Showing posts with label Second World War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Second World War. Show all posts
Simple Charm by Julie Summers
This autumn I went to visit the National Trust's Nuffield Place, the home of William Morris, Lord Nuffield, from 1933 until his death thirty year later at the age of 85. William Morris was one of the wealthiest men in Britain and yet he lived frugally and privately with his wife who he met at a cycle club in Oxford before he was 20. 
He started life mending bicycles and was himself a winning rider. His workshop was soon turned over to motor cycles and he designed by Morris Motor Cycle in about 1902. At this stage he moved into buildings in Longwall Street, Oxford, opposite Magdalen College, where he repaired bicycles, operated a taxi service and repaired and hired out cars. In 1912 he designed his first car, the bullnose Morris. His work was interrupted by the First World War but in 1919 he sold 400 cars and by 1925 he was selling 56,000. 
At the height of his career he was reputed to be earning £2,000 per day (about the same in dollars given the woeful state of sterling at the moment!). When asked about his great wealth he replied 'Well, you can only wear one suit at at time.' What struck me about this lovely 1930s house was its modesty that reflected its owners'. No ostentatious decoration or chandaliers, no leathery portraits of ancient ancestors dragged up from a past that didn't truly exist, and no extravagant gold bath taps. 
For me the most exciting discovery was that the cupboard in his bedroom was not full of clothes but was in fact a miniature workshop. It was a vignette into his life that I had not expected. Apparently he was a light sleeper and would often 'worry out'a problem in the night. I had a vision of him sitting in his pyjamas in front of his cupboard, allowing his mind to rest on the various objects in there that might provide an answer to his questions. Lord Nuffield was famous for his philanthropy. There are well-known foundations that bear his name, such as the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, which was established in 1931 or the Nuffield Foundation (1943) which he endowed with a capital sum of about £10,000,000 'to provide medical and social relief'. This grew out of his work in the 1920s and 1930s to help relieve the 'sick, crippled and the poor and to alleviate social injustice.' But what really interested me were the smaller donations made with aforethought and great generosity that would go almost unmentioned and at times almost unnoticed. On his 62nd birthday, on 10 October 1939, he put a cheque into a nurse's collecting box at the Mansion House. The logo on the poster she was holding read 'Give freely' to the Lord Mayor's Red Cross Fund. When the cheque was unfolded it was in the sum of £100,000 (about £4 million in 2016). 
My favourite donation he made is even less well-known than the Red Cross cheque. During the five and a half years of the Second World War he donated sanitary towels to the women's forces. This was the most thoughtful thing I could think of and I was deeply touched by his concern for the comfort and reassurance of a steady supply of these vitals items, known by the recipients as 'Nuffield's Nifties'. You really couldn't make it up. William Morris, Lord Nuffield, gave away £30,000,000 (or over £2 billion in today's money) over the course of his life. He will remain the most famous of British philanthropists for all time but for me he will be the modest millionaire who knew enough about the real world to know what was really needed.
The Camoufleurs of Leamington Spa - Celia Rees
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Interior Coventry Cathedral - John Piper
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| In Defence of Albion - Paul Nash |
Some artists, however were given a 'bigger' job to do. These were the Camouflage Artists - the Camoufleurs. Artists and designers whose task it was to devise ways to conceal important sites, factories, air fields, power stations, ships, docks and naval installations, from German aircraft and submarines.
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| Camouflaged Factory Buildings - Colin Moss |
The Camoufleurs were based in my town, Leamington Spa, described at the time as 'a pleasant but mildly dilapidated spa town'. The sudden influx of 'arty types' caused some consternation. Men with long hair and donkey jackets walking round the town in sandals with no socks; women with short hair and wearing trousers. It wasn't what the town was used to. So much so, that two of their number were briefly detained on suspicion of spying after being seen out in the countryside in an open top Rolls Royce, the driver wearing a fedora. Talk of drinking, wild parties and free love scandalised the natives even further but the Camoufleurs were here to do a serious job.
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| The Big Tower Camouflaged, 1943 - Colin Moss |
At
the beginning of the war, their work was focussed on disguising strategic buildings from the air. A camouflage officer would fly over the prospective site, take notes and photographs and return to headquarters in the Regent Hotel. Here, notes and photographs were worked up into perspective drawings or three dimensional models if the site was of particular strategic importance. The models were taken to the 'viewing room', a converted Roller Skating Rink at the bottom of the town. They were viewed in a special chamber on a giant turntable which allowed the model to be seen from different angles under different lighting. A sun, set on a giant arm, could be moved and fixed at any altitude. There was also a moonlight viewing room to deal with the increasing frequency of night raids. The models and accompanying colour charts were then used as guides to camouflage the site with paint and netting.
the beginning of the war, their work was focussed on disguising strategic buildings from the air. A camouflage officer would fly over the prospective site, take notes and photographs and return to headquarters in the Regent Hotel. Here, notes and photographs were worked up into perspective drawings or three dimensional models if the site was of particular strategic importance. The models were taken to the 'viewing room', a converted Roller Skating Rink at the bottom of the town. They were viewed in a special chamber on a giant turntable which allowed the model to be seen from different angles under different lighting. A sun, set on a giant arm, could be moved and fixed at any altitude. There was also a moonlight viewing room to deal with the increasing frequency of night raids. The models and accompanying colour charts were then used as guides to camouflage the site with paint and netting.
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| Spraying Paint on an Airfield for Camouflage - Robin Darwin |
There was also a Naval Camouflage Unit based in the Art Gallery in Avenue Road. Their task was to make vessels near invisible to German war ships and submarines. Designs were tested on specially made models in one of the two large viewing tanks.
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| The Outside Viewing Tank - James Yunge-Bateman |
Quite apart from their camouflage duties, the artists painted and sketched what they saw about them. They painted murals in the British Restaurant (now sadly lost). They painted the people they encountered, the houses and streets they lived in, the day to day life of the town.
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| Grace at the Sausage Hatch - Mary Adshead |
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| Lansdowne Circus, 1943 - Christopher Ironside |
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| The Parade - Dorothy Annan |
They recorded how the war was affecting the town. The arrival of evacuees escaping the bombing in nearby Coventry. The aftermath of Leamington's one and only bomb. Digging for Victory - Newbold Common given over to cabbages.
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| Evacuee in Leamington Spa - Janey Ironside |
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| Morning after the Blitz - Colin Moss |
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| Cabbage Field with Townscape Beyond - Colin Moss |
Their camouflage work is now a footnote in history but the paintings that these artists made of Leamington are a unique record of life in a small Midlands town in the Second World War. One particular painting, held in Leamington Art Gallery, has special, personal resonance for me. My family came from Leamington and this picture of Clarendon Street in 1940 after a heavy snowfall, shows my aunt and uncle's house. The woman standing in the doorway could be my Aunty Olive, the little boy with her my cousin, Rodney.
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| Leamington, 1940 - Stephen Bone |
I would like to thank Leamington Museum and Art Gallery for their recent excellent exhibition, Concealment and Deception: The Art of The Camoufleurs in Leamington Spa 1939 -45.
wwe.celiarees.com
Women's History by Julie Summers
Sometimes when I am asked what I write I say: ‘I write about people who get themselves into difficult situations and, by and large, get themselves out of them again.’ That usually gets a positive reaction. If, however, I say ‘I write social history about the Second World War and especially women on the Home Front’ people’s eyes tend to glaze over and they move to another part of the room. Same books, different packaging.
So today I thought I would share a little bit of what I do and why. I write because I love it. I can’t think of anything else I would rather be than a writer. I’ve always wanted to write, ever since I was a little girl. I used to make up stories and tell them to my toys and later to my friends. I even used to write stories for my boyfriend in airmail letters when I was living in Vienna and he in London. We’ve now been married for 29 years, so the stories can’t have been too bad.
However, in the end I wanted to write about real people, not ones I had made up in my head. I find that the lives people lead are fascinating. There is no such thing as a typical person or a ‘normal’ reaction and that is what began to interest me. I was working in the art world but found myself more drawn to the artists themselves than to their work. I wanted to know what made them tick. I remember interviewing the sculptor Anthony Caro and his wife, the painter Sheila Girling, about their lives together as artists. Tony told me that it was Sheila who chose the colours for his early sculptures because she had a better eye for colour than he did. I was tickled pink by that, especially as no one had ever interviewed them together before, so the question was not one he had been asked. I like titbits like that. They are just a little quirky.
When I am interviewing people for my non-fiction books I don’t use any type of recording device because that can be off-putting. I just ask questions and take notes. The interviews generally last about 45 minutes to an hour and in that time I get perhaps three or four sentences I can use, but those are usually gems. For example, I was talking to a lady called Jean Hammond whose story is told in Stranger in the House. Her father was in a German POW camp and when he came home, she told me, they never ate a meal indoors. They sat in the garden or, when it was raining or snowing, under the porch wrapped in blankets. She said it in a matter-of-fact way as if that was perfectly normal. But it was a new one on me. I asked her why and she said she never knew. She imagined it had something to do with his POW experience but as she was a child when he came back she just accepted it.
In researching and writing Jambusters I constantly found women replying to my request for interviews with ‘oh, I won’t have anything interesting to tell you.’ When someone says that my ears prick up and I think: ‘oh, you don’t, do you? Well I think you’re wrong…’ And more often than not they tell me some glorious detail. A woman in an Oxfordshire WI remembered her father coming into the kitchen where members of the Produce Group were making vast quantities of jam. One of the ladies was complaining that she was wasting precious jam as she could not get every last drop from the bottom. So he took a wooden spoon outside to his tool shed and half an hour later returned with a spoon that had a flat side and a sharp point. This was ideal for scraping the jam off the bottom of the pan and everyone was delighted with the design. Needless to say it was copied. I find other gems in diaries, memoirs and in odd collections of notes in the Imperial War Museum archives. It was there that I found Mr Fagg, who worked in the Board of Trade in the war, supervising coupons and taking responsibility for the width of the gusset of women’s knickers, the amount of metal in over-sized corsets and the length of men’s socks. You literally couldn’t make it up. He is one of the key players in Fashion on the Ration.
I also found one of my favourite facts of all time at the IWM. Lord Nuffield, the great car maker and generous philanthropist, supplied all the women’s services with sanitary towels for the entire Second World War. These things were new-fangled and very expensive and he knew the young women in the services would not be able to afford them or indeed get guaranteed supplies. It was an act of immense generosity and far-sightedness on his part and no one knows about it. Except you do now! They were known as Nuffield’s Nifties. Writing women’s history is not always easy. There are a few of us who do it: Jane Robinson, Janie Hampton and Midge Gilles to name three I know well. We sometimes find it hard to get taken seriously by male historians who write about grave matters like tanks and planes and battles and generals with handlebar moustaches. In a list of the top 50 historians published last year there were just four women and of those I was the only one who writes about women.
Women are at the heart of my next book, too, but this one contains explosions and secret codes, radio operators and stealth. I wonder how that will be received?
So today I thought I would share a little bit of what I do and why. I write because I love it. I can’t think of anything else I would rather be than a writer. I’ve always wanted to write, ever since I was a little girl. I used to make up stories and tell them to my toys and later to my friends. I even used to write stories for my boyfriend in airmail letters when I was living in Vienna and he in London. We’ve now been married for 29 years, so the stories can’t have been too bad.
However, in the end I wanted to write about real people, not ones I had made up in my head. I find that the lives people lead are fascinating. There is no such thing as a typical person or a ‘normal’ reaction and that is what began to interest me. I was working in the art world but found myself more drawn to the artists themselves than to their work. I wanted to know what made them tick. I remember interviewing the sculptor Anthony Caro and his wife, the painter Sheila Girling, about their lives together as artists. Tony told me that it was Sheila who chose the colours for his early sculptures because she had a better eye for colour than he did. I was tickled pink by that, especially as no one had ever interviewed them together before, so the question was not one he had been asked. I like titbits like that. They are just a little quirky.
Anthony Caro's Early One Morning 1962
Jean Hammond with her two grandmothers c. 1940
In researching and writing Jambusters I constantly found women replying to my request for interviews with ‘oh, I won’t have anything interesting to tell you.’ When someone says that my ears prick up and I think: ‘oh, you don’t, do you? Well I think you’re wrong…’ And more often than not they tell me some glorious detail. A woman in an Oxfordshire WI remembered her father coming into the kitchen where members of the Produce Group were making vast quantities of jam. One of the ladies was complaining that she was wasting precious jam as she could not get every last drop from the bottom. So he took a wooden spoon outside to his tool shed and half an hour later returned with a spoon that had a flat side and a sharp point. This was ideal for scraping the jam off the bottom of the pan and everyone was delighted with the design. Needless to say it was copied. I find other gems in diaries, memoirs and in odd collections of notes in the Imperial War Museum archives. It was there that I found Mr Fagg, who worked in the Board of Trade in the war, supervising coupons and taking responsibility for the width of the gusset of women’s knickers, the amount of metal in over-sized corsets and the length of men’s socks. You literally couldn’t make it up. He is one of the key players in Fashion on the Ration.
William Buller Fagg in his Home Guard uniform
I also found one of my favourite facts of all time at the IWM. Lord Nuffield, the great car maker and generous philanthropist, supplied all the women’s services with sanitary towels for the entire Second World War. These things were new-fangled and very expensive and he knew the young women in the services would not be able to afford them or indeed get guaranteed supplies. It was an act of immense generosity and far-sightedness on his part and no one knows about it. Except you do now! They were known as Nuffield’s Nifties. Writing women’s history is not always easy. There are a few of us who do it: Jane Robinson, Janie Hampton and Midge Gilles to name three I know well. We sometimes find it hard to get taken seriously by male historians who write about grave matters like tanks and planes and battles and generals with handlebar moustaches. In a list of the top 50 historians published last year there were just four women and of those I was the only one who writes about women.
Women are at the heart of my next book, too, but this one contains explosions and secret codes, radio operators and stealth. I wonder how that will be received?
The True Cost of War by Julie Summers
I am working on a glorious project about the secret life of houses during the Second World War. It is a fascinating topic and there are some glorious details emerging. However, I do have to remind myself that the war was terrible, destructive, murderous. So today I thought I would concentrate on a question I have spent a great deal of time working on: the true cost of war. I do not mean in the sense of how much it cost the British government to prosecute the Second World War – that figure is recorded as somewhere in the region of £10,000,000 a day. No, I’m interested in the cost of the war in human terms. Not numbers of killed or wounded but the impact it had on their families.
Last month I visited Etaples Military Cemetery and was reminded that 10,816 men and women are buried there. It was the cemetery for nearly 20 First World War hospitals. Each of those buried would have had parents and possibly siblings. Some would have been married with children, so the number of people mourning the dead buried at Etaples would be in the tens of thousands. Next year the Commonwealth War Graves Commission will be 100 years old. This remarkable organisation commemorates over 1.7 million men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died in the two world wars. It was set up in May 1917 in response to the outpouring of grief over the slaughter on the battlefields of France, Belgium and further afield on Gallipoli and in Palestine and Greece. Bodies could not be repatriated. That only started in the late 1960s, so men had to be buried where they fell and the Commission’s job over the next decades was oversee the construction of cemeteries and memorials. It now has a presence in 154 countries worldwide. It is through their remarkable determination to remember the war dead and to commemorate them in perpetuity, that has shaped our remembrance services of today. But for the men and women whose sons, daughters, lovers, husbands, brothers, uncles were sucked up into the Forces in 1939 commemoration was the last thing anybody wanted to be thinking about. Every hope was for the safe return of a loved family member or friend.
One of the cruellest notifications a family could receive, short of killed, was Missing in Action. In Jambusters I told the story of diarist Clara Milburn whose son, Alan, was posted as ‘missing’ after Dunkirk. Her diary entries over the summer of 1940 make haunting reading. In June she wrote: ‘How curious this life is. A sort of deep stillness comes over everything from time to time. There is not much traffic on the roads during the week and the village seems empty in the evenings. One misses the young life everywhere, particularly Alan coming in in the early evening.’ A month later there was still no news of her son: ‘Always one is thinking of him, wondering whether he still lives and if so, whether he is well, where he is, what he does all day, what discomforts he is suffering. If… if... And so the days go by.’ At the end of July she heard that he was a prisoner of war and hugged her husband ‘for sheer joy at the good news’. It was not until October that she received a letter from him, a full nine months after she had last spoken to him over the phone. Alan Milburn returned safely but a very changed man.
For Barbara Cartland the news from France was the same as for Clara Milburn. Both her brothers, Ronald and Tony, were fighting with the British Expeditionary Force. Ronald wrote to his mother just before he went into action: ‘This is just to send you my love and bless you always. Don’t be anxious if there is a long silence from me – the fog of war is pretty impenetrable. We shall win in the end, but there’s horror and tribulation ahead of all of us. We can’t avoid it. What a waste it all is, but after months of desolation we shall gain and retain what you and I have always understood the meaning of – freedom.’ Barbara’s mother, Polly, had lost her husband in 1918 and knew full well the horror of the telegram. It came twice over that hot, dry summer of 1940. Both her sons were ‘missing’. In January 1941 came the terrible news that Ronald had been killed in action on 30 May 1940, hit in the head by a German bullet. Barbara wrote: ‘We had gradually been losing hope of hearing that he was alive – now we knew the truth. My mother was wonderful. “Missing” is the cruellest uncertainty of all, as she well knew, for my father had been missing in 1918; and that ghastly waiting, watching, hoping and praying was hers all over again – not twice, but three times, for Tony was still “missing”.’ Tony Cartland had been killed the day before his brother, hit by a shell. For Polly and Barbara Cartland there was no happy ending to their story.
Ronald Cartland described ‘the fog of war’ meaning there was confusion and chaos as indeed there was. And the pressure on families was immense. My grandfather was taken prisoner on Singapore on 15 February 1942 and the first official notice my grandmother received that her husband was alive but a POW was on Christmas Eve of that year, almost 11 months after he had been captured. For her the fog of war was exceptionally thick. Twenty seven per cent of the prisoners of the Japanese died in the camps all over South East Asia. My grandfather came home ‘safely’ in November 1945. He was a changed man as were others who came back from that oft forgotten theatre of war. The families of these men were still counting the cost of war decades later as the emotional fall-out left scars on minds, hearts and bodies. A sombre thought but one worth thinking I feel.
Etaples Military Cemetery, France
Clara Milburn, 1940
Dame Barbara Cartland, c. 1941
My grandmother, Alex Toosey, with her 3 children 1945
Standing Alone on the Edge of Europe by Julie Summers
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| Earl Grey 1764–1845 © Lord Howick |
The campaign was fought on both sides with dirty tricks, lies and some of the most unpleasant rhetoric and scaremongering I have ever heard. Claims and counterclaims about EU funding, EU rules, an EU army, EU migrants flew around like swarms of angry bees. Amid the cries of joy, horror, sadness, despair, disbelief, excitement and any other sentiment you like to attribute to the sentence, a few thoughtful voices have been heard. I thought I might take time to reflect on one of those for my piece this month, rather than writing about 'the true cost of war' as I had planned. That will wait until next month when it might turn out to be rather topical if negotiations go badly...
Anthony Beevor is one of those rare historians who writes history that is both thoroughly readable and wholly to be trusted. He is a researcher par excellence and has an overview of history that is, in my opinion, almost unparalleled. He suggested that looking at history would be an interesting exercise in contemplating what Britain thinks it can achieve while standing alone. How will the country (or should it be countries because England and Wales voted out and Scotland and Northern Ireland vote to remain) defend itself in the future. He wrote:
'Ever since the late 17th Century, we have relied on continental coalitions to oppose the over-mighty oppressor threatening the peace of Europe. Britain alone was never strong enough in manpower to confront a major power alone on land.'
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| Howick Hall was used as a convalescent hospital for Other Ranks from 1941-1945. Over 11 different nationalities were treated there including Finnish, Greek, Polish, Czech, Dutch and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen. |
Canada had already sent thousands of troops to our shores in December 1939. They were joined by more divisions over the course of the war including the Canadian Royal Air Force. We had over three million American GIs in 1944 in the build up to D-Day, not to speak of Australian and New Zealanders who helped to defend these shores both on land and in the air. Far from standing alone, we were very much 'in it together'. Churchill knew that he could not win the war without Allies. He once said: 'There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.' That appears to be a risk for our future at the moment.
Anthony Beevor wrote in his article in the Mail on Sunday: 'No British politician will ever again dare to say that we are punching above our weight.' He concluded: 'We will be the most hated country just when we need to win friends.'
On this occasion I sincerely hope that he is wrong and that we will win back friends so that we have allies in the future but from this perspective and at this moment in time, it looks like we have precious few of either.
Review: Paul Scott's The Chinese Love Pavilion, by Y S Lee
Hello, friends. This month, I’d like to talk about a novel by Paul Scott called The Chinese Love Pavilion. I know, I know: SKETCHY TITLE ALERT! Don't worry: I understand that this is a PG-rated blog.
I picked up the novel as part of the research for my work-in-progress (which is set in Malaya during the Second World War). Since The Chinese Love Pavilion takes place largely in Malaya just after the war, I was eager to experience another writer's vision of the place. Also, while I’ve never read Scott's best-known work, the Raj Quartet, his reputation goes before him. However, I’m going to warn you now: if you’re a rabid fan of The Jewel in the Crown, brace yourself. This will get ugly.
The Chinese Love Pavilion, published in 1960, is about a friendship between two Englishmen in the colonies. The narrator, Tom Brent, is young and in search of a shape for his life. He meets the unconventional, charismatic Brian Saxby in 1930s Bombay and, over the course of a whiskey-soaked evening, falls under his spell. This sets up the men for long conversations about the soul, fate, and the meaning of life. I have a limited tolerance for cod philosophy at the best of times, and that limit plummets when the "exotic" East is used as a picturesque backdrop for these kinds of musings. However, I stuck with it.
The story then skips over the Second World War and picks up in 1946 or so, when a war-injured Brent is brought to Malaya and instructed to find Saxby. Apparently, Saxby is hiding out the Malayan jungle and might be responsible for the revenge-slayings of some Chinese civilians. The metaphysical novel morphs into a kind of homage to Heart of Darkness, with Brent travelling deeper into jungle-dark territory to find his legendary but tortured friend. Promising, right?
Actually, I can't remember the last time I was this appalled by a well-reviewed novel. The self-indulgent metaphysical musings drove me berserk, but I understand that this is a question of taste and personal bias. I am happy to report that the pacing of the novel's second half is excellent. Also, Scott is gifted with an extraordinary sense of place. His descriptions of the Malayan landscape are vivid and entirely convincing, and his eye for natural detail is impeccable.
However, there's one massive problem with the novel that taints everything else it attempts: the way it uses prostitution. Women - specifically, the sexual services of young Indian and Chinese girls - are the common currency of this novel. I'm not exaggerating in the least. Here are three conversations from the novel, in the order they occur:
At a restaurant in Bombay, where Brent and Saxby have just dined:
When Brent visits Saxby after a three-year gap:
In small-town Malaya, where the officer-in-charge offers Brent the use of "his" designated prostitute:
Do you see the progression here? Prostitution is first an economic fact, and then a gesture of welcome between friends, and finally a common courtesy, like a cigarette or a cup of tea. I wondered, at first, if Scott’s obsessive attention to prostitution could be read as a kind of critique of colonialism, or a comment on the moral effects of the British imperial project. I also considered the possibility that Scott’s irony was so subtle as to be undetected by this reader. Sadly, no.
In a still-later scene, Brent describes a British soldier cuddling a prostitute named Suki "who by European standards was no more than a child and looked absurdly fragile in his beefy arms". This is an isolated moment of light-hearted physical contrast in a novel that otherwise takes itself extremely seriously. Significantly, it features a young woman who, if she was "European" - that is, worthy of civilized treatment - would be "no more than a child". I don't think the word "beefy" is an accident, here. It's an evocation of what's familiarly, essentially English. And the "beefy" Englishman who holds Suki - a loud-mouthed but fundamentally loyal and reliable soldier - has the approval of all characters. Could the subtext be any clearer? Child prostitution is a harmless joke, so long as the women are brown and the men are white.
Could it get any worse? Why, yes, it can!
The second, thriller-esque half of the novel turns on the fate of Teena, an enigmatic prostitute of Eurasian descent with whom Brent falls in love. Of course, a “woman of the world” (Scott’s euphemism) cannot be rewarded with a fairy-tale ending. She was always going to be punished for her sins. Teena’s clumsily foreshadowed death is never fully resolved: she might have been murdered, or she might have committed suicide. Brent can’t decide, and nobody else cares. And ultimately, in the schema of The Chinese Love Pavilion, the question matters not. Brent concludes, “Sometimes, I think she was doomed in that few seconds it took me to unbolt and open the door of the hostel in Bombay to which Saxby had come to find shelter…” That is, Teena’s fate was decided by the initial meeting between Brent and Saxby some ten years earlier, in a different country, when Teena herself was a small child. This is perhaps more illogical to a person who’s read the novel even than to somebody who’s never heard of Paul Scott.
The primary relationship of the novel isn’t that between Brent and Teena, or Brent and the Far East, or spirituality and war; it’s the bond holding together Brent and Saxby, and their fumbling attempts to understand their own importance in the world. India and Malaya are only picturesque backdrops, Teena merely a useful symbol, the Second World War but a minor interruption.
When I mentioned these criticisms to a friend (who is a huge fan of the Raj Quartet), she half-heartedly defended the novel as “an accurate representation of how white men viewed native women at that time, as much as it repulsive to us now”. I believe that it’s certainly an accurate representation of how Paul Scott viewed women of colour, both in 1946 when the story takes place, and in 1960 when it was published. But is that sufficient to excuse the novel? I think not.
A metaphysical novel about homosocial friendship and spiritual destiny could happen at any time, in any setting. Using the “exotic” East to lend sexual intrigue and distract credulous readers is a lazy narrative trick. Those who love Scott’s other work deserve better. We all do.
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Y S Lee is the author of the award-winning Mary Quinn mysteries (Walker Books). She blogs every Wednesday at www.yslee.com.
I picked up the novel as part of the research for my work-in-progress (which is set in Malaya during the Second World War). Since The Chinese Love Pavilion takes place largely in Malaya just after the war, I was eager to experience another writer's vision of the place. Also, while I’ve never read Scott's best-known work, the Raj Quartet, his reputation goes before him. However, I’m going to warn you now: if you’re a rabid fan of The Jewel in the Crown, brace yourself. This will get ugly.
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| Cover of the 2013 edition, published by the University of Chicago Press. The building pictured looks slightly like the pavilion described in the novel. |
The Chinese Love Pavilion, published in 1960, is about a friendship between two Englishmen in the colonies. The narrator, Tom Brent, is young and in search of a shape for his life. He meets the unconventional, charismatic Brian Saxby in 1930s Bombay and, over the course of a whiskey-soaked evening, falls under his spell. This sets up the men for long conversations about the soul, fate, and the meaning of life. I have a limited tolerance for cod philosophy at the best of times, and that limit plummets when the "exotic" East is used as a picturesque backdrop for these kinds of musings. However, I stuck with it.
The story then skips over the Second World War and picks up in 1946 or so, when a war-injured Brent is brought to Malaya and instructed to find Saxby. Apparently, Saxby is hiding out the Malayan jungle and might be responsible for the revenge-slayings of some Chinese civilians. The metaphysical novel morphs into a kind of homage to Heart of Darkness, with Brent travelling deeper into jungle-dark territory to find his legendary but tortured friend. Promising, right?
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| An early edition |
Actually, I can't remember the last time I was this appalled by a well-reviewed novel. The self-indulgent metaphysical musings drove me berserk, but I understand that this is a question of taste and personal bias. I am happy to report that the pacing of the novel's second half is excellent. Also, Scott is gifted with an extraordinary sense of place. His descriptions of the Malayan landscape are vivid and entirely convincing, and his eye for natural detail is impeccable.
However, there's one massive problem with the novel that taints everything else it attempts: the way it uses prostitution. Women - specifically, the sexual services of young Indian and Chinese girls - are the common currency of this novel. I'm not exaggerating in the least. Here are three conversations from the novel, in the order they occur:
At a restaurant in Bombay, where Brent and Saxby have just dined:
"[The girls are] clean. Clean now, you understand, not later. Later the bloom goes. Disease enters."
"Does he sell them too?"
"To us first. Honoured guests. Then to others.
When Brent visits Saxby after a three-year gap:
"The little one holding the curtain so patiently, is for you. She is an untouchable, and, I am told, a virgin."
I looked from Saxby to the girl and back to Saxby. "That was very thoughtful of you."
He smiled. He said, "I have always been accommodating to my friends."
In small-town Malaya, where the officer-in-charge offers Brent the use of "his" designated prostitute:
"Did you like her?"
"Yes, I liked her."
..."Well while you're here she's yours. It all comes under the contract but you'll probably like to give her the occasional present."
"It's very hospitable of you. What about you?"
"I'll manage, I expect."
Do you see the progression here? Prostitution is first an economic fact, and then a gesture of welcome between friends, and finally a common courtesy, like a cigarette or a cup of tea. I wondered, at first, if Scott’s obsessive attention to prostitution could be read as a kind of critique of colonialism, or a comment on the moral effects of the British imperial project. I also considered the possibility that Scott’s irony was so subtle as to be undetected by this reader. Sadly, no.
In a still-later scene, Brent describes a British soldier cuddling a prostitute named Suki "who by European standards was no more than a child and looked absurdly fragile in his beefy arms". This is an isolated moment of light-hearted physical contrast in a novel that otherwise takes itself extremely seriously. Significantly, it features a young woman who, if she was "European" - that is, worthy of civilized treatment - would be "no more than a child". I don't think the word "beefy" is an accident, here. It's an evocation of what's familiarly, essentially English. And the "beefy" Englishman who holds Suki - a loud-mouthed but fundamentally loyal and reliable soldier - has the approval of all characters. Could the subtext be any clearer? Child prostitution is a harmless joke, so long as the women are brown and the men are white.
Could it get any worse? Why, yes, it can!
The second, thriller-esque half of the novel turns on the fate of Teena, an enigmatic prostitute of Eurasian descent with whom Brent falls in love. Of course, a “woman of the world” (Scott’s euphemism) cannot be rewarded with a fairy-tale ending. She was always going to be punished for her sins. Teena’s clumsily foreshadowed death is never fully resolved: she might have been murdered, or she might have committed suicide. Brent can’t decide, and nobody else cares. And ultimately, in the schema of The Chinese Love Pavilion, the question matters not. Brent concludes, “Sometimes, I think she was doomed in that few seconds it took me to unbolt and open the door of the hostel in Bombay to which Saxby had come to find shelter…” That is, Teena’s fate was decided by the initial meeting between Brent and Saxby some ten years earlier, in a different country, when Teena herself was a small child. This is perhaps more illogical to a person who’s read the novel even than to somebody who’s never heard of Paul Scott.
The primary relationship of the novel isn’t that between Brent and Teena, or Brent and the Far East, or spirituality and war; it’s the bond holding together Brent and Saxby, and their fumbling attempts to understand their own importance in the world. India and Malaya are only picturesque backdrops, Teena merely a useful symbol, the Second World War but a minor interruption.
When I mentioned these criticisms to a friend (who is a huge fan of the Raj Quartet), she half-heartedly defended the novel as “an accurate representation of how white men viewed native women at that time, as much as it repulsive to us now”. I believe that it’s certainly an accurate representation of how Paul Scott viewed women of colour, both in 1946 when the story takes place, and in 1960 when it was published. But is that sufficient to excuse the novel? I think not.
A metaphysical novel about homosocial friendship and spiritual destiny could happen at any time, in any setting. Using the “exotic” East to lend sexual intrigue and distract credulous readers is a lazy narrative trick. Those who love Scott’s other work deserve better. We all do.
---
Y S Lee is the author of the award-winning Mary Quinn mysteries (Walker Books). She blogs every Wednesday at www.yslee.com.
Fighting Cocks and Showcased Skeletons, or Respect in Retrospect, by Clare Mulley
One of my favourite pubs in my old stomping ground of St Albans has recently been targeted by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, which claims to be the oldest pub in the UK, dating from the eighth century, has drawn criticism for its historic name. PETA spokesperson Dawn Carr has suggested the pub be re-named to Ye Olde Clever Cocks to reflect a change in society’s attitudes.
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| Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, St Albans |
The St Albans pub does indeed sit on the site of an old cock-pit. The round, sunken arena was still evident in the floor when I use to drink there. But although this brutal sport is occasionally still secretly organised in England, it was made illegal here in the 1830s. Today the Fighting Cocks does not celebrate or encourage cock-fighting any more than The Flying Pig in Cambridge promotes porcine parachutists, or London’s The Hung, Drawn and Quartered advocates a return to capital punishment. In fact the landlord, Christo Tofalli, claims that the Fighting Cocks is particularly animal friendly, being near the park and welcoming dogs.
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| Signpost to the historic cockpit inside Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, St Albans |
PETA may be a well-motivated organization, but their suggestion completely disregards the value of social history. Sanitizing our past exploitation of animals will do nothing to prevent future abuses; possibly the reverse. Beyond that, such heritage has inherent value, worthy of respect and protection, as landlord Tofalli appreciates. ‘This is an historic building with a remarkable story behind it’ he commented. It is a story that wants to share with locals and tourists and so, I am pleased to report, he is not planning a pub name-change soon.
Sometimes however the clash of interests and perspectives can be more difficult to negotiate. Last month the remains of a German soldier, believed to be those of Private Friedrich Brandt, were put on display in a Belgian museum. Private Brandt was not a soldier of the Second World War, nor even of the Great War before it, but of the Battle of Waterloo two hundred years ago. His skeleton, less skull but with the telling discovery of a French musket-ball between his ribs, was found, traditionally enough, under a car park near the battle-site. It was the curvature of the spine that led to his unofficial identification as Private Brandt, a twenty-three year old, known to have kyphosis, from Hanover. The skeleton was subsequently put on show at the ‘Waterloo Memorial 1815’ display in a Belgian museum.
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| Skeleton of the Waterloo soldier, believed to be Private Friedrich Brandt, Belgium |
Within days the respected military historian, Rob Schäfer, had launched a petition, Peace for Friedrich Brandt, asking to have the bones removed from display and respectfully reburied. Schäfer is able to picture the young Brandt in the early 1800s, feeling ‘as though he were on the adventure of a lifetime’ as he left his Hanover home to make his way to the ports of the German North Sea. He would have then ventured across the channel and completed his training in the - to him very alien - environment of East Sussex, before fighting alongside his English counterparts at Waterloo. ‘Friedrich’s compatriots would have buried him with honour’, Schäfer argues compellingly, before asking whether it is no less our duty to do the same.
Yet Françoise Scheepers, director of the Belgian Tourist Office for Brussels and Wallonia, has stated that the purpose of the memorial display was ‘not to shock but to pay tribute’. The museum is non-profit making, so there is no commercial exploitation. By humanizing the story of the Battle of Waterloo, their display hopes to engage young people with their history, helping them to appreciate that the soldiers were not just statistics but the ‘people made of flesh and bones’ with whom Schäfer can already empathise so well.
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| The Battle of Waterloo (Image courtesy of Rob Schaefer) |
More broadly, what is it that makes the display of Private Brandt’s remains so much more provocative than those of the Ancient Egyptians, or other human reliquary? At what point, if ever, and under what terms, do bones become historic artifact rather than human remains? Is it the relatively young age of Private Brandt's skeleton, or is it something else that makes this display seem so disrespectful, such as the familiarity of his name? Or is it the fact that we have marked so many military anniversaries recently and honoured so many dead, and because we have developed such a culture of respect for fallen military heroes?
Both animal rights and respect for human remains are important issues that comment on people’s capacity for empathy, altruism, and the value of respect. Engagement with history demands similar qualities. While we must be careful not to impose modern sensibilities on our appreciation of the past, without a degree of respect and an attempt at empathy, any engagement loses meaning. The only thing that is absolutely clear is that sometimes it is the dialogue we have with history itself that is as important as the facts and artifacts of the past. Unless we ask the questions, unless we consider, criticise and debate not just the facts and stories, but the interpretations placed upon them and the uses made of them, history will itself become dead and meaningless.
A moving and inspiring encounter with Dutch wartime history
On a recent visit to my father’s birthplace, Amsterdam, I went to the Verzetsmuseum - the Museum of the Dutch Resistance - which is to be found in the leafy Plantage district to the East of the city. Like the far better-known Anne Frank Huis, it illuminates a dark time in Holland’s past - May 1940 to May 1945 - when the country was under Nazi occupation, and 100,000 Jews were amongst those sent to their deaths in concentration camps. The museum documents what took place during those years, focusing on the growing resistance to the Nazi presence both by political activists and by those who - although not necessarily identifying themselves as such - nonetheless took part in acts of resistance. It is these stories of bravery and self-sacrifice that the museum commemorates, using artefacts - letters, newspaper reports, photographs, and personal possessions - to illustrate what day-to-day resistance meant.
Here, for example, are the cardboard prints used to create the metal ‘stereotypes’ needed for printing one of Holland’s 1,300 underground newspapers. These included Het Parool (The Password), Vrij Nederland (Free Netherlands), Waarheid (Truth) and Ons Volk (Our People). To be found in possession of these would have meant arrest and deportation to a concentration camp (a fate which overtook at least 20,000 Dutch citizens), and so it was essential to keep such material hidden - in a bag with a false lining, such as this one.
Here’s the typewriter on which political activist Coba Veltman typed pamphlets calling for a national strike, in February 1941. Shocked and angered by the rounding up and deportation of young Jewish men in Amsterdam, following an outbreak of civil unrest in which a Nazi sympathiser was killed, Dutch dockworkers organised a strike, which was supported by transport services and businesses across the city. The strike was put down with extreme severity, but it helped to galvanise public outrage against anti-Semitism across the country.
This letter, found on the back of a cardboard notice listing regulations at Scheveningen Prison, was written by Arie Addicks, sentenced to death for distributing the underground newspaper, Het Parool. ‘Having worked for freedom, I’m now having to pay a high price for it,’ he writes, adding wryly, ‘The stake was death. I lost this match.’
Another grim reminder of the ‘price’ some Resistance fighters had to pay is seen in the museum’s display about Hannie Schaft, a young Communist activist, who, together with her fellow student, Truus Oversteegen, took it upon herself to kill men who’d been identified as collaborators. To do this, she sometimes disguised herself as a man, wearing glasses she didn’t need, in order to fool the authorities. Eventually she, too, was caught and executed.
One of my favourite exhibits is the pair of hiking boots, worn by Eleanore Hertzberger during her escape to England with her husband Eddie in 1943. The boots look well-worn - as indeed they might, since the young couple travelled by a rather roundabout route, through occupied Belgium and France, and across the Pyrenees. Exhausted and soaked to the skin, they were forced to crawl on hands and knees for the last part of the journey. It’s a scene straight out of John Buchan, or Le Carre.
I’m happy to say they made it - unlike some of the brave people whose lives are showcased here. What’s heartening is to discover how many people preferred to resist rather than capitulate, even if it meant their own lives - and those of their loved ones - were put at risk. I’m grateful to the Museum for giving me such a moving insight into what life was like for many of my father’s countrymen, during the War years - and for giving me permission to use some of their wonderful archive of photographs.
Museum of the Dutch Resistance
Plantage Kerklaan 61
(620 2535, www.verzetsmuseum.org)
Nona Baker, by Y S Lee
Hello, friends. I'm currently time-travelling in the colony formerly known as Malaya. I'm interested, specifically, in the Japanese occupation of Malaya during the Second World War and how different groups of Malayans responded to the threat.
Here in the west, many people don't learn about WWII's Pacific theatre of war at school. Certainly, my own education focused on France, Britain and Germany, with a dash of Russia and Italy, and a rousing finale by the United States of America. However, there was also a Pacific War and its Axis aggressor was Japan. The most famous incident in the Pacific War, the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941, was just one part of a multi-pronged assault. On that same night in December, the Japanese simultaneously attacked Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines. The next month, the Japanese turned their attention to Burma, the Dutch East Indies, and northern Australia.
When the Japanese invaded Malaya in December 1941, the local population was an ethnic mixture of aboriginal peoples, Malays, Chinese, Indians, and a small percentage of white (mainly British) colonists who controlled the colony's industry, politics and, of course, wealth. In the prelude to one of military history's most ignominious defeats, the British failed to take the Japanese threat seriously. Their attitude is well represented by the the Governor of Singapore, Sir Shenton Thomas: when informed of the invasion, he reportedly said, "Well, I suppose you'll shove the little men off." Far from shoving the little men off, however, "Fortress Singapore" fell to the Japanese in just 70 days.
By the time the British surrendered to the Japanese in February 1942, nearly all white civilians had evacuated - and had done so, very conspicuously, at the expense of the local non-white population. One remarkable exception to the white flight was Nona Baker, "a parson's youngest daughter" from Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
Nona Baker first travelled to Malaya to keep house for her brother, Vin (V B C Baker), who was general manager of a mine at Sungei Lembing, "the single largest tin mine in the world". Before the war, her brother was the most powerful man in the region, universally called Tuan Besar, or "Big Master" in the Malay language. Nona became known as Missie. Vin Baker seems to have been a classic Victorian paternalist in his management of the mine and his workers. Nona believes that "he was a king and father to the people, and they certainly adored him".
When the Japanese invaded, Vin couldn't conceive of a British defeat. Even as the Japanese advanced rapidly south through Malaya, Vin refused to leave his community. He made plans to hide in the jungle with Nona: after all, it would be only a matter of weeks, or perhaps a couple of months at most. Three trusted workers built Missie and Tuan Besar a hut in the jungle and stocked it with a primus stove, paraffin and tinned food. Still, denial prevailed. When the Japanese Army rolled into Sungei Lembing, Vin and Nona were quite rattled: "In the hurry of our departure, I had seized the tool kit from the car and taken it with me, instead of carrying something which might have been of some use." They also forgot to bring any reading material, an omission they bitterly regretted during their long, idle days in hiding.
As it turns out, they weren't in hiding for a few weeks or months. Nona Baker remained in the jungle for THREE YEARS. Despite the danger of being caught by the Japanese or betrayed by spies, their faithful servants visited them every ten days in the jungle to bring them fresh food, coffee, paraffin and news. (The servants also had Vin's false teeth repaired, again at immense personal risk: the dentist who fixed the dentures recognized that they were made in Europe.) After the first year, Vin and Nona's supply of money ran out and they took the decision to go live among the orang bukit, or "hill people": a euphemism for camps of Communist guerrillas who lived in the jungle and actively resisted the Japanese occupiers.
Nona and Vin were welcomed by the Communists, both out of principle (Nona says that she never saw a refugee turned away by guerrillas, even when food was extremely scarce) and financial savvy (Communist leaders recognized that they could raise funds locally, using Vin's name). For three years, Nona and Vin lived as very few white people had ever done, in Malaya: on terms of relative equality with local people.
In 1944, Vin Baker died of illness - a combination of malaria, dysentery and beri-beri. He'd suffered from bouts of depression since going into hiding, and these must have contributed to his weakness. What's much more remarkable is that Nona Baker survived. She gives a few dutiful reasons for her persistence: wanting to demonstrate that not all British were cowards and quitters; looking after Vin; the need to tell her mother, after the war, how Vin died. But there must have been something beyond that - an essential desire to learn, to know, to live. Despite her self-effacing explanations, Nona Baker was an extraordinary woman.
The 1959 edition, published by Constable
Nona Baker was briefly famous after the war, when she was delivered into the care of Force 136 (the equivalent of SOE in Southeast Asia), contributed information to Freddy Spencer Chapman's report on local Communist organizations, and returned to England. But it was only in 1959 that she felt able to dictate a memoir of her time amongst the Communists. It's called Pai Naa: The Story of Nona Baker. (Pai Naa, the name she was given by the guerrillas, means something like, "White Nona".) Nona Baker remains the only documented white woman to have survived the war by living in the jungle. While it is true, as she admits, she was only "busily saving my own skin", it is remarkable to have her even-handed portrait of life amongst the guerrillas. It's an intimate record that otherwise wouldn't exist.
Here in the west, many people don't learn about WWII's Pacific theatre of war at school. Certainly, my own education focused on France, Britain and Germany, with a dash of Russia and Italy, and a rousing finale by the United States of America. However, there was also a Pacific War and its Axis aggressor was Japan. The most famous incident in the Pacific War, the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941, was just one part of a multi-pronged assault. On that same night in December, the Japanese simultaneously attacked Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines. The next month, the Japanese turned their attention to Burma, the Dutch East Indies, and northern Australia.
When the Japanese invaded Malaya in December 1941, the local population was an ethnic mixture of aboriginal peoples, Malays, Chinese, Indians, and a small percentage of white (mainly British) colonists who controlled the colony's industry, politics and, of course, wealth. In the prelude to one of military history's most ignominious defeats, the British failed to take the Japanese threat seriously. Their attitude is well represented by the the Governor of Singapore, Sir Shenton Thomas: when informed of the invasion, he reportedly said, "Well, I suppose you'll shove the little men off." Far from shoving the little men off, however, "Fortress Singapore" fell to the Japanese in just 70 days.
By the time the British surrendered to the Japanese in February 1942, nearly all white civilians had evacuated - and had done so, very conspicuously, at the expense of the local non-white population. One remarkable exception to the white flight was Nona Baker, "a parson's youngest daughter" from Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
Nona Baker first travelled to Malaya to keep house for her brother, Vin (V B C Baker), who was general manager of a mine at Sungei Lembing, "the single largest tin mine in the world". Before the war, her brother was the most powerful man in the region, universally called Tuan Besar, or "Big Master" in the Malay language. Nona became known as Missie. Vin Baker seems to have been a classic Victorian paternalist in his management of the mine and his workers. Nona believes that "he was a king and father to the people, and they certainly adored him".
When the Japanese invaded, Vin couldn't conceive of a British defeat. Even as the Japanese advanced rapidly south through Malaya, Vin refused to leave his community. He made plans to hide in the jungle with Nona: after all, it would be only a matter of weeks, or perhaps a couple of months at most. Three trusted workers built Missie and Tuan Besar a hut in the jungle and stocked it with a primus stove, paraffin and tinned food. Still, denial prevailed. When the Japanese Army rolled into Sungei Lembing, Vin and Nona were quite rattled: "In the hurry of our departure, I had seized the tool kit from the car and taken it with me, instead of carrying something which might have been of some use." They also forgot to bring any reading material, an omission they bitterly regretted during their long, idle days in hiding.
As it turns out, they weren't in hiding for a few weeks or months. Nona Baker remained in the jungle for THREE YEARS. Despite the danger of being caught by the Japanese or betrayed by spies, their faithful servants visited them every ten days in the jungle to bring them fresh food, coffee, paraffin and news. (The servants also had Vin's false teeth repaired, again at immense personal risk: the dentist who fixed the dentures recognized that they were made in Europe.) After the first year, Vin and Nona's supply of money ran out and they took the decision to go live among the orang bukit, or "hill people": a euphemism for camps of Communist guerrillas who lived in the jungle and actively resisted the Japanese occupiers.
Nona and Vin were welcomed by the Communists, both out of principle (Nona says that she never saw a refugee turned away by guerrillas, even when food was extremely scarce) and financial savvy (Communist leaders recognized that they could raise funds locally, using Vin's name). For three years, Nona and Vin lived as very few white people had ever done, in Malaya: on terms of relative equality with local people.
In 1944, Vin Baker died of illness - a combination of malaria, dysentery and beri-beri. He'd suffered from bouts of depression since going into hiding, and these must have contributed to his weakness. What's much more remarkable is that Nona Baker survived. She gives a few dutiful reasons for her persistence: wanting to demonstrate that not all British were cowards and quitters; looking after Vin; the need to tell her mother, after the war, how Vin died. But there must have been something beyond that - an essential desire to learn, to know, to live. Despite her self-effacing explanations, Nona Baker was an extraordinary woman.
The 1959 edition, published by Constable
Nona Baker was briefly famous after the war, when she was delivered into the care of Force 136 (the equivalent of SOE in Southeast Asia), contributed information to Freddy Spencer Chapman's report on local Communist organizations, and returned to England. But it was only in 1959 that she felt able to dictate a memoir of her time amongst the Communists. It's called Pai Naa: The Story of Nona Baker. (Pai Naa, the name she was given by the guerrillas, means something like, "White Nona".) Nona Baker remains the only documented white woman to have survived the war by living in the jungle. While it is true, as she admits, she was only "busily saving my own skin", it is remarkable to have her even-handed portrait of life amongst the guerrillas. It's an intimate record that otherwise wouldn't exist.
Plotting the Second World War, by Clare Mulley
Earlier this month I was delighted to speak at a commemorative day at Tempsford, in Bedfordshire, being held in recognition of the RAF Special Duties Squadrons that delivered SOE's special agents behind enemy lines from the village’s top-secret airfield during the Second World War.
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| Memorial Plaque in Tempsford village church (courtesy of Martyn Cox, www.secret-WW@.net) |
Among the guests was Doreen Jeanette Galvin, nee Grey, a former member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, better known as the WAAF. Doreen served as an Intelligence Officer at RAF Tempsford during the war. She now lives in Canada, and this was her first visit back to her wartime base. Finding a squashy sofa in the memorial hall, Doreen told me how moving it was to return to this tiny village, attend the service of remembrance, and see the beautiful memorial to both the female special agents who were dropped behind enemy lines, and the Special Duties pilots who flew them there.
What I was not expecting was for Doreen to tell me how she had plotted the Second World War. Not in an evil god-of-destruction way you understand, but as a WAAF processing data about aircraft movement provided by radar stations and observation posts, and plotting the changing positions of Allied and enemy planes on a map.
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| Me with Doreen Galvin at Tempsford, May 2015 (courtesy of Mary J Miles) |
Doreen joined the WAAF in March 1941. Her family’s association with the British Air Force went back to the First World War, but it was not until the late autumn of 1940 that she decided to volunteer. The trigger was watching the Battle of Britain at close quarters from her south coast garden, which was on a steep hillside looking down to the sea. At one point the planes flew so low that she felt they might knock the television aerial off the roof of her house, and she threw herself into a ditch in the garden. When she looked up there were black crosses on each wing of a German fighter above her, which was followed by a Spitfire which shot it down into the sea. She knew then that she had to volunteer.
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| Doreen in uniform (courtesy of Doreen Galvin & Martyn Cox, www.secret-ww2.net) |
Doreen’s first position as a plotter was in Liverpool, receiving aircraft information and translating it into representative counters moved across a large map. On her third evening she found herself plotting the course of an enemy plane. Soon more followed; it was the start of the Liverpool blitz. Nothing could have better brought home to her the vital importance of her work, and how essential it was to be accurate.
Doreen's long and often exhausting career eventually led her to a Commission interview with ‘a very frightening Squadron Leader’ and, as the result of her courage to refuse the more regular roles she was encouraged to take in admin, or codes and ciphers, either of which she felt would ‘drive me crazy’, she was accepted for Intelligence.
Doreen was then trained as a Photographic Interpretation officer at RAF Medmenham in Buckinghamshire. Here she worked with Constance Babington Smith, known to all as ‘Babs’, who was ‘charming, not gushing, but she knew what she was doing’, as well as Sarah Churchill, the red-haired daughter of the PM, among others. Their role was to examine photographs and identify tell-tale troop movements, the build up of fleets and tanks, the creation of fuel and ammunition dumps, the construction and development of weaponry and key sites for military production and other bombing targets. Once, when particularly sensitive photographs and maps had to be examined, Sarah Churchill was segregated in the bathroom, with a 3-ply plank across the huge claw-foot bathtub on which to spread the pictures. She did not know it at the time, but she was working on images of North Africa. ‘We always used to say,’ Doreen told me with a laugh, ‘that for us, North Africa started in the bathroom’.
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| Doreen in the WAAF (courtesy of Doreen Galvin & Martyn Cox, www.secret-ww2.net) |
Doreen was then trained as a Photographic Interpretation officer at RAF Medmenham in Buckinghamshire. Here she worked with Constance Babington Smith, known to all as ‘Babs’, who was ‘charming, not gushing, but she knew what she was doing’, as well as Sarah Churchill, the red-haired daughter of the PM, among others. Their role was to examine photographs and identify tell-tale troop movements, the build up of fleets and tanks, the creation of fuel and ammunition dumps, the construction and development of weaponry and key sites for military production and other bombing targets. Once, when particularly sensitive photographs and maps had to be examined, Sarah Churchill was segregated in the bathroom, with a 3-ply plank across the huge claw-foot bathtub on which to spread the pictures. She did not know it at the time, but she was working on images of North Africa. ‘We always used to say,’ Doreen told me with a laugh, ‘that for us, North Africa started in the bathroom’.
Among a wealth of other material, including pictures of her family's former house in the Channel Islands (garden doing well, she noted), Doreen’s photographs provided early images of the German Messerschmitt 162 and 163 rocket planes. She also worked on photos of a series of ramps in northern France, all facing London. ‘It was obvious something was going to be shot off them’, Doreen said, but they couldn’t see what. Nearly two years later she was spending the night with a friend in Bromley when the first V1s to reach London ‘flew over the roof like an express train’. Wearing a hard hat on the early morning journey into work the next day she suddenly realized that these new flying bombs must be what she had been looking for at Medmenham.
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Doreen during the Second World War (courtesy of Doreen Galvin) |
Finally Doreen was sent to RAF Tempsford to work as an Intelligence Officer, without yet knowing the operational nature of the secret little airfield. On arrival she was surprised to see the odd variety of aircraft of all vintages and sizes that operated from the airfield, including a number of old-fashioned Lysanders, affectionately called ‘Lizzies’, which she thought must have come from the previous war. The intelligence office seemed ‘very dull’, the maps ‘uninspiring’, and Tempsford struck Doreen altogether as ‘a mediocre station, full of left-overs, in a forgotten backwater’.
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| A Lysander at Tempsford during the war, with officers from Special Duties squadron 161 (courtesy of Hugh Verity & Martyn Cox www.secret-ww2.net) |
Only after she was taken through a security door did Doreen see a map covering the entire wall opposite. ‘On it were hundreds of brightly coloured pins, each holding down a small label with a number and a code name typed on it.’ These represented the dropping and landing sites for Britain’s special agents and supplies across Europe. Her role was to ensure the pilots were fully briefed on the sites, and their routes, using aerial photographs and other intelligence. Doreen stared at the map in amazement, thinking, ‘If only the Germans could set eyes on this wall map, they could surely eliminate the entire Underground Movement in Europe in a week!’
Tempsford brought its own tragedies, although nothing quite on that scale, but also many lighter moments among friends who became very close. Here the WAAF Officers’ Mess was so close to the vicarage and the old stone church that one morning, after an RAF dance the night before, the vicar’s wife accused Doreen's friend of getting their chickens drunk. The hens had come wandering in unnoticed and drunk from the dregs of the slop bucket behind the bar.
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| Doreen at the Special Duties memorial plaque in Tempsford Church (courtesy of Martyn Cox, www.secret-WW@.net) |
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| Reverend Margaret Marshall with Doreen Galvin at Tempsford's memorial to the SOE women and Special Duties pilots (courtesy of Clive Bassett) |
Last Sunday, after the morning of talks, Doreen visited Tempsford’s old stone church again, this time for a service of remembrance conducted by the Reverend Margaret Marshall (how times have changed), before laying wreaths at the memorial opposite. For Doreen it had been a moving experience to return to the village where she had spent so much of her war, and to see that neither the special agents, nor the brave pilots who flew them behind enemy lines, have been forgotten. Not only are there beautiful memorials in the church and on the village green, but there are often events here which welcome everyone from family members who come to remember, to school children who may be hearing for the first time about the history of the village, the airfield, and the many brave people who once passed through.
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| Aerial photograph of RAF Tempsford during the war (courtesy of The Bob Body Collection & Martyn Cox, www.secretWW2.net) |
I am delighted that Doreen has written and self-published her memoirs, From Arts to Intelligence, available from Amazon in kindle and EPUB formats, and paperback.
I should also mention that the very good Temspford commemorative event this May was organised by educational charity Secret WW2 for which, many thanks.
Copyright Clare Mulley
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