War life

Anything but average

20 May 2006

Mike Peyton is the author of the brilliant memoir An Average War

When you escaped you always escaped with a mate — the Americans with their buddies, the South Africans with their oppos...and so on. In Upper Silesia, we were out on a work party when a Russian plane came and strafed us, and four of us took off into the dense pine wood. A South African, Rosie, was the unlucky one and he fell, wounded or dead. Luckily, we’d had the forethought to get a Russian prisoner to tell us how to say in Russian, ‘We are escaped English prisoners.’ When we were near the Russian lines, we decided to walk in the middle of the road so that they could see us instead of skulking and being shot. Two of them came up behind us on bicycles without our even noticing. If we’d wanted, we could have been passed back to rejoin our unit, but at that age you think you’re indestructible so we just stayed with the Russians and drifted forwards as a little group. They gave us a quilted brown smock to wear and a carbine. Though I hope I might have killed a few Germans [in the desert] at Gazala, I shot a lot more with the Russians. Once we saw this convoy being strafed by a Russian plane and next there were all these Germans piling through the hedge running for shelter with us just 100 yards away. Well, what could you do?

After the war if you went in a pub it was brilliant. You only had to look at someone’s Div sign or his campaign medals and it told you everything. You never had to buy a drink. You could go anywhere you wanted...We went all over England, mostly drunk. Am I glad I went through the things I went through? I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. So long as you come out the other side, war is a fantastic experience. You know when you’re on a black ski run and you look down and you say, ‘Can I manage this?’ Then you get down and you think, ‘How did I manage that?’ That’s what it’s like.

An Average War can be obtained from Mike Peyton for £10 (cheques, please, not cash) from Rookery Cottage, Rookery Lane, North Fambridge, Chelmsford, Essex CM3 6LP.