Peter Finch and Maisie happy days
Peter Finch “…I was stationed oversees in Palestine for 1946-48 and promised Maisie we’d get married as soon as I was demobbed and back home. That was quite a drawn out process, as we got detached from our unit by lack of transport – at one point we were declared AWOL and I thought we were for the high-jump, but they cleared up the mess and we found a ship that could take us up the coast. The skipper said ‘this is our last run, we’re heading back to Liverpool next’ – we were over the moon and said ‘no matter what, we’re staying with you’ and that’s how we got home. I still had my pith-helmet with me, which I would have liked to have brought home, but I had so much clobber to carry including my kitbag and a wooden ammunition box which weighed a ton whenthere was nothing in it, so I flung my pith-helmet over the side of the boat into the sea. I got from Liverpool to London, got a south-bound train to Dunton Green and finally caught the ‘Flyer’ to Westerham. The local bobby spotted me on the platform and ran up to Charlton’s Corn Stores in the town where my dad was manager. He said ‘Arthur, I’ve just seen your boy, he’s at the station, he’s come home’. Dad just left the shop and came to help me home with all my stuff. That was May or early June 1948 and Maisie and I were married that September…”
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