Barking at Winston put Dad in doghouse

MY FATHER, George, was born in 1914 to a Dutch immigrant father. He worked in London until war broke out. Posted to Whitehall, he was responsible for blackout curtains in various buildings. One, now well known for Churchill’s War Rooms, was particularly difficult to black out because the entrance hall was so high. Changing one of these curtains required a tall ladder which, when placed on the highly polished marble floor, became an act of faith. One day my father was at the very top of the ladder when Winston Churchill, accompanied by his bodyguard, ambled along quite drunk. Stumbling against the ladder, he knocked it over and it came down hard — with my father jumping for his life. Rolling over, he found himself at Churchill’s feet where, dazed and not recognising who had knocked him off the ladder, he called him all the names under the sun. Churchill’s bodyguard grabbed him and told him he would spend the rest of the war in prison for abusing the Prime Minister. ‘No, no,’ said Churchill, ‘We bricklayers [mistaking my father’s occupation] must stick together. Let him go immediately.’ Bricklaying was a hobby of Churchill’s. Shortly after, my father received his call-up papers for the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), following the tanks to do quick repairs. Waiting in Southampton to be deployed to France, an officer came from London to interview him. This created a stir among my father’s colleagues. The officer said the German army had just called up every eldest son of a Dutchman. As my father was the eldest son and his father was Dutch, it included him. He was to sign the letter saying he knew the dangers and was going voluntarily to the Continent. ‘Wouldn’t it just be best if I stayed here?’ Dad asked. ‘We need every man we can get,’ replied the officer. ‘Sign it,’ said Dad’s commanding officer. So he did. ‘If I am caught, what will happen when they find out my Dutch name?’ As if from an episode of Dad’s Army, the brass responded: ‘Oh, don’t worry, they will probably shoot you.’ So, as he trod on a Normandy beach, he tried not to think that by some strange quirk of fate he was in both the British and the German armies. If caught, he said he would make curtains for his new employers, but make sure they didn’t quite meet in the middle!

Peter Poessinouw, Weston Colville, Cambs.