Unsung Hero's, Henry J Macey [classic novels .TXT] 📗

eternal terror, not fully knowing what was to happen to them. Yet under the noses of their overseer's, they performed acts of defiance to sabotage the German war machine. Unaware of the hundreds of lives they would be saving, and no one could tell them that they were doing just that. Only when survivors of the work camps, told their stories of these deeds did the outside world know of them.         

 

At the end of that day, I filed this story away in the deeper recesses of my mind where it remained for years until just after 1989. I had just returned from living in Australia and was working as a driver for a large paper company with fourteen depots located around the country, and four hundred trucks. That meant spending many nights away from home.

 

One night, I was in the Limm truck stop with six other drivers from our firm who worked at different depots. When one asked me what it was like to drive road trains in Australia, I was more than happy to tell him and the others tales of my outback adventures. As I told my stories, more people began to gather around, and after an hour or so, one of the drivers told me I should write a book about my life.

 

I liked that idea and started to put down on paper the things I had done in the Navy and on my travels around the world. I decided to add things about my earlier life as well, whatever I could recall about growing up in wartime England. The memories were vague but important as they included Christmas parties and entertainment given by the US forces stationed around the countryside, about our home in Somerset.

 

Needing the gaps filled in, I went to my sister Peggy, who is thirteen years, my senior, and asked her to verify what I thought I could remember. Not only did she help me with my own recollections, but also she told me things I could not have remembered at all. This is where this story I am now telling gets both personal and emotional.

 

My discussions with Peggy about those times brought back to mind that bomb disposal experts story. This is what he told us at the end of the lecture, and he gave us the answer to the mystery about those who sabotaged the bombs. He told us of selfless men who, under great distress and consistent fear for their lives, defied their tormentors to give life to many he would never know who would never even know of their existence.

 

I found myself asking if that individual was responsible for my long life, for the joy of loving my wife and three boys. Was he the reason I now enjoy the blessing of five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren? How many other should be thanking the brave, unselfish beings who have gone unrecognized for so long?

 

Let me introduce myself to you, I am Henry Joseph Macey. Born the 25/03/1939, the only son and youngest child of four born to Henry Joseph Macey, and Margret Mary Macey, in Lambeth hospital London. My sister Ethel was five years older, Ellen was ten whereas Peggy was thirteen. The family lived in the Elephant and Castle London and sent to Wellington Somerset sometime in 1941.

 

That was a little after they had spent a night in an underground railway station during an air raid. On returning to our home in the morning, they found it and several others had been demolished. They then spent several hours searching the debris, for anything of value such as clothing pots and pans, and any other sentimental items, which could be of use to them.

 

Peggy had said they searched for a long time until they were shooed away, by wardens after an unexploded bomb found in the rubble under their feet. Neither Peggy nor any of my sisters returned to the bomb site, and not long after we were whisked away to Somerset. This is where the family have remained to this day, except that is for me, with my wandering feet.

 

 

Imprint

Publication Date: 09-01-2018

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To the men that sat on sleeping monsters, and prevented them from waking and devouring many soles.