Reflecting on what my grandparents did during WW2 for VE Day 2020

I’m a little bit late, since VE day was a week past on Friday!, but I’ve been gathering some information and I am excited to write something in memory of my grandparents, who all lived through and survived the Second World War.

This won’t be so much a factual report as weaving together the fragments of tales I have been fortunate enough to glean from my family who knew my grandparents better than I did (or for longer at least). Sadly none of my grandparents are alive any more - the last of them having passed away about eight years ago now - but their legacy lives on.

I feel proud to reminisce on their lives. I am proud of how they came through such an awful time in history with stories to tell, medals to wear, and families to build and strengthen. We will never - I hope and pray - know the horrors of a war like WW2, but this current COVID-19 pandemic is causing us globally to become interconnected and to learn to support each other in ways we have never had to do before. Perhaps we could learn from our grandparents, or great-grandparents, and all those who came through WW2. Perhaps we will, like our ancestors did, become a nation which is stronger, kinder and more resilient than ever before.

So without much further ado, let me tell you the story of what happened to my grandparents during World War II.

Joseph and Henrietta Davidson

My mum’s parents had already met and married years before WW2, in 1931. They had also already had their first child - my mum’s brother who I never met - who was born with cerebral palsy. Unfortunately he was very severely affected by it and required full-time care from my gran. When her husband, my granddad (the only grandparent I never knew) was called up to the Royal Navy, he went dutifully.

Granddad Joseph was involved in the convoy runs to Murmansk in Russia. He told stories of how the crew had to sleep on tables or the floor, or wherever they could find space.

I’m not exactly sure how long he served this way, but eventually he was granted compassionate leave, due to the fact that it was very difficult for my gran to look after their son on her own.

Of course they still needed an income, so my granddad began working in the artillery barracks in Glasgow. At one point, my mum tells the story that he went down to London overnight in the back of a lorry to find work in the arnaments factory there. Two of his brothers were already living in London. Unfortunately the work - or having to live and work with his brothers (or perhaps both!) - didn’t suit him, so he returned home.

Eventually he settled with my gran and uncle in Nottingham for several years to work, before returning to Scotland (Glasgow) where my mum was born.

Patrick and Jean Casey

I am part of a group chat on Facebook with my dad’s side of the family which has been blowing up this weekend with multitudes of information, photos, anecdotes… I am very grateful for all of their help and am excited to learn even more in the future.

My granny and grandpa’s story is something of a true, bonafide war romance. My grandpa was originally from Bristol, England and my granny was from the west of Glasgow. The story goes that Grandpa was stationed in Glasgow for a time during WW2 (he was in the Army) and my granny and some of her sisters had decided to frequent the barracks where he was staying. (I don’t doubt at all that they were there expressly to meet the handsome young solders!!) It was said to be love at first sight between my granny and grandpa.

One of Granny’s older sisters, Molly, met and married an American soldier from the barracks and subsequently moved to the U.S. He was part of the US Corporation of Engineers building runways at Prestwick. This is also where Granny met Grandpa, but at a slightly later date.

Although my grandpa was in the Army and was rewarded for his service (photos of his medals below), his work was mostly clerical as his flat-feet and asthma excluded him from serving in a military capacity. (As a side note, I have been lucky enough to inherit my grandpa’s flat-feet. And so goes any hope of ever becoming a ballerina… *laments dramatically*)

There is also common knowledge that my grandpa was at Dunkirk, although nobody knows in exactly which capacity.

Granny and Grandpa were married some time during 1945 or 46. Their union hadn’t been completely straightforward, as Grandpa had grown up Roman Catholic and Granny was Protestant. To get married in a Catholic church, Granny had to take some lessons from a priest. Unfortunately her local Catholic church wouldn’t marry them, so they succumbed to getting married in St Aloysius' Church in the centre of Glasgow. Of course the witnesses had to be Catholic so they asked two random Catholic passers-by from the street to sign the register.

All that apparently turned Grandpa away from the Catholic church, so he joined the Presbyterians instead.

As to the effect the war had on my grandparents, it’s hard to say. I do remember my granny (Casey) spending her life rationing her food and saving empty cereal packets. It was a family joke that she could feed twelve people with a steak-pie meant for six.

We’ll never know (perhaps thankfully) the memories that they all carried from those difficult years. Perhaps they saw things they never wanted to speak about afterwards. They all survived but I’m sure they paid the price in other ways.

At least, through such a difficult and tumultuous event, many actually found love, including my granny and grandpa. WW2 brought people together, people from different nations and countries.

Today we’re not facing a war, but we are facing something difficult; something that we’ve never had to face before. Perhaps we can take comfort in the fact that just as WW2 eventually came to an end, so will this global pandemic.

In the midst of it all people are finding hope, comfort and love, just as they did during the war. And after it’s all over we’ll celebrate and move on.

Maybe one day our children and grandchildren will write about it and remember the stories we will tell them, about how we survived and even thrived, just like our ancestors did during WW2.