Missing The Boat: War Stories of Thomas Alan Dirkin

72 supplied with a new uniform. The war was not over in the far-east, so POWs returning in May-June 1945 were still in service. Food, beer and sweets were available to be enjoyed and help ex-POWs regain weight. Firsthand accounts of these first few days back in Britain were very varied as to how the beginning of integration back into “normal” life affected each individual. One ex-POW said that he and four mates had dreamed about celebrating their return for four years. They ordered fish and chips as their first meal, joking and on a clear emotional high following their ordeal. When the food came, high spirits gradually turned flat for the group. Slowing down to a grinding halt they picked at the food and looked at each other incredulously. When the quiet began to bother the group they opted to resume their revelry in the bar. Leaving the food largely untouched, they ordered five pints of beer and tried to resume their revelry. They sipped from the glasses and all realized that joy was going to have to await a slow return. In an interview for the book The Last Escape, Len Jepps said: “All the years we were away, our one overriding thought had been centered around this day (returning home), and it had never occurred to us that it would be anything but an experience of pure joy. We had completely overlooked the fact that we were not the same people who had left so long before and that our experiences had changed us”. Or those who survived, wrote Nichol and Rennell in The Last Escape, “the question of whether peacetime could ever live up to their dreams.” Les Allan, also interviewed by Nichol and Rennell, explained why he did not wish to talk about his experiences, which was an almost universal result of POW incarceration. “People wanted to know about my experiences as a prisoner of war, but I wouldn’t tell them. Why? Because I had a feeling they wouldn’t believe it, so consequently I just bottled it up. It might also have been because of a sense of shame about being a prisoner of war... Those who didn’t know said we had a good time, that we were lucky to have been prisoners when so many men had been killed.” Les Allan went on to describe that about six months after he got home. “... I used to see this poor fellow who had lost half his foot with frost bite and he was still marching... It was the stench – that has never left me, still never left me. The stench of frostbite. It is an appalling smell. Once you’ve smelled it you never forget.” For all those in combat, and intense experiences in general, the mind is always open to visual, auditory, olfactory, taste and tactile stimuli waiting in the wings below conscious thought, waiting to be triggered and rise to the surface.