Corporal George Durrant

George Ingram Durrant was born at 16 Wadhurst Road, Nine Elms, Battersea on 4 July 1924, second son of Arthur Ingram Durrant, licensed victualler, of 333 Eversleigh Road, Battersea and his wife Emily Ellen, widow of Ernest Cowdrey and daughter of Harry Izzard Honeysett, crane driver, of 49 Sterndale Road, Battersea. L/26856 Gunner Ernest Cowdrey, Royal Field Artillery, died of wounds in France on 24 March 1918 and his widow received a War Gratuity of £13 on 21 November 1919. 

George attended a primary school in Holden Street before moving to his secondary school, in Basnett Road, off Lavender Hill. His elder brother, Arthur, won a scholarship to Emanuel School in Battersea and served in the Royal Navy during the war.  George said: "School was very good. I got on quite well really; I wasn’t brilliant at school-work but I was very good at athletics. I was a member of the well-known Belgrave Harriers and was the only member of my school to win a medal at an event at Battersea Park Athletics Ground. I also used to run at White City. When I joined the Army, I became the 3-mile champion at Catterick: running got me off lots of guard duties because I used to say that I had to do my training!"

In September 1939, when war broke out, George was living at home and cycling to work as a printers’ messenger boy. His father was an ARP Warden (Air Raid Precautions) and he explained: "There was an incendiary bomb and I went out with my father to where it had fallen, a couple of streets away. I had to go up into the loft with a bucket of water and a stirrup-pump to put it out. When I came back down the stairs, though, they gave way completely and I fell and hurt my leg.’"

On the morning of 18 October 1940, he was cycling along Balham High Road when he came across a double-decker bus which had almost disappeared into a huge hole created when a German bomb struck a weak spot above the Tube platforms.  George said: "I was lucky not to be cycling past the second it happened."  That scene is one of the most iconic images of the London Blitz and George still keeps the original news cutting in front of his desk. Later, as a member of the Home Guard, he helped to guard a sub-station of Battersea Power Station, which provided electric power for the London Underground, where so many people sheltered during the London Blitz.

After enlisting in London, George was sent to Catterick in Yorkshire for six months’ basic training: "They said that we were going to Richmond and I thought that they meant Richmond in Surrey, which quite pleased me, because it wasn’t far away – but they didn’t. Catterick was a God-forsaken place: those moors are so very bleak and it was bitterly cold. I was training to be a tank driver but they downgraded me because of my eyes so I became a little truck driver instead. They were looking for volunteers for a special job abroad so I thought this is an opportunity to go somewhere a bit warmer."

On 18 February 1944, the SS Stratheden, a 23,722-tonne former P&O steamship, departed from Liverpool as part of convoy KMF 29, having embarked 4,330 troops, including Private G I Durrant: "We went out into the middle of the Atlantic to dodge the submarines and had an aircraft carrier to escort us. We made our way to Gibraltar and then through the Mediterranean to the Suez Canal. Halfway through the Canal, there are a couple of big lakes – the Bitter Lakes – where two Italian battleships were moored. One looked alright but the other was really badly damaged. Then we went to the Red Sea and eventually got close to Aden. It was a stinking hot day so I went up on deck. I spotted a periscope and said to myself, 'My God, we’re going to be sunk'. Luckily it was one of ours, which escorted us to Aden harbour. We slept in hammocks, which are difficult enough to get in but I can tell you it’s quite a performance getting out of one in the middle of the night to go to the toilet!"

On 20 March 1944, SS Stratheden docked in Bombay: "It was a very long train journey to Rawalpindi, before we were taken by truck to Abbottabad, where there was a very big Gurkha training camp. They are wonderful people, so polite and soefficient, and they were excellent fighters. We would sleep in the barracks and the local people would come in and shave you while you were lying in bed, which was a great help, really. When we first arrived, there was snow on the ground but we were still wearing our tropical gear and were in our shorts – but there you are. They soon gave us warm clothing, though. 

"We were part of a special wireless section, for which we provided the protection. There were lots of leaks and the enemy were cashing in on them. After six months or so, we took a long, long lorry journey across India, before we started to climb into the hills and crossed into Burma. Unfortunately, the truck in front of us got too close to the edge and toppled over. It rolled over and over and I saw lots of bodies tumbling out. When you’re in convoy, you’re not allowed to stop so we just carried on. 

"I was now with the Intelligence Corps because they realised that my eyesight was a problem. It was a bit awkward driving our trucks because of visibility in the jungle. We got to this little village and we were hoping to get some lovely fresh water but the Japanese had poured oil on top of it. That was war; that was what they did. We had to cross the Irrawaddy, which is a wide and fast-flowing river. There were engineers there and they had elephants, which they were using to help build rafts. We used their rafts and were ferried across the river. I had to drive the truck onto the raft; when we got to the other side, there was a steep slope so I had to rev up and really go for it.

"We eventually got to Pegu and stayed there for a while to reorganise. The troops were not that disciplined on the radio and it was our job to clamp down on them. In the jungle you had to be very careful in the morning and check that there wasn’t a snake inside your boots because there were snakes everywhere. There were also very nasty scorpions, which wouldn’t kill you but you would be in agony for a few hours. We were going to go down to Rangoon but the Americans dropped the atomic bombs and the war was over. I was lucky because they had a sort of raffle in our section. Names were drawn out of a hat and you could go home on leave if yours was drawn. I wasn’t lucky but a friend of mine was; he didn’t want to go home so he gave me his ticket. I left Rangoon on a very old boat and we sailed to Bombay, where we picked up a bigger ship. When we arrived at Liverpool, we were the first troops to arrive back from the Far East. There were big crowds to welcome us and they were waving flags and they really made us welcome. They gave us cake and sandwiches but I didn’t get many kisses because I was too ugly! 

"It was a bit stupid because, having arrived back in England, I had to go back to India again a month later. Back in India, I went from Bombay to Karachi by train. I was very lucky because they now put me in charge of the Depôt Post Office. I was very popular because everyone was hoping for a letter from England. It was a really cushy job. The Colonel told me that he was expecting a very important letter from England. The letter came and I was marching across the parade ground when a horrible sergeant-major asked me what I was doing. When I told him I was going to see the Colonel, he said: 'You can’t do that!', 'Oh, yes, I can,' I said – and I did. Since I was young and unmarried, my repatriation number was low down the list.  I was still in Karachi when Partition took place [on 15 August 1947]. There were quite a lot of bodies in the streets. I could speak quite a bit of Hindustani." 

His daughter, Ann, who had arranged our conversation, explained: "He still speaks it well now – and people are often taken by surprise when he addresses them in their own language."

George continued: ‘I finally came home at the end of 1947 and went back to the factory where I was working when I was called up.  The Government made them keep our jobs open, you know.  I was a very skilled engineer so they welcomed me back.  The firm was called ACC-TAB [Accounting & Tabulating] and they made lots of things to do with wireless telegraphy.  I was one of the machine operators.  The firm was based in Croydon and I used to cycle there every day from Battersea so I was really fit.  Later I moved to a firm called Silentbloc in Crawley, where I became the machine-shop chargehand because I was very skilled at my job.’  On 24 October 1953 at Christ Church, Croydon, George married Eileen Mary, only daughter of Frank Middleditch, taxi-driver, of 23 Dovercourt Avenue, Croydon and his first wife, Winifred (Winnie) (née Woodcock).  2205 Private Frank Middleditch joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War, serving alongside the artist, Stanley Spencer, as an ambulance driver on the Salonika front.  Sadly, Eileen died in East Surrey Hospital on 18 April 2021 but George still lives on his own, in the house they bought together in 1956.  After buying a plot in Crawley from Taylor Woodrow that January, the two of them used to come down by train every fortnight to keep an eye on progress, before finally moving in that July.  George and Eileen had two daughters: Jill and Ann.