A Corporal's War
Pauline Hayton
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2003 iUniverse
ISBN: 0595290523

World War II Adventures of a Royal Engineer.

In 1939, Englishman Norman Wickman, just 20, married, & already a father of a three-year old daughter, enlists in the army. The idea is to do his six months' National Service (Conscription), & return to civvy street in Middlesbrough, an industrial city in the Midlands, where he could then ask for full adult wages.

Instead, Prime Minister Chamberlain sends an ultimatum to Hitler & when he doesn't respond, Britain declares war. Now Norman is stuck in the sappers for the duration, & then the Battle of Britain begins.

For those who don't know what sappers did during WWII, they drove the materiel & supply trucks from depots to units, & delivered messages between command posts. They also handled the dreaded lethal gasses, dug tunnels, laid mines & secured defenses along coastlines, built things & blew them up! Usually, they were non-combatants, however, that didn't mean they didn't engage in battle.

Based on Pauline Hayton's father's memories A Corporal's War is a well-researched biography of the adventures of a group of friends as they make it through basic training & join the 62 (Chemical Warfare) Company of the Royal Engineers. Here Norman learns to drive & maintain all types of vehicles. Soon his unit is traveling the length & breadth of England for training, & then in April 1940, at what was to be the end of the “Phoney War” they are shipped across the Channel to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force.

With photos from the Imperial War Museum & maps, we ride along with this young & hopeful sapper as at first his army blithely meanders around France, with the top brass fatally complacent about Germany's intentions. Then all hell breaks loose & hundreds of thousands of soldiers, equipped with WWI vintage weapons, are forced to beat a hasty retreat only to become marooned on a sliver of sand with the sea before them & the advancing Panzer divisions behind. Dunkirk was Norman's baptism by fire & he grows up fast & proves his mettle.

Pauline Hayton writes: “People often say that nothing good ever comes from war ... [I] believe ... that war can offer opportunities for an enormous amount of personal growth and unity.”

Safely home, nursing a glancing bullet wound to his head, Norman relishes his time with his family, until orders to ship out to the Far East arrive & he is off to see the world, & what a world he finds. South Africa & Durban, on to Bombay & Deolali in Western India, driving south to Bangalore, then north to Calcutta & on into the fable land of Burma. Here Norman encounters the legendary Ledo Road, “enjoys” a flight over The Hump, & creates airfields out of the jungle. His water truck becomes a passport to everywhere, until he is felled by dysentery. Even as he is laid low by this pernicious disease he is fearful he will lose his Company, however, they too have stalled & once he's recovered he rejoins them for their next adventures -- tangling with Japanese scouting units.

In 1944 at a particularly overwhelming point in the Burma War, the Supreme Allied Commander of SEAC, Lord Louis Mountbatten flew from airfield to airfield on a morale-boosting junket. At Chabua, among the troops lined up was 62 Company & from them, Norman was picked to be presented. For posterity's sake, a photo was taken.

Pauline Hayton has ably blended military life with the homefront, as well as the broader national news of the day. In places the telling could have done with some grooming, although overall A Corporal's War is a fascinating journey of a young & likable, responsible & inventive fellow who got to see the world, meet rare people, see exotic places, face the destruction & terror of war, witness enemy atrocities, keep his cool when taunted by unbloodied American GIs, stay true to his marriage, & return home after four years, with all but one of his comrades, a wiser man.

A riveting, personal & informative biography. Certainly worthy of a prominent place in your war library.

Do cath my wonderful interview with this author.
(04/25/04)

Rebecca