2 highly praised WW2 memoirs under one cover now $2.99

[1923]

Barley Hole was for my great grandfather Canaan, the land of milk and honey. For my father, it was paradise lost and for my mother, Barley Hole was a curse. It was a place that haunted her spirit and her soul throughout her life. To me, Barley Hole is a name forever etched on the map of my family's heart; it is where betrayal and injustice nearly thrust us into oblivion.
The Barley Hole Chronicles are an odyssey of the human spirit that stretch across time and geography to incorporate, diverse personalities, personal hardships, World Wars and the struggle for peace and love, in a society fallen from grace. These Chronicles document one Yorkshire family's decent into the wilderness of poverty and hunger. It is a personal record of one young man's struggle to survive the great depression, the Second World War and the hazards and wonders of life in post war Germany. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a summation of two memoirs by Harry Leslie Smith 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a true account of a time and place when life, full of raw emotion, was never so real. It is also a social history of the 20th century at its bloodiest and deadliest time.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006382B3C/ref=cm_cd_asin_l

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/B006382B3C/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=341677031&s=digital-text[][/img]

[1923]

From the Barley Hole Chronicles:

I don’t know why but the winter rains stopped and spring came early in 1945. When Hitler committed suicide at the end of April, the flowers and trees were in full bloom and the summer birds returned to their nesting grounds. Not long after the great dictator’s corpse was incinerated in a bomb crater by his few remaining acolytes, the war in Europe ended. After so much death, ruin and misery; it was remarkable to me how nature resiliently budded back to life in barns, in fields and across battlegrounds, now calm and silent. The earth said to her children; it is time to abandon your swords and harness your ploughs; the ground is ripe and this is the season to tend to the living.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006382B3C/ref=cm_cd_asin_l

[Ann in Arlington]

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[1923]

From the Barley Hole Chronicles

New Year, 1945
Confined to camp on New Year’s Eve, we sang Auld Lang Syne at the chime of midnight and toasted the year to come. During the first days and then weeks of January, we waited in disjointed apprehension to deploy to Europe. After a while, we thought our captain had played a cruel prank on us. He promised us in December a mission in Europe and a greater role in this war, and it now seemed as fanciful as Meade’s desert premonitions. We waited and asked our sergeants, “You’ll know when you know,” was the answer.

We waited and Warsaw fell to the Russians. We waited impatiently and the death marches began for the near-lifeless prisoners of the concentration camps. We waited while the Germanic retreat of volks deutch began, from the Eastern, Hanseatic fortresses of Lithuania, Latvia, and Pomerania. Over two million Aryan refugees limped across the snow or sailed in over-laden ships across the icy Baltic. While underneath the slushy sea, Russian submarines hungrily trawled the waters in vengeful wait. The Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz and we waited. For parts of Holland still under German occupation, “The Hunger Winter” was now in its fifth month and the citizens were reduced to consuming tulip bulbs and boiling shoe leather for nutrients. We waited anxious, ignorant, and callow for Europe.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Barley-Hole-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B006382B3C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1320757831&sr=1-1

[1923]

The Barley Hole Chronicles From Hell to Hamburg


Barley Hole was for my great grandfather Canaan, the land of milk and honey. For my father, it was paradise lost and for my mother, Barley Hole was a curse. It was a place that haunted her spirit and her soul throughout her life. To me, Barley Hole is a name forever etched on the map of my family's heart; it is where betrayal and injustice nearly thrust us into oblivion.
The Barley Hole Chronicles are an odyssey of the human spirit that stretch across time and geography to incorporate, diverse personalities, personal hardships, World Wars and the struggle for peace and love, in a society fallen from grace. These Chronicles document one Yorkshire family's decent into the wilderness of poverty and hunger. It is a personal record of one young man's struggle to survive the great depression, the Second World War and the hazards and wonders of life in post war Germany. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a summation of two memoirs by Harry Leslie Smith 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a true account of a time and place when life, full of raw emotion, was never so real. It is also a social history of the 20th century at its bloodiest and deadliest time.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Barley-Hole-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B006382B3C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322229231&sr=8-1

<<merged with existiing thread.  One thread per book, please!  Thanks! --Betsy/KB Moderator>>

[1923]

 The Barley Hole Chronicles From Hell to Hamburg Holiday Sale 99 cents
2 books under one volume for under a buck


Barley Hole was for my great grandfather Canaan, the land of milk and honey. For my father, it was paradise lost and for my mother, Barley Hole was a curse. It was a place that haunted her spirit and her soul throughout her life. To me, Barley Hole is a name forever etched on the map of my family's heart; it is where betrayal and injustice nearly thrust us into oblivion.
The Barley Hole Chronicles are an odyssey of the human spirit that stretch across time and geography to incorporate, diverse personalities, personal hardships, World Wars and the struggle for peace and love, in a society fallen from grace. These Chronicles document one Yorkshire family's decent into the wilderness of poverty and hunger. It is a personal record of one young man's struggle to survive the great depression, the Second World War and the hazards and wonders of life in post war Germany. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a summation of two memoirs by Harry Leslie Smith 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a true account of a time and place when life, full of raw emotion, was never so real. It is also a social history of the 20th century at its bloodiest and deadliest time.

I've also read many books about WWII, but never one that took me realistically into the mind and body of a young soldier who thought and acted exactly the way young men do regardless of wars or poverty or other horrors. The book, though an autobiography, reads like a novel, depicts reality with the realism that only novelist generally capture, and captures the reader's heart with the point-of-view of the protagonist, a very real young boy and man.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C


<<thread merged with existing thread. --Betsy>>

[1923]

A Page Turning True Story The Barley Hole Chronicles From Hell to Hamburg  2 books under one cover 1923 and Hamburg 1947

http://www.amazon.com/The-Barley-Hole-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B006382B3C/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323524886&sr=1-1


Frieda and I walked back towards the river below the city centre. A wind had picked up and the air smelled of burning rubbish, while soot and ash rained down onto the pavement. The eruption originated from a truck puffing, slowing up the thoroughfare in front of us. Its roof was fitted with a boiler and a steam pipe. The vehicle dragged three carriages behind it like a primitive train.

It moved like a rheumatic centipede. A young boy raced across the top of the truck, feeding the boiler with an odd assortment of fuel ranging from chair legs to telegraph poles sawn down to size. The boy, like Vulcan’s apprentice, fed the boiler and shifted the burning timber with iron tongs to increase the inferno. The contraption wheezed ahead of us like a castrated dragon let loose on a desolate industrial waste land, belching smoke, ash, and cinder.

“What is the matter?” Friede asked. “Have you never seen German ingenuity before?”

“It’s the strangest thing I have ever encountered.”

Friede explained that when the Nazis began to run out of petrol; cars and lorries were converted to run off of coal and scrap wood. Mechanics attached primitive steam engines to Volkswagen motors. They were slow, smelled horrible, and were as dirty as mud. Friede laughed and pointed at the truck painfully meandering up the road and said, “Look, there goes Germany’s secret weapon to win the war.”

Suddenly, we were near the harbour which flowed out to the Elbe River. Apart from the homeless, few people ventured onto this roadway. Ahead of us was a scattering of refugees who carried the weight of their lives on their backs, or pushed it on baby prams with warped squeaking wheels. I saw a family dragging an enormous clock in their cart, its weights and pulleys clanking and screeching over the bumpy road.

[1923]

The Barley Hole Chronicles From Hell to Hamburg



A True Story of Life Lived on the Razor's Edge of History
http://www.amazon.com/The-Barley-Hole-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B006382B3C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1324384686&sr=1-1

Barley Hole was for my great grandfather Canaan, the land of milk and honey. For my father, it was paradise lost and for my mother, Barley Hole was a curse. It was a place that haunted her spirit and her soul throughout her life. To me, Barley Hole is a name forever etched on the map of my family's heart; it is where betrayal and injustice nearly thrust us into oblivion.
The Barley Hole Chronicles are an odyssey of the human spirit that stretch across time and geography to incorporate, diverse personalities, personal hardships, World Wars and the struggle for peace and love, in a society fallen from grace. These Chronicles document one Yorkshire family's decent into the wilderness of poverty and hunger. It is a personal record of one young man's struggle to survive the great depression, the Second World War and the hazards and wonders of life in post war Germany. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a summation of two memoirs by Harry Leslie Smith 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a true account of a time and place when life, full of raw emotion, was never so real. It is also a social history of the 20th century at its bloodiest and deadliest time.

[1923]

http://www.amazon.com/The-Barley-Hole-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B006382B3C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1325171794&sr=1-1

Barley Hole was for my great grandfather Canaan, the land of milk and honey. For my father, it was paradise lost and for my mother, Barley Hole was a curse. It was a place that haunted her spirit and her soul throughout her life. To me, Barley Hole is a name forever etched on the map of my family's heart; it is where betrayal and injustice nearly thrust us into oblivion.
The Barley Hole Chronicles are an odyssey of the human spirit that stretch across time and geography to incorporate, diverse personalities, personal hardships, World Wars and the struggle for peace and love, in a society fallen from grace. These Chronicles document one Yorkshire family's decent into the wilderness of poverty and hunger. It is a personal record of one young man's struggle to survive the great depression, the Second World War and the hazards and wonders of life in post war Germany. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a summation of two memoirs by Harry Leslie Smith 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a true account of a time and place when life, full of raw emotion, was never so real. It is also a social history of the 20th century at its bloodiest and deadliest time.


New Year, 1945
Confined to camp on New Year’s Eve, we sang Auld Lang Syne at the chime of midnight and toasted the year to come. During the first days and then weeks of January, we waited in disjointed apprehension to deploy to Europe. After a while, we thought our captain had played a cruel prank on us. He promised us in December a mission in Europe and a greater role in this war, and it now seemed as fanciful as Meade’s desert premonitions. We waited and asked our sergeants, “You’ll know when you know,” was the answer.

We waited and Warsaw fell to the Russians. We waited impatiently and the death marches began for the near-lifeless prisoners of the concentration camps. We waited while the Germanic retreat of volks deutch began, from the Eastern, Hanseatic fortresses of Lithuania, Latvia, and Pomerania. Over two million Aryan refugees limped across the snow or sailed in over-laden ships across the icy Baltic. While underneath the slushy sea, Russian submarines hungrily trawled the waters in vengeful wait. The Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz and we waited. For parts of Holland still under German occupation, “The Hunger Winter” was now in its fifth month and the citizens were reduced to consuming tulip bulbs and boiling shoe leather for nutrients. We waited anxious, ignorant, and callow for Europe.

[1923]

It is about a life lived on the razor's edge of history.




http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C

"I recommend The Barley Hole Chronicles to history buffs as well as readers learning about war. A first-hand account is priceless."-mrc-bookreviewer.blogspot.com

Barley Hole was for my great grandfather Canaan, the land of milk and honey. For my father, it was paradise lost and for my mother, Barley Hole was a curse. It was a place that haunted her spirit and her soul throughout her life. To me, Barley Hole is a name forever etched on the map of my family's heart; it is where betrayal and injustice nearly thrust us into oblivion.
The Barley Hole Chronicles are an odyssey of the human spirit that stretch across time and geography to incorporate, diverse personalities, personal hardships, World Wars and the struggle for peace and love, in a society fallen from grace. These Chronicles document one Yorkshire family's decent into the wilderness of poverty and hunger. It is a personal record of one young man's struggle to survive the great depression, the Second World War and the hazards and wonders of life in post war Germany. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a summation of two memoirs by Harry Leslie Smith 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a true account of a time and place when life, full of raw emotion, was never so real. It is also a social history of the 20th century at its bloodiest and deadliest time.

[1923]

  The Barley Hole Chronicles are a summation of two memoirs by Harry Leslie Smith 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a true account of a time and place when life, full of raw emotion, was never so real. It is also a social history of the 20th century at its bloodiest and deadliest time.



http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C

[1923]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C

"I don't know much about how to write a review, but I just have to say how much I enjoyed this book. Right from the start I was drawn into this world that is foreign to someone who never lived during this time. While reading I felt I could actually see the characters, smell and feel and actually be there with them."

"I've also read many books about WWII, but never one that took me realistically into the mind and body of a young soldier who thought and acted exactly the way young men do regardless of wars or poverty or other horrors."

 "Smith writes a true love story during wartime in Hamburg 1947."

[1923]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Good Read, December 3, 2011
By ncpulla - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Barley Hole Chronicles : From Hell to Hamburg: 23/47 (Paperback)
The Barley Hole Chronicles is actual a book containing two memoirs by Harry Smith, his first 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The book vividly portrays life in Northern England during the depression. It is at times a sad tale about a young boy who must struggle with hunger, family breakdown and extreme poverty. Smith is a very good painter of scenes and of people. He is also very good at keeping the balance between dark and light in this book. There is heartbreak but their is hope and laughter in the Barley Hole Chronicles. I found myself laughing out loud at times. The book leads into his experiences in the war and his time in Germany as part of the British occupational forces. There is love and heart break in this episode of his life but there is always a sense of humour and of optimism for the future. The Barley Hole Chronicles is also a valuable history lesson about the days before, during and after the Second World War. I highly recommend this book

[1923]

A Page Turning True Story The Barley Hole Chronicles From Hell to Hamburg on Sale for 99 cents 2 books under one cover 1923 and Hamburg 1947

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C

Birthday Greetings from 1941



I am quite sure that, this year, on my birthday there will be many good wishes, along with some cake. No doubt, there will be champagne because, after all, I am turning eight-nine.

“That is very old,” a relative recently said to me.

“It is an ocean of time,” I replied.

On good days, I marvel at my advanced age and on bad I lament that so many have passed before me. Being a winter baby, I have felt February’s austere light ebb, fade and grow cold upon my face for close to nine decades. Time has marked my body with many scars from this marathon, I started in 1923. I hope my finish line is far off in the thicket and I have still lots more time to ramble along the river bank of existence.

When I began this sprint, in my life’s journey, there was little to mark the day of my birth from any other day. There were no parties, balloons or fancy sweets, just a passing greeting from my mother, while my older sister tugged on my hair and counted my years of life. Afterwards, she would give me a pinch for good luck.

When I turned eighteen, a squeeze of good fortune from my sister would not have gone amiss considering Britain was at war. I was certainly going to need providence, on my side, because I was scheduled to begin my induction with the RAF, the following day.

My birthday in 1941 was a quiet affair. My friend Roy had already left to join the Cold Stream Guards while my other friend Dougie Butterworth was ill again and had taken to his bed with a quivering heart. I did not want to spend my last birthday, perhaps my last days on Earth with Eric. His fast talk about the money he was making in selective war service sickened me.

Instead, I decided to indulge myself with a visit to the public baths. They were located at the top of Boothtown Road. I arrived and paid an attendant 50p. It was a privilege to soak in a warm bath rather than a tin tub filled with tepid water in a kitchen. A female attendant led me along a narrow passageway until she found an unoccupied room. Inside the narrow, wood-lined space was a hanger for one’s clothes, and a deep, porcelain, bathtub. The attendant placed a plug into the bath. She turned the taps on until the bath was filled with warm inviting water. When finished, she closed the door behind her. I undressed and submerged myself in calm, cleansing hot water. I was empty of thoughts or cares until the water grew cold and it was time to dry myself, dress, and depart.

Afterwards, I spent some hours with my sister Mary who had come down to Halifax to bid me farewell. We did not talk much. We sipped our ale. We held each other’s hands on the table. We looked into each other’s faces, seeing if we could read our past upon them. She joked and bantered more than me because I was withdrawn and frightened about what tomorrow would bring for me. I was as scared as I was as a child when the nuns beat me because my future was as ominous as my past. I experienced the same form of loneliness when Albert our father left us. There was no one and nothing which could ease my sense of apartness from the civilian world. When it was time for my sister to leave, she got up and kissed me.

“Come back safe, Harry, just come back.”

The following morning, I awoke with a jittery feeling like it was a school morning. I dressed warmly and went to the kitchen. My mother was sitting alone, warming herself by the oven. Bill her lover had already gone to work and my half brother’s Matt and junior were at school. She made me a cup of tea and cut me a large slice of fresh bread. There was a generous lather of butter and jam on it.

“Go on, tuck in. Well, lad, this is it. Keep your head down, Harry. Don’t do anything daft because life is short, my boy, life is short.”

I hugged her with mixed emotions. I mumbled farewell and made my way to the train station.

The platform was deserted while I waited for my train to take me to Padgate for induction. It was cold, damp, and grey; sweet smoke from the McIntosh candy plant fell like drizzle across the station. I reached into my overcoat and found a near-empty packet of cigarettes.

I placed one in my mouth and furiously struck a match, quickly inhaling the harsh tobacco. In the distance, I heard the whistle of the train. I smelled the coal burning off its engine. I breathed in the coal that had been dug from the pits of Barnsley, Elsecar, and Barley Hole. I tasted it in my mouth, around my teeth, and on my tongue. It was the soot of my father, my grandfather, and all my ancestors who laboured beneath the ground.

As the train drew its way into the belly of the station, another passenger approached the platform. He was a man in his fifties, long past the time for war, and he was whistling the tune, ‘Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run…”

[1923]

The Barley Hole Chronicles from Hell to Hamburg A double memoir edition with both 1923 and Hamburg 1947


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C


Frieda and I walked back towards the river below the city centre. A wind had picked up and the air smelled of burning rubbish, while soot and ash rained down onto the pavement. The eruption originated from a truck puffing, slowing up the thoroughfare in front of us. Its roof was fitted with a boiler and a steam pipe. The vehicle dragged three carriages behind it like a primitive train.

It moved like a rheumatic centipede. A young boy raced across the top of the truck, feeding the boiler with an odd assortment of fuel ranging from chair legs to telegraph poles sawn down to size. The boy, like Vulcan’s apprentice, fed the boiler and shifted the burning timber with iron tongs to increase the inferno. The contraption wheezed ahead of us like a castrated dragon let loose on a desolate industrial waste land, belching smoke, ash, and cinder.

“What is the matter?” Friede asked. “Have you never seen German ingenuity before?”

[1923]

The Barley Hole Chronicles from Hell to Hamburg $2.99 A double memoir edition with both 1923 and Hamburg 1947


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C

I don't know why but the winter rains stopped and spring came early in 1945. When Hitler committed suicide at the end of April, the flowers and trees were in full bloom and the summer birds returned to their nesting grounds. Not long after the great dictator's corpse was incinerated in a bomb crater by his few remaining acolytes, the war in Europe ended. After so much death, ruin and misery; it was remarkable to me how nature resiliently budded back to life in barns, in fields and across battlegrounds, now calm and silent. The earth said to her children; it is time to abandon your swords and harness your ploughs; the ground is ripe and this is the season to tend to the living.


I was twenty-two and ready for peace. I had spent four years in the R.A.F as a wireless operator. During the war, I was lucky; I never came close to death. While the world bled from London to Leningrad; I walked away without a scratch. Make no mistake, I did my part in this war; I played my role and I never shirked the paymaster's orders. For four years, I trained, I marched, and I saluted across the British Isles. During the final months of the conflict, I ended up in Belgium and Holland with B.A.F.U. My unit was responsible for maintaining abandoned Nazi air fields, for allied aircraft.


When Germany surrendered, to the allies in gutted Berlin, I was in Fuhlsbuttel, a northern suburb of Hamburg. Our squadron took up a comfortable residence in its undamaged aerodrome located not far from the main thoroughfare. At the time, I didn't think much about Fuhlsbuttel, I felt it was between nothing and nowhere. It was much like every other town our unit drove through during the dying days of the war. Nothing was out of place and it was, quiet, clean and as silent as a Sunday afternoon.

While I slept in my new bed, in this drowsy neighbourhood; the twentieth century's greatest and bloodiest conflict came to an end at midnight on May seventh. On the morning of the eighth, our R.A.F commander hastily arranged a victory party, for that afternoon. The festivities were held in a school gymnasium close to the airport.


No one considered or asked on that day of victory "what happens next." That was tomorrow's problem. I certainly didn't question my destiny on that spring afternoon. Instead like the Romans, I followed the edict carpe diem: I ate too much, I smoked too much and I drank too much. And, why not I reasoned, the war was over and I had survived whereas many others had been extinguished as quickly as it takes to blow out a flame on a candle.

[1923]

The Barley Hole Chronicles: From Hell to Hamburg


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C

Barley Hole was for my great grandfather Canaan, the land of milk and honey. For my father, it was paradise lost and for my mother, Barley Hole was a curse. It was a place that haunted her spirit and her soul throughout her life. To me, Barley Hole is a name forever etched on the map of my family's heart; it is where betrayal and injustice nearly thrust us into oblivion.
The Barley Hole Chronicles are an odyssey of the human spirit that stretch across time and geography to incorporate, diverse personalities, personal hardships, World Wars and the struggle for peace and love, in a society fallen from grace. These Chronicles document one Yorkshire family's decent into the wilderness of poverty and hunger. It is a personal record of one young man's struggle to survive the great depression, the Second World War and the hazards and wonders of life in post war Germany. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a summation of two memoirs by Harry Leslie Smith 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a true account of a time and place when life, full of raw emotion, was never so real. It is also a social history of the 20th century at its bloodiest and deadliest time.

From the Back Cover
I don't know why but the winter rains stopped and spring came early in 1945. When Hitler committed suicide at the end of April, the flowers and trees were in full bloom and the summer birds returned to their nesting grounds. Not long after the great dictator's corpse was incinerated in a bomb crater by his few remaining acolytes, the war in Europe ended. After so much death, ruin and misery; it was remarkable to me how nature resiliently budded back to life in barns, in fields and across battlegrounds, now calm and silent. The earth said to her children; it is time to abandon your swords and harness your ploughs; the ground is ripe and this is the season to tend to the living.


I was twenty-two and ready for peace. I had spent four years in the R.A.F as a wireless operator. During the war, I was lucky; I never came close to death. While the world bled from London to Leningrad; I walked away without a scratch. Make no mistake, I did my part in this war; I played my role and I never shirked the paymaster's orders. For four years, I trained, I marched, and I saluted across the British Isles. During the final months of the conflict, I ended up in Belgium and Holland with B.A.F.U. My unit was responsible for maintaining abandoned Nazi air fields, for allied aircraft.


When Germany surrendered, to the allies in gutted Berlin, I was in Fuhlsbuttel, a northern suburb of Hamburg. Our squadron took up a comfortable residence in its undamaged aerodrome located not far from the main thoroughfare. At the time, I didn't think much about Fuhlsbuttel, I felt it was between nothing and nowhere. It was much like every other town our unit drove through during the dying days of the war. Nothing was out of place and it was, quiet, clean and as silent as a Sunday afternoon.

While I slept in my new bed, in this drowsy neighbourhood; the twentieth century's greatest and bloodiest conflict came to an end at midnight on May seventh. On the morning of the eighth, our R.A.F commander hastily arranged a victory party, for that afternoon. The festivities were held in a school gymnasium close to the airport.


No one considered or asked on that day of victory "what happens next." That was tomorrow's problem. I certainly didn't question my destiny on that spring afternoon. Instead like the Romans, I followed the edict carpe diem: I ate too much, I smoked too much and I drank too much. And, why not I reasoned, the war was over and I had survived whereas many others had been extinguished as quickly as it takes to blow out a flame on a candle.

[1923]

A True Store About Live Lived on the Razor's Edge of History

"This is one of the most poignant memoirs I've ever read. Harry Smith's life is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit to survive, endure, and thrive against all manner of tragedies and obstacles."
Highly recommended.  --Midwest Book Review



http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C




Barley Hole was for my great grandfather Canaan, the land of milk and honey. For my father, it was paradise lost and for my mother, Barley Hole was a curse. It was a place that haunted her spirit and her soul throughout her life. To me, Barley Hole is a name forever etched on the map of my family's heart; it is where betrayal and injustice nearly thrust us into oblivion.
The Barley Hole Chronicles are an odyssey of the human spirit that stretch across time and geography to incorporate, diverse personalities, personal hardships, World Wars and the struggle for peace and love, in a society fallen from grace. These Chronicles document one Yorkshire family's decent into the wilderness of poverty and hunger. It is a personal record of one young man's struggle to survive the great depression, the Second World War and the hazards and wonders of life in post war Germany. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a summation of two memoirs by Harry Leslie Smith 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a true account of a time and place when life, full of raw emotion, was never so real. It is also a social history of the 20th century at its bloodiest and deadliest time.

[1923]

A True Story About A Life Lived On The Razor's edge of History

http://www.amazon.com/The-Barley-Hole-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B006382B3C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334338116&sr=1-1

I don't know why but the winter rains stopped and spring came early in 1945. When Hitler committed suicide at the end of April, the flowers and trees were in full bloom and the summer birds returned to their nesting grounds. Not long after the great dictator's corpse was incinerated in a bomb crater by his few remaining acolytes, the war in Europe ended. After so much death, ruin and misery; it was remarkable to me how nature resiliently budded back to life in barns, in fields and across battlegrounds, now calm and silent. The earth said to her children; it is time to abandon your swords and harness your ploughs; the ground is ripe and this is the season to tend to the living.


I was twenty-two and ready for peace. I had spent four years in the R.A.F as a wireless operator. During the war, I was lucky; I never came close to death. While the world bled from London to Leningrad; I walked away without a scratch. Make no mistake, I did my part in this war; I played my role and I never shirked the paymaster's orders. For four years, I trained, I marched, and I saluted across the British Isles. During the final months of the conflict, I ended up in Belgium and Holland with B.A.F.U. My unit was responsible for maintaining abandoned Nazi air fields, for allied aircraft.


When Germany surrendered, to the allies in gutted Berlin, I was in Fuhlsbuttel, a northern suburb of Hamburg. Our squadron took up a comfortable residence in its undamaged aerodrome located not far from the main thoroughfare. At the time, I didn't think much about Fuhlsbuttel, I felt it was between nothing and nowhere. It was much like every other town our unit drove through during the dying days of the war. Nothing was out of place and it was, quiet, clean and as silent as a Sunday afternoon.

While I slept in my new bed, in this drowsy neighbourhood; the twentieth century's greatest and bloodiest conflict came to an end at midnight on May seventh. On the morning of the eighth, our R.A.F commander hastily arranged a victory party, for that afternoon. The festivities were held in a school gymnasium close to the airport.


No one considered or asked on that day of victory "what happens next." That was tomorrow's problem. I certainly didn't question my destiny on that spring afternoon. Instead like the Romans, I followed the edict carpe diem: I ate too much, I smoked too much and I drank too much. And, why not I reasoned, the war was over and I had survived whereas many others had been extinguished as quickly as it takes to blow out a flame on a candle.

[1923]

The Barley Hole Chronicles: From Hell to Hamburg 477 pages
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006382B3C

"Smith's coming of age memoir takes readers on a journey of poverty and heartbreak that is the author's childhood and young adulthood growing up between the first and second world wars. Smith stays true to himself and his inner voice as he recounts the events of his early life. The narrative flow develops and ages, if you will, as he does throughout the book. It's incredibly powerful to see a precocious child harden under his circumstances and age into an adult set on escaping the ever looming workhouse and empty stomach that seemed to define his childhood. "

[1923]

There is love and heart break in this episode of his life but there is always a sense of humour and of optimism for the future. ”
ncpulla  |  2 reviewers made a similar statement
“
For me, perhaps, the most astonishing thing was to read about a post-war that I had never been taught about and never even imagined. ”
Vickie Adair  |  2 reviewers made a similar statement
“
I couldn't stop reading and immediately purchased the next book in the series Hamburg 1947 when finished. ”



http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006382B3C