Once, in Civvie street, he started to have lessons, to read music. He turned up for one lesson, sat down and stared to play the music before him. The teacher soon said-
“Mister, you’re wasting your money and my time!”
“Why? I’m playin’ it right, aren’t I?”
“Yes but you’re playing in the wrong key!” He had simply read the title, and ‘Oh yes! I know that.’ and off we go!
He was a show all by himself. Sit him at an instrument and tell him to play until further orders, and he would play the clock round, tune after tune, without a pause. Many a French and Belgian watering hole must have witnessed Charlie playing the whole of ‘E’ Company into a drunken stupor.
Before the war it had been a regular occurrence, after Charlie, Jane and the kids were all in bed asleep, for a knock on the door to rouse Charlie from his slumbers, and be dragged off to play the piano in a pub lock-up, i.e. an illegal, after hours drinking session behind closed doors. Further it was not uncommon for Charlie to bring everyone back home to roll back the furniture and carpets for singing and dancing to Charlie’s own piano.
Jane was driven to her wits’ end by the upheaval, for her and for the children. Next morning, after getting Charlie off to work, and children off to school, she would have to set to, on her knees, scrubbing the scuff marks off the lino, and setting everything to rights. Eventually it all got too much, so after clearing up, she sold the piano, and had it carted away, while Charlie was at work. She then went next door to her friend, May Wilde, and voiced her fears-
“Our Mester’s goin’ to kill me when ‘e gets ‘ome. I’ve selt ‘is pianner”. Note that though these bosom friends were May and Jane to each other, their husbands were our Mester and your Mester.
Well the Mester came home and sat straight down to his tea. For years, Jane’s proudest boast was that, as the Mester came through the door, his tea was just arriving on the table. This achievement was made possible by always having one of the chidren on duty, at the window, ready to sing out when the Mester made his appearance from the top passage, into the yard.
Not for some little time, did he register the empty space on the wall opposite the fire, then, in a mildly puzzled tone-
“Where’s ‘pianner?”
“I’ve selt it!” Jane braced herself for the beating of her life. Nothing. No blows, no harsh words. No word. Into the third day- no word. Silence. Not moody, not sullen, just silence. The third evening, as Charlie sat reading his paper, after tea, Jane was driven to distraction. The dam of silence had to be broken, so she jumped up, suddenly, and started rummaging through the corner cupboard, the sideboard drawers, under the sink, on the cellar head, clattering away, all the while. Eventually, Charlie became aware of the racket, and enquired, mildly-
“Whatever are yer lookin’ for, Jane?”
“Nowt, now! I’ve found it! It’s in your mouth!” came the triumphant reply. The crisis was past.
But he did still possess a full size melodeon, and when his fellow sergeants learned of it, they clubbed together to have it sent out to him, so he could entertain them in their off duty hours. The melodeon saw several years service in dugout after dugout, and survived well after the war, until Jane stood on top of it, once too often, to clean the bedroom window, and crashed with both feet through the bellows effectively killing it.
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| Rest and Recuperation |
When home on leave, even in uniform, Charlie was still subjected to prejudice and resentment. Most likely some of it was from shirkers and cowards who resented him doing what they didn’t have the guts to do. On one particular leave, he decided to treat the family to a fish supper from the local chip shop. In the shop, three bully boys, in civvies, started mocking his uniform, and taking his lack of response for fear, they decided to set about him. Considering how he’d been passing his time of late, he didn’t have any hesitation or difficulty in laying all three out. He then turned to pick up his order. Indicating the comatose figures, he said to the beaming proprietor-
“They’ll pay!”
“thats fine, Charlie!” came the reply.
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| Battered |
There’s a photo of Sergeant Eckhardt showing his fine, waxed moustache, of which he was very proud. It was the height of current, male fashion. On another leave, towards the end of the war, with two similarly hirsute sergeants, they all three got roaring drunk, rolled into the local barber’s shop, and in spite of Mr Twigg’s attempts to prevent rash actions which that worthy gent knew would be deeply regretted, later, they insisted on having their moustaches shaved off! Then they parted company, each to go to their respective homes, to crash out, and sleep themselves sober.
Charlie awoke on the sofa, several hours later. He rose unsteadily, and stepped to the hearth. On seeing the bare faced truth in the mantelshelf mirror, he let out a heartfelt cry of perplexed anguish-
“Where’s me moustache?” He didn’t remember a thing. He never re-grew it, but to the end of his days, he never lost the habit, as he sat daydreaming, in his arm-chair, of absent-mindedly twirling the waxed tips of his long-gone moustache.
*
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| Clean Shaves! |
The establishment of Mr Alonzo Twigg, barber, was the scene of my first haircut. I did not co-operate. In fact, two waiting customers, soldiers both, were pressed into service, to hold me down in the chair. One of them escaped unscathed, but I scathed the other, all right. By skilful use of the segs in my shoe heel, I managed to put a 6” rip in the leg of his battle-dress uniform by way of learnin’ him to mind his own business.
Next door but one to Mr Twigg’s shop was a house-window shop, a draper’s I suppose you would have to call it. With later, more subdued visits, which were probably every four weeks, come to think, Betty and I would always call at this shop after my haircut, for pins, lace, tape, knitting wool, I don’t know what, but always ‘and a box of towels, please’. I suppose it was the regular utterance, word for word, which made it lodge in my mind, and caused me to think ‘we must get through an awful lot of towels, at our house. I don’t know where they all go ‘cos I don’t see ‘em’.
*
Charlie would never discuss his war experiences, and questions were discouraged, in fact, so was the whole topic of war. This was in spite of, yet maybe partly because of the fact that my father was killed in action, in 1944, two months before my 3rd birthday, hence Betty and me continuing to live with her parents, Charlie and Jane. I remember, as a 5yr old, once drawing some aeroplanes , or aeroes as I would have called them then, some with RAF roundels, some with swastikas, all in a dog fight. Jane duly admired the drawing, then said-
“Put it away, now, before your Grand-dad comes in from work. He’ll be here in a minute”. She spoke quite matter-of-factly, as though hiding it from his eyes were the most natural thing in the world. I remember one single exception to this conspiracy of silence. It was prompted by a radio reference to the ailment ‘water on the knee’. Charlie murmured, almost to himself, almost unaware of speaking aloud-
“I’ve seen blokes sit for hours in ‘trenches, beatin’ their bare knees wi’ wet rags, tryin’ to get watter under ‘kneecaps so’s they’d be invalided ‘ome”. He further confided that it didn’t work; it was a cruel delusion.
Charlie duly received his three medals- Pip, Squeak and Wilfred, as they were dubbed, after newspaper cartoon strip characters of the day. He fair burst with pride. Every week they were polished, so that now they are quite worn, like old coins, long in circulation. Every Armistice Day between the wars, and for a while after, he wore them to the service of remembrance at the Sheffield Cenotaph, in Barkers’ Pool. I believe it was his way of saying ‘Look! This is what I did for you, you bastards, after what you did for me!’