elegant, tree-lined avenue that stretched from Wricklemarsh to Broad Walk. The housing was varied, with Tudor-style, timber-faced properties at the Wricklemarsh end and futuristic, 'suntrap' designs beyond Dursley Road, as well as the bow-fronted, tiled type in which they lived themselves. Wilfred senior was due to retire in 1944, and no doubt planned a good deal of bowls at the private Blackheath and Greenwich club, where he became a member. Not far away, in Bromley, the Barkers settled into their similar new home, with Herbert senior due to retire on 9th November 1939. Bessie and Chris knew each other, through the London Counter and the Union , but they were not romantically linked or even close as friends.

When the war came in September 1939, these new, comfortable Kentish lives were seriously shaken, although both families were very fortunate. No one died in the First War; no one was to die fighting this time. No one was to be injured or maimed. Neither house was damaged. But the impact on people's lives was immense and nothing was quite the same again.

The sons were soon dispersed. Wilfred Moore junior (aged 28) had joined the Army Supplementary Reserve in the mid-1930s and was called up quickly when the war started. He served in the Royal Engineers' Postal Service and was sent to guard the coast at Bournemouth in 1940, when the Germans were threatening to invade. As we have seen, Bert (aged 34) was called up in the autumn of 1940. He was sent to Trowbridge to learn telegraphy but failed the test. As a result he was trained as a driver at Catterick, together with Frank Wicks, another Post Office man. Bert's car, AYE 825, remained jacked-up in the garage for over four years. The middle brother, Archie, remained in London throughout the war, serving as an inspector with the Fire Service. Chris (aged 26) continued on the Post Office counter until 1942, when he too was conscripted into the army (see details above).

Thanks to her training in morse, never used in the Post Office, Bessie (aged 26) found herself transferred to the Foreign Office, where she had the tedious task of transcribing intercepted German radio messages. She remained in London throughout the war. She endured the Blitz in 1940 and then the V1 and V2 rockets, one of which struck a house 500 yards up the road. She took her turn fire-watching and travelled up to town by train every morning. She volunteered for the WAAF but cancelled her application when her mother died in 1942, believing that she should stay at home with her father.

Then Wilfred (junior) was posted to Algiers in 1943, where he became a corporal, fell in love (with an attractive French colonial, Helene) and contracted jaundice, which led to a long period in hospital and an eventual return home. Bessie was alone in Woolacombe Road with her father and was disappointed in love when Nick broke off their relationship. Then, in September 1943, she received that first letter from Chris, who had just arrived somewhere in the Western desert.

Since Auld Acquaintance should not be forgot, and I have had a letter to Nick and yourself on my conscience for some time, I now commence some slight account of my movements since arrival here ... The behaviour of the troops on board ship was bad. They shouted, shoved, swore and stole to their black hearts content. I lost about a dozen items of kit ... Since joining (or being joined to) HM Forces, I have had a great deal of leisure, and I have spent most of it reading and writing ... Oh, the Pyramids; yes, I have seen them, sat on them, and thought what a gigantic case for Trade Unionism they present. How many unwilling slaves died in the colossal toil involved in erecting these edifices. And how insignificant the erection compared with Nature's own hills and mountains? ...It's a long way from our Lantern Lecture on Sunny Spain at Kingsway Hall.

By February 1944 Chris was responding eagerly to encouragement.

I received your letter of 1st January on 7.2.44, since when I have been bursting to send you a 'smashing' reply ... I could hug you till you dropped! The unashamed flattery that you ladled out was very acceptable ... I must confess that your outrageous enthusiasm banishes 'acquaintance' from my mind, and that I recognise the comings of a new-kind-of-atmosphere into our interchanges, and one which you will need to watch ... You say your mind is a rambling rubbish box, and your youthful desires for improvement remain unfulfilled. Congratulations on getting the rubbish in a box, mine spreads in a heap.

The letters became more frequent, more romantic and then passionate. By the summer of 1944 Chris had written over 50 letters. When the flying bombs began to hit London he became worried about Bessie, apparently more at risk than himself. 'I am wondering about these pilotless planes. I hope you go in the shelter, and do not try and be "brave" by going to bed' (July 1944).


This was the beginning of the great adventure of my father's life, a war story that he recorded in detail as it happened and told many times afterwards. In his eighties he came to Leicester University School of Education and spoke on Greece for an hour without notes to my class of trainee history students. The episode remained fresh and interesting, although he mentioned no heroics and no death. It was his kind of war story.


The Allies had landed on mainland Italy in September 1943. Following the successful invasion of Sicily, General Harold Alexander's 15th Army Group (comprising Mark Clark's U.S. Fifth Army and Bernard Montgomery's British Eighth Army) landed around Salerno on the western coast in Operation Avalanche, while two supporting operations took place in Calabria (Operation Baytown) and Taranto (Operation Slapstick). This was the end of Chris's desert idyll with its cinemas, libraries and comfortable writing facilities. His unit was moved first to Taranto, then Bari, where they camped under almond trees in Camp Mandorla. Little information booklets were issued about Istria, revealing the over-optimism of the Allies at this stage of the Italian campaign.

When the Germans withdrew from Greece in 1944, Churchill sent a small British force to escort the Greek government home. In late September 1944, Lieutenant General Ronald Scobie's Force 140 began landing on the Peloponnese, while the Special Boat Squadron captured Araxos airfield. Parachute troops were dropped at Megara on 4th October and entered Athens on 14th October. Chris, Bert and their friends - 'G' Company, Air Formation Signals, Air Headquarters Greece - followed shortly afterwards.

They embarked on the Canadian ship, HMCS Prince David, and sailed in company with the British ambassador to Greece, the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, and the rest of the emigre cabinet. When they arrived at Piraeus in the early morning of 18th October, their officers told them that it was 'D' Day but the Germans had already left. The thirty men of the Wing section and the 50 in the Line section who made up 'G' company were taken to the Hotel Cecil, Kifissia, which had been Air Headquarters, Luftwaffe and was now Air HQ, RAF. They spent six weeks in luxury, with a double room, single beds and blankets.

Chris became intoxicated by the welcome the British received and dined out every night with Greeks who gave food and drink though they had almost nothing for themselves. On 27th October he wrote:

Athens is a city on holiday, a people celebrating after years of suffering, a great communal smile; laughter, happiness, joy, jubilation everywhere ... Imagine travelling with half-a-dozen other chaps in a truck, running through banner bedecked festooned streets hung with bright coloured declarations of welcome and praise for England, being cheered and applauded, loud and long ... Imagine everyone sitting outside a cafe getting to their feet and clapping. Imagine that happening at a hundred cafes ... Wherever you go you are pounced upon as a long-lost friend. It is a great feeling ... Currency here has been ruined by the Germans. 500 drachma to the pound in peacetime. Now 6 cigarettes cost two thousand million drachma. I have several billions of worthless notes which I will send you later.

By the 4th November he was reeling. He had the 'attitude of mind a monk would have when first leaving a monastery. I am pleasantly bewildered. There is so much to say, and I don't know where to start. There are three families which I regularly visit ... our circle is constantly expanding.' He gathered souvenirs of the German occupation (a spoon with the Luftwaffe crest on it, a sponge and a tin of blacking) and drank wine that he thought tasted like turpentine. He met an old lady on the street who 'touched our hands, piped a tear, crossed herself, and stumbled away. She had seen her deliverers.' The British stabilised the currency at 600 drachma to the pound and 'the old drachma issued by the Germans can be exchanged at the fair price of 39 billion drachmas to the £1'. He was amazed by the shops, where you could buy almost anything, including cigars, stockings, Ovaltine, Max Factor, Silvikrin and Tampax.

Although Chris saw 'tough' looking characters walking around, ammunition belts encircling them, he was not aware that he would soon be fighting Greeks. During 1943, the socialist-led anti-Nazi resistance movement EAM, and its military wing ELAS, using military equipment abandoned by the Italians, had won control of most of Greece, apart from the large cities. This led to civil war between EAM and the right-wing, royalist EDES party in the winter of 1943-4. Churchill was thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of communist rule. With the arrival of George Papandreou, General Scobie and Force 140, confrontation with EAM seemed inevitable. After 15 communist protesters were shot dead, fighting broke out between ELAS and the British on 3rd December. Faced with an uprising, Churchill instructed Scobie: 'Do not hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress'.

Back in London, Bessie was following events in the New Statesman and the News Chronicle with growing anxiety. On 6th December she wrote:

So very worried about what is happening in Greece, on the news tonight it spoke of it spreading and seem to have become a battle, my worst suspicions of what the British Army went to Greece for are fulfilled. I don't know how this is affecting you & whether the ordinary people are involved. Of course you won't be able to tell me much, I can only just hope for your safety - oh! Darling! The trouble seems to be centred in Athens, & you spoke of visiting it, so I presume you aren't billetted there ... the news tonight says civil war.

By the 8th December she was even more suspicious.

Churchill calls them rebels trying to enforce a communist Dictatorship, but the New Statesman says they represent the people ... Greece will still be ruled from here by Churchill and Co. When is Churchill genuine & when is he a humbug, is it necessary for us to enforce order??? Feel very unhappy about it, fighting the Greeks sounds too awful, wicked.

Bessie tried to be cheerful and paint scenes of war time London, laughing at posh girls with the right voices for the Foreign Office, but her heart was not in it.

Our interest in Christmas is nil ... Oh! Dear! Christopher! I really can't think of anything else, Darling, I do really want to be cheerful but it so blooming difficult, Xmas & you out there. I love you, I love you, I love you, & my heart is aching, it is so lonely and desolate without you. My mind keeps going into flights of fancy on how to get to you, from stowing away on a ship to applying to the war office, so blooming silly, but it does get so bad sometimes.

Meanwhile, Scobie's troops, including 'G' company, were outnumbered and in trouble. On the 9th December, Chris wrote to Bessie: 'I expect the news of Greece has by now nicely alarmed you ... I am enduring no hardship or privation.' Earlier he had seen a pall of smoke over the city and had heard the 'Puff -boom, Boom -puff' of the guns. He was more worried about the rockets hitting London. He remembered that Zola had worked in a coal mine for six months to get the atmosphere for 'Germinal' and concluded that he should have to hear 'at least one rocket' before it really came to him that there were such things, because 'imagination cannot take us all the way'.

In reply, on 11th December, Bessie's imagination soared:

Dearest Christopher, it is not easy to surrender myself so completely as I am doing, at my age, a much more tender age to be in love than at 20. What I feel for you Dear One is love, this is not settling down, getting married, & having children, it's something so much more, so much bigger, you have caused an upheaval within, an upheaval that contains so much sweetness, ecstasy & pain, something that I thought did not exist because I had not known it ...it is the uncertainty of life in London that enhances it, I want to rest with you in peace, but you are so far away.

Bessie's reading (she cites Reynolds News, the Daily Worker and the News Statesman) seems also to have given her a strategic grasp of what was at stake in Greece. On 16th December she wrote:

It looks to me as though on Churchill's last visit to Moscow that he & Stalin struck a bargain. For now the Polish business has come out, it looks as though we are not interfering with Russian plans in Poland, & Russia is not interfering in Greece. Shifting 6,000,000 maybe it was 4,000,000 (the figures are so enormous anyhow) Germans out of Prussia, so that Russia can have a chunk of Poland which means a further shift of millions, seems too fantastic, it doesn't matter about people, good God talk about pawns on a chessboard, surely Stalin has something else in his mind, he can't mean this. What a set up for another war in 20 years.

On the 18th December, ELAS attacked the Hotel Cecil. Chris kept a notebook throughout the action that followed.

Air HQ Greece was woken at 1.30 am on the morning of 18th December 1944, with shouts from the hotel grounds: 'Surrender, comrades, We are your friends'.

We passed the day without sleep mostly, while the building occasionally received a shell from a .75. Mess room hit. The shell when I was on top floor ... The armoured column from 3 corps had not been able to get through ... Chirgwin asked who could use a Bren gun. I replied that I could not. About 4 we got ready to go out at 5 to relieve 10 Line Section. I was not keen on having Bert in the same trench, but he thought it best so we improved on the shallow trench which had been dug during the day. Spitfires strafed where ammo had been incorrectly dropped (and fallen into ELAS hands). Quiet except for our shots, an evacuation and the snoring of the chap in the right hand trench ... At 11.30, ELAS started serious attack: shells, Bren, Rifle, mortar. The last was quite frightening. I had just read 'For Whom the Bell Tolls', wherein a Spaniard says that if you are afraid under fire you have no saliva in your mouth. I therefore took some interest in applying the test to myself at odd times, as I lay quaking with fear and cold on the ground.

Mortars started firing and got very close ... Met on the way Kell under a lorry badly wounded in the left arm. The job of getting him in. Panic in the passage. 'Close the door!' The Bren gunner still outside ... Reported to Chirgwin, got more ammo, then with Bert and Jack sat on the first floor landing. Ordered downstairs, then upstairs again. Bofors or dynamite through end passage. Much glass falling under shelling. We thought ... 'about an hour before the Spits bring us relief'. Then, suddenly, 'Cease Fire!' joyously, all over the building the cry was taken up ... Came downstairs, laid down our warm weapons and was greeted by long-haired partisans, with 'Hail, Comrades!' during the dark hour, before dawn.

Writing later, Chris commented that 'we came out of the hotel with our hands up (I suppose we had seen it done on the pictures)'. He also noted that members of the company had different experiences, according to where they were sent. 'We were all told that 16 British had been killed, one of them in the Line Section, and we all "wondered why"'.

Led away in small parties while above us the Spits looked wonderingly on ... Walk about 4 miles to a mansion. Lady partisans. Lovely, interested and approving. Water and 2 ozs of bread. Then about 15 mile march through 'the woods and forest glades'. Led away to a mountain fastness blindfolded ... Night on stone floor ... 9 wayside shrines the first 90 miles ... Spitfires and Beaufighters keep us under observation. Collection of bread from villagers ... On a wall of the German mess room there was a large painting, with girls, and the caption: 'The whole world is centred on love, will you have a cup of tea with me.'

Afterwards, he remembered the cold. 'It was good weather when we left but in a few days it must have snowed, because we did a good deal of walking through beautiful whiteness. Although everyone lost their overcoats, it did not seem cold during the day. It was very cold at night, and without this short period in my life I should not have known what it was to be cold and hungry.' Bert cut his balaclava helmet, giving Chris half. When pulled over the head, the wool stuck in their newly-grown beards, so that head and face both kept warm. Bits of cardboard and lumps of paper were in demand. Placed under the hips, the effect of turning over when trying to sleep on the floor was softened.

The RAF drops were invaluable, although villagers on the route were eager to befriend the British prisoners. Chris said that the village bread was 'rough, nutritious and laxative'. The captives were given maize which Chris found possible to chew. Others were pleased to be given raw tobacco leaves and rice paper pages from a Greek Bible. During the early stages of the march the prisoners were under the control of the ELAS but lightly, with opportunities to wander off at night to urinate. Chris said that he was scared once, when one of the welcoming guards, a lad of about 14, prodded him in the stomach with a rifle. But he was never searched and retained possession of two notebooks throughout. When the ELAS knew they had been defeated, however, 'our own officers asserted authority, and started tidying-up what had been a tolerable regime.'

In London, Bessie was able to follow events closely, reading about a possible exchange of prisoners of war and the RAF dropping supplies. But there were no more letters from Chris, no replies to her Air Letters, now short and desperate. On Boxing Day, 1944 she asked:

I wonder so much, wonder if one day I shall come home & find you - in person, on the mat - just dreams of course. I went out with Deb, Lil & Iris, to a theatre last night. It was a good play with Alfred Lunt and Lyn Fontaine, so that made me forget for a bit, but somehow I can't manage to keep my mind on any conversation, I am no stimulating companion these days, more of a wet blanket I fear, though I do my best. Where Oh! Where are you Christopher My Darling, days have become weeks and still no news. I can't settle down to read, not even in the train, so I am knitting into vests the spurned coupon free cotton cum wool, instead of writing loving letters to you, am I bottled up.

After six weeks with the Communist partisans, the British were exchanged for ELAS prisoners at Larissa, on 23rd January 1945. They were given a ration of rum and piled into dozens of Army lorries for the short trip to Volos, where Chris and Bert were photographed on arrival, wearing six weeks' growth of beard, for the first and only time in their lives. It interested Chris that when they were medically examined, he, Bert and Jack (another Post Office friend), were lice free, while the RAF men who had shared their room had to be sprayed with DDT or have their body hair shaved off. He also noted the issue of new uniforms and kit: 'We entered a long, narrow room in our dirty uniforms, and walked out at the other end with arms full of new uniforms, underwear and other clothing. Some of the men immediately sold their new clothing to waiting Greeks, then went back for more.'

Chris was able to send telegrams to his family and to Bessie. He swiftly followed up with this letter (see below), scrawled at Volos on 24th January 1945. The 'warm hands of the British Army are about us and we are as comfortable as possible'. He told her to stop worrying and get drunk, and confessed that he had 'happily gulped two rum issues' since release. This was something for a life-long abstainer.

Bessie replied on 1st February:

I have just received your telegram – how can I tell you how beautiful the world is, contact again with you, contact with life. I did not realise what a benumbed state I had been reduced to. I did not whoop or prance but my knees went weak, my tummy turned over, since when I have been grinning happily to myself with a beautiful inward pleasure.

The men arrived in Athens on 27th January, en route for Italy and home, not without an argument. The RAF ordered all the men to Britain on leave, while a new set of Army officers took over and told Chris: 'You'll be on the switchboard at 8.00 am, Monday, at Tatoi'. Fortunately, Walter Citrine had arrived in Athens with a TUC delegation, to investigate atrocity stories about the civil war. Chris decided that they should also hear about the Army's tough line on the soldiers newly released by the ELAS. He improvised a trade union style deputation of ex-prisoners and marched to the Hotel Bretagne to see Citrine. He was told that Citrine was not there but persuaded other members of the delegation to listen. The interview lasted ninety minutes and was included as evidence in the delegation's official report. Representations were also made to Lieutenant General Scobie and Reginald Leeper, the British Ambassador, with the result that all the men were given home leave and arrived back in England via Naples and Glasgow on 21st February 1945.

Meanwhile, home life was less than comfortable. 'It tried to snow today,' wrote Bessie, 'horribly cold ... what is a girl to do in this climate, had cold feet all day.' She was irritated that their British restaurant was being taken over by the War Office. 'That will mean 2/6 lunches, without any improvement.' Wilfred had written from hospital, where he was recovering from jaundice. 'He has been drinking beer, the doctor on the wireless said of jaundice, no alcohol for 6 months, he said the hospital never said anything about keeping off alcohol ... He isn't a heavy drinker, but he likes it unfortunately.'

Bessie's cooking activities were limited. 'Dad has his dinner midday from Mrs Baker (a neighbour) which absorbs our meat ration. Cake making is rare because we drink our sugar ration, even the cooking of snacks isn't very often because Dad is a bad shopper + I can't shop often enough to catch the odds & ends that are to be had on occasions, my diet is a most uninteresting repetition.'

The London theatre seems to have provided relief from the bleak landscape and rations that were her daily fare. 'I went to see The Circle, John Gielgud's production of a play by Somerset Maugham, didn't think much of it ... to me he seems such a milk and water specimen, no fire, no life in him, just a beautiful voice, too too cultured. I think I have got a bit choosy over the theatre, have seen some really fine plays during the war, my standard has got a bit high.'

About a year earlier, there had been a silent drama at 161 Ridgeway Drive, which added to the poignancy of Bert and Chris's imminent return from war. Bert had been driving a signals' vehicle attached to a general in the Western Desert. His father received a telegram from the War Office, informing him that his eldest son was 'missing'. Herbert kept the news to himself and grieved alone. It is easy to picture the lonely old man gazing into space, believing that his beloved son was dead. A few days later another telegram arrived, mercifully informing him that Bert was safe and well.

Preparing for reality made Bessie and Chris equally apprehensive. He wrote to say that he didn't want to get married when he returned from Athens and that they should plan their time. 'Do not let us make any mistakes'. Bessie replied: 'You dear old silly, do you really think you can guard against that, or insure the future ... it all depends on you. I shall be with you, what's done with the time I don't care, as long as I get sufficient opportunities to cuddle you, & be alone with you. To feel, what I have imagined, to know you.' But she was worried about the photograph he had sent. 'A funny photo of you, with a beard, but you look a little grim, as if you need loving, as if you need tenderness.' She admitted that she was 'a little scared' because 'everything in letters appears larger than life size'. She felt her own photograph 'didn't show the white hairs beneath the black, the decaying teeth, the darkening skin, I think of my nasty characteristics, my ordinariness yes, I too feel a little afraid. Still, I can't be bothered with that now, for we are going to meet, does anything else matter Chris, no no no.'

On the journey home, Chris was almost too nervous to write. He tried hard to think of a restaurant that would 'allow us to talk and look at each other in some privacy ... I am coming to you, to claim you and to call you lovely.' He arrived in the UK on 20th February 1945 and after press interviews and celebrations in Glasgow, hurried south, first to Bromley, then Bessie. Herbert (senior), alerted by the Evening News that his sons were at Charing Cross on their way home from Greece, was at Grove Park station to meet them. The press photograph reproduced here shows Bert and Chris reunited with their parents in the garden at 161 Ridgeway Drive, Bromley. Before their leave ended, however, Herbert had taken to his bed, and he was in it when his sons returned to the war on 28th March.

Back in Italy, however, Chris felt a new phase in his correspondence with Bessie had begun. 'We are so much strengthened now by our meeting: I have seen you, and I hope you've seen and will remember my eyes. I think I shall have to write to you rather differently from my 1944 items ... I am now too much aware of you, too moved within me by the knowledge of you and the fact that now we are one. We now do know what we mean to each other ... It is appalling to think of not seeing you for a year.'

Chris now explained why he had not wanted to get married during his recent leave. 'I do not want to marry until I am sure that only natural causes (including your cooking!) can separate us. Lying on my stomach in the dark cold night, with the ELAS banging away at us, I realised with clarity that we have no automatic assurance of life together until both wars, German and Jap, are over. I do not want to leave a widow (perhaps with a child) behind to mourn me.' He was pleased to learn about Bessie's Ridgeway Drive visit, however. 'We heard yesterday from Mum that Dad had just started to appear a bit interested in life, and that you had a long talk with him on your visit...It was a great success, that occasion when you expressed interest in his seven or eight medals, he won't ever forget it.'

Chris and Bert were separated after their ELAS leave, except that Bert, as a driver, sometimes delivered to his brother's unit. On one of these visits he told Chris tragic news of his friend, Frank Wicks. Chris wrote to Bessie (30.4.45):

One of Bert's old letters returned is from the wife of a chap to whom he sent cheery Xmas greetings. He joined the Army with the chap, and had been sent a photo of his little girl. He wrote him, although he hadn't heard of him for some time. His wife (Daisy) replies with a fine letter, to say her 'beloved Frank' was killed accidentally in Italy, April 6, 1944. What a letter to have to write.

This chance contact was about to fracture the Barker family forever.

On the 2nd May, Chris heard the shout 'News Flash' and rushed to the 'tent with the wireless' and heard that the German armies in Italy had surrendered unconditionally. 'Coming on the same day as the 7 AM announcement (which I heard) that Hitler was reported dead and Runstedt captured, it gave us a certain extra elation and hope that other Germans will also surrender rather than make it necessary for our chaps to get killed unnecessarily.' But he was convinced that the war with Japan would be long and that there was no prospect of returning home inside eighteen months. There was little relief amongst the troops because the men were 'much too aware of the time that will elapse before they return home.'

He reported himself out of sorts. He feared they would not get a place of their own for a long time and suggested 27 Woolacombe Road might be the best place to stay. 'I hope (your Dad) does not decide to find a wife.' On the other hand, he calculated they had saved £700 between them, to which he was adding at the rate of £3 per week, thanks to the fact that his Army income was topped up to the level of his civil service pay, giving him more money than some of the officers. He advised Bessie to consult an estate agent, perhaps in Bexley, to find out what was available.

On 5th June 1945, Herbert Barker died. The right hand photograph shows flowers fresh on his grave. The Army refused compassionate leave. Chris saw the commanding officer and protested that his father's pride in participating in the Siege of Ladysmith had done him no good in life or death. He told Bessie that he should like to visit his father's 'resting place' when he was next home on leave. At this time, however, his main concern was for his mother, to whom he resolved to write every day rather than every three days.

Meanwhile, Bert had continued his correspondence with Frank Wicks' widow. He sent her a quantity of the nuts so freely available in Italy and before long had fallen in love with her, and she with him. According to Chris (20.8.45), he was 'very confident (as honest, innocent people are) that Mum would find it easy to adjust herself to the new situation.' He was not so sure and warned Bert to be careful in broaching the subject of his proposed marriage with Daisy. Recently bereaved and grief stricken, Mrs Amy Barker was thinking of anything but the marriage and loss of her sons. She wanted Bert to return to Bromley and for the old pre-war way of life to resume.

Bert arrived home from leave one morning (July/August 1945) at 6.30 am and over breakfast announced his wedding plans. Although he promised her a continued home at 161 Ridgeway Drive, she was unyielding in her refusal. When it was clear he would marry, she declared she would leave at once and join her daughter Rosie, son-in-law Charlie, and grandson Geoffrey, in their newly-purchased home at 63 Granville Road, Wood Green. Chris informed Bessie that his mother was 'selfish and jealous' and that the situation was 'as bad as it looks'. Meanwhile, Archie was pre-occupied with his own problems. He divorced and moved, with his second wife, Hilda, to a two-bedroom downstairs maisonette in Enfield.

By September 1945, when he was formulating his own leave and marriage plans, Chris reflected sadly on 'the maze of misery started by Bert's unsingular desire. I know that my Mother is behaving unpardonably, but I think you should know that I readily and freely pardon her.' But he did not think the imbroglio could be improved by written words, 'so I am chucking it'. Already on his brother's side, Chris concealed his feelings when his mother said she would be unable to 'stand the strain of presence at the Registry Office. I have written saying I understand her position (not, of course that I dislike her tragedienne attitude) and that I hope Rosie and Charlie if convenient will be present.'

Bessie replied that she was worried about her soon-to-be mother-in-law's attitude, so he wrote again, 'asking if she will come as a necessary expression of goodwill to us, as you are rather unhappy at her decision'. Writing a few days before he arrived home in London for their marriage, on 24th October 1945, Chris was more concerned with Bessie and their long anticipated happiness than with the emotional convulsion over Bert. 'Won't it be wonderful to be away from all those who have claims on our attention, to be just by ourselves and responsible only to ourselves?' He wished, above all, to avoid fuss, and thought that the more people were involved, the more fuss there would be. So they were married by special licence at the local registry office, with only Bessie's father and brother present. There was no 'wedding breakfast' or gathering of friends, only lunch and a drink at the Dover Patrol public house, now demolished.

The married man returned to Italy, although the German and Japanese wars were over, and he was not eventually released until June 1946, only a couple of months before my birth. But as Chris recorded shortly after the Japanese surrender in August, 'We've both survived our second world war. Now, all we need look forward to is the many happinesses associated with surviving each other.' Living in the countryside, he was able to send home large quantities of rice and roasted nuts, as well as scrounged household goods (enamel pails, matting) that Bessie dismissed as 'junk', the first hint of disagreement between them in over two years of almost daily correspondence. His letters remained full of love but they were increasingly taken up with practical details to which he could not attend himself.

Bert and Daisy offered to sell them 55 Ellesmere Drive, Sanderstead, Surrey, where Daisy had lived with Frank Wicks before the war, but the house seemed expensive, especially as it was located 4 miles from the station. Daisy wanted a £1,000, which was almost all their savings. There would be nothing left for setting up their new household, especially if Bessie's missed period should turn out to be a child on the way. Should they buy the house at once and let it until Chris was released from the forces? Suppose it were requisitioned in the meantime? Was Bessie prepared to say 'cheerio' to her father and leave him alone with her brother at no. 27? Chris asked her whether 'the fact we have this offer might induce him to transfer 27 and him with it? What about the girlfriend?'

As it turned out, Bessie was pregnant. Chris believed the addition would be 'a physical sign of our mental togetherness'. He repeated his sums and decided they would have £1,100 if his Army gratuity and their income tax rebates were taken into account. The prospect of their own house was too good to miss, especially when there were so many homeless people and so many damaged buildings. So they decided to seize the opportunity and Bessie moved in. Chris was soon racing to join her:

7.6.46

The Last Letter

Darling, tonight I spend my last night in the Army. Tomorrow I spend the night in the train. As you go to sleep on Wednesday night, think of me speeding along the rails towards you, sleeping this final separate sleep. And remember that when you awaken in the morning, it will be to hear my voice and see me. Dearest, Darling, Only One, thank you for all that you have been to me through these years, and be sure we shall overcome with our love, any difficulties there may be later on … I can never be as good as you deserve, but I really will try very hard … We shall be collaborators, man and woman, husband and wife, lovers.