Lest we forget
To mark the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, John Eskdale and other survivors share their harrowing memories of war and stories of hope
Chris Terry
- Michael Hodges
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On 15 August at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire a 100-year-old man in a blazer festooned with medals and wearing the Green Beret of the Royal Marines will stand to attention. John Eskdale will be part of the Royal British Legion’s marking of the 80th anniversary of VJ Day and the end of the Second World War. As the bugler plays, Eskdale’s thoughts will flick back through memories of blitzed-out streets, the terror of being on a sinking warship and walking through the radioactive remains of Japanese cities. In its sweep, tragedy and, occasionally, humour, Eskdale’s story is the story of Britain’s war.
The Welshman was 15 when that war began. “I remember it vividly,” he says, when we meet at his Gloucestershire cottage, where the widower’s armchair sits in front of photographs of children and grandchildren. “I was in a queue for the pictures in Bridgend when I heard war had been declared. I went home and dug an air raid trench for my family in the back of the garden.”
Too young to serve, Eskdale was taken on by an aerodrome near Bath. Living in a village outside the city, he was volunteering as a runner with the fire service when he was caught in a bomb blast during a Luftwaffe raid on Bristol. Eskdale survived with only bruises and joined the Home Guard before, remarkably, he was blown up again in a Luftwaffe raid on Bath. “We were putting out a fire in a fish and chip shop,” he recalls. “And then out of the clouds a big bomb came straight at me. I thought, ‘Blooming heck!’ Then I was blasted to the other side of the road.
“I was in bed for a couple of days and thought, ‘I’ve had enough of this, I’m going to fight back.’ The recruiting office said I was too young, but one sergeant said, ‘If you sign up for 12 years, I can take you.’”
The Charybdis hit was the worst time in my life. I was in the water for five hours
John Eskdale – Ex-Corporal, Royal Marines
Which is how, after training, 18-year-old Eskdale found himself in the Marines detachment on board HMS Charybdis, a cruiser that escorted aircraft carriers during the siege of Malta and, later, accompanied the Queen Mary when she took Winston Churchill across the Atlantic. At one point, Noël Coward was also on board. But disaster lay ahead.
On 23 October 1943, the Charybdis and several destroyers were lured towards the French coast – the German cargo vessel Münsterland being used as bait – and were ambushed by German torpedo boats. In the early hours of the morning, Charybdis was hit twice and sank quickly. “It was the worst time in my life, and the longest,” remembers Eskdale, who was among the last to get off the ship.
“I was in the water for five hours before I got onto a Carley float [life raft]. There were two sailors, me and a petty officer whose legs had been damaged. It was six o’clock and still dark. He had a torch and said, ‘I can’t carry on.’ So, I took the torch and then, out of the murk, a British destroyer came straight towards us, suddenly turned and went away again!”
John Eskdale during his wartime service. John Eskdale / Royal British Legion
The raft was finally spotted on the ship’s third turn. “They didn’t stop,” he says, “just put the netting down, and we had to grab hold of it as the ship passed. The chap with the damaged legs didn’t stand a chance, he was dead when they tried to get him on board. I got hold of the netting but was exhausted and just couldn’t move. Two sailors came down and helped me up.”
Eskdale was left with injuries that still affect him. “My leg used to come out in blisters all over – brass filings were working their way out. They were going to take it off because I had gangrene, but an operation saved it.”
The loss of an important ship and over 400 men in such circumstances – in effect, falling for a German trick – was humiliating. “It was such a disgrace, the Charybdis getting sunk,” says Eskdale. His own suspicion is that survivors of the Charybdis were deliberately sent far away from the UK to hush up the disaster. He himself would be posted to the Far East to help establish bomber bases as the Allies moved closer to the Japanese mainland.
Before that, on release from hospital, he was assigned to future James Bond author Ian Fleming’s 30 Commando, the special Marines unit tasked with capturing Nazi documents and staff officers in the forthcoming invasion of France. He had liked Noël Coward, “a nice guy and very intellectual”, but Fleming was less at ease with the lower ranks. “I think he didn’t want to mix with us at all. We were his underlings.”
There was absolutely nothing there. Nagasaki was gone
With thousands of other men, Eskdale was in the Cage, a sealed-off military area around the D-Day embarkation points on the south coast of England, when he was sent out to have a lorry repaired. In his rush to get back, he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his lorry into a village telephone pole. “It rang every telephone in the village. A policeman came out and said, ‘You’re a clever boy,’ and made me a cup of tea.’’ By such a quirk, he missed the Normandy landings.
Instead of France, he would be invading Japan and, after more skin grafts on his legs, was sent to Australia. “We were all preparing to move up into Japan,” he says. “The attack was imminent.” He was in Brisbane when news came that atomic bombs had been dropped and, subsequently, Japan had surrendered. Was he troubled by the new kind of bomb and the immensity of the slaughter? “We were just glad the war was over,” he says. “It saved our lives.”
Three months later, Eskdale was in defeated Japan, escorting British photographers who were recording the effects of atomic warfare and the firebombing raids that preceded it. “From Yokohama to Tokyo it was virtually all flat, burnt out. Everybody was wearing face masks.” He remembers standing in what had been Nagasaki. “There was absolutely nothing there,” he says. “It was gone. Razed to the ground.”
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Victory in Japan was achieved, but Eskdale’s war smouldered on. His Commando unit was sent to Hong Kong’s New Territories to deal with Japanese units who didn’t know the war was over, and he didn’t get home until he was invalided out in 1947. He married his girlfriend Barbara, had two sons and turned his mind to civilian life. But every year he would attend the memorial service for his comrades on the Charybdis, just as he will this week. For Eskdale, remembering matters – not just the bravery of his lost comrades but, also, that the risk of war is always with us. “I’m afraid we’ve not finished with it yet,” he says, and reaches for the Green Beret that lies beside him.
Authors
Michael Hodges
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