Today is the anniversary of the D Day landings on the beaches of France 1944, which saw combined Allied forces launch an invasion which would begin the slow overthrow of the Nazi party, I would like to share with you a story I was told by a man from Eccles who took part in the invasion and the sad consequences for him. In 1973 I started work as a lab assistant at the Eccles Sewage Works on Peel Green Road and I have to say I enjoyed every minute, a great job working in a small lab analysing samples of waste water taken during the various progress through the treatment plant...but enough of that. Amongst the men who worked there whose duties including maintenance work on the plant and others who worked on the filter beds and sludge tanks, not the best of jobs it has to be said, one of these men was Thomas Gubbins, a very quite, introvert loner who never mixed with the other men. He would sit in a small pumping station and have his meals there on his own, I would pass it every day and exchange the odd greeting etc, one day the door was open and I had a look in, amongst the tools and clothing there was a collection of books, I was expecting the usual how shall we say racy literature? I was astounded to see books by Plato, Homer, Nietzche, Dickens, Proust etc not your usual fare. I plucked up courage to speak to him and over a period of weeks I slowly gained his trust and he told me the most amazing stories of his life and what a cruel hand of cards he had been dealt. He grew up in Frodsham, Cheshire and moved to Winton with his family in the 1930s, and worked at various jobs locally, he told me he got his call up papers aged 18 this was in 1944 and was taken to Scotland for training how to fire a rifle etc, shortly after this he was put on a train with blinds on and taken to Portsmouth and put on a landing craft heading to the Normandy beaches, prior to this his furthest outing was a day trip to Blackpool with his parents. Telling me of the carnage that he saw on the beaches that day still affected him, he told of men being blown apart in front of him, headless men, bodies floating in the war and the constant rattle of machine gun fire and mortars exploding around him, somehow he managed to get to safety and hid in a storm drain, crying and shaking for 24 hours, he had thrown away his rifle and basically had a complete nervous breakdown. He was taken back to England and placed in an army hospital treated and for shell shock, he never recovered from what he had witnessed that day, he was given ECT therapy amongst other things and discharged from the army a broken man, mentally and physically aged 19. He made a slow recovery and eventually was given a job as a porter at Worsley Railway Station, a job he liked because of the relative tranquillity and he was left on his own for most of the day, he did strike up a friendship with one of the commuters, a city gent with a bowler and brolly who would say hello to him each morning, until one day the chap said goodbye to him and jumped in front on an oncoming train this horrendous sight caused him to have a further nervous breakdown resulting in a lengthy stay in Bridgewater Hospital, Eccles where he received further ECT treatment.. I left the sewage works in 1979 but kept in touch with him, he lived in Blantyre Street with his aged father, I would see him cycling around Eccles and sadly he had become a target for local children who would taunt him for his eccentricity, it has to be said that he didn't help himself by chasing them after they threw stones at him which graduated to them throwing stones through his windows, kicking his front door in, and smashing his greenhouse. He gained the nickname the "Mad Axeman" and his life was made a misery, his father died shortly after this and Tommy was to follow a few years later, just before he died I helped him buy a television prior to this his he would listen to a small transistor radio which was strapped to his bicycle. Such a sad life for such an interesting man, all he wanted was to be be left on his own, read his books and potter around his tiny greenhouse, perhaps if the local kids knew about his troubled life they may have shown more respect, I would like to think so, but I am grateful that our paths crossed and I knew him for a few short years. These days he would have been recognised as having PTSD and have received the proper care and attention he deserved and I am certain that was the case for so many soldiers coming home from World War 2, a sad reminder for this D day anniversary.
