Trafford Publishing: Forfeit to War

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Forfeit to War

by Vera Renouf

370 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0555; ISBN 1-55369-153-9; US$31.00, C$35.95, EUR25.50, £18.00

Non-Fiction memoir of the decade 1940-1950 in Britain and Canada. The author describes what it was like living through WWII and its aftermath.

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About the Book

    The post first world war Depression came to an end in Britain with the outbreak of the second world war in september 1939.
    For a few months there was an apprehensive lull soon known as the "phoney war", but this ended in the spring of 1940.
Without warning, the German Army burst across the German borders, and swept through Europe with terrifying efficiency.
    By June 1940, most of Europe was under the control of Adolf Hitler, and the victorious German Army was poised to invade Britain, only twenty two miles across the channel.
    Rallied by Winson Churchill, the new British Prime Minister, civilians were ordered to fight the invader on the beaches, in towns, in the streets, and house to house. They were not to surrender.
    In a rapidly deteriorating situation, a group of school friends abondon their Guide and Scout Troops, and join the newly formed military cadet units.
    One by one, as they achieve military service age, they say farewell, and go to war.
    This is their story.

About the Author

    Mrs. Renouf was born during the Depression in the north of England. She was educated privately, and at the Universities of London and Southampton.
    Joining her school's air cadet cadre at the beginning of the war, she later volunteered for the Women's Royal Naval service and was transferred to the Royal Marines.
    After demobilization in the late 40's, she became a constable in London's prestigious Metropolitan Police, whose Headquarters are at Scotland yard.
    She and her husband retired to Canada in 1981, and after Allan went into care, served for several years as a director on the board of trustees for the Lodge at Broadmead.

Excerpts

Preface
    This is the story of a group of British schoolchildren who are catapulted from childhood to adulthood during the Second World War.
    As pre-war friends, they part company to pursue higher education, coming together again as military cadets when the threat of invasion in 1940 mobilizes the country. One by one, the cadets achieve military service age and are called to the colours.
    One joins the Royal Air Force as a bomber pilot, trains in Canada, returns to Britain for active service, then crashes his Lancaster on his third mission - killing himself and his crew.
    Two become reluctant conscripts into the Army, and I volunteer for the Women's Royal Navy Service and am transferred to the Royal Marines.
    Another joins the Royal Navy and is seconded to the Royal Canadian Navy, while Ginger, the youngest of the group, falsifies his age and joins the Parachute Regiment. It also follows the fortunes of others who join our lives, including Eddie, the handsome American sailor who breezes into our midst like a breath of fresh air. Eddie goes down with his ship on a convoy to Murmansk, Russia.
    Then there was Allan's friend, Violet, who marries a French Army Officer, and later joins the Special Operations Executive (French Section) after he is killed in action.All through the late 40's we are demobilized to broken homes, ruined cities, reduced food rations, and shortages of everything we had once taken for granted. In different ways we tried to pick up the threads of a life we barely remembered, but try as we might, there was no turning back the clock to the people we had once been. Our world was gone, friends were dead, and those who had survived were old beyond their years.

    Nothing was ever the same again.

Book One
    Most of the time when I visit Alan, he is relaxed and asleep in the custom-built wheelchair provided for him by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Fast asleep beside him is his comrade, who looks so much like him, there have been occasions when I have cuddled the wrong husband.
    During the long summer days, they sit side by side in the shade of the inner garden, but when the days shorten and the air becomes crisp with the promise of winter, they are brought inside and sit together by the picture window - oblivious to the golden shades of autumn and the arrival of the first flakes of snow.
    Shuffling aimlessly around them, other comrades wander restlessly no longer knowing what they seek, while others, several of them highly decorated war heroes, stand forlornly by the window gazing out at a world that no longer remembers them.
    The immaculately maintained, wide, airy, bright corridors sometimes carry the muted sound of someone weeping, a veteran huddled in the safety of a corner sobbing quietly, lost in the terrifying labyrinth of a mind in decay. Here at the Lodge, time stands still as staff go quietly about their duties. Decades have passed since a world conflict ended that eventually brought so many residents into care, but today's staff, far removed from the war years, are still in the front line caring for survivors.
    Occasionally when I arrive, Allan's face lights up with that charismatic smile that captured my heart so long ago - and for a brief moment, hope twists my heart that he still remembers who I am.But the smile fades as quickly as it begins, and with its passing I once again feel the loneliness of despair. As I hold on to his gaze, I see the veil of death descend as his eyes lose the inner light and become wide and vacant. Only the outer shell remains of the man he once was - the real Allan departed this life long ago.
    I should have recognized what was happening to him long before I did, but we were far too close, and I attributed his increasingly odd behavior to his slowly advancing years. He had had an exceptionally hard war, enduring the blitz on London, service with the Home Guard, and eventually with the Royal Navy. Even when he finally went into care, some of those memories were so deeply etched into his subconscious, he still occasionally came awake crying out and soaked in the sweat of fear, as a long-ago terror snaked out of the past and held him in its icy grip.
    It had long been our habit to play cribbage after dinner each evening, a game he played exceptionally well. The games were fun and very hard fought, although it was only on rare occasions that I was able to win.
    Gradually, this situation began to change as he lost the thread of the game, recorded his points in reverse, then became furious when I won. He would leap angrily from his chair, fling down his cards on the table and accuse me of cheating.
    With the ending of the nightly crib games, he took to rising early in the morning, quietly leaving the apartment and wandering through the corridors of the still-sleeping building.
    One morning when I went to the bathroom, I found it stacked with copies of that morning's newspaper. When I asked him where they had come from he seemed as genuinely surprised to see them as I was, and said he had no idea. Picking them up, I placed them beside the elevator hoping they would be retrieved by neighbours awaiting delivery.
    He spent hours in the bathroom, and for a long time I thought he had taken his transistor radio in with him, until one day he left the bathroom door slightly open and I saw he was in deep conversation with his own reflection in the mirror.
    His personality began to change and he was constantly active; his surly conversations were peppered with anger and unjustified accusations. He bore an obsessive resentment against anyone he held responsible for the instability and confusion in his life, and gradually, he began to wear me down.
    Home was no longer the happy, peaceful place it had once been, and an uninterrupted night's sleep became a thing of the past, as he would shake me awake and ask me if I wanted another cup of tea.
    On dry days, irrespective of how cold it was, I would walk into Beacon Hill Park and stretch out on the first vacant park bench I saw, and using my handbag as a pillow, would fall into an exhausted sleep.
    One night I came awake to find him standing at the foot of my bed, staring and motionless. When I asked him if he was alright, he told me people had been in and out of the car all evening and now they were sleeping in it.
    He was so convincing I asked him if he had called the police. He said no, he was waiting for me to wake up. Putting on my dressing gown, I went to the balcony and looked down onto a dark, empty road. The car was parked below the balcony quite close to a street lamp, and the reflections from the lights cast shadows across the windows. From that position I could not see if there was anyone in the car or not.
    We dressed quickly, and after picking up the car keys and the torch, we made our way down to the elevator, through the building and out onto the deserted road. Approaching the car with caution, I turned to talk to Allan expecting to see him by my side - but I was surprised to see he was hanging back by the entrance of the building.
    Shining the torch into the car, I could see that there was no one in there - nor had there been - as the doors were still locked and undamaged. The car, in fact, was just as we had left it earlier.
    Perplexed, I beckoned to him to join me and take a look inside - and very reluctantly he did so. We stood together in the road while I waited for an explanation, but all he did was shrug his shoulders and mumble he did not know what to say; then he turned and walked back into the building. Crisis point came several weeks later when one afternoon we were returning to Victoria from a day at Sidney.
    Allan had always been a fast, hard driver, and few of the many cars he had owned had lasted longer than two years before they reached a point when it was more economical to trade it in than repair it and keep it.
    Revving moodily at the red lights outside the Waddling Dog Inn, he plunged his foot to the floorboards as soon as they changed to green, and roared left onto the Pat Bay Highway on the wrong side of the road. Allan had driven for years in Britain before coming to Canada, and now he had reverted to driving on the left instead of the right.
    Suddenly faced with fast-moving on-coming traffic racing for the Vancouver ferry, he lost control, became disoriented, and panic-stricken by the horns and curses of startled drivers who swerved around him but continued to drive at speed as close to the concrete median as he could. Strapped into the front passenger seat beside him, there was little I could do until there was a break in the rush of traffic.
    When the lull came, I reached across him and pushed the steering wheel round in a half-circle until the car was facing the right direction. I ordered him onto the hard shoulder, and then to stop and switch off.
    When he had calmed down I suggested he was tired and that I should take over the driving. This, however, triggered off a denial that anything untoward had happened, that it was his car, and that he would drive it. Returning to the Waddling Dog Inn, he made a left turn onto the correct side of the highway, then drove back to Victoria as fast as the car was capable of travelling. By a miracle, we arrived home safely.
    Thoroughly shaken by these events, I demanded his driving licence and car keys before he killed someone. He adamantly refused, but I was not going to give up, and threatened to wrestle him to the ground if need be. We had the only serious argument in our marriage and, in the end, like a sulky child, he handed over his car keys and his licence.
    But from then on there was a chill in our relationship and, since he resented anyone touching his car, we began travelling on the bus and leaving the car, unused, out on the road.
    It was not long after this incident that I found him standing in the middle of the lounge trembling and white faced. Looking at me with the eyes of a frightened child, he said, "Something is happening to me and I'm frightened." I put my arms around him, held him close until he calmed down, reassured his fears, and the following day took him to see his doctor.
    Months later, after a series of tests, interviews and short periods in respite to give me a break, he went into care.It was a cold grey day in January when I drove him to the Lodge and went through the admission process with him. In spite of telling myself he now needed more care than I could give, nothing prepared me for the over-whelming feeling of guilt, anguish, and loneliness that almost overcame me when I returned to the now-empty, silent apartment.
    Lying awake, hour after hour, in the nights that followed, I found my thoughts drifting back in time to those carefree, sunny days of my youth - long before World War II had changed both our lives forever.

Catalogue Information