Charles Arthur Wanger
23 August 1926 - 03 September 2018
This is a photograph of a certificate presented to my grandfather, on the Liberation of Norway in May 1945.
He was born in Poplar, East London to Arthur George Henry Wanger and Anna Richardson. He had 5 other siblings: 3 brothers and 2 sisters.
Charles, or Charlie, as he liked to be known, enlisted on 02 November 1944 in Cantebury. At the time he enlisted he was 18 and working as a timber porter, presumably for his father (who is listed in 1939 England and Wales Census as a wood carrier). By the time he enlisted, conscription was in place in England, so enlistment may be the wrong word to use! Conscription had began in 1939, with the age limit being gradually lowered to meet the demands of the war.
Charlie had insurance with one of the approved societies, The Great Eastern Railway.
From 02 November 1944 to 13 December 1944 he is listed as being in the CSC or possibly GSC. We have Charlie's original Pay Book, Service Record and Discharge Record. If it is the GSC this stood for General Service Corps. From July 1942 men were first enlisted in the GSC for 6 weeks to assess their skills and determine where it would be suitable to post them based on these and the current military needs. Charlie did not serve 6 weeks, though by 1944 things were very different.
I know he would have been sent for parachute training to RAF Ringway in Cheshire, which trained all Allied paratroopers. While he was away from London he met my grandmother Sheila Margaret Peake. The story is that, because he had spent a lot of time working outside, he was quite tanned and had a moustache. Apparently he looked like Errol Flynn and I guess with his Cockney accent he would have been exotic.
From 14 December 1944 to 16 March 1948 Charlie served as a Gunner, in the 96th Airborne Light Battery, which was part of the 1st Airborne Parachute Division, known as the Red Devils, because of the colour of their berets.
The story is that Charlie was the first man to land in Norway on 08 May 1945, as part of Operation Doomsday, to liberate Norway.
Charlie shows up again in the Electoral Register for October 1948 when he is living back in the East End, not far from his parents.
In December 1948 Charlie and Sheila were married in Poplar. My uncle Charles Lee Wanger, was born in June 1950 and my mother, Sylvia Ann, in December 1951. The family moved to Stoke on Trent, in Staffordshire in 1957.
