During that summer I was able to get back to Reading on a few occasions and visit my family and the Peacheys. I would go out with the twins and Lawrence to play bar billiards or darts or going to whist drives or go for a walk with Vera Peachey by Thames and in the park. On the Saturday 28th December 1940 I married Vera Peachey at Reading. I did not actually have the courage to ask her directly to marry me and so I asked her “what would you say if I asked you to marry me”, to which me she replied that she would say “yes, please” and so I then asked her to marry me. Afterwards Vera asked her sister Violet whether she minded, as Violet had known me first, but Violet said that she hoped to marry someone grander than a private.


Vera had been living with other members of the Peachey family in Prospect Street but we managed to get some rooms in Belmont Road Reading so that we could be on our own whenever I was home on leave. I had to return to my unit on the Sunday and so I left Reading at 6 p.m. getting on a full train to Paddington Station which arrived at 7:00 p.m. I went by bus to Victoria Station where I had to hang around for 1½ hours before getting a train back to Kent. There was a big air raid that evening with lots of fire bombs, in particular around St Paul’s and in the City of London and there was great damage that night. Paddington station was also bombed and Vera wrote to my unit to check that I was still alive.

That night, when I got back, our unit moved to a large hall in Partridge Lane Faversham and we lived there with about 90 other soldiers for three months, through to March 1941. Altogether we spent one and half years in Kent from June 1940 to November 1941 and quite a few soldiers married local girls. We all liked Faversham in particular, a nice little town.

During the night of 10th-11th May 1941 Roland Whittle was killed during the last really big bombing raid on London, about 2,000 people were killed that night and the House of Commons was hit. Roland was killed near platform one at Kings Cross station and I managed to get a pass to visit the station on 11th May. When I reached there an officer told me that they were still digging his body out and that six military police and five guardsmen had been killed.


Roland had earlier told me how he and a colleague had to take German airmen, who had been shot down, from Victoria or Charing Cross station by army vehicle, to either Kings Cross or Euston station. He said that most of the German airmen were tall, very smart and able to speak English. They were very confident and told Roland that they would be free in 6 weeks, Hitler would march through Whitehall and he would wring Churchill’s neck. They told Roland not to touch them and to maintain the international law.

Most of the Whittles went to Roland’s funeral at Herstmonceux in Sussex, Roland was married but had no children. After the funeral we went back to Kingsclere and Lawrence, who had a small car, a Singer I think, gave me a lift from Kingsclere to Reading. He had to return to his RAF unit. He asked me my view as he had a chance to leave the RAF and go into a factory in Coventry to help produce aircraft. I told him to take the chance after all I did not fancy Wilfred, Leslie or myself to survive the war.


In June 1941 I had to see a medical brigadier based near Canterbury Kent concerning the goitre on the left side of my neck and he offered me “my ticket”. I asked instead for an operation and he agreed. On 17 November 1941 I had the operation and I was out with the anaesthetic all day. On the same day Vera Whittle gave birth to Dorothy Rose, our first child. As soon as I knew I sent her a telegram telling her that I was absolutely delighted with the news. My mother got £9 from various Whittles for a new pram. During the war, thanks to some help from the state supplying such foods as dried milk and cod liver oil children seemed better off for vitamins than they had been in the 20s and 30s. Soon after Dorothy was born, Vera and I had to go and get her fitted with a gas respirator.

Around Christmas 1941, when I was home on sick leave following my operation, someone rang the bell and I opened the door and I saw a lady with yellow hair, a yellow face and yellow hands! She was my sister Veronica and she had run away from a shell factory in the north of England. She had left school at 14 and had got a job making shoes and boots at 3s and 6d. She then went into domestic service firstly as a scullery maid, secondly as a kitchen maid and thirdly a cook; this was mainly at the places where father and Clifford worked as gardeners. Veronica spent the first night with us sleeping in a chair and Mrs Peachey; Vera’s mother, took her in as a lodger at 15 Prospect Street Reading. She got a job at Thatcham about 5 miles from Reading as an inspector and capstan operator. Three American soldiers seemed to be chasing her and eventually she married Arnold Smith from New Jersey and left for USA by ship with her son Charles in 1945 as a ‘GI bride’. Arnold was a paratrooper who took part in Operation Market garden in September 1944. My other sister Joyce, the youngest in the family was still at school when the war started but got a job as a short hand typist after she finished school.

After my sick leave I returned to our unit which was now based in the area of Suffolk and Essex. In July 1942 I had to be seen by another medical brigadier at Colchester because our unit was soon to go abroad. He and his two colleagues, a colonel and a major looked at my neck and after discussion said “We will leave it to you private Whittle, either you can go with your unit abroad or you can stop in England and do a job in the army here”. “I asked how long have I got to decide” the brigadier said “a minute”. I said “Sir I will go abroad” but I never told Vera that I had the choice, I thought it might be my only opportunity to see the world. On 24th August 1942 our unit, having travelled from Long Melford in Suffolk, sailed from Liverpool in convoy of 19 ships and two escort warships to travel to the Middle East via Cape Town in South Africa. Our ship was the ‘Franco’ a 20,000 ton ship that normally traded between Liverpool and Canada. I was to see eight countries and I survived the war.

As I did not know when I would return, if ever; Vera left Belmont Road and moved back in with the rest of the family in Prospect Street. This is part of a letter that I wrote to Vera from on board ship soon after we set sail.

‘I am now able to tell you that I am on board ship and I am OK. I am rather tired but I have just had a shower and shave so feel a little fresher. It is all quite fun and we are settling down gradually to the new life. A lot of the boys are already playing cards etc… but I think I will spend my time reading. I have a few books with me.