The Long Way Home (15 page)

Although I could see nothing outside, my stomach told me quite clearly that we had started to dive towards Scotland. Now, for the first time, I started to wonder how Jimmy was doing in his
Mosquito and if he had worked out how much good his parachute would be in the case of accidents. This train of thought was soon ended as the crew began to radio in for landing instructions. We were
soon bumping along the runway at Leuchars. When we finally came to a standstill, the bomb-bay doors were silently opened and the infernal wire basket was lowered and I was able to throw out my
parachute pack before clambering out onto the runway. A truck was waiting to collect the diplomatic mail but I was told to stand by and within a few minutes the plane carrying my big brother landed
and finally rolled to a stop near ours.

Jimmy scrambled out and after a big congratulatory success hug we made our way together to the flight office. Here, after getting out of all the flying paraphernalia, we heartily and profusely
thanked our respective crews and wished them luck for the future. Unfortunately, this didn’t do them much good; we heard later from Sweden that my crew were shot down and killed about six
weeks later. Naturalists wonder what drives the lemmings to their suicidal rush to their deaths over cliffs into the sea, but what about the men who enter a war where the odds are stacked against
them? Many times in prison camp I thought about what I would do if we ever got home safely, and the recurring answer was that never again would they get me into a situation that didn’t
correspond with the job I had signed up to do.

Why should a signalman like myself end up lying behind a bren gun on a road block, when his commander-in-chief and all his elite troops were on a ship heading for home? How was it that some
people had done so much better? For example, a friend of mine, also a signalman in our line section, was on the same assignment with Joe and me when we ended up in Boulogne and were diverted to the
road block. He worked it out and decided that this wasn’t why he was in France, and so he slung his hook and headed for home where he was, of course, welcomed as a Dunkirk hero. Believe it or
not, by the time we arrived home in 1944 he was a major in the Royal Signals and the three of us were still signalmen. So much for desertion in the face of the enemy and getting your just
deserts.

An officer from Military Intelligence came forward and introduced himself. He told us that we would have to go through the whole rigmarole of how, where and when again, but it seemed to get
easier each time and he kept the information he required to a minimum. I have to admit that I couldn’t tell you his name or what he looked like, and when he stopped me several weeks later in
the Intelligence Depot in Wentworth to ask how I was, I had no recollection of having met him before. He said this was understandable as Jimmy and I were quite overwrought on our arrival from
Sweden.

When our debriefing session was finally over, we were passed to the Duty Officer for his attention. What we fervently hoped for was a rail warrant to Glasgow but this hope was quickly dashed. We
were told to proceed under escort to the War Office in London for some real interrogation by the experts who were waiting for us. Apparently only about a dozen British POWs had reached Sweden since
the beginning of the war, so we made up twenty-five percent of this figure, which wasn’t bad going for three lads from Glasgow.

Jimmy and I had been in touch with big brother William, who was the only one in the family with a telephone in his home. Only now could we tell him where we were and where we were going next.
The family couldn’t understand why we weren’t allowed to return to Glasgow rather than travel south to London. We couldn’t answer this question, and personally I was beginning to
think in terms of another escape. All we wanted was to go home, see our family and sleep in our own beds, but for the moment this was impossible.

Instead, after a meal and early bed we had to catch the first train in the morning to Edinburgh and travel with our escort to London. We were promised that after the London debriefing we would
finally be allowed to go home. This still seemed awfully remote, and not at all as we had pictured our homecoming.

Luckily for us, we had seats reserved on the train, otherwise we would have had to join the crowd of service and civilian travellers who had to sit on their suitcases and
various other forms of luggage in the crowded corridors of the Edinburgh–London express. We were being escorted in the nicest possible way to our debriefing session with the Intelligence
personnel of the three services about our successful escape from the POW camp.

The three of us were beginning to feel tired and edgy. When you consider that in the morning we had been in Sweden, then flown to Scotland in Mosquito bombers, and were now heading for London in
an overcrowded train, this was perhaps understandable. Jimmy O’Neill, my brother, Joe Harkin, my friend, and John McCallum, myself, were hitting a very low ebb after the euphoria of our big
success. If we hadn’t been so spoiled in Sweden, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, but coming down to earth with such a big bang was difficult.

If all politicians had to suffer hardship and deprivation after a war was declared, then there would be no more war; talking is easy and cheap, but you still need the silly sods who will go out
and do the dirty work for the professional talkers. If the cabinet ministers who declare a state of war were forced to operate from the front line then, as they promised in the two world wars, we
would indeed all be home for Christmas. It’s strange the thoughts that run through your head when you’re suffering from a major anticlimax.

Halfway into England we managed to get a cup of tea and some sandwiches from a trolley at one of the stations we stopped at, and although we complained about the quality, we were grateful to be
able to get them at all. As we moved further south, we were shocked at what we saw on the roads. An interminable array of all sorts of tanks and other armoured vehicles were parked along sections
of the main roads along with thousands of trucks of all kinds and weights.

My mind went back to the day the efficient German army had rolled past me on the road block outside Boulogne; I had felt sorry for our troops behind me, knowing what they had to face. Now the
boot was on the other foot and I could almost sympathise with the enemy, knowing the scale of the equipment that was ready to engage them. Strange pictures and thoughts were racing through my mind.
They were brought to an abrupt end as Jimmy shook me awake and told me we were in London.

By the time we had consumed a greasy breakfast in the dingy station restaurant, I was once again fully awake. I was expecting to see the horrific damage that London had suffered at the hands of
the Luftwaffe, but the crafty cab driver took a devious route that showed none of this. London looked like a normal bustling metropolitan city as we passed through. Our strictly anonymous escort
quickly arranged our security passes at the reception desk in the War Office and handed us over to another escort. We were taken through a maze of corridors and finally arrived at a door which
mysteriously opened. Our escort ushered us in and closed the door behind us. Here, we were suddenly greeted by real people again.

Representatives of the three Armed Services interviewed us, each being interested in different things, and extracted information from us that we had no idea we had. The RAF intelligence officer
made notes of the fact that the lovely big red Post Office building still stood untouched in the middle of Stettin. By the look on his face this would not be the case for very long. The Navy were
naturally interested in what we had seen in the dock area. Military intelligence had the hardest job, as their interest stretched from 1939 until now, the middle of 1944. Eventually we were
squeezed dry and they handed us over to an officer who would arrange our proper documentation, plus pay, plus leave, plus rail warrants for our journey home and back to a reporting camp on the
termination of our leave.

When the smug captain stated that we would be granted twenty-eight days’ leave and would then return to the army selection unit designated on our leave passes, it all started to go wrong.
I politely interrupted and asked him to repeat the number of days of leave. This he promptly did, whereupon I informed him that as far as I was concerned this was completely unacceptable and
nowhere near the amount of accrued leave we were due for the last five years. Can you imagine – the Dunkirk fiasco, four years in POW, you make your own way home – and you’re told
you can have five and a half days’ leave for every year that you were away. I asked the good captain if he could tell me exactly how many days’ leave he had had in the last five years,
at which point he threatened to bring in the sergeant-major and have me arrested for insubordination.

Jimmy realised I had gone too far and told me to be quiet and give the officer a chance to clarify the situation, which he did. He told us that if at the end of twenty-eight days we felt we
needed more time to adjust, then we should ring him and he would make the necessary arrangements. Why he couldn’t have said that in the first place I don’t know, though it is possible
that I didn’t give him a chance. The paperwork was duly completed and, after a few nasty looks, we parted company. Now our target was home.

We finally settled down in the northbound train from Euston which, like the last train we were on, was overcrowded. I now had time to think some loving thoughts about Traudl and try to come up
with some way of letting her know what had happened since we had parted company. The three of us discussed the problem and always came up with the same answer. Any attempt to get in touch with her
would compromise her safety and wellbeing. It seemed ironic that we could inform Stalag VIIIB of our success but couldn’t tell Traudl. I felt if we had discussed it with her before we left,
she would probably have come up with a solution to the problem. Perhaps the reason we had never discussed it was that, in my heart, I had never really believed we would succeed. I did ask advice
from the Foreign Office later. They said there was nothing anyone could do at this stage of the war. So, for the present, it was a case of putting it out of my mind, which I didn’t find
easy.

After another rude awakening I was told that we were approaching Glasgow. I began to wonder if I was going to spend the rest of my life dropping off to sleep. Strangely enough,
to this day I only have to close my eyes and I can doze off, even standing up. It may have some connection to the severe nervous attacks I had developed, even though these were occurring less and
less – thank God, as they were still terrifying when they happened.

Outside the station we said goodbye to Joe for the present and arranged when we would meet again. Then Jimmy and I shared a taxi as we lived quite close to each other. Glasgow didn’t look
any different after years of war, and soon we were in Maryhill and I was kissing my sister-in-law Clara ‘hello and goodbye’. A few minutes later the taxi was turning into the street
where my mother lived. Flags and bunting and ‘Welcome Home John’ banners were strung all over the place and surprised me because I had never been very familiar with any of the
neighbours. Most of them would never have recognised me under normal circumstances, but now they knew what I looked like because of the newspaper stories and photographs.

The family reunion doesn’t have to be described, but was certainly memorable. No one seemed to think it strange, though, that in twenty-eight days we would be expected to enter the fray
again. With what results next time, I wondered? I thought of asking them to alter the banners to read ‘Welcome Home John – for twenty-eight days’.

During the four years we had been in POW camp we had all assumed that if or when we returned to the UK the war would be over for us. But here we were, faced with the possibility of doing another
five years, perhaps even longer. What we had heard in London was that the army was delighted we were back because tradesmen of our calibre were at a premium and that we would be back in service
with as little delay as possible. What they didn’t know was that at least one tradesman had no intention of going back to the Royal Signals to start all over again. In 1937 I had enlisted in
the Reservists in this rank and now in 1944 my rank was still the same. My gut feeling was that there must be something else that I could do in the army that would give me promotion virtually
immediately, and when I returned to duty this would be my top priority.

On the surface everything looked the same in Glasgow but things were very different when you moved around. I went into a tobacconist’s in Maryhill Road two days later and, without
thinking, casually asked the nice old grey-haired man behind the counter for twenty Players. First he looked at me as if I had come from another planet, then he thought over what I had asked for
and finally he burst into hilarious laughter. While he was still laughing I went outside the shop and checked the sign above the door to make sure I was in the right establishment. Then I
re-entered and repeated my request for twenty Players. When he calmed down, he asked me where I had been hiding for the last few years. After hearing my story, he realised I was one of the three he
had read about in the papers, and went on to explain that good cigarettes were at a premium and hard to come by unless you were in the good books of your friendly tobacconist. Then the kind old
gentleman produced the said cigarettes from behind the counter and promised that while I was on leave I could have twenty Players every day. Needless to say, we became good friends.

Suddenly I had fan mail. But when Mother said that I would have to answer it all, the fun of being famous evaporated. I compromised by placing a ‘thank you’ ad in
the newspapers. Then the neighbours organised a presentation dance in the church hall. The presentation that they made was a leather wallet containing money which had been collected for me. I was
supposed to make a speech, but I was completely incapable of doing so. As far as I remember I muttered something about ‘thanks a million’ and sat down. Reporters came and went and one
of them even tried to buy the snap-brim soft hat that I had got in Sweden – with no success, I may add.