War hero Eric’s – from Dunkirk
A CHANCE glance at a national newspaper’s flashback to British troops marching into Copenhagen showed a paratrooper smiling for the camera.
It was May 6, 1945, and men from the 1st Parachute Brigade were entering the Carlsberg Breweries to assist Danish Resistance Forces who were collecting Nazis temporarily interned there.
Among them was Huddersfield lad Eric Wade who, aged just 24, had gone all through the war from Dunkirk to D-Day and beyond and lived to tell the tale.
Three-quarters of a century may have passed since the photograph was taken but Melanie Wade, along with sisters Stephanie and Leonie and their mum Barbara, recognised him in a heartbeat.
“I knew straight away that it was my dad,” said Melanie, from Golcar. “He had that moustache all his life.”
Eric, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday in July, has been much in his family’s thoughts in the run-up to VE Day.
The approach of the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe prompted Melanie to dig out her father’s medals, photographs, memorabilia and, of course, his red beret.
And as the big day approached there has been much reminiscing about Eric, who died 20 years ago.
“Dad lied about his age to join the Royal Artillery when he was 16,” says Melanie.
“I think it was about getting away from Huddersfield. He’d had two or three dead-end jobs and wanted to get away and have an adventure.
“His mum died when he was quite young. He was the eldest of four brothers, one of whom died young, too. His dad had been in World War One.
“I think they struggled. They certainly weren’t well-off.”
Eric was followed into the services by younger brothers Ronald and Peter. And it was as the war got underway that Eric, still only 19 years old, would experience arguably the biggest adventure of his life.
He was among the 338,000 British and French troops snatched from Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo, the hasty and audacious rescue mission that turned a disaster into what Churchill described as “a miracle of deliverance”.
Back in Blighty, Eric answered Churchill’s call for 5,000 airborne assault troops.
Almost four years after he left France on one of the little ships out of Dunkirk, he returned as part of the unit that captured what became known as Pegasus Bridge in the early hours of June 6, 1944: D-Day.
Melanie takes up the story. “I imagine it being horrendous but he was like most men of that age in that he didn’t talk about the war.
“Instead he’d tell silly stories. “When he was rescued off the beaches at Dunkirk his main story was that he was fed-up because he’d lost his cigarettes on the beach.
“And when he served in Africa they would fry eggs on the bonnets of vehicles. When we were growing up I remember him frying eggs in butter because that’s the way they’d done it in France. Just silly things.
“He did have a scar on his knee, though. He said he got that from being shot.”
The story of D-Day was immortalised in the movie The Longest Day, in which an international allstar cast - including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton and Sean Connery - lent movie star glamour to a real-life tale of grit and guts.
Among the multitudinous cast was John Gregson, playing the 6th Airborne’s padre who loses his Communion set in a canal and has to retrieve it by repeatedly plunging beneath the water.
Assisting him is a young paratrooper, played by Harry Fowler. It was dramatised from a real-life incident with the Fowler character based on Eric Wade.
“That was my dad. They had to fight their way back. And my dad said it didn’t quite happen as it was shown in the film. He said the padre was a pain in the backside!”
Eric’s wartime service took him to France, to Africa, to Denmark and, in March 1945, to Germany. His wife and daughters are attempting to locate his records to understand precisely where he saw action.
Family legend says that Eric, a corporal, was twice made up to sergeant but lost his stripes “as he answered back too many times!”
Of the photograph of the Paras marching into Copenhagen, Melanie once again points to her father’s character.