Writing inspiration comes in many forms, but for Arthur Callister it was a severe dose of poisoning in a Spanish bar which spurred him to put pen to paper to tell the story of his wartime experiences working alongside German prisoners and “aliens”.
He was out celebrating New Year’s Eve when, so far as he can tell, somebody must have spiked his drink.
“It was one of the worst experiences that I ever had,” said 75-year-old Mr Callister, of Apley Court, Wellington.
“Whatever the dope was that went into my drink, I totally lost my marbles and was fighting little demons coming out of the ceiling. My wife had to sit on me to keep me down. For nearly two weeks I did not know who I was, or where I was.
“By the time I had finished the treatment I did not have the strength to lift a cup of coffee. I was totally zapped. In the end I thought that I would sit down, and what could I do? That’s when I decided to put it all down - put down this story of what life was like for me in the Isle of Man in this long-forgotten period.”
Mr Callister was living at the time in Fuengirola and to this day does not know who spiked his drink, nor why.
But that event back in 1989 sparked the process which, at last, has seen his book The Enemy At Close Quarters come into print.
Although not published as an autobiography - names have been changed - it is a factual account of his experiences as a boy on a farm during wartime on the Isle of Man, where he rubbed shoulders with German prisoners of war, and later some of the many people who were interned on the island because they were of Italian or German backgrounds and considered a potential threat to national security.
“During the war I was raised by my aunt and uncle on a farm on the Isle of Man. I don’t think I was ever more afraid in my life than the first morning that I saw a German soldier standing in the farmyard.”
The soldier was one of a number of prisoners sent to the farm in response to a request from Arthur’s uncle for some manpower to help harvest the potatoes.
For young Arthur it was a confusing period. Here he was, a mere boy, and he was supervising German prisoners on the farm.
“When I got to know them, they were just young men, not ferocious people. The sergeant who had initially scared the living daylights out of me produced a photograph from his jacket of him with his wife and his son.
“He pointed out that the son was very similar to me, which for some reason totally soured my relationship with him. I did not want to be compared with his son.”
After the Germans, came the internees, and the main part of the book is about four of them.
“Three of them were of Italian origin. One of them was Dutch. His name I shall never forget. It was Carlos Maximilian Pineapple.
“One of them came from Cardiff and had the most beautiful Welsh accent. His father had a little business there. He was the eldest of the family of three children. His parents had come to South Wales in the early 1930s.
“They had British citizenship but I think the problem was they were not supposed to bring a child with them, and had done, and as a result he had not been registered. So they locked him up.
“One of the things I still don’t understand is man’s inhumanity to man. His brother was in the Welsh Guards. His sister made camouflage nets for the Army, and here he was, behind the wire in the Isle of Man.
“The first time I had ever seen a man really cry was when these people were being sent home. The camp commandant sent for him and said: ‘We are discharging you, give me an address in Italy you want to go to.’
“This bloke hardly spoke two words of Italian. He spoke Welsh. They were offering to send these Italians back to Italy, but as far as they were concerned Italy was not their home.”
After leaving the Isle of Man Mr Callister was in the Merchant Navy for a time, then the police, before running a guest house in Cornwall. He first came to Shropshire in 1960 when he worked for the post office in Wellington, and later lived in South Africa for nearly 10 years before returning to Wellington in 2000.
The Enemy At Close Quarters is his first book to be published.
“There’s another, which I call Love Thy Neighbour, that I have sent off so many times now that it almost knows its own way round. No publisher will touch it. It’s about religion which, as Salman Rushdie found out, is not a subject you tinker with.”
- The Enemy At Close Quarters is published by Athena Press and costs £5.99.
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