“My Life’S Adventures”: Memoir By

By Bernard Tinker

This book deals with situations of living through the German occupation of Norway from 1940, including shortages of food and heat, all under a threatening occupation by the Hitlerite German Army. My father was imprisoned in Germany for five years while we survived without his strength and abilities. At eleven years old, I escaped imprisonment or death when caught by a German soldier in the wrong place.

The story moves to a totally different environment in Nigeria, with another culture that was about to be changed by the removal of British control. This gives a picture of the beginning of large changes. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip attended the liberation ceremony in Benin.

This book also includes a number of images of the life of the African and English cultures. This includes the problems of living with noxious tropical diseases and pests.

Bernard returned to Britain to continue work and studies but, unfortunately, developed a serious disease, cerebral vasculitis, that they did not think he would survive. Fortunately, he has and is still active.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546216582

Bernard Tinker

Bernard Tinker was born in 1930, in Lancashire and moved with his family to Norway in 1940. There they lived through the German occupation until the end of the war. His father, (a Cotton Mill manager) was imprisoned by the Germans for 5 years and his family lived without his help and support. They suffered many hardships including shortages of food, heat and clothing. At eleven years old he was caught by a German soldier in a forbidden area, and could easily have been shot. Following his return to England he was educated as a soil scientist and chemist and was awarded a PhD from Oxford University for his research. He then worked for the British Government in the Colonial Scientific Service in Nigeria on the improvement of Oil Palms for 7 years. Bernards book describes many facets of the British life in Nigeria under the British influence and the problems of the diseases and pests in this tropical country. He suffered from River Blindness in Nigeria, but was finally cured. Upon his return to England he held academic positions at the University of Leeds and Rothamsted Research Station and was finally a Director of the National Environment Research Council (NERC). He has made significant contributions to our understanding of Soil Science and the Oil Palm and has published more than 175 scientific papers and made a major contribution to the production of the Oil Palm in several tropical countries. Following retirement he developed a serious disease called Cerebral Vasculitis that was expected to be fatal, but he survived and is still active and lives in Oxfordshire.

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© 2017 Bernard Tinker. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/21/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1659-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1658-2 (e)

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Contents

1    Norwegian Adventure

1.1   Where we came from and who we were

1.2   Family Tree

1.3   Why and how we moved to Norway

1.4   How we moved to Norway

1.5   Norway in peace/war

1.6   Norway in the war – the invasion

1.7   Norway in the war - the long wait

1.8   The end of the war

2    Re- entry to England

2.1   Returning back to England, as foreigners

2.3   English Schooling and education

2.4   University

3    Nigerian Adventure (1955-1962)

3.1   Waifor, the West African Institute for Oil Palm Research.

3.2   The scientific purpose of Waifor

3.3   Sites of work in Nigeria

3.4   The staff and conditions

3.5   How we and our children lived

3.6   Religion in Nigeria

3.7   Nigeria in the Empire, and independence

3.8   Nigerian History

3.9   Travel in Africa

3.10   Disease and Pests

3.11   Noxious livestock

3.12   Leaving Nigeria and retiring for good

4    Life in England after Nigeria

4.1   Lecturer / Professor

4.2   Housing

4.3   The Egyptian Interim.

4.4   Family - The years that the locust has eaten

5    The Oilpalm

6    My parents and their end

Dedications

To my Grandsons:

Archie Hines

Bertie Hines

Philip Tinker

Jack Tinker

Acknowledgements

Thanks to everyone that assisted me with the writing of this book, namely:

George Overton

Leslie Chappas

Stephne de Ascensao

Anne and Chris Lever

Jenny Hart

Lyndon Preston

1

Norwegian Adventure

1.1   Where we came from and who we were

This book is written mostly for my 4 grandsons, because much of what it contains happened before they were born.

You Boys may wonder why I have written this for you, and I sometimes wonder myself. I hope that, through this memoir, you will know more about one part of your family, three and four generations back than I have ever done. You will also know more about the 2nd World War, and how it felt to be caught up in this war, that did such terrible damage.

The best requiem for the War is Marlene Dietrich singing Where have all the flowers gone, or, better, Where have all the young men gone or When will they ever learn and I hope you will hear those songs some time. Perhaps if everyone knows a little more about real, grinding, killing war, then the world is less likely to start another one – but that is what people said after the 1st World War. It did not work then, but perhaps now?

It is natural to be curious about where and who you come from, or to explore whether characteristics repeat themselves within the family, and perhaps to see a pattern in the family down through time. Really, I know remarkably little about my own family – things were not written down or they were lost during moves, or I never thought to ask my parents about them while they were still alive.

Perhaps they did not encourage my questions, because they did not like to look back at unhappy things that had happened to them during their lifetimes, and did not often talk about the past. New records are useful, because they affect the present, and really old records are useful, because they are history, so both are stored carefully. But recent and middle-aged records are just old rubbish, and most get thrown out before they have a chance to become old. But one day they may become history too. I have sent off a letter to a Records Dept., to try to get more clarity about the time from 1900 to the war, but without useful response.

I remember little from the very beginning of my life, as always. The first memories are isolated, diffuse scenes, with little relationship to each other in space or in time. Each one floats like a scene seen through the mist, with little continuity or colour. As they have no clear boundaries, I usually do not know the sequence in which they happened, and so I really do not know how far my memory extends back. Of course very young children do have a short-term memory, especially about things that are promised to them, but the information cannot be placed in a permanent memory until they grow older. It really is a bit like a computer with random access memory and hard disc memory, and once the material is moved from the RAM to the hard disc, it remains available for many years. When you boys were very small, you were so bright, with such definite likes and dislikes, that it seemed impossible that nearly all that early experience would be lost from your memory, yet this is what may have happened.

I took an Oxford University course on Writing from Memory before starting to write this story. A piece of advice given to us by Nick Kneale, the Tutor, was to look at our memories carefully and patiently, because we would then begin to see more and more of the past. Sometimes I bring these memories out to look at them, as though they are a pack of old sepia-coloured photographs, and hope to see a little further round the edges, but this rarely happens; sometimes a small incident jumps up. I doubt if I know much more about the past since writing this story, but it is better organised on paper and in my own mind. It has certainly made me treasure the old photographs that I have left, after the ravages of time.

I lost track of Nick Kneale shortly after the course finished. He did a good job at teaching us, and I would have liked to stay in touch, but he must have left Oxford, perhaps in a hurry. When I was practicing writing in the Oxford Extramural University Course we had a sharp argument within the tutorial group about how far a writer should alter or improve his memories, so as to make them more coherent or more interesting. Some writers call this ‘making them artistically true’, as though artistic truth is different to ordinary truth. For myself, I think that if what is written is supposed to be the truth, then we should make it as truthful as possible, but possibly omit offensive parts.

So I do my best to use my memory as accurately as I can, which seems the only way to get an honest story, and is what a scientist is trained to do. However, very early memories may be muddled or mistaken, or we may convince ourselves that we remember facts that we only have at second hand, such as from an old photograph. I will do the best I can with the material I have got in my head or on paper. My sister Joy read this Norway paper, and made suggestions that helped where my own memory failed. Sadly, she died on 15 September 2015, aged 92. Mrs. Jenny Hart, Joy’s daughter has been a great help in the same way.

1Tinkerbros%20copy.jpg

Fred and Sarah Tinker and 5 sons

1.2   Family Tree

The family tree

Philip Tinker Snr - 4 Brothers -—1 (Brother John Tinker) + 3 others

Philip Tinker Snr - Wife (Gertrude Annie Hague)

Gertrude Hague - Siblings (Harold Rowe Hague) (Cornelia Nellie Hague) (Reginald Hague)

Gertrude Hague - Parents (John Mellor Hague) (Annie Elizabeth Rowe)

Philip and Gertrude – Children (Philip Bernard Tinker & Joy Cawdron)

Philip Bernard Married Maureen Ellis

Children – John Tinker (married Ann Hobart) & Amanda Tinker (married Richard Hines)

John Tinker - Children – Philip and Jack Tinker

Amanda Hines - Children – Archie and Bertie Hines

Joy Cawdron Married David Cawdron – Daughter – Jenny & Ray Hart

Maureen – Parents – Joseph & Christina (Doyle – from Castle Rae)

Maureen – Siblings (Netta Chiverton, Kathleen (Kate) & Peter Kember,

Kathleen & Peter Kember - Children - Richard, Rodney, Philip

Kathleen & Peter Kember – Grand Children - (Kyle, Noah, Vikki, Jamie and Molly)

The English have always been great travellers and colonists – they have been everywhere, and fought with almost everyone else. My paternal family, the Tinkers, followed this tradition. My father had 4 brothers who did not keep in contact, partly because of the wars, but mainly because they all worked on different tasks in far-away places. My father once told me that