One Man's War: Fighting Through Italy (Part 4)
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I came home for the first time in november forty four. This was the worst thing I remember about the war because no one had conditioned me. It never occurred to me. I thought I was intelligent. I wasn't. I was very naive actually. Never realised that time doesn't stand still. My sister had died during the war. She'd been down on the shelters every night and she got pneumonia and died and she left two children. I knew my mother would be at my sister's house looking after her children. She didn't know I was coming home, and I didn't want to just walk in. I thought if I go to my sister's house, she may or may not be there. I went to my sister's house. When I went away to war my niece was a little girl of about twelve, and I was met by a lovely young lady of about eighteen.
I thought, Who's this? She said, Don't you know me? I said, No. She said, I'm your niece. Then my mother came and that's when it really hit me because my mother had had lovely brown wavy hair and when I saw she had silver grey hair, my immediate thought was, It isn't me that suffered in the war. Not really. But my mother's suffered. She's borne the pain. She's aged so much. I had to go through this process. There was no one I knew. They were all different people. I had a month's leave, and if I went out at night I didn't know anybody. All the people I knew had disappeared, gone. I went to the pub.
How does Sam describe his first homecoming after the war?
They were only open for about an hour because there was no beer. There was no one I knew, so I didn't feel I belonged. I was like a foreigner, it was terrible, an awful experience. Then I met a fellow who he was in some regiment. He never went abroad. He was lucky, stayed in England. Helped me a bit. He was about the same age as me. It took a long time. I thought, why didn't someone tell me? I don't know if other people had the same experience, but I felt cheated somehow, like I'd lost my youth, and everyone had grown old. I then realized that I was older. I didn't realise.
What impact did Sam’s sister’s death have on his return home?
I felt I was only about nineteen. It was like I'd been living in a dream, an imaginary world, and now I was coming back. to reality. And those are the words of Sam Bradshaw. Welcome to We Have Ways of Make You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland. And the our final fourth and final part of the story of One Man's War. Um where what we've done is we've yeah, I mean we've done in previous episodes, we've done some big arrows on maps to tell you what's going on, but we've really been trying to look at Sam's experiences as a as a fighting man um in the Royal Tank Regiment, six RTR, in the desert, um uh and how he feels about his experiences as as well as the absolutely harrowing first combat proper that he had, where he lost in an ambulance with a major who'd lost his arm and a and a
Another guy bleeding out on me. Extraordinarily harrowing stuff. So I mean we're not wrapping up with Sam here. I
We're we're throwing forward a little bit and we'll we'll come back to his homecoming and what he does about it. But Jesus, that's devastating, isn't it? It's so thought provoking. Just hearing you read that out again, it's s it's all sort of coming back to me, that conversation I had with him. And I'm and it's one of the things I was so determined to make sure that we got that voice in this series because I, you know, I I interviewed him twenty five years ago, but I I remember that so well. Yeah. About his mum going grey and not belonging and no one to talk to and no one preparing him for it. Yeah. But but hearing it again, I mean Jesus. It's it's a bit that no one ever thinks about, isn't it?
Well it is, isn't it? And the thing is is because some for the Patreons, I've just been doing my grandfather's letters home from France in North West Europe, and I think about my grandmother receiving these letters and then he d and then he d you know, he didn't come back.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–1:47
2
How does Sam describe his first homecoming after the war?
1:47–2:19
3
What impact did Sam’s sister’s death have on his return home?
2:19–5:45
4
Why does Sam feel isolated during his month’s leave in England?
5:45–19:07
5
How does Sam’s experience with the reconnaissance unit shape his role in Italy?
19:07–39:19