Land Fit For Heroes is a work of fiction inspired by my maternal grandparents Leonard and Laura White. Sadly, I never met Leonard, but he appeared in my first book, Plagued, as Lofty, one of the men fighting in France with Thomas. The real Leonard White joined the Devonshire Regiment in 1914, aged sixteen, and was later transferred to the Hampshire Regiment but served in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, not France. Leonard was the second of Harry and Ada White’s six children. They lived in Standford Street, Northam. Harry was a porter in the docks’ stores. After the war, Leonard followed in his father’s footsteps and became a warehouse porter. As there are no family photos of Leonard, I had to imagine him. I gave him blonde hair, like his eldest son, Robert. The blonde streak running through my family had to come from somewhere, after all. I also made him tall, another trait that runs through my family, although it bypassed me.
Laura was the youngest of six children born to Frank and Emma Hebditch of Kent Road, St Denys. She died when I was just four, but I remember her tin of sweets and the fairy tales she told me. She was larger than life, always laughing, and fond of a bottle of stout and a cigarette. In later life she lived in Carnation Road, where the locals all knew her, and her door was always open to her friends and family.
Percy also appeared in Plagued. He was loosely based on Laura’s older brother, Percy Hebditch. The real Percy joined the territorial force before the war, aged 17, and was later in the Hampshire Regiment in India. He was discharged from the army in March 1917. His Silver War Badge records mention, amongst other things, delusional insanity, a condition that would later be recognised as shell shock, or PTSD. Like his sister, I imagine he was quite a character, although perhaps not quite like the one in my story.
Southampton’s part in the General Strike of 1926 was brought to life by Will Boisseau’s informative article in the Southampton Local History Forum Journal, and the TUC library, where I found copies of Southampton Strike Bulletins. Adrian Weir’s newsletter in the History Group of the Communist Party of Britain was also thought provoking. It gave an alternative slant on Boisseau’s story of men who ‘lost their lives or their limbs in the docks as unqualified men tried to work heavy machinery.’ Weir’s version had them as ‘Two dockers killed due to management scabbing and trying to operate cranes.’ The truth is probably somewhere between the two.
General information about the strike came from the National Archives and SparticusEducational.com. The Old Bailey Online and the National Archives gave an insight into trial procedures and the workings of the Winchester Assizes. History.com had useful facts about the use of fingerprint evidence and the 1905 trail of the Stratton Brothers. HistoryExtra.com helped with my understanding of the Russian Civil War and the British campaign against the Bolsheviks.
Fate also played a part. Laura and Leonard White lived on Melbourne Street, but the houses were either flattened by the Luftwaffe, or demolished as part of the 1960’s slum clearance. In response to a plea on several local history Facebook groups for information about the area I had a message from a lovely gentleman called Roger Stevens. After the Second World War, his family lived in the house my grandparents once rented, and his memories were more helpful than I can say. They also confirmed the poverty and depravation my mother recalled.
This book may owe a lot to Laura, Leonard and Percy but it is really a story about the lasting brotherhood between the men who came back from the Great War, and the struggles faced by the working-class people of Northam between the wars. It is a tribute to their spirit, and the tight knit community they built, even though they never saw the land fit for heroes they were promised.
Copyright © 2022 Marie Keates
All rights reserved. ISBN: 979-8-4382-4761-6
1 – Saturday 24 April 1926
When Lenny saw young Albie Joyce on the doorstep, he knew he was in for a long night. He liked Albie; he was a good lad and a hard worker, but there was only one reason he’d be knocking on the door at nine o’clock on a Saturday evening.
‘It’s Percy.’ Albie was a little out of breath. His collar was turned up and rainwater dripped from his cap.
‘Isn’t it always,’ Lenny sighed. He looked over Albie’s shoulder at the teeming rain. The house lights and streetlights reflected gold in the growing puddles, and chilly air, thick with the acrid smell of the gasworks, drifted into the hallway. ‘What’s he done now?’
‘He’s got in a brawl with some posh chap in the Bell and Crown.’ Albie took his cap off, shook off the water and nervously smoothed back his thick, dark hair. ‘It wasn’t his fault this time. The chap was with a load of fascists. They were calling us all Bolsheviks and boasting how a strike might be coming but they would break it. Then one of them started on Percy. I think he saw his scar and knew he’d been in the war. Anyway, he started spouting all this stuff about the Tommies who joined the strike being traitors to their country, and how being a communist and downing tools was like tramping on the graves of the brave men who died in France. Percy went mad. If Harry Smith, Arthur Fisk and Jimmy Pothecary hadn’t been there, who knows what might have happened? The other fascists all scarpered.’
‘Is he still at the pub?’
‘He was when I left. Harry told me to come and get you.’
With an exasperated huff, Lenny went to get his coat and tell Laura where he was going. The steady drip of water falling into the bucket on the upstairs landing reminded him that the hole in the roof was getting bigger. He’d had a hard day at work. He was tired. The last thing he wanted to do was go out into the rain and cold, but there was no way round it. Worrying about Percy and bailing him out of trouble came as naturally as breathing. He’d been doing it now for almost ten years.
‘Not again.’ Laura looked up from her sewing and shook her head when he told her what had happened. ‘That bloody brother of mine is more trouble than he’s worth. I swear I’m going to swing for him one of these days.’
Lenny loved how she never minced her words almost as much as he loved her plump prettiness, her eyes like dark chocolate drenched with honey and her quick smile. On the outside she was so soft and curvaceous, but she was as hard as diamond on the inside.
‘I’ll try to bring him back in one piece. Don’t wait up, though.’ He picked up his coat and hat and pecked her on the cheek.
The Bell and Crown was only at the end of the road. With any luck Percy would still be there, and he wouldn’t be so drunk he’d need Albie to help carry him back.
‘Was there much damage?’ Lenny asked as they marched up the road, heads down against the rain.
‘Not as far as I could see. Maybe a few broken glasses and some chairs turned over. Percy didn’t have a mark on him, either. The bloke barely had a chance to get a punch in.’
‘Sounds about right.’
When it came to fighting, Percy waded in as if he were immortal, but he never seemed to get injured. It was almost as if he’d used up all his bad luck over in France.
Although the pub was no more than three-hundred yards away, Lenny was soaked through by the time he pushed the door open. The place was packed to the rafters, mostly with dockers celebrating the end of another working week. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of damp, sweaty bodies. Someone was playing Don’t Dilly Dally on the piano, although Lenny couldn’t actually see them through the crowd. A few people joined in with the chorus.
‘You can’t trust a “Special”
Like the old-time copper
When you can’t find your way home.’
He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he’d dragged Percy out of this pub enough times to know it well. He shouldered his way through the crowd. As he went, he looked around for Percy, or any sign there’d been a fight. He found neither, but he did find Amy Medway, the landlady, pulling pints at the bar.
‘For once it wasn’t his fault,’ she said, giving him a wry smile.
With her shock of molasses-brown curls and meaty arms any docker would envy, it was hard to tell her age. He’d have put her somewhere between forty and fifty, but she could easily be far younger or far older.
‘Is he still here?’ He looked up and down the bar, as if Percy might suddenly materialise.
‘No. Harry Smith and Jimmy Pothecary took the toff off somewhere, and I told Arthur Fisk to take Percy off, too, in case the coppers turned up looking for him. Broke one of me chairs, they did, and half a dozen glasses, but Harry Smith took a couple of quid out of the toff’s wallet to pay for it all. He had more than a fiver in there, believe it or not. What’s a rich chap like that doing round here anyway? Harry told me, “If anyone comes asking about this, it never happened.” So, I says, “I’ll tell ‘em these chaps came in and started busting the place up for no reason, and me regulars threw ‘em out on the street.” They’ll all vouch for it, and they’ll swear Percy was never here tonight.’
‘Do you know where Percy and Arthur were heading?’
‘No, but I know Arthur lives in Chapel Road. He sometimes drinks in the Apollo, and the Durham.’
He thanked Amy and pushed his way back out into the rain, with Albie trailing behind him like a lost puppy. With his head down against the icy air he splashed his way towards Chapel Road. It wasn’t a long walk, but the streets were sloshing with water. It always flooded here when it rained heavily. To add to his misery, now his feet were wet. Without the benefit of alcohol to dull his senses, he was cold, weary and more than a little angry at being dragged out of his warm house. How many times would he have to bail Percy out before his debt to him was repaid? If not for Laura, the bond between them might have been broken by now. Then again, who was he kidding? If he lived to be a hundred, he’d be beholden to Percy for what he’d done for him in France. He’d never get over the guilt of walking away unharmed from the shell that ruined Percy’s life. If Percy had been paying more attention out there, instead of being intent on looking after him, he might not have been hit at all.
Finally, they reached the Apollo, but there was no sign of Percy. He wasn’t in the Durham Tavern either, but Dan Painter said, ‘If he’s with Arthur Fisk I’d try the Railway Tavern on Albert Road. He’s got his eye on the barmaid in there; not that she’d look twice at a chancer like him.’
With a pub on every street corner and Percy’s habit of drinking in all of them until he got thrown out or barred, it looked like it was going to be a long, wet night. Lenny and Albie made their way through the sodden streets towards Albert Road. It was anyone’s guess whether they’d have any more luck there.
‘You and Percy were in the army together in France, weren’t you?’ Albie asked when they reached the brief shelter of Central Bridge.
‘We were.’
The lad was not yet twenty, with a string bean body that looked as if it was trying hard to grow into his head. He was too young to have gone to France. Lenny looked at his fresh face and innocent, hazel eyes and found it hard to believe that at a similar age he’d been shovelling up rotting bodies in No Man’s Land.
‘What was it like?’
‘Hell on earth.’
Hieronymus Bosch sprang to mind, but the reference would have been as lost on Albie as it would have been on everyone Lenny knew. Not even Laura understood his love of art. It was hardly a normal interest for a docker.
‘Is that why Percy’s like he is? He was badly wounded, wasn’t he?’
‘He almost lost his leg. A man is never the same after a thing like that.’
Despite the rain, men spilled out onto the street outside the Railway Tavern. They all looked crumpled and grubby, as if they’d hit the pub straight from the dock gate. They most likely had, and they were now too full of drink to care about getting wet. They pushed their way into the pub. Lenny spotted Percy at once. There was no mistaking that tall, muscular physique, the mop of shaggy hair the colour of roasted coffee beans or the face that might have been handsome without the puckered scar running down his right cheek from the corner of his eye to his mouth. He stood at the bar with Arthur Fisk. Percy’s height and Arthur’s dark, cheeky cockiness made them an intimidating pair. If the toff at the Bell and Crown was itching for a fight he couldn’t have picked on a worse target.
‘You’re for it now, Percy.’ Arthur leaned back against the bar and wiped beer froth from his thin moustache with the back of his hand. His round, cherubically chubby face and wide blue eyes gave him a look of innocence belied by his sneering mouth and quick fists. ‘Your sister’s sent the cavalry out to fetch you home.’
Lenny curled his lip. He didn’t much care for Arthur. He was too full of himself by far.
‘If our Lor wanted me fetched she’d come herself, and she’d make mincemeat out of a young whippersnapper like you, Arthur, so less of your cheek.’ Percy turned and grinned at Lenny. ‘If it ain’t my old pal Lofty come to join me for a pint before last orders.’
‘I’d rather just go home.’
The use of his old army nickname told Lenny that Percy had had more than enough to drink already, although he was still standing, so he’d probably be able to get him back home on his own.
‘Oh, come on. Just one for the road.’ Percy pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and slapped them down onto the bar. ‘And one for young Albie, too – for his trouble.’
Lenny knew this was a battle he couldn’t win. He’d been down this road too many times before.
‘Just one,’ he nodded.
As he did so, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror behind the bar; a pale, gaunt face and a shock of damp, blonde hair, half a head taller than everyone around him. He looked worse than he felt, and that was saying something.
2 – Sunday 25 April 1926
The scrawny chicken was in the oven and the smell of it roasting already permeated the dingy little kitchen. Frankly, it looked more pigeon than chicken, but it was all they could afford seeing as Percy had barely had a shift last week. Laura stood at the big white sink peeling potatoes with more viciousness than was strictly necessary. She was angry with Percy. Fuming, actually. It wasn’t just about him pissing so much money up the wall and getting into brawls, it was all the time she wasted worrying about him, and the toll it took on Lenny. He’d made a fool of them yet again, and he didn’t seem the least bit contrite about it. When he came into the kitchen, she couldn’t even bring herself to turn to look at him.
‘Shall I put the kettle on and make some tea?’ He sounded sheepish as he put the battered old kettle on the range. ‘Len will probably be getting up in a minute, I should think. Unless he’s planning on sleeping all day.’
‘Do what you bloody well like.’ She turned to face him. The knife was still in her hand and she waved it in his direction. ‘You always do anyway, and don’t you dare malign Lenny. He got soaked to the skin chasing around after you last night. He was up half the night coughing. You know full well how bad he gets. He should never have had to go out in that weather.’
‘Oh, don’t be like that, Lor.’ He tilted his head to one side and gave her a dejected smile. ‘It was just a few drinks with the lads from the docks and a stupid toff who didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. He started it, not me. There was no need for Len to come out. Harry Smith had it all under control.’
‘No bloody need.’ If he thought his little boy lost look was going to wash with her now he was sadly mistaken. It might have worked when they were kids but he was a man now, with a stubbly chin and a neck as thick as his head. She had a sudden vision of plunging the knife into him. In case she was tempted to actually do it, she put it down. ‘I’d say there was every bloody need. Albie reckoned you’d have killed that chap if Harry Smith and his mates hadn’t stopped you.’
‘I didn’t start the fight. Ask Amy Medway, she’ll tell you.’
‘Of course she will, you’re her best bloody customer. Anyway, I don’t know why you’re hanging around with that lot in the first place. They’re nothing but a load of bloody Bolsheviks. What were you thinking going from pub to pub getting drunk with a load of communist dockers, plotting revolutions and strikes and god only knows what else?’
‘It was just talk, a bit of solidarity with the miners. The mine owners are going to lock them out at the end of the month if they don’t agree to a pay cut and longer hours. Working class men have to stand together.’
‘Stand together until it all goes wrong. Then who do you think they’ll point the finger of blame at, eh? You’ve got scapegoat written all over your face, Percy Barfoot.’
‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. It was just talk, Lor.’
‘A molehill, is it? Were you planning on starting the revolution last night before you got drunk and began picking fights with strangers? Was it all going to be war on the streets and dragging the rich men out of their beds to execute them, just like the Russians did to their Tsar and his whole family? Or maybe you were going to build a guillotine like the bloody French? Only, if that’s the plan, you should let me know. I could bring my knitting and come along to watch. I’d far rather that than have poor Lenny running around in the cold and rain looking for you.’
‘He didn’t need to come looking for me.’
He couldn’t even meet her eyes. Instead, he found something extremely interesting in the bottom corner of the scuffed and chipped kitchen cabinet. He wouldn’t find any answers in the layers of peeling paint, no matter how long he looked.
‘Didn’t he? Should he have waited until you got arrested for treason, or you were swinging from the bloody gallows before he came after you? You’d have probably spent the night lying in the gutter if he hadn’t, or in the police cells. He was soaked through and frozen half to death when he got in. Not that you give a flying fig about that. You’re the only one who’s allowed to suffer in this family, aren’t you? I doubt you even remember that Lenny was gassed. Only your war wounds count.’
Her eyes flicked to the scar running down his cheek. This was no time for pity, though. Just because Lenny’s wounds weren’t visible didn’t make them any the less.
‘That’s not fair, Lor.’ He caught her eye briefly then looked away again.
‘I’ll tell you what’s not fair, Percy.’ She stepped towards him and jabbed at his chest with her finger. ‘Taking advantage of Lenny’s kindness. Spending all your money in the pub instead of paying your keep. Letting him clear up all the trouble you make when you’re drunk. Acting like you’re the only man in England who got injured in the war. Wasting your whole life because things didn’t go the way you wanted ten years ago. Most of all, it’s not fair that every time you go out of that door, we should all have to worry what you’re going to do next. It’s time you bloody well grew up before you lose everyone in your life who actually cares about you.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He caught hold of her hand and didn’t avoid her gaze this time.
‘Well then, do something about it.’ His eyes, chocolate brown and almond shaped, were so much like hers it was like looking in a mirror. There was remorse in them, but she’d seen that look too many times before to take it at face value. ‘It’s got to stop, Percy. I don’t have the energy for it anymore, and neither does Lenny.’
3 – The Somme – November 1916
The ground was as hard as iron and little flakes of fine snow swirled around them as they stumbled over the shell-pocked earth searching for the dead. Some of the poor buggers had been lying out there in No Man’s Land since the first day of the Somme Offensive; four months or more rotting in the mud. Finding the bodies amongst all the frozen mud and shell holes proved harder than Lenny had expected. When they came upon the first one, it was by accident. The Hun knew they were out there and what they were doing, and it wasn’t long before they sent the first of the whizz-bangs over. He threw himself flat on his stomach, trembling. The ground beneath him was wet, stinking and slimy. He’d landed on a corpse, and not a fresh one, either. To his everlasting shame, he vomited.
‘It’s all right, mate.’ Percy helped him to his feet. ‘Happens to the best of us, but you soon get used to it.’
They managed to haul what was left of the poor blighter onto the stretcher by grabbing the sleeves of his jacket and the legs of his trousers. The stink was overpowering and Lenny couldn’t stop retching. He couldn’t believe he’d ever be able to take it in his stride like Percy.
Several bodies later, some transferred to the stretcher with the help of shovels, others nothing but skeletons in uniform, he’d stopped vomiting. He hadn’t stopped seeing himself in every one of the poor sods, though. Would he end up this way, a white skull with a few tufts of blonde hair? Who would be shovelling what was left of him onto a stretcher? Every so often, another whizz-bang exploded. He got used to them surprisingly quickly. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t heard a shell explode before. He was just more used to hearing them from the other side of a trench. He knew this gave him a false sense of security, though, and that he could just as easily be killed there as out in the open.
Then Percy got hit. He didn’t see it happen. He’d been kneeling over the corpse of Billy Simms. At least, it looked like it might have been Billy Simms once, before his flesh had been washed with a mixture of chrome green, Prussian blue and crimson. It wasn’t a picture he wanted to paint, but he couldn’t help thinking of it in those terms. The blast knocked him over and when he looked around, Percy was flat on the ground with an ashen face and blood pouring out of him. It was the shrapnel from the shell that had hit him, rather than the shell itself, so he was still alive, but he looked in a bad way. A flap of skin hung down from the side of his face, his arm was bleeding and the bone of his thigh stuck out through a bloody rip in his trousers. Lenny’s stomach clenched at the sight, even though there was nothing left in it now. He couldn’t understand how he’d been untouched.
‘We need to get you back, mate,’ he said, and looked at the ten yards or so between them and the trench. ‘Maybe I should get some help?’
Percy had taken him under his wing when he first arrived, so now it was his turn to look after Percy.
‘No,’ Percy said through gritted teeth. ‘I think I can walk if you help me, Lofty.’
This proved to be a touch over-optimistic, especially with him being so much taller and thinner than Percy. Somehow, though, he managed to get him upright and more or less carried him back to the trench. When they finally dropped breathlessly down to safety, they found Corporal Brodrick and Joe Wilson, all mud and tin helmets, crouched over the bodies they’d brought back. Joe tended Percy’s wounds while Corporal Brodrick checked Lenny over to make sure he hadn’t been hit, too. Luckily, he’d escaped with nothing but a few scrapes and grazes, but Percy was a different matter. His face and arm looked a lot worse than they were, but the leg was a mess. With a grim look, Joe bandaged it as best he could.
‘Will I get three wound stripes or just one?’ Percy could hardly speak for shivering, but it was likely shock rather than the cold. His skin had a bluish tinge and there were beads of sweat on his upper lip.
‘Just the one, I think,’ Joe said.
‘How long before I’m back in action, do you reckon?’
‘It’ll be Blighty for you, mate,’ Joe said. ‘I’d say your war is probably over.’
When Percy began to cry, Lenny looked away, embarrassed to witness his friend’s tears.
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