Ken Follett - Real Stories of World War Two

On Ken Folletts Facebook page we created a storybank, a place for readers to upload their own, real-life stories of World War Two.

The following pages hold some of the incredible, moving stories that readers were inspired to post, as well as a personal piece from Ken himself, about his own familys experience of the war.

We have also teamed up with ABF The Soldiers Charity, whose mission statement is to offer lifetime support to serving and retired soldiers and their families. All of the profits from the sale of this ebook will go directly to them. You can find out more about their work on their website, www.soldierscharity.org

To see the storybank on Facebook, visit
www.facebook.com/KenFollettAuthor

My grandfather Tom Follett was a cobbler in Cardiff, Wales. He had his own small shop in a working-class neighbourhood called Canton. Twice a day he walked to work from his house, which was about a mile away. Apart from two years in the army during the First World War, it was the only job he ever had: he became an apprentice at the age of twelve, and retired eighty years later at the age of ninety-two.

In the summer of 1941, the British and the Germans began bombing one another. Cardiff was a port city and therefore a prime target. My grandfather once described, in a characteristically dry, matter-of-fact tone, his own experience of the first air raid.

He was in his shop, mending a pair of boots, when the sirens went off. He locked up and hurried to the nearest air-raid shelter. A couple of hours later, the all-clear sounded.

This was before phones were commonplace and there was no phone either at the shop or at the house so he had no way of contacting his family except to walk home, which he did. On the way he passed several houses which had suffered direct hits. Rescue workers were pulling dead bodies out of the smoking ruins. One such ruin was a house Grandad had once lived in.

As he walked that mile he had no idea what had happened to his wife and four children, including my father, then a schoolboy. I didnt know, you see, he said to me in his unemotional way. They might have been alive or dead. It must have been the longest walk of his life.

When he got home, the house was undamaged and the family were all alive and well otherwise, of course, I would not be here today to tell the story.

My grandmother was twenty-six at the time she was forced to flee, away from the Russians and Prussia, in the cold winter month of January 1945. Along with her family and dozens of others, and only a wagon full of belongings, she started to make her life-saving escape to Denmark.

Today, my grandmother is ninety-three and has forgotten most of her past. But sometimes she begins to talk about those days and nights as if she was right there again, hearing the sound of the Russian artillery.

It is shattering to hear her talk about sleeping in the snow, wearing only a thin coat, or about the day they reached a lake which they had to cross, because there was no other way. After four whole days, the ice was finally solid enough for them to dare to cross.

They would all have made it, if the Russian aircraft had not fired into the ice, But the aircraft did fire and many people were killed and drowned. Hearing the people screaming, my grandmother made it to the shore to find her family safe. I think she never forgot those screams.

Finally, after weeks, they reached northern Germany. Close to the Danish border, my grandmother collapsed in a town called Schleswig and said farewell to her family, who continued, unable to bear the thought of staying in Germany any longer. The following two years changed her life. She fell in love with a British soldier based in Germany. But one day he went back to England.

My mother does not know her father. I was told he died in the war. Now I know this is not true. The only thing my grandmother remembers is his name. She told me last January.

Until then, she had never said a word about George Matthews.

My father, Carson Morton, an Irishman, served in the RAF in No. 8 Squadron and was stationed near Aden, Yemen. He saw action in Somaliland against the Italians.

In order to travel to the Kormaksar airbase for some much needed R&R, he and three other men were assigned to an old two-seater bi-plane. They formed two pairs, each pair with a pilot, and tossed a coin a penny to see who got to sit in the open air in the front and who had to crouch in the airless fuselage. My father and his friend lost, so they crawled into the fuselage.

Shortly after take-off, the plane hit an air pocket and nosedived into the sand. The two men in the open-air seats were decapitated. My father and his friend were unhurt. While my father kept vigil over the bodies, his friend walked back to base for help.

My father lived a long life, raised three children, and eventually moved the family, with our mother, to the United States.

All on the flip of a coin.

My grandfather served in the US Army in the South Pacific during World War Two. He is one of five children, three of whom were deployed overseas during the war. My grandfather served in the military police, assigned as a bodyguard to high ranking officers.

A local man made my grandfather a ring out of an old rivet. It was a simple band, not much to look at. My grandfather took this token home with him and left it in a box on his dresser after the war. When my brother (his grandson) was an adult he gave the ring to him, along with the story of the man who made it. He rarely spoke of his time in the Pacific.

When my husband was deployed to Iraq in 2006 with the US Navy, my brother gave my husband the ring, the story, and said he expected this ring to come home safe and sound. It was a moment that spanned three generations and three continents. I have never been more proud of my family than the moment I watched this ring pass into my husbands hands. My husband brought the ring (and himself) home safely in 2007 and returned it to my brother, where it will stay until its time for it to be passed on again.

It was the summer of 1943. One day, a group of children arrived in the village of Chaves. Albertina, my grandmother, was the mother of two young boys, a religious woman in a time when northern Portuguese villages were isolated from the world, sharing occasional contact with the neighbouring villages of the Spanish border.

Although Portugal was not participating in the war (at least officially), its effects were felt everywhere. Food and water were rationed and the movement of refugees was intense: although they usually didnt go near the villages, groups of people were seen crossing the rivers and travelling through the forests, and many stories were told.

So, when a group of children arrived and asked for shelter in the village, Albertina immediately contacted the local priest and they were taken in. They were children aged from four to ten years old, accompanied by two Spanish men. My grandmother couldnt stop looking at them and her heart broke just to think that these children had been forced to leave their parents to travel god-knows-where, probably never able to see their homes again.

Who are these angels? she asked one of the Spanish men, himself barely more than a young boy, with a starved look about his face. He looked so thin that his mouth seemed to stretch in a continuous smile.