Waiting for Something to Happen

By Adrienne de Mont

Athol Varley already had a pilot’s licence when he joined the RAF in 1941, but his eyesight precluded him from flying in combat. Instead a disappointed Athol spent much of the war bored, frustrated and dreaming of his sweetheart, the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his life. His diary records no heroic escapes or acts of bravery, but portrays an ordinary young man who was keen to serve his country but grew increasingly disillusioned with his lack of involvement in a war that
seemed remote. Having too much time on his hands allowed him to write many letters and diary entries about his thoughts and feelings. The result is an interesting insight into the hopes, fears and attitudes of the war years. Athol Varley’s diaries have been collated and edited by his daughter, Adrienne de Mont.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mereo Books
• Release date: Jul 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781861514868

Book preview

ATHOL E. VARLEY

WAITING

FOR SOMETHING

TO HAPPEN

An RAF serviceman’s reflections on life and love in WW2

Copyright ©2015 by Adrienne de Mont

Smashwords Edition

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Mereo Books, an imprint of Memoirs Publishing

Adrienne de Mont has asserted her right under the Copyright Designs and Patents A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover, other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The address for Memoirs Publishing Group Limited can be found at www.memoirspublishing.com

The Memoirs Publishing Group Ltd Reg. No. 7834348

Mereo Books

1A The Wool Market Dyer Street

Cirencester Gloucestershire GL7 2PR

An imprint of Memoirs Publishing

www.mereobooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-86151-486-8

These diaries were collated and edited by Athol Varley's daughter, Adrienne de Mont.

Adrienne de Mont (née Varley) spent most of her childhood in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, and graduated in pharmacy from the University of Nottingham in 1966. She spent her working life as a freelance medical journalist in London, writing mostly for pharmacists, doctors and pharmacy assistants but occasionally for consumer magazines and newspapers. In 2001 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society for distinction in the profession of pharmacy and in 2010 was a finalist in the Health Editor of the Year category of the Medical Journalists’ Association Awards. She lives in Loughton, Essex, with her husband Howard, an architect.

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

At the beginning…

DIARY 1

1941

1942

1943

DIARY 2

1944

DIARY 3

1945-6

After the War

Some Key Events of World War 2

PREFACE

This war diary records no heroic escapes or amazing bravery. Instead it is the reflections of an ordinary young man who, like many others, was keen to serve his country but who grew increasingly disillusioned with his lack of involvement in a war that seemed remote. The benefit of having too much time on his hands meant he was able to write copious letters and diaries about his thoughts and feelings. The result is an interesting insight into the hopes and fears of the lucky ones who emerged unscathed, as well as the attitudes of young men at that time towards women, marriage and life in general.

My father, Athol E. Varley, was already a qualified pharmacist when he volunteered for the RAF in 1941, aged 28. He had a private pilot’s licence, loved flying and even considered a long-term career in the RAF. His first disappointment came on finding that his eyesight was not good enough to become a pilot, so he worked in signals as a wireless mechanic. One by one his ambitions were shattered and his initial enthusiasm for a new and interesting life turned into resignation tinged with guilt at doing little when thousands were being slaughtered in battles overseas. He wrote: I feel very lost and restless these days but things could be much worse.

He did record some significant world events, but in general his aim in keeping a diary was as a relaxation from the war. Putting his innermost thoughts on paper gave him a sense of achievement that was lacking in his working life: I am only expressing the feelings of most people in this, for unless we ourselves are bombed or otherwise see the war in our own back yards we cannot really believe there is a war in progress.

Overall his story is one of waiting and hoping: waiting for promotion, hoping the love of his life would marry a mere AC Plonk with no money or prospects, wishing the war would end, wondering if he would be posted overseas and then - when he eventually was - waiting for a ship to bring him back home several months after the war had ended.

Above all it is a love story, describing how a chance meeting with a kindred spirit enabled him to survive the horrors and uncertainties of the time.

There is a comfort in the strength of love

‘Twill make a thing endurable,

Which else would o’erset the brain or break the heart

-William Wordsworth, Michael: a pastoral poem

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the RAF Museum in Hendon and the Yorkshire Air Museum for their help, together with the many friends who have encouraged me in this project.

At the beginning…

Athol Edmund Varley was born on December 12, 1913, to Joe Varley and Lily (née Dibb) in the colliery village of Little Houghton, six miles from Barnsley in Yorkshire. They already had a daughter, Evelyn, aged 15, and a son, Claude, aged 13.

Athol aged two in 1915. Rufus was two years older

Joe Varley was a colliery under-manager who, when Athol was two, got a job with Waterloo Main Colliery Co in the grounds of Temple Newsam Park, Leeds. He was awarded a medal for bravery for attempting to save the life of a youth who was killed when he was buried under a landslide. Later Joe took over a sub-post office (Marsh Lane) in a slum area of Leeds, where Athol was the only child not to wear patched trousers; it was only the ‘boots for bairns’ fund that enabled many children to go to school wearing shoes.

In 1924 Athol and his parents moved to the garden suburb of Adel, where he attended the local church primary school and, later, Leeds Grammar School.

Having much older siblings had a considerable impact on him as a young boy; they seemed like secondary parents and he felt they never had much in common. My opinion was never tolerated and often ridiculed, he wrote. As a result he lacked confidence at school and felt he missed many opportunities for advancement. He did, however, have a good singing voice and was a choirboy from the age of five, at St John’s, Briggate, and in the Leeds Parish Church Probationers’ Choir, often singing solos.

He also enjoyed and excelled at chemistry, so he decided to become a pharmacist. This involved a three-year apprenticeship in a pharmacy, which he later described as among the worst three years of my life. Instead of learning about medicines he was used as cheap labour in a monotonous job washing the floors and shelves and dispensing measures. He worked until 9pm, when all his friends were going to the cinema or playing tennis.

After this apprenticeship he did a year’s finals at Leeds University Medical School (the first in his family to go to university) and qualified as a pharmacist in 1935.

In December 1936 tragedy struck when his mother died suddenly at the age of 61 following a stroke. His father moved to Blackpool and Athol took a job as pharmacy manager at Rotherham Co-operative Society. In a very short space of time he had lost his mother, his home and the district he loved, and found himself in a grimy South Yorkshire town where he knew hardly anyone. As if this weren’t enough, a turbulent two-year relationship with a girlfriend came to an abrupt end. It was all a very unpleasant nightmare from which I hoped to awaken, he wrote later.

This could explain why his early diaries of 1941-42 were filled with dark passages, which I have omitted from this book because they were totally out of character. By the time I knew him he had put these demons to rest and was usually outgoing and optimistic. He would probably not have wished this melancholy to be made public 70 years later. In fact, he wrote inside each diary that it was private, so I have omitted anything that would embarrass him if he were still alive. For similar reasons I have only selected short passages of general interest from the love letters he and my mother wrote to each other nearly every day, revealing intimate thoughts that only they should share.

During the earlier dark periods he was greatly helped by strong Christian beliefs and by the study of Pelmanism, a system for developing the mind and memory and cultivating mental efficiency.

In the late 1930s, as fear of war with Germany increased, the government decided to train civilian pilots as an auxiliary air force – a kind of TA of the air. Athol paid five shillings an hour to fly BA Swallows and gained a private pilot’s licence. He also joined the Home Guard for a short time in Rotherham. After working as a pharmacist in the Leeds and Rotherham areas, he joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve as an aircraftsman in 1941 and was discharged as a corporal in 1946.

In editing his diaries I have put explanations in where necessary for clarification [in italics in brackets]. But the rest is his story.

DIARY 1

This is the private diary of 1451421 Athol Varley. In case of any accident or my departure to a better (?) world, will whoever reads it do all they can to deliver this diary to Miss Mary Bibby, 9 Sulby Avenue, Warrington, Lancs.

Thank you.

1941

September 14

Ninth week in the RAF.

Scene: 15 Portman Square, London. Fifth floor, Room 90

We have been in London now for three weeks.

Skegness was five weeks of experience entirely new, yet with an undercurrent of familiar things - camping at Elie in Fifeshire, Becketts Park in Headingly, Leeds, on Tuesday afternoons, and Sitwell golf course.

I enjoyed my five weeks there, though the sickness caused by inoculations was anything but enjoyable. Certain things stand out vividly in my memory - the three lines down the centre of the road where stamping feet had worn the Tarmac as we marched up and down in open order; our first experience of one-pause-two; my first impression of the glorious display of roses on arrival; the Seacroft Hotel; the long waits on the verandah each mealtime; falling in for the march to and from Seacroft; Jimmy James always running to the telephone and his continual letter-writing; the teashop just around the corner; washing the entrance to the Imperial and the day in the workhouse at that hotel; pay parade; swimming in the open air baths with Wally - an exhibition swimmer; in bed with vaccination fever; our nocturnal feasts with Jimmy, Vic, Tony and Creber; Jack Alan singing his own version of ‘Bless ‘em all’ and ‘Salome’; the pass-out parade and all the bullshxx. All this in five hectic weeks. Really an experience worth having.

Three weeks in London feels like three years, each day seems so long. We arise about 6.10am, breakfast at 6.45am, ride to Battersea on the service bus, queue in the air raid shelter, begin lectures at 8am, break at 10am, PT in the park, more lectures, dinner time in the refectory and those wonderful meals (!), more lectures or laboratory and workshop until 5pm filing pieces of iron and brass, home by bus and then the mad scramble for tea before all the jam has been eaten! This is the life at Portman Square.

Three weeks in London and we haven’t had an air-raid or a siren. I wonder when the bombing will start here again, or was last year’s bombing the peak period that will go down in London’s history for Hitler’s war? I cannot see that it will start again with the same violence. It may come again more violent than before but it’s just a hunch that may be wrong. Or is it called wishful thinking?

September 30

Have not kept this diary during the past week or so. I seem to have plenty of time on my hands but I am afraid that this aimless sort of life, which was a pleasant change at first, is now becoming rather stale. For instance on the wireless mechanics course I do not want to show up badly on each week’s test, and yet it seems such a foolish waste of time to swot. I would prefer to visit famous places in London rather than spend my time in Portman Square.

I went with Creber to the Imperial Museum this afternoon and, by good fortune, met a party of Belgian refugees who were about to make a tour of the place. The curator, who seems a very pleasant fellow, made us welcome and we thoroughly enjoyed the cinema show of Indian travel talks. We had tea in Lyons and wandered around Earls Court.

The past week has been almost uneventful. We have had no sirens since I came to London. The weather is remarkably hot for the time of year. The heat of the sun this morning was strong enough to cause sunburn.

Last Sunday I paid a visit to Frieda and we went for a walk to Epping Forest. By noon the sun was shining brightly. Rowing on the lake [Connaught Water?] provided a pleasant change and, after sustaining ourselves with sandwiches, we continued to the King’s Oak at High Beach - a fine pub with fine beer. The finest beer I’ve ever tasted down south! I hope I shall pay a visit to that establishment again [which he did, several years later, when visiting his daughter in Loughton].

Having rested for a while, we returned through the woods, discussing war and the German people.

On Monday morning we had two exams, which I passed with 94 per cent in each - a rather amazing effort which surprised me.

Monday night was spent at the Marble Arch to see ‘Underground’, a story of the secret German radio system.

On Tuesday evening the boys were placed under arrest for slinging water out of the window. This caused a certain amount of mixed amusement and anxiety. They appeared before the commanding officer and were seriously admonished.

On Friday I went to see ‘North West Passage,’ a most bloodthirsty picture - probably the worst I have ever seen. I had beads of perspiration on my brow during some scenes. This is most unusual for me. I’m usually so unmoved by films. It must be this place that is making me neurotic!

Eric B, Hobbs, Popple etc have gone on the beer