Eglantyne Jebb bust unveiled

100 years and one day since Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy Buxton launched Save the Children at a packed public meeting at the Royal Albert Hall, I was very moved to see a new bronze bust of Eglantyne unveiled at the same venue. You can see a short film of the event here. The sculpture was created by the award-winning artist Ian Wolter who donated his time and work for free, mainly because he is a long-standing supporter of the Fund, but also because he is my husband. The cost of the bronze was generously sponsored by Save the Children’s former Chairman, Peter Bennett-Jones, and broadcaster and ambassador for the Fund, Natasha Kaplinsky, kindly did the actual unveiling.

Natasha Kaplinsky and Clare Mulley with Ian Wolter’s bronze bust of Eglantyne Jebb

Eglantyne and Dorothy had arrived at the same hall a century earlier, when the trees across the road were rather shorter and there was less traffic pollution on the building’s beautiful façade. The sisters did, however, have to face some fairly hostile elements among the crowd that had gathered that day. Some had even brought rotten fruit and vegetables to throw at the ‘traitor sisters’ who wanted to ‘give succour to the enemy.’ Eglantyne silenced them all as she called out, ‘Surely it is impossible for us as normal human beings, to watch children starve to death, without making an effort to save them?’ Potatoes went back into bags, purses came out, and a spontaneous collection was taken up around the hall.

The Royal Albert Hall hosting the launch of Save the Children on 19 May 1919

The unveiling of the bronze of Eglantyne Jebb, 20 May 2019

Fortunately, a century later, Save the Children’s CEO Kevin Watkins, and Craig Hassall, CEO of the Royal Albert Hall, had left their rotten veg at home, as had the Fund’s trustees, many committed volunteers and supporters, and quite a few members of the Jebb and Buxton families who joined us.

As her biographer, I was delighted to open the event with the story of Eglantyne’s arrest in Trafalgar Square, the brilliant defence she mounted at her Mansion House court case, and her and Dorothy’s ambitious initiative to capitalise on the blaze of publicity that followed the trial by launching the Fund a few days later. Just before I stepped up to the mic, a lady who looked vaguely familiar introduced herself.

I first met Amanda Richards when I worked at Save the Children in the corporate fundraising team, over twenty years ago. Amanda was one of three guests to join me on the Fund’s first ever programme visit for major corporate supporters. In 1998, we travelled together for two weeks in India.

Amanda Richards (3rd from left), Clare Mulley (in SCF t-shirt) with staff from one of Save the Children’s partner community organisations in India, 1998

Our first stop was to see the mobile crèche set up by the Save the Children for the children of female construction workers on the building site of an international hotel. This was a pilot scheme and, seeing the many benefits to both child welfare and worker productivity, it was soon paid for by the construction company and extended to all their sites, before becoming standard industry practice.

At Save the Children’s mobile crèches project in Delhi, 1989

While we were joining in with some craft activity at the crèche, one of the children gave me a card she had made with a drawing of a flower. When Amanda left a week later, having seen a range of projects looking at child health, education through night schools, the supply of safe water, and a women’s collective making clothes, she took the card with her. Inside I had written a note for another Save the Children business supporter, a man who she would be meeting back in London. I don’t think I had seen Amanda again since then. She is now a Vice President of the Fund, among other activities acting as long-standing chair of the ‘Summer in the City’ ball that annually raises around £200,000.

A couple of weeks after the Royal Albert Hall event, Amanda and I arranged to meet again. Now she told me that her visit to India had stayed in her heart, and on her mind, ever since. She had expected to be moved and impressed, but she had not anticipated the impact of the work being either so wide or so deep. Staff explained how cycles of social exploitation and deprivation had been broken; companies had permanently changed their business models to align with children’s rights; and children had told her that they hoped to become teachers, doctors and even development workers!

Amanda Richards with Clare Mulley, 2019

Amanda had since read my biography of Eglantyne, The Woman Who Saved the Children, and I was delighted to sign some copies of the book that had been donated for guests at her centenary summer fundraising event. She was thrilled in turn that all the book’s royalties are donated to the Fund, so that every copy raises money as well as awareness.

When the book was republished this year, to mark the centenary, the arrest and trial chapters inspired scriptwriter and Save the Children supporter Charlotte Bogard McLeod to write a short play. This was then performed with Joely Richardson as Eglantyne, and Helena Bonham Carter as the judge, at Save the Children’s centenary gala in London’s Roundhouse. During rehearsals both actresses told me how inspired they were by Eglantyne, and how they hoped this play might go further… fingers crossed everyone please!

Helena Bonham Carter in judge’s wig, author and historian Clare Mulley, and Joely Richardson as Eglantyne Jebb.

                                                 

The Roundhouse, London, May 2019

Other Eglantyne events this year have included a series of talks in and around Ellesmere in Shropshire, a town which now has new street signs welcoming people to ‘The Birthplace of Eglantyne Jebb’, and an event at Cambridge University where I spoke with Dr Peta Dunstan whose biography of Eglantyne’s sister Dorothy, Campaigning for Life, has just been published. There has also been a new blue plaque to Eglantyne put up in Marlborough, where she once taught in the local school, and Anne Chamberlain has performed her excellent one-woman show, Eglantyne, all round Britain and in Switzerland, Lebanon and Tanzania!

                                                       Clare with the new Ellesmere town signs

With Dr Peta Dunstan, biographer of Dorothy Buxton

Flier for Anne Chamberlain’s one-woman play Eglantyne

Back home I have been interviewed about Eglantyne for national and regional press, for BBC TV World News, and on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme with Evan Davis. I’ve recorded podcasts for the Spectator and Dan Snow’s History Hit; and spoken at countless history and literary festivals and other events. ‘We have to devise means of making known the facts in such a way as to touch the imagination of the world,’ Eglantyne once said, not knowing what an impact her own life story might have.

Clare discussing Eglantyne Jebb with Matthew Amroliwala, BBC World News

The Woman Who Saved the Children has now been translated into Spanish and Korean, and recently I was pleased to talk about Eglantyne to members of the International Save the Children Alliance at their centenary conference in Lady Margaret Hall – Eglantyne’s own former Oxford college. This is where the bronze bust of her now lives, where it has already inspired plans for an annual Eglantyne Jebb lecture. Meanwhile a plaster edition of the bust, with a bronze patina, has been given a permanent home in Save the Children UK’s Farringdon head office, where everyone can see her.

International copies of The Woman Who Saved The Children

Finally, following my introduction to the Jebb family, this autumn the National Portrait Gallery will be including an original image of Eglantyne in the national collection. Perhaps it might be this one, below, showing her striding into action, apparently not noticing that her shoe-laces are undone and she is losing papers from her file. This is my favourite of all Eglantyne’s scratchy self-portraits, although I also very much love a set showing show her frightening a herd of sheep as she falls off her bicycle before getting back on again with true blue-stocking determination…

Eglantyne Jebb self-portrait, c.1901

These updates were all very good, but what Amanda wanted to know was what happened to the lovely corporate supporter to whom she had brought my flower-card from India. Readers, I married him… Watch out people, it is amazing how much the story of one brilliant, courageous, passionate and compassionate woman, can change your life!

Sculptor Ian Wolter with his bronze of Eglantyne Jebb, and author Clare Mulley

Clare Mulley’s first book, The Woman Who Saved the Children, won the Daily Mail Biographers’ Club Prize. The Spy Who Loved, now optioned by Universal Studios, led to Clare being decorated with Poland’s national honour, the Bene Merito. Clare’s third book, The Women Who Flew for Hitler, tells the extraordinary story of two women at the heart of Nazi Germany, whose choices put them on opposite sides of history. 

www.claremulley.com

Text and photos copyright Clare Mulley, with the exception of Eglantyne Jebb’s self-portrait and the Royal Albert Hall in 1919, which belong to the Jebb family and Save the Children.

Perhaps this International Women’s Day, we might consider judging women for their agency!

Article originally published on the Andante Travel Website as an interview with Clare

The women of the Special Operations Executive, or SOE, were special agents, recruited, trained, armed and sent to serve behind enemy lines coordinating, training and arming resistance circuits in Nazi-occupied countries alongside their male colleagues. The SOE was established in July 1940, following Winston Churchill’s injunction to ‘set Europe ablaze’. Yet the first female agent of the war, the Polish-born Countess Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, had demanded to be taken on by the British secret services six months earlier, and was in post before the end of 1939! Her achievements in three different theatres of the war showed how valuable female agents could be. Later more women were recruited as they were considered less likely to be stopped and searched than able-bodied men travelling around enemy-occupied countries. Around 39 women were sent into occupied France alone, to act as clandestine couriers and wireless transmitters - work for which they were told they could expect to be arrested, interrogated and executed within six weeks. Many stepped up to undertake sabotage and armed combat, and several became circuit leaders, organising armies of several hundred men. Thirteen would not return.

The women who were involved in this project, what would have given them the ‘edge’ to apply (or be recruited, if that was the case)?

Krystyna Skarbek was unusual in that she approached MI6 to be given a role. Women were usually recruited from other branches of the services when they were discovered to have valuable skills. All the female agents were great patriots with a strong sense of honour and duty. They were determined, ready to endure both stress and loneliness, and each was also incredibly brave. They shared certain skills too; the ability to think quickly and creatively under pressure, languages skills, physical fitness; and the ability to win support and generate loyalty. Yet there was no single ‘type’ of woman that made a good agent. They came from many different countries and faiths, some were young women, others mothers or grandmothers, one had an artificial leg. Beauty could be both a help and hindrance, as an attractive face might charm but was also more memorable. The popular idea that the female agents’ most important role was as a ‘honey-trap’, seducing the enemy into revealing their secrets, is mistaken. Although some did employ their charms to good effect, their most vital attribute was simply that they might be overlooked while getting on with a range of tasks from gathering intelligence to smuggling, and sabotage to transmitting radio communications.

What can guests on Historical Trips’ Women of the SOE tour expect from the experience?

This is a very special and personal tour that follows in the footsteps of several of the female special agents, some of whom did not return, but all of whom made a significant contribution to the Allied war-effort. As well as visiting a couple of small museums, and several public and some quite hidden memorials, family members of several of the special agents have supported the tour, opening up their homes, giving talks, and sharing their knowledge. I feel strongly that the contribution made by the women should be remembered respectfully, and their service honoured.

What do you think is important to consider, discuss or celebrate on International Women’s Day 2019?

I am often asked why I mainly write about women. While I would be delighted to write about the lives of interesting men, the fact is that there is still a rich seam of women’s stories waiting to be told, and plenty of information to be found that has been misfiled under ‘domestic’! Furthermore, all too often female special agents, in particular, are still presented primarily as beautiful and brave, rather than as effective. Perhaps this International Women’s Day, we might consider judging women for their agency!

What interests you so much about women involved in war?

Conflict requires societies to give of their all, even if this means defying previous societal norms. As a result, wars have provided many women with new opportunities, be it working on farms or in factories, as drivers or pilots, or behind enemy lines as special agents. My three books look at the responses of four very different women to conflict. The remarkable Eglantyne Jebb, who distributed aid in the Balkan conflict that turned into the First World War, later defied the law to set up Save the Children, and developed the pioneering concept of children’s human rights - permanently changing the way the world regards and treats children. Krystyna Skarbek was not only the first female agent of the Second World War, but also the longest-serving agent male or female. Brought up to marry well, she yearned for freedom, and was extremely effective when she had the chance to fight for it. Most recently, I have written about the only two women to serve as test-pilots for the Third Reich, one a fanatical Nazi, the other secretly in the German resistance. Their perspectives, choices and actions meant that they would end their lives on opposite sides of history. Perhaps paradoxically, in overturning established special norms conflict can be an enabler, as well as a force of destruction.

You must have experienced some really memorable moments over the years, thanks to your work as an author along with your various lectures and television/radio appearances, could you please share some with us?

I love my job. I am naturally nosy, and being a biographer gives me license to read private letters and diaries, and interview witnesses of the most extraordinary events from the past. My research has led me to sleep in my subjects' bedrooms, and eat from their dishes - how good is washing up, could there be any DNA left on a plate? I have flown a glider in France, eaten breakfast with an assassin’s son in Germany, and in Poland I was once nearly arrested by the Gestapo… honestly, you will have to ask me when you see me!

"The Women Who Flew For Hitler".....a dreamcast of a movie adaptation

Clare Mulley,  September 2018

‘Blog post written for The Campaign for the American Reader’.

What could be more filmic? Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg both learnt to fly over the same green slopes of north-east Germany in the 1930s. This was the glamorous age of flight, when Amelia Earhart had her own fashion line and En Avion was the perfume of choice. Female pilots anywhere were considered courageous, but nowhere were they considered more extraordinary than in Nazi Germany, which promoted the idea that women’s real place was in church, the kitchen and the nursery. Hanna and Melitta were exceptional, and with the war they became the only women to serve the regime as test pilots, the only two female Flight Captains in Nazi Germany, and both recipients of the Iron Cross.

You might have thought, then, that Hanna and Melitta would have supported one another, but in fact there was no love lost between them. With her bubbly personality, blond hair and blue-eyes, Hanna seemed the perfect example of Aryan maidenhood, and she was soon an ardent supporter of what she considered to be the dynamic new Nazi regime. Melitta, by contrast, was dark, serious and seemingly shy. Her father had been born Jewish and she was officially categorised as ‘Mischling’, or half-blood, by the regime, but her skills were so valuable to them that they gave her ‘Equal to Aryan’ status. In July 1944, Melitta would support the most famous attempt to assassinate Hitler.

There could hardly be more perfect roles for two actresses today; both at the heart of the Third Reich’s war effort, risking their lives daily in the macho world of Nazi aviation. How about Emma Stone or Jennifer Lawrence for the blond Hanna, who once starred in UFA films for the Nazi the regime. Rachel Weiss or perhaps Gal Gadot could excel as her nemesis, whose quiet determination and moral courage drive the story forward.

There are plenty of supporting roles for the men here too. Hitler is hard to cast, although Bruno Ganz was excellent in Downfall. (The terrifying map room scene when Hitler/Ganz screams at his generals is one of the most adapted clips on YouTube.) Tom Cruise has already played Claus von Stauffenberg, Melitta’s brother-in-law, in the film Valkyrie, but perhaps he could be persuaded to reprise the role among the supporting cast?

Humour and Humanity: A day with 100 RAF veterans at Project Propeller

Clare Mulley,  July 2018

Mary Ellis as a Second World War ATA pilot, & with me at Project Propeller 2017

‘When women pilots cease to become news, the battle of equality will have been won’, the British ATA pilot Mary Ellis wrote in her memoirs, published last year.i Mary died in late July, aged 101, the last female Spitfire pilot who flew in the Second World War. I was among those honouring her, talking to Sky News, as her name rightly made headlines once again. I had had the privilege to meet Mary at the Project Propeller annual air veterans’ reunion last year where she told me stories of having been shot at twice in one day by anti-aircraft guns mistaking her for an enemy bomber, and of once being ‘stalked’ through the air by a Luftwaffe pilot who cheekily waved to her before ‘suddenly he was gone’. It was ‘all part of the job’ she told me in her matter of fact way, before striding over to chat with her fellow former ATA pilot Joyce Lofthouse and some of the male veterans at the reunion.

Mary had joined the women’s section of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) in 1941, the same year that C.G. Grey, editor of Aeroplane magazine wrote that ‘the menace is the woman who thinks she ought to be flying a high-speed bomber when really she has not the intelligence to scrub the floor of a hospital properly’. In those early days the ATA women earned 20% less than the men and were expected to fly in skirts, even in freezing conditions. By the end of the war 166 women had enrolled, working alongside 1,152 men on equal pay and in uniform trousers. Last year the RAF became the first branch of the British military to accept women for service in any role, including close combat. The battle for equality is still being fought, but it is worth both remembering that we have come a long way, and the pioneers like Mary and Joyce who helped make the diversity of today’s RAF possible.

Joyce passed away last year, and Spitfire pilots Tom Neil and Geoffrey Wellum both died just a few weeks before Mary this July. As we remember these extraordinary men and women, wish them ‘blue skies’ and imagine a wonderful reunion in the clouds, we must also pay attention to those veterans still with us, keeping the Second World War within living memory.

Project Propeller 2018, Halfpenny Green

This year’s Project Propeller reunion was held at Halfpenny Green, Wolverhampton. Although most World War Two veterans are now in their early 90s, guest numbers have been rising as word of the annual event spreads. It now takes a team of volunteers to not only liaise with the host airfields and ATC cadets, make cakes and sandwiches and book the 1940s singers, but also coordinate a growing crew of volunteer light-aircraft pilots who fly the veterans over from their nearest airfield. This year I arrived in a little Cirrus SR20 piloted by Mark Williams and Nick Snow. Setting off from North Weald, we went first to Elstree to collect veteran Spitfire pilot Geoff Hulett. 

Geoff Hulett with me, and Cirrus pilots Mark Williams and Nick Snow

Geoff was waiting for us in Elstree airfield’s Wings Café, wearing his RAF tie, good aviation sunglasses, and only a slight air of impatience. At ninety-five, he was up on the wing and kindly offering me his hand before I had time to turn around. A quick evaluation of the relative merits of the Spitfire and Cirrus ensued… The Cirrus won on comfort. Geoff, a recipient of the Burma Cross, had been a ferry pilot, delivering Spitfires, Hurricanes and P-47 Thunderbolts in Egypt and the Far East. He remembered his machines getting so hot that when he stopped to refuel he could barely touch the metal harness to lock himself back in, and sometimes oil would slip out onto the floor adding hot fumes to the already heavy air in the cockpit. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly however, the Spitfire cleaned up in other respects. ‘We didn’t have this problem’, Geoff told me cheerfully when the warm engine of our Cirrus had second thoughts about firing as we waited to take off from Elstree. ‘If there were two aircraft, we would park one in front of the other, so that the slip-stream of one would keep the other cool, then reverse the order. That would keep them going.’ Then, once we were up in the air and Nick showed off his GPS navigation systems, Geoff simply pointed out the window saying, ‘that’s the best way actually.’ In Burma he had had no radar to guide him, only maps and a compass. ‘Monsoon season was awkward’, he admitted, ‘though low-flying on clouds is always fun’. Two minutes later Geoff had taken the controls, and we were ‘cloud surfing’ over to Wolverhampton in the very safe hands of a Second World War Spitfire pilot.

Spitfire pilot Geoff Hulett at the controls

Geoff disappeared as soon as we landed at Halfpenny Green. Many of the veterans I spoke with were keen to meet up with old friends, and I was also glad to see a number of familiar faces such as RAF Flying Officer John Alan Ottewell who advised me on my research for my last book, The Women Who Flew for Hitler.

With Flying Officer John Alan Ottewell

Like most of the veterans I spoke with this summer, John had flown with Bomber Command. Every one of these men had an incredible story to tell. 

Only eleven at the start of the war, Ron Applegate joined the ATC in 1942. Although he flew with trainee pilots doing what he called ‘circuits and bumps’, one of his most vivid memories was when he was out blackberrying with his brother. ‘All of a sudden there was a tremendous roar. It was Lancasters, flying at rooftop level… coming at us!’ Only later did Ron learn that they were practising low-level flying and flights over water in preparation for dropping the ‘bouncing bomb’, designed to destroy German dams. 

Radar specialist Stan Forsyth flew with heavy radar equipment, locating enemy radar stations to be bombed, and sometimes accompanying raids up above the bombers, trying to catch the frequency of enemy fighters to warn the crews below. In 1944 Stan was given a different target to locate: the German Navy's mighty 42,900 ton battleship, the Tirpitz. ‘Five aircraft went out, and I found it in the fjords’, Stan told me with understandable pride. ‘I didn’t see it, except on the radar, but I knew it was him. They sent the bombers in, and I got the DFC for finding it.’

Pilot and Warrant Officer Peter Holloway flew over 150 operations in Burma in what he called ‘Hurricanes and Hurribombers.’ Some ops only lasted ten minutes, he told me, as his airfield was right at the edge of the Japanese lines. ‘We were so close you just took off, lifted the wheels, dropped the bombs, and landed again.’

John Whitworth remembered being exhausted, flying a Mosquito back from a Hamburg bombing raid, when suddenly he felt his unflappable navigator, Canadian Bill Tulloch, nudging him hard with his elbow. ‘We were doing 400mph, and I was asleep!’ 

Several of the crew flying on long distance raids had been shot down. Wireless Operator and Gunner Fred Hooker’s first operation was on 3 September 1944, a bombing raid over Venlo in Holland. Bad weather forced them to land away from their base and they only returned on 10 September. The following night they flew to the Ruhr ‘which was hell’. On 12 September their aircraft was shot down on an operation to Munster. 

‘We were on a bombing run, when suddenly I was sitting in fresh air,’ Fred remembered. ‘No Perspex. No guns. In fact the guns were hanging from the tower turret.’ With no intercom, Fred moved down into the damaged aircraft. ‘The rear was full of flames, and in the portside was a bloody large hole.’ Seeing one of the crew bail out of the front hatch spurred him into action but the parachute he grabbed was already on fire. The last thing Fred saw before blacking out was the flight engineer who strode over, picked up a chute, put his arm round Fred, clipped on and pushed him out. 

Fred’s pilot and the tail gunner both lost their lives in the burning bomber, but the rest of the crew landed in a field of sugar-beet near Munster. Immediately caught, they were searched and put on a truck into the city. Walking past burning houses in the streets they had been bombing just an hour earlier was sobering. Some civilians tried to attack them and Fred believes his life was saved a second time that night, but this time by their two German guards. 

Like several of the veterans at the reunion, Fred had brought along some papers. Among them was his German prisoner-of-war ID card, with photo showing a ruggedly handsome but stoney-faced young man. When I asked what was in his mind when it was taken, he laughed, ‘Blue murder… I hadn’t had a wash for two weeks!’ He would spend most of the rest of the war as a POW, long months whose progress he recorded in pencil on brown paper ripped from a Red Cross parcel. 

Wireless operator and gunner Fred Hooker with his papers

Welshman Harry Winter was also shot down over Germany. Harry flew Wellingtons and Halifaxes with the 427 Royal Canadian Air Force, known as the ‘Lion Squadron’ and adopted by MGM because of their rampant lion insignia. In October 1943 Harry was in the second wave of the bombing run over Kassell, when German flares lit up the sky until it was like ‘going down a high street with the lights on’. Night-fighters proceeded to shoot down twenty-five bombers within five miles. 

Having been caught with his parachute still attached after baling out, Harry was taken to Luft 7. Later he would join the forced march to Stalag IIIA, south of Berlin, a camp that was eventually liberated by the Russians. Even then Harry was detained for a POW swap. Allowed to walk under guard into East Berlin, he knocked on doors asking for food. ‘Two girls saw my uniform was different and, when they found out I was British, they asked me to stay and protect them’, he told me. The women feared being raped by Russian soldiers. Harry was more than happy to swap the hard floor at the camp for a settee in Berlin, and eventually managed to flag down a US army truck and get sent home. When he finally got back to Cardiff, Harry found that his girlfriend had married another chap. ‘It was ok, I had disappeared I guess,’ he told me wistfully, before his eyes lit up again. ‘I got a London girl.’

All the veterans I spoke with this summer were pleased to share their time and memories, and some have published their memoirs, listed below. Ivan ‘Lucky’ Potter even signed a copy of his for me. None glorified war in any way, although most spoke warmly about the comradeship they found, and lit up at recalling their better memories. 

‘We were flying with a full bomb load, a Lancaster UMH2, and there was a thundercloud directly on track’, Rear Gunner Peter Potter told me, a large grin raising the curled ends of his glorious moustache. ‘It was too massive to go around, so we went up 24,000 feet to go over it.’ Soon they were caught in the turbulent centre of the dark cloud, then suddenly sucked out of it and falling 20,000 feet. The air was howling over the aircraft’s fuselage and the control panel shook so much it was hard to read the dials as they plummeted down, but somehow Peter’s pilot managed to pull the Lancaster out of their unintended dive. They had just enough power to limp back to base. ‘It tore the rivets out, its body was all twisted’, he added rather proudly. Later he got a letter from Lancaster design engineer Roy Chadwick, who had inspected the broken aircraft. ‘To have incurred this damage,’ Chadwick wrote, ‘you had to have been going at 520mph. Ps, You have probably flown the fastest bomber in the war’.

At Project Propeller 2018 with Lancaster Rear Gunner Peter Potter. Photo c. Nigel Whitmore.

There was also much moving talk about losing friends and colleagues however, the less fortunate who are also always remembered at Project Propeller reunions. ‘The worst was when we bombed Nuremberg,’ Wireless Operator and Rear Gunner Reginald Payne, now 95, recalled. ‘I have still my log-book. I did the ops without any real problems… the ground-crew found damage to the aircraft that showed we had been hit by enemy flak, but we were not aware of it… But we lost 94 airmen. We lost men in our hut. We lost a lot of friends. At night you would sleep next to another man, and you always said goodnight. Then they were gone. You would see all the empty beds, and a few days later “sprog” [newer recruits] airmen would come in.’ 

Wireless Operator and Rear Gunner Reginald Payne

Mary Ellis had shared similar memories with me the year before. Once, delivering a Wellington bomber, she had had to stay over at a Bomber Command airfield & enjoyed a fine meal in the mess with ‘all these lovely air crew.’ ‘The place was full of laughter and they were all such decent chaps’, she told me. The next morning there were only two or three men at breakfast, ‘solemnly drinking tea’. The others had not returned from their missions that night.

Other veterans spoke about the civilian casualties of their bombing raids. ‘At age 18/19 you don’t think’, Lawrence Rogers, now 96, told me. ‘Dropping bombs. It was our duty but so many innocent people were killed. Women and children.’ 

Most of the men were quick to tell me that their best moment was, in Reginald Payne’s words, ‘landing back at base after the last op.’ Reginald and his crew celebrated by going into Lincoln to have ‘a good old round of drinks, but not too much - you never knew whether, for certain, they wouldn’t want you again the next day.’ Between them, the veterans I met saw the end of the war on different dates in London, Lincoln, Berlin and Shanghai.

Pilot Eric Carter

At 98 ‘and getting on a bit’, Eric Carter, who had wangled his way into the RAF having originally been called up for the army, only to serve a gruelling year in Russia followed by postings in Egypt and the Far East, was the least sentimental about his war. ‘The best moment? I don’t think there were many… It was bloody dangerous, and it was awful.’ Like many, he had a clear message for the next generation: ‘Learn as much as you can from this period. It was not a party, not something to happen again. Make sure it does NOT happen again. Watch these politicians.’

Navigator Jim Wright greets the Lancaster bomber salute at Project Propeller 2018

A moment later our conversation was drowned out by the sound of rapidly approaching Rolls Royce Merlin engines. Eric automatically lifted his gaze, while Jim Wright in a chair beside us, a navigator who flew on 43 missions during the war, raised his hand in greeting. A Lancaster was flying low overhead in tribute to the service that these men and their colleagues, male and female, British, Poles, Czech and others, had given during the conflict. 

For my daughters, the Second World War is part of the history curriculum. I felt the same at their age, but almost as much time has passed since I was at school, as between the war and my classes. My children are probably the last generation who may have the chance to talk with people who served in the conflict, men and women like Mary Ellis, Geoff Hulett, Fred Hooker and Eric Carter, whose lives were shaped not only by their service, but by the absence of those dear to them who lost their lives. Once female pilots made headlines by dint of their gender; these days the names of both male and female Second World War pilots are all too often in the papers as they leave us. Project Propeller provides a unique opportunity for many of those still with us to meet again, share their news, and retell their stories. Each passing year it feels ever more important to listen to their voices, remember the debt that we owe, and learn from their memories and insights, their humour and their humanity. 

Clare with Cirrus pilot Mark Williams, Flight Engineer Harold Kirby, and Pilot Geoff Hullet.

Project Propeller depends on donations of both time and money to keep going. If you would like to contribute, or are a private light aircraft pilot who would be interested in offering to fly veterans to next year’s reunion, please get in touch through the website: http://www.projectpropeller.org/PP/index.asp

Historia Interviews: Michael Morpurgo

Clare Mulley talks to HWA Honorary Patron, Michael Morpurgo, about the extraordinary family history that inspired his latest book.

On 17 August 1944, Michael Morpurgo’s uncle, Francis Cammaerts, was scheduled to be executed. He and two colleagues had been arrested by the Nazi German occupying forces in southern France, who rightly suspected that they were special agents, sent in to arm and organise the French resistance. Having had ‘an ominously good meal’ of vegetable soup, that evening the three men were marched across the prison courtyard towards the football ground, the place used for executions by firing squad. As the sky darkened with a summer storm, they were surprised to suddenly be herded the other way and into a waiting Citroën. Once round the first bend, the car stopped to collect a solitary figure, standing silhouetted against the white wall of an isolated farm building. It was Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the Polish-born female special agent who worked with Francis in the field. Unknown to him and the other men, a few days earlier Christine had begged the local resistance to rescue them. After their refusal, she had cycled the 20 kilometers over to the prison, planned, and pulled off the apparently impossible rescue on her own…

A few years ago, not long after my biography of Christine, The Spy Who Loved, had been published, I met Michael Morpurgo at the Harrogate History Festival where he was talking in his capacity as the Honorary Patron of the Historical Writers Association. I asked him whether he might ever write the story of Francis and Christine, their love affair, resistance work, and Christine’s dramatic rescue of the men. Michael told me that he had published almost 800 stories, but this one was too close to him. Last month I went to the launch of In the Mouth of the Wolf, Michael’s latest book, which finally tells the story of Francis, his brother Pieter, and Christine. We met again, a few days ago at Ognisko Polskie, London’s Polish Hearth Club, to talk about why Michael finally chose to share this tale.

‘This story has been at the back of my mind all my life,’ Michael told me, at least ‘since I was six years old.’ Michael was about seven when he first met Francis. Knowing only that his uncle was a great war-hero, and finding him ‘immensely tall’, Michael found him very daunting. ‘Francis was a one-off, very strange. He did not behave like other uncles. He commanded a room whenever he came in. Very handsome. Very impressive. Difficult to talk to’.

Despite this, Michael was deeply inspired by both of his uncles; Francis and his younger brother Pieter, who had joined the RAF and was killed in action early on in the war. When he left school Michael even joined the army, ‘because the story of these brothers was so strong in my head. I was not a very deep-thinking eighteen year old’, he laughs, and he left again pretty swiftly, ‘never having had to go to war, thank god.’ His change of mind about his vocation came during winter training exercises in 1962. Michael tells even this like a story waiting to be written. ‘It was freezing’, he begins, ‘there was snow on the ground and in the trenches, and the enemy’ – in fact some Argyll Highlanders – ‘would cheerfully have killed and eaten us Sandhurst cadets. They shouted at us all night, and in the morning I had an epiphany… I suddenly realised that what I wanted to do was talk to people, not shoot at them. So I left the army.’ Nonetheless, his time as a cadet gave him an understanding of the military that he would later find very useful in his writing.

Like Francis before him, Michael then became a teacher, and the two men found each other again, discussing education. Over time Francis spoke more about his own life. It was his knowledge of the courage of the French people who hid and supported members of the resistance during the war that enabled Michael to write his book about the French occupation, Waiting for Anya, with real integrity.

Francis now also spoke about working with Christine. She had been parachuted in to serve as the courier with his resistance circuit in the south east of France in the summer of 1944. The previous courier, Cecily Lefort, had been arrested some weeks before, and would eventually be killed in the gas chambers. Christine was the first woman to serve Britain as a special agent in the war, and had already operated behind enemy lines in two different theatres of the conflict; in Eastern Europe; and Egypt and the Middle East. She had a reputation both for courage and for getting results. Francis immediately knew that he could trust her, and simply told Michael that it was Christine ‘who made it work.’ What he did not talk about was their love affair. ‘They fell in love extraordinarily quickly’, Michael told me. But Francis was married, and all he would later say was that ‘it is possible to love two women at the same time’.

Michael says he feels indebted to his uncles for many things, not least for having given him the debate of his life, ‘do you or don’t you do what they did, serve and fight?’ Michael believes he would have made the same choices at Pieter, the uncle he never knew. Francis started the war as a conscientious objector, and it was these differences that gave Michael his way into the story. He only dared to write the book after Francis had died, involving his family all the way, sending them drafts. Luckily, he says, ‘they are broadminded’.

In the end, the story of Francis and Christine was one that Michael felt he had to write. ‘History is the most important subject in the world, and the most ignored,’ he told me. ‘There is very little curriculum interest in it. Children are not being taught the story of the story, the development of history. You can start wherever you like, that doesn’t matter at all.’ Michael has told tales from all over the world, and across time, but ultimately, he says, ‘this is the story that I am connected to the most. I grew up during the Second World War. I played in the ruins, and there really was an old soldier with one leg at the end of the street. It was a dark and gloomy London, full of sadness. It was like some monster had come… This war had not just knocked down houses, burnt bodies and taken off flesh, it had also affected my own family.’

Michael and I had chosen to meet in the Polish Hearth Club in London, because last year the club commissioned a bronze bust of Christine, which now lives there on public display. The portrait was sculpted by my husband, Ian Wolter, an award-winning artist, using every photograph of her that I could find, including crime scene pictures released to me under the Freedom of Information Act. At the foundry, we added a handful of Polish and British earth to the bronze, so Christine is literally cast with the soil of her native and adoptive countries. What was it like to finally come face-to-face with Christine, I asked Michael. ‘Very strange,’ he hesitated, ‘to see the face that meant so much to Francis, but who none of us were ever able to meet’.

This is not the place to let you know what made Francis change his mind and fight in the Second World War, or even how Christine saved him and his colleagues-in-arms in a French field in the late summer of 1944. There are books out there for that. As a piece for Historia, I will simply pass on Michael’s passionate belief that, whatever the subject, you ‘have to tell a story that matters to you. If you are not really passionate about the subject then don’t tell it. If it hurts, it hurts. If it’s about war, it will hurt. You look people in the eye when you tell a story… just write.’

Michael Morpurgo’s In the Mouth of the Wolf, illustrated by the brilliant French artist Barroux, is published by Egmont. www.michaelmorpurgo.com

Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved, the Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, is published by Macmillan and has been optioned by Universal Studios. www.claremulley.com

Images:

1. Clare Mulley with Michael Morpurgo at Ognisko Polskie, The Polish Hearth Club in London, 2018. Photo © Ania Mochlinska, Ognisko Polskie.
2. Francis Cammaerts & Krystyna Skarbek aka Christine Granville
3. Clare Mulley with Michael Morpurgo at Ognisko Polskie, The Polish Hearth Club in London, 2018. Photo © Ania Mochlinska, Ognisko Polskie.
4. The stories of Francis; In the Mouth of the Wolf, & Christine; The Spy Who Loved
5. Ian Wolter’s sculpture of Christine at Ognisko Polskie. © Ania Mochlinska, Ognisko Polskie.

Article originally published on the Historia Website here

How to Knit Gloves

‘How to Knit Gloves’ (for the Edwardian James Bond), 1911

‘Gloves are not very difficult to knit’, my grandmother wrote in 1911. A rather proud sixteen-year-old, who had probably just finished her first good pair, she prudently remarked that hers were ‘very useful as new finger-tips can be knitted when the first wear out.’

I am not a knitter, but I love the idea of knitting new finger tips for old, rather like Bond replacing his finger-prints to enable him to have a whisky while avoiding leaving identifying marks on a glass. Bond could, of course, have just worn gloves, but perhaps Q did not have the beautiful instructions that my grandmother had written out for knitting such a ‘useful’ pair.

There are long generations on my mother’s side of the family. I was 38 when I had my last daughter, and my mother and her mother were about the same age when they had theirs. So, generationally, it only takes us two hops to get back to 1911 when my grandmother, Mary McCombie, was sixteen, the same age as my eldest today. Mary was the first of four siblings, who filled their spare time with reading and radio, tennis and parties, and – Mary at least on one slow afternoon – knitting.

Hoping to gain some insight into my teenage grandma, I emailed her gloves recipe to my brilliant-knitting friend, Emma to see what she would make of it. Emma immediately plunged into the challenge of knitting Edwardian gloves…

‘These needles arrived today.’ Emma emailed back a week later, with the first of a series of photos. Mary had recommended using ‘4 steel needles’, which is a traditional way of knitting in the round. Today there are bendy needles that flex in the middle, like bendy-busses making life easier for going round corners. They make it ‘less like hedgehog wrestling’ Emma wrote, which seems a perfect way to describe knitting with traditional straights.

Mary had recommended 3 ply yarn for men’s gloves, 2 ply for ladies, but Emma soon saw that this would only produce a tiny and rather lacy, decorative glove, so she moved up a size, fortunately announcing, ‘I'm loving this!!!!!’

Unlike me, Emma understood Mary’s knitting language and was soon setting off on two rounds of purl (garter stitch), 8 rounds of plain (stocking stitch) and 2 rows purl. The first cuff appeared. #intertextualknittingphotography

‘Looking good,’ I wrote back, and love that tattoo!

Three more photos followed in rapid succession. ‘I can't help but smile at how your gran begins with "gloves are easy to knit”’, Emma wrote. Mary had chosen moss stitch - achieved by doing a knit one, purl one sequence, reversing on the next row.  ‘This gives the lovely bumpy effect you can see in the second picture. It's used if you want a robust garment, but it’s a bit of a fancy stitch that someone may use to show off.’ So either Mary wanted robust gloves or she was quietly parading her knitting proficiency.

Emma was knitting with the TV on. Despite using coloured wool threads as markers, as instructed, she lost count, but pressed on following her mother-in-law’s excellent philosophy that ‘flaws add character’. ‘Amazing work,’ I told her. ‘You are having a conversation with my grandma that I could never have understood, and it tells you a bit about her, her confidence and perhaps showy-offness, that I love.’ I sent her a photo of Mary aged about 16. Unlikely she had any tattoos, and certainly no Netflix.

The gloves were starting to look a bit mittenish, but Emma was soon ready to knit fingers. Mary’s pattern suggested 7 stitches per finger with 4 stitches added each side to ensure no gaps, but got a little vague in parts so Emma worked it out as she went along, sticking with the moss stitch.

Suddenly the first was done! ‘Now to make sure the second matches!’ Emma wrote as proud as Mary had ever been…

The result was a mossy, grey, 1911 work of genius, which Emma generously presented to me one evening a week later! I love them.

The grandma I remembered was an old lady (that’s the downside of long generations), but she was kind, and loving, and delighted at cheating at cards. I hadn’t put it past her to cheat with her gloves instructions too, but it seems she was rightly proud of her endeavours.

No doubt when the First World War started, just three years after Mary wrote out her knitting instructions, she again put her skills to good use. It is unlikely that her future husband, Alfred Smith, ever wore her wartime creations. He was posted to Turkey and served at Gallipoli, before being transferred to Egypt, but the nights did get very cold so you never know. I like to think that when they met after the war, and he was back in chilly England, she might have picked up her four steel needles again for him.

With thanks to Emma Dobson and Mary McCombie.

Emma Dobson

Mary McCombie

Mary McCombie’s ‘How to Knit Gloves’ full instructions