RAF Rivenhall, ex USA airfield in 1943
John Betts was a real character; his shoulders were as broad as his height which was about a head shorter than mine, and that wasn’t very high; a large head with big luminous hazel eyes sat on top of that frame… and you could immediately sense his jovial humour and passion for life – always smiling, always gibbering in his imitation of the Goon Show speak. And you couldn’t miss spotting his trouser pockets – they stuck out like two potato sacks attached to his thighs! I once asked him to empty his pockets onto a table and, oh boy! conkers, screws, handkerchiefs, string… an unbelievable collection of really nothing and everything!
click images to enlarge
11. Life after the war
KELVEDON CAMP SNAPSHOTS by Jerry Kubica
Growing up in a Polish Resettlement camp 1947-57
page 3
KELVEDON CAMP SNAPSHOT - 17
More, more education
Every school-day in1955 and 1956, that monstrous caterpillar with a huge steam engine for its head waited for me at Witham railway station to take me to Chelmsford for more education… but one day in June 1956 was special. When I got back home to the Camp I could tell my parents – I have done the “Matura”! I have passed my GCSE O-Level in Maths, Physics, Biology, Chemistry and, believe it or not, in English too (!) and… I passed Polish language at GCSE A-Level.
That weekend my parents and I were walking alongside our Camp Doctor and his wife when I heard my Dad tell the Doctor that I have “Matriculated” – that I have passed seven GCSE’s and… I was furious – how dare he boast like that! It was me who did all the hard work – not Dad!!
And then I recalled my Dad’s words I overheard two years earlier, and I felt so stupid, so ungrateful… Dad was saying to a family friend – "No, I am not going to some place in Canada to shift muck on some farm; NO! I am staying PUT, here in England; I want to give my children an education that will give them a better chance in life than I have ever had in Poland"… Good Lord how thankless can a 16 year-old boy be! And Dad worked so hard as a labourer on building sites just to give me that better chance in life! From now on it’s hard work for me, and more hard work; and I WILL catch up with those Grammar school boys! GCE A-Level next, then a university degree!
The only sad event at about this time was the fact that my two best friends at Mid-Essex Tech, John and Tim, decided to emigrate to Canada like my friends Bolek and Lolek did earlier!
He once happened to show me a family photo with his cousin, a lovely-looking girl. Oh…maybe I could be friends with her too? So John had to explain to me how it is England – you can’t be “just good friends” with her; I would first need to come over to Brentwood where she lives, meet her parents, become her “boy-friend”, then start “going steady” and after a couple of years, when she had finished her maternity course at College, both she and her parents would expect me to marry her. Wow! What a peculiar custom this in England! I can be “just good friends” with Polish girls at the Camp without the thought of marriage ever crossing my mind; true, I did want to get married once… but that was oh such a long, long time ago - I was only 11 years old then, but now? Now at the age of 15 /16 any talk of marriage is enough to send me into isolation. John was mad on joining the Air Force but he was just a couple of inches too short for the RAF in England but he got a place with the Canadian Air Force to train as a Navigator – I was really sorry to lose him as my best friend but I wished him good luck.
The three of us had a mutual friend – a young girl from Chile, looking quite nice actually with her cropped hair and in the black & white chequered costume she wore regularly. She was a bit of a philosopher too. Then one day she stopped coming to the College and I often wondered whether Tim had perhaps followed her to Canada, or she followed him.
GOOD BYE KELVEDON SNAPSHOT - 18
Now that I had done the “Matura” and set my sights on a University Degree, my parents decided to leave the Resettlement Camp and move to London to find a place that could become our permanent Home in our adopted Homeland. I can see now that growing up in the post-war social environment at the Resettlement Camp weighed down my aspirations – the thought of entry to one of the more prestigious universities and colleges had never crossed my mind, just as grammar schools were way off my potential when I was eleven.
My objective at this time was clear and simple – get GCSE grades good-enough to secure a place at any University to study for a B.Sc. Degree. I knew that paying off the mortgage on our home in London would be tough on my Dad – he was nearly sixty and some forty years of constant war-ring had inevitably left a heavy mark on his health. I was the eldest son – my brother was ten years younger – so for me, time for fun and games was over – it was time for hard work. I knew my friends would think me a bit of a “swat” but I did work hard and passed GCSE A Level in Physics and Chemistry in one year, passed Pure and Applied Maths in the following term and clinched my acceptance at Battersea CAT to sit for B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from London University.
AND now, I had full nine months of doing either nothing or everything, before the start of the course! So I did “everything”; I worked on building sites earning good money, just like my Dad had done; and actually it was FUN – I was 17-18, fit and strong and loved that hard physical work on construction sites; loved those Jamaican chippies/carpenters and their great sense of humour; loved competing with two Ukrainians in handling scaffolding pipes – they could lift them without much effort but I could toss them about with even less effort; loved being acknowledged by the Irish bricklayers as the best “mixer of mortar” they had ever had; even got on well with the all-self-important shop-steward operating the circular saw. AND at the end of this break in studies I could make a contribution, however small, to my parents’ purchase of our first HOME in our new Homeland. AND still had time to go hitch-hiking across Europe for a month – Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy… my first taste of manly freedom!
But I couldn’t leave the Camp without first saying goodbye. So, my camping tent, a few pots and a primus cooker mounted on my faithful BSM bike I cycled to visit the farms so well known to me. Here was a chance to earn some good money like in the “good old years”. One of the farmers remembered the Polish piece-workers – ”Oh yes, I’ve got a couple of acres of beetroot seed to be harvested – interested?” “ Of course I am, that’s why I came; I will do it for you right away. How much an acre do you pay?” “Oh don’t worry, I will see you all-right.” Hmmm – he "will see me all-right” – what does that mean? Oh, OK. I picked up the sickle, whetstone, cord … and I was ready.
Oh boy, did I work fast and furious; I had good training from the age of eight, plus eight months on building sites! 24 hours later I knocked on his door –” It’s all done!” “Done? What, all of it?” ” Yep, all of it! Come and see.” He came; he couldn’t hide the look of incredulity on his face – all the beetroot was cut, tied into sheaves and neatly laid out... he reached into his pocket for the envelope with money – ”Here’s the best “daily rate” for you; come later in the day, I will have some more work for you.” When he left, I counted my earnings…. O C***** ! So this is what “I will see me all-right” means! This may be good for a farm-hand but I worked at crazy piece-rates. I felt so angry and hurt, so naïve! Never again will I take on a job without nailing down the price first! Can I ever trust the word of an Englishman? “He will see me all-right”… He can stuff his more work up his nose! I packed my bags and cycled back home. My fuming anger dissipated slowly along the fifty-mile cycle ride…
Sometime later my mother’s school-friend Benon, from Postawy came to visit us in our new Home that we had just moved into. He was in the Polish SAS and was parachuted into Warsaw before the Uprising – a fascinating story. Somehow my experience at the farm came up in the conversation; I told him I felt so naïve – a “sucker” – accepting the word of an English farmer. "My dear boy, you WERE naïve, but you are not the only one. Why do you think you, me, your Mom and Dad are here? We were all naïve. We, including our top generals were naïve – we all trusted the word of an Englishman, the highest-ranking Englishman – Mr. Churchill! We fought and died believing his promise that we “we will be all right” that we will get our Country back. And what? We fought and died for his “King and Country “ and the British Empire… and our half of Poland, our Homes, were ceded to Stalin as prize-money. That’s what’s called political expediency! Sure, as our compensation you and I can now make our life in England”... But the significance of what he was saying somehow didn’t sink in at the time perhaps because entirely different thoughts were occupying my head.
Only a week, or so, earlier, a Hungarian lady with her son and daughter came to see us; they were Jewish refugees from the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. I wasn’t gripped by the politics discussed at the time but I just couldn’t get the daughter out of my head; I stood in the doorway struck speechless by the beauty of this young woman and was quite unable to participate in any conversation!
And then there was this other recent event that still bothered me. Fr. Włodzimierz Okoński from the Marian Fathers used to visit our Camp, “fishing” like the proverbial Paul, not for fish, but for youth that may feel the calling to serve God as Catholic priests. I wasn’t the one to be caught but I offered to help at Fawley Court, recently acquired by theMarian Fathers. It offered a mini holiday in exchange for physical work that I very much enjoyed anyway, and a “good deed” that, I hoped, would count towards my absolution.
One day, towards the end of my stay while I was still working with a hoe and shovel in the grounds, a young woman approached me; from a distance she reminded me of Lorna but, oh boy! this was no wisp of a girl like my Lorna at 14 – this was Tina, Italian, a lovely young woman in all respects. With some hesitation and embarrassment, and in Polish, she dumbfounded me with her question: do I know if “braciszki” seminarians are allowed to marry? I would think not, but what a question, and why ask me? I had never seen her before during my two weeks here at Fawley Court so why ask me? What if she was a “plant” brought over from Rome by Fr. Superior or Ks. Okoński to test the spiritual resolve of the seminarians here – such a lovely temptress that apparently at least one “braciszek” could not resist her physical charms. And me? If she had asked ME to marry her, I would most probably have said YES right there and then. So what if she is a few years older than me – only love matters; love at first sight.
I was nearly 18. All thoughts of soldiering were in the rear trenches of my brain right now; entirely different interests occupied all forward trenches.
Oh yes... I was now grown-up! I was now a MAN.
Goodbye Kelvedon
It was fun sharing You.
KELVEDON CAMP 18 - POSTSCRIPT
I was now 18, left the Camp and saw myself quite grown-up, mature now.
MAMMA MIA, how naïve I had been!!
It took me 40 years to come to terms with WHAT I am and 25 years more to accept WHO I am.
So much more of the "Growing-up" story still left untold!!
Every school-day in 1955 and 1956 train from Witham Station to Chelmsford
My other friend, Tim Woods, was a philosopher ready to challenge all established beliefs – sure, he would believe in God and Jesus if, at his request, Jesus would come down from Heaven to introduce himself, right there where we stood. I asked him about the Queen but he was prepared to excuse the Queen from coming up to the College to prove to him that she does exist as he rather liked the idea of going up to Buckingham Palace someday to introduce himself to her.
One of the barracks at the camp photo taken in 2011