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The Second World War had a devastating impact on family life in Britain, | 0:00:04 | 0:00:08 | |
with repercussions that are still felt to this day. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:12 | |
It brought grief and heartache to millions of people across the land. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:18 | |
It wrecked marriages and turned decent fathers into broken men. | 0:00:18 | 0:00:23 | |
It did affect me badly. I began to think myself as worthless... | 0:00:25 | 0:00:30 | |
..as no good for anything, because I couldn't provide | 0:00:32 | 0:00:37 | |
as I wanted to for my family. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
Four million men were demobbed in the years following the war, | 0:00:41 | 0:00:45 | |
many of them fathers. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:47 | |
Thousands were scarred by their experiences and struggled to return | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
to civilian life in a world that had changed beyond all recognition. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:56 | |
But their homecoming could be just as traumatic for their children, | 0:00:56 | 0:01:01 | |
for whom Daddy was a stranger. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:04 | |
And all of a sudden there was this man, and he just threw his arms around my Mum | 0:01:04 | 0:01:09 | |
and I just felt as if I was totally on the outside. | 0:01:09 | 0:01:13 | |
I think I heard mum said something about it, | 0:01:13 | 0:01:16 | |
it's your dad, or your daddy. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:18 | |
I didn't know what a dad was, I didn't know what a daddy was. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:22 | |
And I didn't like him. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:23 | |
In the years that followed, austerity would be replaced by affluence | 0:01:26 | 0:01:31 | |
and as stable marriages flourished, fathers would at last enjoy | 0:01:31 | 0:01:35 | |
the simple pleasures of time spent with their sons and daughters. | 0:01:35 | 0:01:39 | |
But the children of the Blitz would soon grow up to become | 0:01:39 | 0:01:43 | |
the rebellious teenagers of the '50s and '60s, and would reject all that their fathers had fought for. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:50 | |
I didn't want to be like him, I wanted to be the business, | 0:01:50 | 0:01:55 | |
which was at the time the Teddy Boys, and he didn't want me to be. | 0:01:55 | 0:01:59 | |
And the more he didn't want me to be, the more I wanted to be | 0:01:59 | 0:02:03 | |
and the more I would be, do you know what I'm saying? | 0:02:03 | 0:02:06 | |
This is the continuing story of how Britain's fathers have fought | 0:02:06 | 0:02:11 | |
to overcome many obstacles in their struggle to bring up their children. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:16 | |
These are tales of love and war, rebellion and redemption. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:21 | |
This is A Century Of Fatherhood. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:23 | |
BELLS RING | 0:02:29 | 0:02:31 | |
For many families in Britain, life in the late 1930s was a happy one. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:40 | |
With unemployment falling after years of depression, | 0:02:40 | 0:02:44 | |
and home ownership on the rise, the future was looking bright. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:48 | |
But all this would change with the outbreak of the Second World War. | 0:02:50 | 0:02:54 | |
I have to tell you now | 0:02:57 | 0:02:59 | |
that no such undertaking has been received, | 0:02:59 | 0:03:03 | |
and that consequently this country is at war with Germany. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:08 | |
At the start of the war, the British Army numbered less than 900,000 men, | 0:03:10 | 0:03:16 | |
compared to well over four million in the combined German Armed Forces. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:22 | |
Conscription was introduced for all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 41, | 0:03:22 | 0:03:28 | |
and by the end of 1939, more than a million men had been called into service. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:34 | |
Given the age range, many were fathers. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:37 | |
EASY LISTENING MUSIC PLAYS | 0:03:39 | 0:03:42 | |
Before September was out, the British Expeditionary Force | 0:03:46 | 0:03:49 | |
had set sail for France | 0:03:49 | 0:03:51 | |
and in the months that followed, more volunteers and conscripts | 0:03:51 | 0:03:55 | |
would leave Britain for the Middle East, North Africa and Burma. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
And unlike those that left to fight at the beginning of the First World War, | 0:03:58 | 0:04:02 | |
this time they were fully aware that they might not be coming back. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:07 | |
It's very easy to forget | 0:04:09 | 0:04:11 | |
that the Second World War came hard on the heels of the First World War, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:15 | |
so that young men who were going away to fight, and were young fathers in 1939-1940, | 0:04:15 | 0:04:20 | |
had quite possibly had the experience of losing | 0:04:20 | 0:04:23 | |
their own fathers, or uncles, or cousins, or even brothers in the First World War | 0:04:23 | 0:04:27 | |
and they knew the impact that had on family life. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
Cliff Shepherd, a butcher from Yorkshire, had volunteered to fight, | 0:04:33 | 0:04:37 | |
despite being devoted to his baby daughter, Thelma, | 0:04:37 | 0:04:40 | |
who was born in 1939. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:43 | |
Well, to leave Thelma, | 0:04:43 | 0:04:45 | |
it... | 0:04:45 | 0:04:46 | |
just practically broke my heart | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
to go... | 0:04:50 | 0:04:51 | |
and the thought passed through my mind, "Will I see her again? | 0:04:51 | 0:04:56 | |
"Will I be killed and that?" | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
And we loved each other so much. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:01 | |
Cliff made Thelma one last promise, that he would bring her home a doll on his return. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:12 | |
Then it was time for him to leave. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:15 | |
And I were feeling absolutely terrible | 0:05:19 | 0:05:22 | |
and I tried to look cheerful, | 0:05:22 | 0:05:26 | |
and as soon as I got out of the door, I cried all the way to the station | 0:05:26 | 0:05:31 | |
and I couldn't resist it. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:33 | |
Family life was disrupted further as the threat of aerial attack loomed large. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:41 | |
And over three million people, mostly school children | 0:05:41 | 0:05:43 | |
from Britain's towns and cities, were evacuated to the countryside. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:49 | |
But against all expectation, the air raids didn't happen. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:55 | |
During the months of phoney war, | 0:05:55 | 0:05:57 | |
a false sense of security spread across the country | 0:05:57 | 0:06:00 | |
and in time, thousands of children returned home. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:05 | |
When the Blitz finally began, over 5,000 of them would be killed. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:11 | |
Sonny Leigh grew up in Bermondsey in London. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:18 | |
As a boy, he'd had a difficult childhood and when he married | 0:06:18 | 0:06:22 | |
his sweetheart Daisy in 1938 they vowed that they would | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
bring up a happy family together. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:27 | |
In 1940, Daisy gave birth to their first daughter, Pamela. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:35 | |
You can't describe the feeling I had, you cannot. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
It's out of this world, especially when, you know, | 0:06:39 | 0:06:43 | |
you want something and you've got it. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:45 | |
And she was about six weeks old, and I said, "Daisy, | 0:06:45 | 0:06:49 | |
"don't you think we ought to see about getting her christened?" | 0:06:49 | 0:06:51 | |
She said, "I'm going to give it until she's two months, | 0:06:51 | 0:06:54 | |
"then we'll go to the church and we'll get her christened." | 0:06:54 | 0:06:57 | |
Sonny had volunteered for the Auxiliary Fire Service at the outbreak of war, | 0:06:58 | 0:07:03 | |
but was off duty when the Germans began their aerial bombardment on September the 7th. | 0:07:03 | 0:07:09 | |
This was the first night of the Blitz and London's docklands, | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
close to where Sonny lived, bore the brunt of the attack. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:19 | |
As the bombs fell, Sonny and his family fled | 0:07:21 | 0:07:25 | |
to an air raid shelter close to their home. | 0:07:25 | 0:07:28 | |
This night was a bloody awful night, | 0:07:28 | 0:07:31 | |
it was like a bloody battlefield. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:35 | |
Daisy and her mother and Pamela, they were all in the shelter. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:40 | |
And she said, "I've left my rings and everything on the dressing table." | 0:07:40 | 0:07:44 | |
So I run upstairs, grabbed her stuff, run downstairs. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:48 | |
As I bent down to give it to Daisy | 0:07:48 | 0:07:50 | |
so the landmine came down and that was it. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
Inside, the shelter was all buckled | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
and they dug us out. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:03 | |
And I looked at Pamela and she was lying in this woman's arms. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:08 | |
I wanted to go and kiss her but I thought she was asleep, | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
I don't want to wake her. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
I didn't know she was dead. | 0:08:16 | 0:08:18 | |
I've regretted it ever since, that I never said goodbye. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:27 | |
Now she's a little sunbeam. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
For fathers separated by the war from their families, whether at home or overseas, | 0:08:48 | 0:08:54 | |
the best way to ensure at least some involvement in the lives | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
of their growing children was through the good old-fashioned letter. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:02 | |
From the deserts of North Africa to the jungles of Burma, | 0:09:02 | 0:09:06 | |
as fathers prepared for action, thoughts of their children were never far from their mind, | 0:09:06 | 0:09:11 | |
and a simple message from home could mean so much. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:15 | |
It is absolutely the case that the army recognised the importance of the postal system to morale, | 0:09:20 | 0:09:26 | |
not only morale of their men, but also morale back home. | 0:09:26 | 0:09:29 | |
Thousands of millions of letters exchanged hands, | 0:09:29 | 0:09:33 | |
so there was a real correspondence and communication going on between fathers and sons and daughters, | 0:09:33 | 0:09:40 | |
which I think helped enormously for when the men came home, because they had that link | 0:09:40 | 0:09:44 | |
with their children, and they really felt they needed it because a child is the future | 0:09:44 | 0:09:49 | |
and they had to feel they were fighting for something. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:52 | |
If you just sit out in the desert or you're stuck in Northern Italy, | 0:09:52 | 0:09:55 | |
or you're fighting in Burma, | 0:09:55 | 0:09:57 | |
you have to believe that there's something you're going to go back to. | 0:09:57 | 0:09:59 | |
From the women of Britain to all their men folk overseas. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
"My dear, another letter for you to let you know we're all well and everything at home is going on fine. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:10 | |
"Ann and John are marvellous, they seem to be growing every day, | 0:10:13 | 0:10:16 | |
"and since the weather improved, they've just lived out of doors. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:19 | |
"I'd love you to see them scampering over those fields at the back of the cottage..." | 0:10:19 | 0:10:23 | |
Cliff Shepherd joined the RAF Regiment as a gunner | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
and was away from home for most of the war. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:41 | |
He wrote to his wife and daughter, Thelma, every day, | 0:10:41 | 0:10:44 | |
and sent Thelma this photograph, so that she wouldn't forget him. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:49 | |
In his letters to her, he was always careful | 0:10:52 | 0:10:55 | |
to avoid the realities of war. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:57 | |
I used to say, "I've been on the tram car today," | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
and in some cases... | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
I hadn't. I used to make it up | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
because I didn't want to tell her anything about war. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
But you were scared stiff many times. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:18 | |
Thelma has kept many of the letters Cliff wrote to her in the five years that he was away, | 0:11:20 | 0:11:24 | |
and still has his photograph that she used to kiss goodnight. | 0:11:24 | 0:11:28 | |
But there is one card that Thelma treasures above all others. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:36 | |
There was one very special birthday card that Dad sent me | 0:11:41 | 0:11:45 | |
and he'd put a special two verses in, a little poem for me. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:49 | |
I'll read it to you. "God bless you darling Thelma upon this happy day. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:54 | |
"My thoughts are always with you, though I am far away. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:57 | |
"I send you birthday greetings, for you are six today. | 0:11:57 | 0:12:02 | |
"May future years be happy ones, to help you on life's way. | 0:12:02 | 0:12:07 | |
"To my darling, Thelma, with best wishes for a very happy birthday. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:12 | |
"From Daddy. Lots of kisses." | 0:12:12 | 0:12:14 | |
And that one's really special. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:18 | |
As the war dragged on, the armed forces were keen to experiment | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
with alternative ways to enable fathers to keep in touch with loved ones back home. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:32 | |
Among them were a series of messages known as "Calling Blighty", | 0:12:32 | 0:12:36 | |
which were filmed in India and the Far East and played at cinemas across the country. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:41 | |
Hello there. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:48 | |
Firstly, many happy returns of the day to Brenda. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:52 | |
Give her a big kiss from her daddy. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:54 | |
I'm quite well and hoping to be home soon. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:56 | |
I'm sure you're doing well over there judging by the mail I receive. | 0:12:56 | 0:13:00 | |
Give my love to Aunty Eve, Aunt Evelyn, Uncle Rog, | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
all those who are interested. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:05 | |
I don't think it'll be very long before I'm catching the boat. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:08 | |
Keep your fingers crossed and smiling. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:11 | |
Kay Chorley's father had been a butler in a large country house | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
in Hertfordshire before he left home on her 7th birthday in 1939. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:22 | |
In peacetime, they'd been devoted to one another so she found their separation hard to bear. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:28 | |
Well, I longed for him every day. Every day. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:36 | |
It was cruel because you... | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
had a picture of him, but it was getting more and more faded. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:46 | |
I couldn't remember how he walked or you couldn't remember | 0:13:46 | 0:13:51 | |
what it felt like to be up on his shoulder or cuddled. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:55 | |
All those things were precious, but...but they began to fade. | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
Then in 1943, Kay and her mother were told | 0:14:00 | 0:14:04 | |
to expect a message from him broadcast over the radio from the Middle East. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:08 | |
For a few seconds, he was back in the room with me. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:15 | |
His voice, I'd forgotten what he sounded like. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
And I began to build up a picture of his face again, | 0:14:18 | 0:14:23 | |
his blue eyes and his hair and everything, and he was almost in the room again. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:30 | |
I can remember my mother and I both sat with the tears rolling down our faces. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:39 | |
It was very emotional, very, very emotional. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:43 | |
But not all messages brought good news. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:50 | |
After the death of his daughter, Pamela, in the Blitz, | 0:14:50 | 0:14:54 | |
Sonny Leigh volunteered for the Navy and went to sea as a stoker, | 0:14:54 | 0:14:58 | |
at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
At home in London, his wife Daisy was expecting another baby. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
Well, the Petty Officer came up and said, "Leigh..." | 0:15:07 | 0:15:09 | |
I was on duty in the boiler room. And he said, "Here's a telegram for you." | 0:15:09 | 0:15:15 | |
And when I read it, it said "Daisy very ill, baby dead." | 0:15:15 | 0:15:18 | |
I was numb, numb, really numb. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:24 | |
Daisy had had a miscarriage. | 0:15:27 | 0:15:29 | |
But when Sonny asked the Petty Officer if he could take compassionate leave, | 0:15:29 | 0:15:34 | |
he found there was little time for sympathy. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:37 | |
He took the telegram and he went and saw the First Lieutenant. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:41 | |
The Lieutenant went and saw the old man, so the Captain said "Tell him to get back on duty. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:46 | |
"He may be dead himself in the next hour, the convoy's being attacked." | 0:15:46 | 0:15:50 | |
And that's all there is to it, | 0:15:52 | 0:15:54 | |
and course I couldn't cry because it hurt me so much. | 0:15:54 | 0:15:58 | |
Before the war was over, Daisy would lose another baby in childbirth. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:05 | |
The experience would have a devastating effect on Sonny. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
I seized up, I suppose. I don't know. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:15 | |
I was like a machine, just doing automatically. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:19 | |
I couldn't think straight. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:21 | |
In Billinge, in 1942, Heather Burnley's mother received a telegram informing her that her husband | 0:16:25 | 0:16:31 | |
had been captured by the Japanese. | 0:16:31 | 0:16:33 | |
Over a quarter of around 50,000 British Servicemen taken prisoner in the Far East died in captivity, | 0:16:36 | 0:16:44 | |
mostly from starvation, punishment or disease. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:47 | |
Heather's father couldn't know it, but at least the odds were in his favour. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:54 | |
The statistics show that it was | 0:16:54 | 0:16:56 | |
the married men in the prison camps, those men in their 20s and early 30s, | 0:16:56 | 0:17:00 | |
who generally did better because they had some life experience behind them and had children, | 0:17:00 | 0:17:05 | |
so they had something to look forward to, something to live for, something to go back to, | 0:17:05 | 0:17:09 | |
and even though they hadn't been able to communicate with them | 0:17:09 | 0:17:12 | |
because the Japanese wouldn't allow them to write letters, | 0:17:12 | 0:17:15 | |
nevertheless some of them had kept diaries, they've written stuff | 0:17:15 | 0:17:18 | |
so that they could have something to show their children later. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:21 | |
Heather's father was imprisoned in Kuching Prisoner of War Camp in Borneo. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:29 | |
Against all the rules, he kept a journal in which | 0:17:29 | 0:17:33 | |
he recorded the suffering he endured at the hands of his captors. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:37 | |
It was only found after his death in 1992. | 0:17:37 | 0:17:41 | |
"First of November, 1942. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:46 | |
"There is an outbreak of dysentery in the camp | 0:17:46 | 0:17:48 | |
"and today I find myself a victim. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:52 | |
"So today I go to hospital and I've got to get over it somehow, | 0:17:52 | 0:17:57 | |
"although they have no medicines, | 0:17:57 | 0:17:59 | |
"as I've just got to get back to Wynn and Heather. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:01 | |
"Two of the men died in the ward today | 0:18:03 | 0:18:06 | |
"and two more are expected within the week. | 0:18:06 | 0:18:09 | |
"When they are known to be hopeless cases they are put in a small adjoining room | 0:18:09 | 0:18:14 | |
"known as 'the death cell', and left there to pass out. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:18 | |
"Have been here three months now and still hanging on. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
"I mustn't let it beat me, | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
"although I have to crawl on all fours to be able to move. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:31 | |
"I've no strength left at all and a beard six inches long." | 0:18:31 | 0:18:35 | |
It just brings tears to the eyes to think of this strong human being, | 0:18:40 | 0:18:45 | |
nice man, cuddly man, | 0:18:45 | 0:18:48 | |
reaching this state of being in a prison camp. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:54 | |
It's just so very, very sad. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:57 | |
SHE MOUTHS | 0:18:58 | 0:19:00 | |
One of the greatest fears | 0:19:02 | 0:19:05 | |
for men going into battle was the possibility of serious injury | 0:19:05 | 0:19:08 | |
and the impact the disability would have on their prospects for family life. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:13 | |
In 1944, Wilfred Copley was a 34-year-old sergeant | 0:19:15 | 0:19:19 | |
in the Essex Regiment, preparing his platoon for the Normandy landings, | 0:19:19 | 0:19:24 | |
while at home in London, his wife, Florence, was expecting their baby. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:29 | |
On D-Day, Wilfred and his men landed on Sword Beach | 0:19:33 | 0:19:37 | |
and in the days of fierce fighting that followed, | 0:19:37 | 0:19:40 | |
he led his platoon in the advance towards the town of Caen. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:45 | |
There's a crossroads and that's what we were fighting for. | 0:19:45 | 0:19:47 | |
And this German tank, I see it come out of a siding. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:55 | |
And it pointed the gun my way, | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
along my road where I was, my platoon. | 0:19:58 | 0:20:02 | |
And the next thing, it fired. | 0:20:02 | 0:20:04 | |
All I knew, there was a kind of a blinding flash and I was out straight away, I was unconscious. | 0:20:07 | 0:20:14 | |
Wilfred received life-threatening injuries. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:19 | |
His left leg was almost severed and he had terrible wounds to his neck, his back and his hand. | 0:20:19 | 0:20:25 | |
Still unconscious, he was given emergency treatment | 0:20:25 | 0:20:29 | |
before being shipped back to Britain, where he was covered | 0:20:29 | 0:20:32 | |
from head to toe in plaster cast. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:35 | |
But he was determined to survive. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:38 | |
I think it was by virtue of knowing that I was going to be a father | 0:20:40 | 0:20:47 | |
that sort of gave me some added strength to live through it. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:52 | |
I realised that... | 0:20:54 | 0:20:56 | |
probably the worst was over... | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
and I would live... | 0:20:59 | 0:21:02 | |
I'd want to live... | 0:21:02 | 0:21:04 | |
to welcome my child when I get well again. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:09 | |
Whilst Wilfred lay seriously ill in hospital, his wife gave birth to their son, Michael. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:18 | |
Wilfred was desperate to see him, but gangrene had set into his wounds | 0:21:18 | 0:21:22 | |
and, fearing infection, father and son were kept apart. | 0:21:22 | 0:21:27 | |
It would be six months before Wilfred was allowed to meet his son | 0:21:27 | 0:21:31 | |
for the first time. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:33 | |
Unfortunately, I couldn't welcome him by cuddling him or anything like that | 0:21:35 | 0:21:40 | |
because I was in this plaster cast | 0:21:40 | 0:21:43 | |
from the neck down to my feet, | 0:21:43 | 0:21:47 | |
and all they could do... | 0:21:47 | 0:21:50 | |
was place him sat on top of the plaster cast | 0:21:50 | 0:21:56 | |
facing me, looking at each other, | 0:21:56 | 0:21:59 | |
and that's how we met for the first time. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:02 | |
What a welcome(!) | 0:22:04 | 0:22:06 | |
And immediately, soon as I see him, I knew he was my boy. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
In the months that followed the end of the war, | 0:22:22 | 0:22:25 | |
there were many happy reunions as four million men were demobbed from the armed forces. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:31 | |
After fighting in France and Holland, Cliff Shepherd returned home to his daughter in 1945. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:40 | |
It was just marvellous. | 0:22:42 | 0:22:44 | |
My legs were getting dizzy as I were getting near home. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:48 | |
I think it was just the excitement. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:50 | |
My daughter said, "Are you come on leave, Dad?" | 0:22:50 | 0:22:54 | |
I said, "No," I said, "I'm not going back any more." | 0:22:54 | 0:22:59 | |
She said, "Well, what will they say if you don't go back?" I said, "The war's finished." | 0:23:05 | 0:23:10 | |
I says, "I'm stopping at home now, I'll be home with you always now." | 0:23:10 | 0:23:16 | |
And we really enjoyed the life together then. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:22 | |
When he left home in 1939, | 0:23:24 | 0:23:26 | |
Cliff had made Thelma a promise, that he'd bring her home a doll. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
In the nine months that he carried her around France, | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
she survived a few near misses, but Cliff was true to his word. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:39 | |
And bringing it home was absolutely gorgeous, it were like Father Christmas give her this doll. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:47 | |
And she were absolutely thrilled to bits with it and she still has it this day, just as new as ever. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:55 | |
It was really, really special to have you home again, wasn't it? | 0:23:59 | 0:24:03 | |
Oh, it was just wonderful. | 0:24:03 | 0:24:05 | |
We've got through everything else. We've had great, great times, | 0:24:05 | 0:24:09 | |
and I love you so much. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:11 | |
Bless you, darling. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:13 | |
At the end of 1945, | 0:24:22 | 0:24:24 | |
Heather Burnley discovered that her father was alive. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:28 | |
Miraculously, he had survived the horrors | 0:24:28 | 0:24:30 | |
of the Japanese Prisoner of War Camp and was at last on his way home. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:35 | |
She hadn't seen him in over five years. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:39 | |
When I knew my father was coming home, I was wildly excited. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:48 | |
And when the ship docked, it was full of men | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
going absolutely wild, shouting, waving. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:56 | |
And I remember looking at all these men and picking out my father. | 0:24:56 | 0:25:01 | |
And I said, "I've found him, I've found him." | 0:25:02 | 0:25:05 | |
And he came to join us | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
and he gave me a big hug, | 0:25:10 | 0:25:13 | |
a long enduring one, and also to my mother, | 0:25:13 | 0:25:18 | |
and I was asked or invited to sit on his knee. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:23 | |
And, of course, suddenly this man was a stranger. | 0:25:23 | 0:25:27 | |
I hadn't seen him for so many years. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:29 | |
And although I knew it was my father, I felt a little shy, to put it mildly, but I did sit on his knee. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:36 | |
This photograph, taken on the quayside, captured that moment. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:42 | |
It was a little strange when sitting on his knee | 0:25:47 | 0:25:50 | |
because I hadn't seen this man since I was a very little girl, and now I was eight years old. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:57 | |
And so it must have been hard for a man who left his tender young family | 0:25:58 | 0:26:05 | |
to come back and find that so many years had wrought the changes. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:09 | |
And here was a skinny girl with pigtails, | 0:26:11 | 0:26:13 | |
he probably didn't like pigtails. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:15 | |
I don't know what he thought, but certainly he must have thought, | 0:26:15 | 0:26:19 | |
"Gosh, I've got to come to terms with all of this." | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
Although awkward, Heather's reunion with her father | 0:26:27 | 0:26:30 | |
was a happy occasion. | 0:26:30 | 0:26:33 | |
But despite what the newsreels suggest, | 0:26:33 | 0:26:35 | |
not every reunion went so smoothly. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:38 | |
It is estimated that when the war ended, | 0:26:41 | 0:26:43 | |
as many as a million children under the age of six had never met their father. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:48 | |
In these circumstances, the trauma of his homecoming could last for decades. | 0:26:48 | 0:26:54 | |
Janet White was born in Braintree in Essex in 1940. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:04 | |
The youngest of four children, she was still only a baby | 0:27:04 | 0:27:08 | |
when her father left to fight. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:10 | |
In 1942, | 0:27:12 | 0:27:14 | |
he was captured by the Italians while serving in the Middle East. | 0:27:14 | 0:27:17 | |
Here we've got some photographs. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:22 | |
I like the ones that my mother sent to my father out in the camp. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:26 | |
And this one is my sister, | 0:27:28 | 0:27:30 | |
Nancy, and myself. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
Nancy was eight and I'm three. | 0:27:33 | 0:27:35 | |
And this is the actual one that was sent to my father. | 0:27:35 | 0:27:38 | |
It's addressed to Prisoner of War, Number One Camp, in Italy, | 0:27:38 | 0:27:42 | |
with my mother's address on it as well, they had to have their addresses on everything. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:47 | |
And evidently they took us to a studio to have these photographs done purely for my dad, | 0:27:47 | 0:27:52 | |
but I can't remember having them done, because I was three years old | 0:27:52 | 0:27:55 | |
and, you know, the memories are very scarce from that time. | 0:27:55 | 0:27:58 | |
Although Janet has no memory of this photograph being taken, | 0:28:01 | 0:28:05 | |
the day of her father's return is one she will never forget. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:08 | |
Mum had said to us before we left for school, | 0:28:11 | 0:28:13 | |
she said, "I've got a surprise for you this afternoon." | 0:28:13 | 0:28:18 | |
And she said, "I'm going to come and meet you from school and I won't tell you about it till then." | 0:28:18 | 0:28:23 | |
And she'd taken us to buy our favourite sweets, | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
and I can remember mine were aniseed balls that changed colour as you sucked them. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:31 | |
Then we started to go down for the railway station | 0:28:31 | 0:28:34 | |
and we'd not got the slightest idea why. | 0:28:34 | 0:28:37 | |
And then we saw all these men coming up from the train, the train had just come in, | 0:28:37 | 0:28:42 | |
all these men in khaki coming up the road. | 0:28:42 | 0:28:45 | |
And all of a sudden there was this man | 0:28:45 | 0:28:48 | |
and he just threw his arms around my mum. | 0:28:48 | 0:28:51 | |
And I just felt as if I was totally on the outside. | 0:28:51 | 0:28:54 | |
I heard mum said something about, "It's your dad," or, "your daddy," | 0:28:56 | 0:28:59 | |
but I didn't know what a dad was, didn't know what a daddy was. | 0:28:59 | 0:29:04 | |
And I didn't like him, he was a stranger and I didn't like him, I didn't want him. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:09 | |
I just wanted to get away. | 0:29:09 | 0:29:11 | |
So it was literally a shock. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:14 | |
I was being taken out for a surprise that turned out to be my worst nightmare. | 0:29:14 | 0:29:19 | |
For fathers returning home with the physical and mental scars of war, | 0:29:21 | 0:29:25 | |
readjusting to normal family life could be a gruelling process. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:30 | |
Resettlement Advice Centres were set up to help men | 0:29:30 | 0:29:33 | |
with the practicalities of finding work, but for fathers recovering from serious injury, | 0:29:33 | 0:29:38 | |
like Wilfred Copley, | 0:29:38 | 0:29:40 | |
it was difficult to come to terms with the fact that, for a time at least, | 0:29:40 | 0:29:44 | |
they could not be the main provider. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:46 | |
Those years between | 0:29:49 | 0:29:51 | |
leaving hospital | 0:29:51 | 0:29:53 | |
and getting home, | 0:29:53 | 0:29:55 | |
and then afterwards, trying to find a job, | 0:29:55 | 0:29:59 | |
was... | 0:29:59 | 0:30:01 | |
..was a void really. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:04 | |
It did affect me badly. | 0:30:06 | 0:30:07 | |
I began to think of myself as worthless... | 0:30:09 | 0:30:12 | |
..as no good for anything, | 0:30:14 | 0:30:16 | |
because I couldn't provide as I wanted to for my family. | 0:30:16 | 0:30:22 | |
My wife was mothering two, not one, | 0:30:24 | 0:30:27 | |
mothering Michael and myself | 0:30:27 | 0:30:31 | |
because of my condition, and that went on for two years. | 0:30:31 | 0:30:35 | |
For those most severely traumatised by their war experiences, | 0:30:39 | 0:30:43 | |
Emergency Medical Service Centres, like this one, were set up | 0:30:43 | 0:30:46 | |
to provide the latest in psychological testing and treatment. | 0:30:46 | 0:30:51 | |
NEWSREEL: From every point of view, a neurotic who has broken down is a liability. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:55 | |
Treatment must therefore be carefully planned to restore each individual | 0:30:55 | 0:31:00 | |
to maximum usefulness within his limitations. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:03 | |
But for the thousands of prisoners of war | 0:31:03 | 0:31:06 | |
who returned from the Far East to a Britain slowly recovering from war, | 0:31:06 | 0:31:10 | |
there was often very little sympathy. | 0:31:10 | 0:31:12 | |
What's interesting is that the men who came back from the Far East | 0:31:12 | 0:31:16 | |
didn't come back until November 1945 and they were told by the army | 0:31:16 | 0:31:21 | |
that they were not to talk about their experiences. | 0:31:21 | 0:31:23 | |
And they came home and were simply expected to get on, | 0:31:23 | 0:31:27 | |
and some of them couldn't. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:29 | |
And what's very interesting is that it's quite clear | 0:31:29 | 0:31:32 | |
that it was the younger men, who had had three-and-a-half years of their lives stolen from them, | 0:31:32 | 0:31:37 | |
the men who were 19, 20 when they went abroad, who found it more difficult to adjust. | 0:31:37 | 0:31:42 | |
Frank Davies from Salford was 24 when he returned to Britain | 0:31:44 | 0:31:48 | |
after being held prisoner by the Japanese for three-and-a-half years. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:53 | |
He wanted a wife and a family, | 0:31:53 | 0:31:55 | |
but was too traumatised by his experiences to see any hope for the future. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:59 | |
All my teeth had started to rot through lack of vitamins and calcium. | 0:32:01 | 0:32:07 | |
My eyesight was affected with no shelter in the sun. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:11 | |
I'd got a damaged ear... | 0:32:11 | 0:32:13 | |
I was on malaria tablets, | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
I was having nightmares, | 0:32:16 | 0:32:19 | |
I were having panic attacks | 0:32:19 | 0:32:21 | |
and you had to try and carry on with a normal life | 0:32:21 | 0:32:26 | |
feeling the way you did. | 0:32:26 | 0:32:28 | |
And some of my old comrades in England who'd never been out there | 0:32:28 | 0:32:32 | |
had already married and had young children coming up, | 0:32:32 | 0:32:35 | |
and there was me at the same age, felt like a freak. | 0:32:35 | 0:32:39 | |
I thought who the hell's going to want to take up with me, the condition I was in. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:44 | |
Sonny Leigh had simply wanted to be a father, | 0:32:47 | 0:32:50 | |
but during the course of the war, | 0:32:50 | 0:32:53 | |
he and his wife Daisy had suffered the trauma of losing three babies. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:57 | |
The pain was too much for Sonny to bear and he was admitted to a mental hospital. | 0:32:57 | 0:33:03 | |
NEWSREEL: Electric convulsion therapy is reserved for depressions of the more endogenous type. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:10 | |
Loss of consciousness is immediate | 0:33:12 | 0:33:14 | |
and the treatment leaves no unpleasant memories. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:17 | |
I went in there and they gave me narcosis treatment, | 0:33:18 | 0:33:22 | |
electrical shocks, medicine, everything. | 0:33:22 | 0:33:24 | |
People there thought they was bomber pilots, | 0:33:26 | 0:33:29 | |
they was coming down the ward as aeroplanes, religious maniacs. | 0:33:29 | 0:33:33 | |
I watched three men walking round a flowerbed like that, round there, | 0:33:36 | 0:33:40 | |
and a man took a packet of papers out and it blew away, | 0:33:40 | 0:33:44 | |
and he's running round... And I thought to myself, | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
"Sonny, you're not going to come to this, you're going to get out." | 0:33:47 | 0:33:51 | |
And from that day, I made sure I got better. | 0:33:51 | 0:33:54 | |
I wasn't going to be like that. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:56 | |
After several months of treatment, Sonny did get better | 0:33:59 | 0:34:03 | |
and he was able to leave the hospital. | 0:34:03 | 0:34:05 | |
And although he and his wife agreed they would give up on their dream of having a family, | 0:34:05 | 0:34:10 | |
in 1957, Daisy gave birth to their daughter, Linda. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:15 | |
I saw Daisy and the baby, I could have jumped over the moon. | 0:34:21 | 0:34:24 | |
I could have won the Olympics the way I felt. | 0:34:24 | 0:34:27 | |
Being a daddy made me king of the world, I was so happy. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:32 | |
I had everything, I had a wonderful woman, a lovely child. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:38 | |
What else did I want? | 0:34:38 | 0:34:39 | |
And she's a wonderful girl. | 0:34:41 | 0:34:43 | |
Sonny's story had a happy ending, but thousands of families failed | 0:34:48 | 0:34:53 | |
in their efforts to readjust to life after the war. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:56 | |
The years of separation had often brought too much change, | 0:34:56 | 0:35:00 | |
and as a result, in the late 1940s, the divorce rate soared. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:04 | |
It's very well recorded that the divorce rate | 0:35:04 | 0:35:07 | |
after the Second World War escalated, | 0:35:07 | 0:35:09 | |
and it reached 60,000 in 1947, which was an all-time high. | 0:35:09 | 0:35:13 | |
And the really sad thing was | 0:35:13 | 0:35:15 | |
that the divorces that happened after the Second World War were very often | 0:35:15 | 0:35:19 | |
where simply two lives had grown apart, | 0:35:19 | 0:35:21 | |
and for the children, it was very often tragic | 0:35:21 | 0:35:24 | |
because they didn't understand why Daddy, | 0:35:24 | 0:35:27 | |
who'd been revered during the war, had been celebrated, had written letters, | 0:35:27 | 0:35:32 | |
came home and suddenly didn't want to live at home any more. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:35 | |
In Hertfordshire, Kay Chorley's father had returned home from service after six years overseas. | 0:35:39 | 0:35:45 | |
She was delighted to have him back, | 0:35:45 | 0:35:48 | |
but it wasn't long before she found out | 0:35:48 | 0:35:51 | |
that he had left home again, and this time for good. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:55 | |
I was at school doing an art exam. | 0:35:55 | 0:35:57 | |
It's very clear in my memory. | 0:35:57 | 0:35:59 | |
And the headmistress came in and said | 0:35:59 | 0:36:02 | |
could she speak to me. And the teacher said yes. | 0:36:02 | 0:36:05 | |
I went out, and she said, "I've just had a message from your mother, | 0:36:05 | 0:36:09 | |
to say don't be surprised if you get a letter from your father | 0:36:09 | 0:36:15 | |
from your aunt's in Ipswich, he's going to stay there for a while." | 0:36:15 | 0:36:20 | |
And I thought, well, what's all that about? | 0:36:20 | 0:36:23 | |
You know, it's very odd, cos I'd never ever heard them argue | 0:36:23 | 0:36:28 | |
or row or even disagree about things really. | 0:36:28 | 0:36:31 | |
My life was changed at that point, and I did wonder, | 0:36:35 | 0:36:40 | |
have I done anything? | 0:36:40 | 0:36:43 | |
What had I done? | 0:36:43 | 0:36:46 | |
But I assume they were two different people. | 0:36:46 | 0:36:50 | |
My mother had had to do everything | 0:36:50 | 0:36:54 | |
and he had had a different life again. | 0:36:54 | 0:36:58 | |
And I didn't see him for a few years after that, till I was about 18. | 0:37:00 | 0:37:05 | |
But at least I did see him again, | 0:37:08 | 0:37:10 | |
so he didn't end up out in Egypt in the grave somewhere. | 0:37:10 | 0:37:16 | |
The post-war years saw a baby boom in Britain, | 0:37:19 | 0:37:24 | |
but the country remained dominated by austerity. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:27 | |
Rationing continued well into the 1950s, | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
and in towns and cities across the land, | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
children played on bomb sites, these improvised playgrounds, | 0:37:33 | 0:37:36 | |
the last remnants of the 500,000 homes destroyed in the Blitz. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:41 | |
With so much destruction, there was a nationwide housing crisis, | 0:37:43 | 0:37:47 | |
and many newlyweds faced an unenviable choice | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
between slum housing and sharing a home with their in-laws. | 0:37:50 | 0:37:55 | |
This shortage of housing put great pressure on young fathers, | 0:37:56 | 0:38:00 | |
who found themselves unable to fulfil the basic paternal role | 0:38:00 | 0:38:04 | |
of providing decent accommodation for their children. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:08 | |
David Ritchie and his wife Rhoda lived in Dundee. | 0:38:08 | 0:38:12 | |
When I came out of the army | 0:38:13 | 0:38:15 | |
and I was setting up a home, | 0:38:15 | 0:38:18 | |
Rhoda and I were married and there was no possibility | 0:38:18 | 0:38:21 | |
of my living with my parents | 0:38:21 | 0:38:24 | |
because my parents had two rooms with an outside toilet | 0:38:24 | 0:38:29 | |
and three grown-up children. | 0:38:29 | 0:38:32 | |
And to try to get a house was impossible. | 0:38:33 | 0:38:37 | |
I went down to Dundee Corporation, to the council, | 0:38:37 | 0:38:40 | |
and asked if I could put my name down for a house, | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
or our names down for a house, and "Certainly," they took it all down. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:48 | |
"Married?" "Yes." And I said, | 0:38:48 | 0:38:50 | |
"Now, when do you think I could look forward to perhaps getting a house?" | 0:38:50 | 0:38:55 | |
He says, "Well, at the present time, where you are, | 0:38:55 | 0:38:58 | |
"come back in 15 years and we'll see how we're getting on." | 0:38:58 | 0:39:01 | |
He says "I couldn't even promise you one then." | 0:39:01 | 0:39:04 | |
Part of the solution was the creation of new towns, | 0:39:08 | 0:39:12 | |
like Stevenage, Basildon, and importantly for David Ritchie, Glenrothes. | 0:39:12 | 0:39:17 | |
In the heart of Fife, work on | 0:39:21 | 0:39:23 | |
new housing for over 30,000 people began in Glenrothes in 1948, | 0:39:23 | 0:39:28 | |
and by the early 1950s, David and Rhoda had moved into their dream home. | 0:39:28 | 0:39:34 | |
It was fairyland! I couldn't believe it! | 0:39:37 | 0:39:40 | |
We couldn't really believe it. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
Lounge, big kitchen that you could eat in, | 0:39:46 | 0:39:49 | |
bathroom, garden back and front. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:53 | |
Ach, I think it was the best time in my life. | 0:39:55 | 0:40:00 | |
It really was the best time in my life, | 0:40:00 | 0:40:03 | |
coming to that place, it was really great. | 0:40:03 | 0:40:06 | |
Nicknamed "Nappy Valley", Glenrothes quickly became | 0:40:07 | 0:40:12 | |
the ideal place for young fathers like David to raise a family. | 0:40:12 | 0:40:15 | |
People next door to us had seven, | 0:40:18 | 0:40:19 | |
we had four, there were three next door to us on the other side, | 0:40:19 | 0:40:24 | |
and five on the end, and that was quite common, that was the norm. | 0:40:24 | 0:40:28 | |
We-We-We loved the children, the children were our life. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:33 | |
But they always had something to do. | 0:40:35 | 0:40:38 | |
They were out, they were playing down the bank, in the burn, | 0:40:38 | 0:40:42 | |
up in the play park, this was it. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
They didn't have to be at home to play. | 0:40:45 | 0:40:49 | |
They were out most of the time and it was marvellous. | 0:40:49 | 0:40:52 | |
I think they had a wonderful life. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:55 | |
These were the "never had it so good" years, of modernity, | 0:40:58 | 0:41:02 | |
domesticity, and happy, stable marriages. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:06 | |
This was the Britain the country's fathers had fought for. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:11 | |
Ex-prisoner of war Frank Davies found that his worries about the future were in the end unfounded | 0:41:19 | 0:41:25 | |
when he married Joan, a girl he'd met at work. | 0:41:25 | 0:41:28 | |
In 1953, Joan gave birth to their daughter Val, | 0:41:30 | 0:41:34 | |
and Frank quickly discovered | 0:41:34 | 0:41:36 | |
that, ironically, his experiences as a prisoner of war | 0:41:36 | 0:41:40 | |
had left him with many of the skills he needed to cope with | 0:41:40 | 0:41:43 | |
the responsibilities of fatherhood. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:45 | |
I used to enjoy all the little tasks | 0:41:46 | 0:41:49 | |
that in those days wasn't considered manly. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:53 | |
Things like changing nappies and giving 'em baths | 0:41:53 | 0:41:57 | |
and letting 'em, helping them on the potties and things like that, | 0:41:57 | 0:42:01 | |
there was no problem for me | 0:42:01 | 0:42:03 | |
because we'd done all this for our comrades. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:06 | |
They'd done it for me, I'd do it for them in the prison camps. | 0:42:06 | 0:42:10 | |
When blokes have dysentery, | 0:42:10 | 0:42:11 | |
they're having to relieve themselves a couple of dozen times a day | 0:42:11 | 0:42:17 | |
and it's blood and mucus and God knows what. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:20 | |
Er...things like changing a nappy's nothing. | 0:42:20 | 0:42:24 | |
By the 1950s, many fathers were happy | 0:42:26 | 0:42:29 | |
to get involved in the care of their young children at home. | 0:42:29 | 0:42:32 | |
But in some places, there was still a certain stigma | 0:42:32 | 0:42:36 | |
attached to fathers seen looking after their children in public. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:39 | |
Where I lived, in Salford, you know, | 0:42:40 | 0:42:44 | |
it was a real man's world as they called it | 0:42:44 | 0:42:47 | |
and everybody thought men were tough | 0:42:47 | 0:42:50 | |
and women had to know their place in life | 0:42:50 | 0:42:53 | |
and I used to think nothing | 0:42:53 | 0:42:57 | |
of taking my daughter out in the pram or for a walk | 0:42:57 | 0:43:01 | |
and blokes would be looking at you as if to say, | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
he looks a bit of a Mary-Ann as they used to call it then, | 0:43:04 | 0:43:08 | |
and it didn't affect me at all, it didn't. | 0:43:08 | 0:43:11 | |
I didn't look upon it like that. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:13 | |
Being a father had a profound effect on Frank, and finally helped him | 0:43:16 | 0:43:21 | |
to banish the terrible memories he carried from the war. | 0:43:21 | 0:43:25 | |
And I got...suddenly felt that | 0:43:25 | 0:43:29 | |
all this was...helped me to... | 0:43:29 | 0:43:32 | |
get rid of the feelings that I'd had before of the... | 0:43:32 | 0:43:36 | |
that were left behind, the horrors of the terrible days of the prison camps. | 0:43:36 | 0:43:42 | |
You know, you felt really uplifted. | 0:43:42 | 0:43:45 | |
You'd left all that behind you, | 0:43:45 | 0:43:48 | |
you were starting a new life with this...new person | 0:43:48 | 0:43:54 | |
and it was all worthwhile. | 0:43:54 | 0:43:56 | |
But just when the generation of fathers who had lived through the war finally felt | 0:43:56 | 0:44:02 | |
that life was regaining some sense of normality, | 0:44:02 | 0:44:05 | |
a new phenomenon appeared in households up and down the country - | 0:44:05 | 0:44:09 | |
one which would seek to undermine a dad's place as head of the household - | 0:44:09 | 0:44:13 | |
they were called teenagers. | 0:44:13 | 0:44:16 | |
# You shake my nerves And you rattle my brain | 0:44:16 | 0:44:19 | |
# Too much love drives a man insane | 0:44:19 | 0:44:22 | |
# You broke my will Oh, what a thrill | 0:44:23 | 0:44:26 | |
# Goodness gracious Great balls of fire... # | 0:44:26 | 0:44:29 | |
The new idea of teenagers began | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
with the emergence of the Beatniks and Teddy Boys in the early 1950s. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:36 | |
On street corners, in coffee bars and in jazz clubs up and down the country, | 0:44:36 | 0:44:40 | |
there was a revolution in music, fashion and idealism | 0:44:40 | 0:44:44 | |
as the young turned their backs on the old way of life. | 0:44:44 | 0:44:48 | |
In their search for identity and self expression, | 0:44:48 | 0:44:52 | |
the new teenage rebels questioned all that the previous generation believed in, | 0:44:52 | 0:44:57 | |
and all that their fathers had fought so hard to defend. | 0:44:57 | 0:45:01 | |
JAZZ MUSIC | 0:45:01 | 0:45:03 | |
For the fathers who had come back from the war | 0:45:06 | 0:45:08 | |
and had adjusted to life back in Britain, | 0:45:08 | 0:45:11 | |
and who had really begun to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, | 0:45:11 | 0:45:15 | |
suddenly, that their teenage children were turning round | 0:45:15 | 0:45:17 | |
and rebelling against them was a shock, and one in the eye for them | 0:45:17 | 0:45:21 | |
because they, in some ways, even if subconsciously, | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
felt they'd made the world a safer place through the sacrifice | 0:45:24 | 0:45:28 | |
they'd made in the Second World War. | 0:45:28 | 0:45:30 | |
What you ended up with of course is | 0:45:30 | 0:45:32 | |
terrible clashes of personality between fathers and children | 0:45:32 | 0:45:36 | |
because the fathers still wanted control over the children | 0:45:36 | 0:45:39 | |
and their children felt that they didn't owe their fathers anything. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:43 | |
Peter Lambert was born in Birmingham in 1940. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:49 | |
His father was a welder who spent his evenings in the local pub, | 0:45:49 | 0:45:53 | |
or asleep in his favourite armchair. | 0:45:53 | 0:45:55 | |
As a teenager, it was a lifestyle that Peter would violently reject. | 0:45:55 | 0:46:00 | |
I didn't want to be like him because I didn't want any of that. | 0:46:02 | 0:46:06 | |
I wanted, like, to be... out with my mates. | 0:46:06 | 0:46:11 | |
I wanted to dress how I wanted to dress, | 0:46:11 | 0:46:13 | |
not how he wanted me to dress. | 0:46:14 | 0:46:17 | |
I wanted long hair. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
I wanted these, sideburns, I wanted to be me. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
I wanted to be the business, | 0:46:27 | 0:46:29 | |
which was, at the time, was, in the '50s, was the Teddy Boys. | 0:46:29 | 0:46:34 | |
I wanted to be one of them | 0:46:34 | 0:46:36 | |
and he didn't want me to be... | 0:46:36 | 0:46:40 | |
and the more he didn't want me to be, | 0:46:40 | 0:46:41 | |
the more I wanted to be and the more I would be. | 0:46:41 | 0:46:44 | |
Nobody could touch me, not even my dad, | 0:46:47 | 0:46:50 | |
and I got to the stage where I sort of turned on him. | 0:46:50 | 0:46:55 | |
And then it ended up like we're rowing | 0:47:04 | 0:47:08 | |
and I ended up smashing a milk bottle on the fireplace | 0:47:08 | 0:47:13 | |
and holding it up to him. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:16 | |
It stunned him so much probably to think that | 0:47:16 | 0:47:20 | |
his own son could do something like that. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:23 | |
Hoping to keep him out of trouble, | 0:47:25 | 0:47:27 | |
Peter's father sent him away to live with his grandmother. | 0:47:27 | 0:47:30 | |
But it wasn't long before Peter was back with his gang. | 0:47:30 | 0:47:34 | |
Father and son would barely speak to one another for the next 25 years. | 0:47:34 | 0:47:40 | |
In Essex, Janet White had also become a teenager, | 0:47:46 | 0:47:49 | |
and was having similar problems with her father. | 0:47:49 | 0:47:53 | |
More than ten years had passed since his return from the war, | 0:47:53 | 0:47:57 | |
but the distance Janet had felt at his homecoming had not diminished. | 0:47:57 | 0:48:01 | |
He was often strict about her going out, | 0:48:01 | 0:48:03 | |
and worried about her forming friendships | 0:48:03 | 0:48:06 | |
with the American servicemen who still had a base in town. | 0:48:06 | 0:48:10 | |
# Too late | 0:48:12 | 0:48:14 | |
# For me to ask the reason why... # | 0:48:14 | 0:48:20 | |
When I was a teenager, I wanted to go dancing with my friends | 0:48:20 | 0:48:23 | |
and he wasn't very keen, and one occasion I really remember | 0:48:23 | 0:48:27 | |
because it made me believe he didn't trust me at all. | 0:48:27 | 0:48:31 | |
I just felt, he doesn't trust me, he doesn't know me, | 0:48:31 | 0:48:33 | |
his own daughter and he doesn't even know me. | 0:48:33 | 0:48:36 | |
Cos he came in, it was the following morning I'd got up, | 0:48:36 | 0:48:39 | |
"What were you doing round the town last night talking to Americans?" | 0:48:39 | 0:48:43 | |
I said, "What?" | 0:48:43 | 0:48:44 | |
He said, "I saw you. Don't you tell me you didn't, cos I saw you with my own eyes." | 0:48:44 | 0:48:49 | |
I said, "I'm sorry, Dad, you don't even know your own daughter." | 0:48:49 | 0:48:53 | |
It really hurt that I felt he didn't trust me, you know, that there was no trust there. | 0:48:57 | 0:49:03 | |
It was a very difficult thing, you know? | 0:49:03 | 0:49:05 | |
But I also acknowledge now that a lot of that was my fault. | 0:49:07 | 0:49:12 | |
It was my fault because I had resented him from day one, | 0:49:12 | 0:49:16 | |
I hadn't really wanted him there | 0:49:16 | 0:49:18 | |
and my mum told me after he died, she said many times he sat and cried, | 0:49:18 | 0:49:23 | |
many's the time he sat and cried because he just felt, | 0:49:23 | 0:49:28 | |
as much as he tried, and I know he did try in his own way... | 0:49:28 | 0:49:33 | |
he just couldn't get through. Neither of us in a way could bridge that gap. | 0:49:33 | 0:49:37 | |
I suppose I was young and thought I knew better at the time. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:40 | |
I just...I just don't know what it was. | 0:49:40 | 0:49:42 | |
Keen to escape their father's rule in the family home, | 0:49:46 | 0:49:48 | |
many teenagers of the 1950s married young, | 0:49:48 | 0:49:52 | |
and by the '60s had become parents themselves. | 0:49:52 | 0:49:56 | |
After a series of petty crimes, Teddy Boy Peter Lambert ended up in prison. | 0:49:59 | 0:50:04 | |
It was an experience that for while set him on the straight and narrow. | 0:50:04 | 0:50:09 | |
In 1966, he married his girlfriend, Judith, | 0:50:10 | 0:50:13 | |
although they had to elope to Gretna Green | 0:50:13 | 0:50:17 | |
after her parents disapproved of their courtship. | 0:50:17 | 0:50:21 | |
Then, in April 1967, Peter became a father to daughter, Debbie. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:28 | |
# Take my hand, little girl | 0:50:28 | 0:50:32 | |
# And we'll go through life together... # | 0:50:32 | 0:50:37 | |
I used to look forward to coming home from work to see my little girl. | 0:50:37 | 0:50:41 | |
I was proud to be her dad, you know? She was a lovely little girl. | 0:50:41 | 0:50:46 | |
I used to rock her in this little rocking thing that she had, you know? | 0:50:46 | 0:50:51 | |
So take her down the rec where the little swings are, you know? | 0:50:51 | 0:50:56 | |
I just wanted to be normal. | 0:51:02 | 0:51:04 | |
Normal dad, go to work, earn my wages. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:08 | |
Being a rebel...then, at that particular time, | 0:51:09 | 0:51:13 | |
was sort of fading out a bit. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:16 | |
I was more interested in being a dad. | 0:51:16 | 0:51:19 | |
And I used to love going out and pushing the pram. | 0:51:19 | 0:51:23 | |
I'd do it cos I wanted to do it. | 0:51:23 | 0:51:24 | |
By the late '60s, many of Britain's young fathers were able to provide | 0:51:26 | 0:51:31 | |
for their children as never before. | 0:51:31 | 0:51:33 | |
They had more money, better housing | 0:51:33 | 0:51:36 | |
and a brighter future than their own fathers could have dreamed of. | 0:51:36 | 0:51:41 | |
But for some of those who'd grown up with a rebellious streak, | 0:51:41 | 0:51:45 | |
domestic bliss just wasn't enough. | 0:51:45 | 0:51:48 | |
After several years of marriage, and the birth of a son, David, | 0:51:51 | 0:51:56 | |
Peter Lambert started to go back out with his old gang. | 0:51:56 | 0:51:59 | |
Working away for much of the week | 0:51:59 | 0:52:01 | |
and drinking with friends when he was back, | 0:52:01 | 0:52:04 | |
it wasn't long before his marriage fell apart | 0:52:04 | 0:52:06 | |
and he lost contact with his children. | 0:52:06 | 0:52:09 | |
And although Peter took responsibility for the break up, | 0:52:10 | 0:52:13 | |
it still upset him deeply. | 0:52:13 | 0:52:16 | |
Well, I used to go for a drink, back then, I used to go for a drink | 0:52:16 | 0:52:20 | |
and I'd get a few drinks in me and I'd start crying. | 0:52:20 | 0:52:23 | |
Wondering what my kids were doing. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:26 | |
Where they are, what they're like. | 0:52:26 | 0:52:30 | |
I used to wonder, drowning in self-pity, if you like, | 0:52:32 | 0:52:36 | |
you know, why's this happening to me? | 0:52:36 | 0:52:38 | |
But I'd brought it on myself, you know what I'm saying? | 0:52:38 | 0:52:42 | |
It wasn't the ex-wife's fault, it wasn't the children's fault, | 0:52:42 | 0:52:46 | |
it was mine, but there I was, sitting on buses coming home from the pub, | 0:52:46 | 0:52:52 | |
crying my eyes out because of my kids. | 0:52:52 | 0:52:55 | |
Not only had Peter lost his children, | 0:52:58 | 0:53:00 | |
he'd also lost contact with his own father. | 0:53:00 | 0:53:04 | |
And, like many of his generation, it wasn't until he got older | 0:53:04 | 0:53:08 | |
that he began to question his past. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:11 | |
Men and women, now in their retirement age, | 0:53:11 | 0:53:14 | |
are looking back at what their fathers did for them | 0:53:14 | 0:53:17 | |
and actually are beginning to appreciate it, | 0:53:17 | 0:53:19 | |
and the number of people that one hears saying, | 0:53:19 | 0:53:22 | |
"I wish I'd understood my father better. | 0:53:22 | 0:53:24 | |
"I wish I'd asked him more questions. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:26 | |
"I wish I'd shown more interest in his life during the war" | 0:53:26 | 0:53:30 | |
is very sad, so it's not too late now | 0:53:30 | 0:53:33 | |
if your father is still alive, but sadly many of them are not. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:37 | |
In 1983, 25 years after leaving his childhood home, | 0:53:39 | 0:53:44 | |
Peter arranged to meet up with his father. | 0:53:44 | 0:53:48 | |
They spent the weekend together, | 0:53:48 | 0:53:50 | |
and when Peter left, they vowed to make it a regular event. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:54 | |
Two weeks later, Peter's father passed away. | 0:53:54 | 0:53:58 | |
You know, I'm looking forward to when I was going to see him again, | 0:54:03 | 0:54:06 | |
I was gonna tell him this, things that we hadn't spoke about | 0:54:06 | 0:54:10 | |
and I was gonna talk about stuff that we'd missed out on, and... | 0:54:10 | 0:54:14 | |
Crazy, innit? | 0:54:21 | 0:54:22 | |
And then, like...you can't do it then, you can't tell him. | 0:54:26 | 0:54:31 | |
And you think to yourself, | 0:54:36 | 0:54:39 | |
"Ooh, why didn't I say it when I saw him, why didn't I say this, | 0:54:39 | 0:54:42 | |
"why didn't I say that?" | 0:54:42 | 0:54:44 | |
You live and learn, don't you? | 0:54:50 | 0:54:54 | |
Peter has now been married three times, and has seven children. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:03 | |
Over the years, and particularly after the death of his own father, | 0:55:04 | 0:55:08 | |
he'd thought often about Debbie and David, the two children from his first marriage. | 0:55:08 | 0:55:14 | |
Finally he decided to search for them. | 0:55:14 | 0:55:17 | |
And in 2003, 30 years after they were separated, he found them. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:23 | |
We can't change the past, | 0:55:25 | 0:55:27 | |
but we can try and make things better in the future. | 0:55:27 | 0:55:30 | |
You know, I just love life now, I love life, I'm just... | 0:55:30 | 0:55:35 | |
I'm just happy and I'm grateful for every day. | 0:55:35 | 0:55:39 | |
I'm not sure whether I deserve it really cos I've been a bit of a rascal, you know, | 0:55:39 | 0:55:45 | |
but it's just great and I'm just enjoying life, you know? | 0:55:45 | 0:55:48 | |
I wouldn't change it for the world. | 0:55:48 | 0:55:50 | |
I don't think so, you know what I mean? | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
Throughout her life, Janet White was never able to bond with her father. | 0:55:57 | 0:56:02 | |
The repercussions from that first fateful meeting | 0:56:02 | 0:56:06 | |
on the railway platform lasting until his death in 1971. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:10 | |
Like so many war veterans, he'd never spoken about his experiences, | 0:56:10 | 0:56:16 | |
and it wasn't until 1996, long after his death, | 0:56:16 | 0:56:20 | |
that Janet found the diaries he'd written during his time in captivity. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:25 | |
Reading his words, she began to understand | 0:56:26 | 0:56:30 | |
all that he'd been through as a prisoner, | 0:56:30 | 0:56:32 | |
and finally discovered just what she'd meant to him | 0:56:32 | 0:56:36 | |
all those years before. | 0:56:36 | 0:56:38 | |
"It'll be grand just to receive some letters from home. | 0:56:39 | 0:56:42 | |
"Everything seems to have stopped at once, no mail, no food, no fags. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:47 | |
"Roll on those blue clouds. | 0:56:47 | 0:56:49 | |
"Spend a lot of time these bad days planning all sorts of things for when we get back. | 0:56:49 | 0:56:55 | |
"It's going to be rather strange to go back to one's family all grown up | 0:56:55 | 0:56:58 | |
"and to feel almost like a stranger amongst your own family, | 0:56:58 | 0:57:02 | |
"but we'll soon sort that out, I have no doubt. | 0:57:02 | 0:57:04 | |
"I don't suppose that they have forgotten their dad | 0:57:06 | 0:57:09 | |
"except for the youngest, Janet, who cannot remember me, | 0:57:09 | 0:57:13 | |
"she being too young when I left her. | 0:57:13 | 0:57:16 | |
"But the wife tells me in her letters that she's always talking about Daddy, | 0:57:16 | 0:57:20 | |
"and I expect in her little mind she has made up a picture of what her daddy should look like. | 0:57:20 | 0:57:24 | |
"I hope sincerely that I shall not disappoint her. | 0:57:24 | 0:57:27 | |
"I only know I'm longing to be with them all again." | 0:57:27 | 0:57:31 | |
To think that he was actually thinking about me | 0:57:33 | 0:57:36 | |
when he was stuck in a prisoner-of-war camp. | 0:57:36 | 0:57:39 | |
Even now I can say, "Oh, Dad, if only you'd let us have those books earlier." | 0:57:39 | 0:57:44 | |
If I could have been given those books to read, we may have healed that breach before he died. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:49 | |
If my dad was alive today I think I'd just want to tell him I understand | 0:57:54 | 0:57:58 | |
and I'm sorry it took so long, but it was too late, | 0:57:58 | 0:58:02 | |
it's much too late for both of us, | 0:58:02 | 0:58:05 | |
and I just wish the war had never ever happened. | 0:58:05 | 0:58:08 | |
Yeah. | 0:58:10 | 0:58:11 | |
Next time, sex, divorce and the rise of feminism | 0:58:16 | 0:58:20 | |
present new challenges for Britain's fathers. | 0:58:20 | 0:58:24 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:39 | 0:58:42 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:42 | 0:58:45 |