The Lost Band of Brothers (43 page)

I knew Geoffrey from his school-days onwards. At the time of his early manhood I said to a friend: ‘If a visitor dropped down from Mars and visited each country to find out what earth’s inhabitants were like, and if I had the chance to suggest whom such a visitor should meet in England, I should suggest Geoffrey Appleyard … His body he may have given for England, but his soul lives on, part of the wealth of the universe, for it possessed qualities that do not die and over which war has no power.
7

At war’s end Graham’s mother, Lillian Hayes, wrote to Marjorie March-Phillipps about the enduring, life-long friendship of Graham and Geoffrey: ‘So those two who had played as boys together and faced life and death together, went on their way to start a new and free life, continuing, I feel sure, to wage war against the evil that is the cause of all this unhappiness and sorrow.’
8

J.E.A. Appleyard wrote of his son:

Although he may not come back, he never seems far away. Often indeed he seems very near; not least so when we are tramping over his beloved Yorkshire fells, the wind carrying the varied sounds of the moorland – the splash of a nearby stream, the whisper of the long grass, the bleating of lambs and suddenly, the lovely, bubbling cry of a curlew – the bird he loved above all others. Then we recall what Geoffrey said one day as the same call came faintly across the moor: ‘That’s how I’d like to return to earth when my time comes.’

Perhaps he has.

Ernest Appleyard – ‘J.E.A.’ – died in Torquay, Devon, in 1966, aged 83. The family business prospered, expanded and benefitted from a public flotation in the early 1960s. The Manor House at Linton was sold in 1950 and has since passed through several hands, its current owners apparently disinterested in its past. Although Kiln Hill still exists, the Hayes family has dispersed and left Linton. The Linton-on-Wharfe Memorial Hall, with its handsome oak tribute to the fallen of distant times, still thrives.

In May 1989 there was a summer fete and reunion at Anderson Manor for those who had served there as part of the Small Scale Raiding Force. A small brass plaque was dedicated in St Michael’s chapel, where Tony Hall and Gus March-Phillipps had sought spiritual strength just before Operation
Aquatint
.

Etched into the oft-polished brass are the words:

IN MEMORY OF THE SMALL SCALE RAIDING FORCE (62 COMMANDO) AND ALL THOSE WHO SERVED WITH THE SPECIAL OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE AT ANDERSON MANOR DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR.

That ceremony of dedication was attended by Henrietta March-Phillipps, the daughter Gus never knew, together with Peter Kemp, Tom Winter and a handful of other veterans.

Henrietta had been working in theatrical production and had gone into a Bristol antique shop looking for props. The shop was owned by Tony Hall. The fortuitous meeting that resulted led to the 1971 BBC radio documentary
If Any Question Why We Died
:
A Quest For March-Phillipps
, produced by the daughter he never knew, who had grown up believing her father had been some sort of pirate. She was not entirely wrong.

Henrietta’s brief marriage in 1978 ended in divorce. There were no children. She died of cancer in 1991 at the age of 48. Peter Kemp, the Spanish Civil War veteran haunted by the screams of those German sentries on Pointe de Plouézec, became a writer and published author. His book about wartime service in SOE,
No Colours
Or Crest
, was published in 1958. It became a classic of its genre and changes hands, today (2013) at anything up to £200. Peter Kemp died in 1993. Tom Winter, survivor of Operation
Aquatint
, died in 1996, aged 92, on the Isle of Wight after running a taxi business with former SSRF officer Ian Warren. In peace, as in war, the pair supported one another into the softening shadows of old age: both attended the Anderson Manor reunion in 1989. ‘I interviewed both of them,’ recalled local historian Philip Ventham. ‘They were at that stage both looking out for one another. It was very touching, really.’
9

Post-war, Major Oswald ‘Mickey’ Rooney worked for Courages and then Charrington Breweries before returning to the family brush-making business and becoming a member of Lloyds. Married with five children, he later moved first to Little Laver, near Ongar, in Essex and then to Chipping Warden, near Banbury, claiming that all he ever wanted after the war was to ‘live a normal life’. He died in 1995 aged 79, a few years after telling his son, Chris, ‘I never expected to live this long.’
10

†††

Anderson Manor itself still remains beautiful, weathered and unchanged. It appears, from the outside, exactly as Gus March-Phillipps and Geoffrey Appleyard must have viewed it that first fine spring morning in March 1942 when the gardens were alive with primroses, scented purple violets and crocuses. The Manor has, however, changed hands. Its current owners know its history and are reminded of its wartime past in gentle ways: digging up mole hills in the kitchen garden, they unearthed spent cartridge cases from Bren, tommy gun and .45 automatics – the kitchen garden had been a shooting range. There have been other reminders, too. One morning their young daughter came down for breakfast and announced ‘that man’ had been in her bedroom again. ‘Man? What man?’ asked her mother with a casualness she did not feel. ‘The man,’ said the little girl, ‘standing in the corner of her room’. He had been there three or four times before. She then described a man dressed in commando clothing. The girl was 3 years old. She had never seen or heard of a commando.

‘Proper people’, all

*
    The same night Major Geoffrey Appleyard disappeared, 2,000 British paratroopers and glider-borne infantry mounted a disastrous airborne operation to seize Primosole Bridge 7 miles south of Catania on the east coast of Sicily. This was approximately 35 miles due south of Appleyard’s intended DZ. Allied shipping opened fire on the British aircraft before they reached the coast and German guns joined in once they made landfall. Out of those 2,000 troops, only 200 were left to assault the bridge. This was seized and held for just twelve hours before they were forced to retreat. The night before, the men of Major General Matthew B. Ridgway’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82rd US Airborne, suffered catastrophic ‘friendly fire’ losses, with twenty-three aircraft shot down and at least 410 killed when nervous Allied shipboard gunners opened up on approaching Allied aircraft. Five days later, Ridgway could still only account for 3,900 of his 5,300 paratroopers. (
The Day of Battle
, Rick Atkinson, 110)

  
1
.  ‘
If I Must Die …
’, 215.

  
2
.  Malcolm Hayes in letter to the author.

  
3
.  Capt. Michael Gubbins was killed in the Anzio bridgehead on February 6 1944. His body was never found.

  
4
.  Letter from Colin Gubbins loaned to the author by Annabel Grace Hayes, Graham’s niece.

  
5
.  John Appleyard interview with the author.

  
6
.  Ernest Appleyard’s wife Mary – Geoffrey’s mother – died in Paris in October 1947 from early heart disease.

  
7
.  
Geoffrey
, 191.

  
8
.  Letter in the March-Phillipps papers, 06/103, Documents and Sound Section, Imperial War Museum.

  
9
.  Letter from Philip Ventham to the author.

10
.  Letter to the author from his son, Chris Rooney.

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