The day was exhilarating. The British Army really knows how to put on a show. The colour, the flags, the pipes and drums, the drills. The scarlet uniforms, black busbies, the marching, with the pipe major throwing his staff high into the air. I was thrilled. Mr Collett had seen it all before, and couldn’t see it very well this time, but he heard my cheers and was delighted.
Towards evening, when the marching and the drilling had ceased, and the tired crowds were starting to leave, I thought we would be leaving also. But Mr Collett pulled me back. “Now it is time for the regimental dinner. Come on, my beauty. This way. They’ll see ‘the privates know how to pick ’em’.”
We went to the great dining room by special invitation. We were a little late, because Mr Collett’s walking was slow. We passed young soldiers, who clicked their heels and saluted. We entered, the doorman took our card, and called: “Mr Joseph Collett and Miss Jenny Lee.” There were about two hundred men and women seated at the tables. Heads looked up, and then a voice called out: “Gentlemen, now here is a really old guardsman.” And everyone in the room stood up and raised their glasses: “To an esteemed old soldier.”
Tears of emotion sprang from Mr Collett’s eyes. We were led to the Colonel’s table, and placed at his side. The dinner was sumptuous, and the Colonel and his lady so gracious to the old man. They talked about the Boer War, and Africa, and army life sixty years earlier. He was treated with the respect and recognition that he deserved so well.
FRANCE
1914-1918
The joyous day at Caterham Barracks cemented our friendship and I knew then that, come what may, I was bound to Mr Collett for life. We chatted and laughed all the way home, and parted at the bus stop near Blackwall Tunnel. He insisted that he didn’t need me to go back with him, as he was perfectly capable of finding his way in the dark. It gladdened my heart to remember the respect, even deference, with which he had been treated at the barracks by the Colonel. He would not forget that day in a hurry.
One day, whilst treating his legs, I asked him about his life after leaving the army. I knew that Sally and the twins were living in Alberta Buildings by that stage. Did they continue to live there when he came back?
“No. I got a job in the Post Office you see, and so we had to move near to the sorting office in Mile End.” He went on to tell me about his new life. Postmen had to sort their own mail in those days, and had to be in the sorting house by four o’clock each morning to receive the night mail. Sorting took a couple of hours, then they would be out on the road delivering until about 1 p.m. After a couple of hours off, they went back to sort and deliver the evening mail, which finished about 7 p.m. Mr Collett thought it was a good life.
“The twins were getting bigger. Pete and Jack were about six or seven, and the spitting image of each other. No one except their mother could tell them apart and even she got it wrong sometimes. They were lovely boys.”
He bit his lip and swallowed hard, choking down the emotion.
“You’ve heard, I suppose, that identical twins often seem to live for each other. Well, I can tell you how true that is. They were two people, but I often thought that neither of them could be quite sure where one ended and the other began. They were always together, you couldn’t separate them. They didn’t seem to need anyone else. They even spoke their own language. Yes, it’s true! We would listen to them playing, Sally and me, and they used different words with each other than they used with everyone else. It was a mixture of ordinary English and their own language. They could understand it, but we couldn’t. You can never be quite sure what’s going on in a child’s mind, and identical twins are more of a mystery than other children. Pete and Jack lived in a world created by their combined imaginations, filled with giants and dwarves, kings and queens, castles and caverns. They didn’t really have any friends. They didn’t need them. They had each other.”
“Didn’t their mother feel left out?”
“You’re right there, she did. The boys weren’t lacking in affection, or anything like that. They were just totally self-sufficient. In fact, Sally once said, ‘I reckon you and me could die, Joe, and they wouldn’t notice. But if one of the boys died, I reckon the other would just fade away.’”
Tears glistened in the corners of his eyes, and he murmured, “Perhaps it was best, all for the best. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” He fell completely silent, lost in thought.
I had heard of two sons being killed in France, and looked at the picture of two handsome little boys on the wall. I asked, “Did you have any more children?”
“Yes, we had a little girl, and Sally nearly died in childbirth. I don’t know what went wrong, and the midwife didn’t know either, but my Sal was near to death for weeks after the birth. Her sister took the baby and wet-nursed her for the first three months, and the boys went to my mother. It frightened the life out of me, so I never let her go through it again. That’s one thing you learn about in the army, if nothing else: contraception. I never could understand these men who let their wives have ten or fifteen children, when they could prevent it.
“But Sally recovered, thank God, and the children came home. We called the little girl Shirley – don’t you think that’s a pretty name? She was the loveliest little thing in all the world and a blessing to us both.”
I did not need to see Mr Collet professionally more than once a week, because his legs were nearly better, but our sherry evenings continued, and during one of them he told me the story of Pete and Jack.
Young girls are not usually interested in war and military tactics, but I was. Wartime had shaped my childhood, but really, I knew little about war itself. The First World War was a mystery to me, and we were taught nothing about it in our history lessons at school. I knew that vast numbers of soldiers had died in the trenches of France, but so great was my ignorance that I did not even know what “trenches” meant. Later I met people who had suffered in the Blitz, and heard their first-hand stories, so when Mr Collett mentioned his sons’ experiences I encouraged him to talk.
Pete and Jack had been sixteen years old when the war started. They had left school at the age of fourteen, and for two years had been Post Office telegraph boys, racing around London on their bikes delivering telegrams. They were known as “the flying twins”. They loved it, were proud of their work, proud of the uniform, and were both healthy from all the fresh air and exercise. But in 1914 war started, and a national recruitment campaign was launched. “It will all be over by Christmas” was the government’s promise. Many of their friends joined up, lured by the thought of adventure, and the twins wanted to go too, but their father restrained the boys, saying that war was not all adventure and glory.
1915 saw the launch of the famous poster of Lord Kitchener, pointing darkly out of the frame and saying “Your country needs you”. After that, young men who did not join up were made to feel that they were cowards. Hundreds of thousands of young men volunteered, Pete and Jack among them, and marched off to their graves.
The men were sent for three months’ military training in how to handle a gun and a grenade. Also how to care for horses and sword fighting for hand-to-hand combat were part of their training. Mr Collett commented wryly: “That just shows you how little the military High Command knew about mechanised warfare with high explosives!”