Christine Clegg - pledger story
“The Fund was a lifeline to me – I hope my Will can be for someone else.”
Christine’s father Raymond joined the RAF straightaway when war was declared. His father said it was the daftest thing he’d ever done, but Raymond knew he would be conscripted, and he wanted to choose where he went. That was the start of six years’ service and led to him meeting his future wife.
Reflecting on the time her father was posted, Christine said:
Dad was at RAF Filton and there was a church social nearby. My dad never usually went near church but my mum Joan did, and that’s where they met. They were married by special license because they thought my dad was going overseas which may have postponed things. Although the strange thing was that the first two ships he was originally scheduled to go out on were both torpedoed.
In the meantime, dad was posted around the country, accompanied by my mum. They stayed in rented accommodation, and mum would have to take any job on offer, which varied from a greengrocer's shop to a Borstal! When the day finally came for dad to go overseas, mum was allowed to go to the station to wave him off but only, he said, if she didn’t cry. No fuss was the order of the day. He went out to Tripoli while my mum enlisted with the Civil Nursing Reserve in Bristol. I can only think that my dad went around Africa and through the Red Sea, because he talked about going round Cape Town and of the ‘Lady in White’ who used to sing to convoys of ships visiting Durban Harbour.
At the end of the war he could have stayed on and become a Warrant Officer but he decided he’d had enough. He thought he was going home to Bradford to run his father’s painting and decorating business, but he became poorly soon after, so that changed things. What he didn’t realise at the time was that he was experiencing the first symptoms of Parkinson’s.
His Parkinson’s progressed over the years, and there came a time when I was nursing both him and my mum, as she had developed pancreatic cancer and later passed away. By then, I was desperate for a rest and I looked at different nursing homes that might take my dad for a short while. I came across a lovely nursing home but there was no way I could afford it at the time, and that’s when I contacted the RAF Benevolent Fund and they stepped in.
It gave me time to get things in place and get Social Services involved in my father’s care. I have to say it was a lifeline to me to have the Fund do that, and to have someone there to turn to, so I thought it would be nice if my Will could the same for somebody else”.
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