14 – Postscript to a nightmare

We settled down to post-war life in the Devon town of Totnes where Dorothy’s parents lived. My father-in-law had a shoe-making business in the main street and we set up house in a second-floor flat above a hairdresser’s salon, directly across the street from his shop.

My main concern was finding a job. I had a wife and child to support, but all I knew were ships and ships’ guns, so I was really starting from scratch. There was a lot of talk about there being a building boom because the war was over, so I decided to become a bricklayer. I found work as a builder’s labourer, earning a pittance, while I was doing a bricklaying course in Plymouth. It was getting near Christmas 1946 and it was freezing. Believe me, there is no more miserable place than a building site in the middle of a bitter British winter. I dug trenches, filled wheelbarrows with dirt, carried bricks, mixed concrete, dug more trenches and daydreamed about summer in Australia. With hands bleeding from handling the bricks, I knew straight off that I wasn’t cut out for that line of work, but there didn’t seem to be many other opportunities.

I was getting pretty worried because Dorothy was now expecting our second child. One day I was walking down the main street of Totnes, wondering where I was going to find a better job, when I noticed the local policeman, a terrific chap called Ken Alway, walking toward me. He was pulling a hand trolley with a large canvas bag on it. When he saw me he stopped for a chat, which he liked to do. As the town’s copper, Ken knew and talked to everyone and was well respected.

‘What have you got there, Ken?’

‘Oh, it’s just a body.’

‘What!’

‘Taking it down to the morgue.’

‘You mean a dead body?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t be taking a live one down to the morgue, now would I?’

‘No, suppose you wouldn’t be.’

Ken and I stood there in the main street for a while chatting about this and that, accompanied by the recently departed soul on the trolley. People were walking past, going about their business, oblivious to Ken’s macabre cargo.

‘Afternoon, Ken!’ a passer-by called out.

‘Hello there,’ Ken replied. ‘Family well?’

‘Very well, thanks.’

‘Listen, Mac,’ Ken said, turning back to me. ‘I’ve noticed you’re looking a bit miserable these days. Everything all right?’

‘No, as a matter of fact,’ I told him. ‘I’ve got this job as a builder’s labourer. Bloody terrible it is.’

‘You know, I think you’d make a good country copper.’

‘Me? A copper? Don’t be daft.’

‘You should think about it. It’s a good life. Good people around you, interesting work.’

I glanced at his trolley, wondering if I could be that casual if I had to trundle a dead body along the main street.

‘All right, Ken. I’ll think about it.’

I went home and told Dorothy about Ken and his dead body. We had a good laugh. When I mentioned his suggestion of becoming a policeman, she said it would suit me more than being a bricklayer. The more trenches I dug the more I agreed. So, a few days later I went to the Totnes police station and filled out an application form. I wasn’t really expecting anything to come of it, so I was surprised and relieved to get an interview with the Assistant Chief Constable at police headquarters in Exeter. It went well and I was accepted into the Devon Constabulary. I was over the moon. For once I might do some work that has real human value. The injustices I’d seen while in the lifeboat still angered me, especially the fact that people had perished horribly for want of stolen emergency rations.

I began my police training in March 1947, at the Falfield Police Training School near Bristol. Most of my fellow recruits were ex-servicemen who, like me, found something oddly reassuring about being back in uniform. While I was away on the three-month training course, Dorothy gave birth to our second son, Ian. It was a demanding time, but I felt a great sense of pride in what I was doing. I got a good result at the end of the course, graduating as a probationary constable.

Life as a country copper was many things, but it was never dull! I was mostly assigned to bicycle patrols, pedalling far and wide around the Devon countryside, policing the rural communities surrounding Totnes, Kingsbridge and the picture-postcard villages of Aveton Gifford, Lodiswell and Harbertonford. It was routine most of the time, dealing with petty theft, road accidents, traffic control and infringements of the various livestock acts, although I once arrested an escapee from Dartmoor prison and on another occasion, with trembling knees, managed to pacify a man who had gone berserk wielding a large carving knife. It was a bit like living in an episode of that wonderful television series Heartbeat, because in every town and village there seemed to be a Greengrass-like character intent on testing the will and wits of the local police.

During that period Dorothy presented me with two more beautiful children, with Judith arriving in 1951 and Jane in 1953. The war slipped into the background, although terrible memories still surfaced in my sleep from time to time. I was particularly disturbed by a recurring nightmare about being below decks in Laconia as the torpedoes struck her. In the pitch black and screaming chaos I struggled to climb the Jacob’s ladder to safety. Then I would snap awake in a blind panic, sweating profusely, legs kicking wildly. It always left me wide-eyed and exhausted. That nightmare has continued to disturb my sleep, and Dorothy’s, ever since.

Sometimes I’d be going about my duties when incredibly vivid memories of the lifeboat would come out of nowhere. I’d see gallant Doctor Purslow saying goodbye to us and then falling backwards over the gunwale. I’d hear poor Mickey pleading for his life. I’d see Hartenstein saluting from his conning tower, and the freckles on Doris’s round face. They made me terribly sad, those memories, but at the same time immensely thankful to be alive and cycling through the lovely hills of Devon.

I think it was about five years after the war ended that I finally steeled myself to read Doris’s account of those terrible events. Her tiny book Atlantic Torpedo was a very eloquent, gentle and understated description of what had occurred in the lifeboat. Her writing confirmed that she was an extraordinarily kind and compassionate person. It reminded me of many incidents that I had been trying to forget, but also many that I found pleasure in remembering.

While we were living in Totnes, Dorothy and I would sometimes go to Liverpool to visit my family. On one of those trips I remembered that my old shipmate Peter Rimmer came from Southport, which is just outside Liverpool near the mouth of the River Mersey. It was Peter who had absolutely astonished me by rushing below decks to retrieve his collection of photographs when Laconia was sinking. I couldn’t imagine how he had survived.

Dorothy and I went to Southport to find his family or at least someone who knew of him. Well, we found Peter Rimmer himself, just as tall and skinny as ever and living happily with his young wife, a lovely Irish girl called Bridie. We had a wonderful get together although, strangely, we didn’t say very much about the sinking. Instead, Peter and I talked and laughed about the unexpected turns our lives had taken since the war, about how odd it was that I ended up a policeman and he a children’s toy-maker. Sometime later he and Bridie called in to see us in Totnes.

By the end of 1954 I was constantly being distracted by thoughts of Australia. It was some 10 years since I’d been there and, although it had been a difficult time in my life, I thought fondly of the openness of the people, the informal way of life and the warm, sunny weather. This all came to a head when I was doing a daytime foot patrol in Harbertonford. I said hello to a chap in the street, who I hadn’t seen around the village before, and when we stopped for a chat I detected a well-remembered accent.

‘You Australian?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Originally from Devon, but I’m an Australian now. Lived there for most of my life. I’m just back for a visit.’

‘I was there in the war,’ I said.

We talked for quite a while, and he told me about all the opportunities in Australia.

‘I like the sound of that.’

I wondered what sort of future might be in store for my family in England, where post-war austerity still held a tight, grey grip on everyone. Things could be better for the children in Australia. I imagined them running carefree on an Australian beach somewhere.

My career seemed to be in a rut. I’d passed the exams for promotion to sergeant, and been told that I was a first-class country policeman, but I was still a constable. I had a gnawing feeling that I’d never be anything more than a country copper, a little fish swimming round and round in the same small pond.

Dorothy and I talked about going to Kenya, but the violence of the Mau Mau uprising there put us off. A police officer I knew had left to join the police force out in Malaya, but that didn’t appeal to us. We thought of Canada and America. But all the time I couldn’t let go of the idea of Australia.

‘Look,’ I finally said. ‘Let’s just do it. Let’s apply for Australia and see what happens.’

So we sent away for all the brochures on Australia, which showed the types of houses and schools available and, of course, the scenery and the beaches. In all the photographs there was never a cloud in the sky, and with those images dancing around in our minds we applied to emigrate to Australia. A letter came giving us the choice of settling in Rockhampton or Sydney. There was a mad scramble for the atlas to see where Rockhampton was.

‘It’ll be too hot there,’ Dorothy said.

‘Let’s make it Sydney, then. I’ve been there, I know what it’s like.’

So in 1955 we came to Australia with the children. It was, without doubt, the best thing we could have done. Dorothy fell in love with the way of life immediately and never looked back. After a short time in Sydney we moved to South Australia. Our fifth child, Diane, was born in Adelaide in 1960. I joined the South Australian Police Force, serving in uniform for 25 years and finally finishing my career as a sergeant in the Prosecution Division.