In this article, originally entitled "Stiff upper lip - memoirs of a non-combatant" C.A.Goddard reflects on his time at an English boarding school (Ottershaw) in the early 1960s, on stiff upper lips and changing attitudes.
A feature of our leisure time at Ottershaw was the Saturday evening entertainment. This took various forms. In my first year, a senior West House boy ‒ Allan Thomas ‒ presented his very own ‘Desert Island Discs’, which included Edith Piaf singing ‘Milord’. On another occasion, English master ‘Munchie’ Menscher sang to his wife’s piano accompaniment. And we watched films: mostly modern masterpieces of the ‘North by Northwest’ variety.
One of these Saturday evening screenings presented Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ (1946), a wartime story of a bomber pilot who bales out without a parachute but miraculously survives, as finally ordained by a heavenly court, after lengthy debate, in order to pursue his love interest (see photo below: David Niven and Kim Hunter in a scene from ‘A Matter of Life and Death)
Well received on release, the film is now a classic: in December 2017, a digitally restored version was shown in British cinemas. Kevin Maher, writing in The Times, complimented the restoration as well as the film itself, which he described as a “...definitive fantasy classic” and “essential viewing.” However, I have to admit that I was rather disappointed at the time, as the film failed to deliver what I had been expecting in terms of action, aerobatics and awesomeness, especially as it starred some of the ‘usual suspects’ to be found in the genre: David Niven, Roger Livesey, Marius Goring. These expectations stemmed from early roots…
Fanciful Fiction
An avid reader during childhood of authors from Charles Dickens to O. Henry, my taste in books also extended to tales of the boys’ adventure genre. These included titles that are now collectors’ items, such as Masterman Ready (Frederick Marryat), The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch (Talbot Baines Reed, founder of ‘The Boy’s Own Paper’), The Dash for Khartoum (G.A. Henty), Deeds of Pluck and Daring in the Great War (Percy F. Westerman), With Haig on the Somme (Herbert Strang), With Allenby in Palestine (Captain F.S. Brereton), Bulldog Drummond (Sapper) (pictured), Beau Geste (P.C. Wren) and The Thirty-nine Steps (John Buchan). Some of these were on the bookshelves at home, others arrived as Christmas and birthday presents. Scouring of stalls at jumble sales and garden parties produced yet others still.
The Real Thing 1
Then one day, while browsing through an out-of-the-way bookshelf, I came across something at once the same and altogether different, in the shape of Britain’s Wonderful Fighting Forces. This propaganda piece, published in 1940/1941, boasted chapter titles such as ‘Our Unchallengeable Navy’ (see illustration). In addition, the volume displayed photos with captions like ‘Bren Carriers in the Ruins of Fort Capuzzo’ and pictures of ships with names that evoked thrashings inflicted on the ‘Frogs’ and other neighbours rash enough to flaunt their hostility. One of these was the awe-inspiring battleship HMS Ramillies, which really did pound Fort Capuzzo with her 15-inch guns. The picture below was included in ‘Our Unchallengeable Navy’: chapter from Britain’s Wonderful Fighting Forces.
But the most striking was a drawing of a British infantryman alongside his German counterpart, both in full kit. The aim was to illustrate how we were better-equipped than the enemy. The ‘Tommy’ was tall, well-made, with an open, honest face. By comparison, ‘Fritz’ appeared decidedly ill-favoured: visibly malformed, assuredly malevolent and presumably malodorous, a credible prototype of the Beastly Boche.
Vicarious valour
These low-brow literary enthusiasms found an echo in films that caught my young imagination, such as ‘The Four Feathers’, ‘Lives of a Bengal Lancer’, ‘In Which we Serve’ and ‘Dawn Patrol’ (picture). These were characterised by an underlying fatalistic melancholy lurking beneath a scripted dry, laconic wit and featuring performers seemingly chosen to represent the stereotypical gallant Englishman, instantly identifiable from a nonchalant attitude and flippant, slang-strewn remarks in clipped tones. Along with actors already mentioned, others also come to mind: Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Jack Hawkins. Apart from Bulldog Drummond, characters included Richard Hannay and ‘Beau’ Geste. This genre of film remained in vogue until it faded out along with the national anthem in cinemas. Notwithstanding, an updated form persists in the shape of James Bond. And as recently as May 2015, at the Belmont Hotel in Sidmouth, where we were celebrating my mother’s 90th birthday, my ears caught the strains of the national anthem, still played to mark the end of spring and summertime performances at the bandstand in Connaught Gardens, just up the hill from where I was standing on the hotel terrace.
Here, in the framework of this genre, is an imagined exchange between the officers’ mess sergeant and Bertie Bingham-Browne, sole surviving pilot of his squadron, the others lost in a bombing raid over Germany the previous evening …
Mess Sergeant: Morning sir, all back safely then, or is it just you for breakfast this morning?
Browne: ‘Fraid so… not much left of the squadron, sergeant. Went to bash the Hun last night but took a pasting ourselves...
Mess Sergeant: Sorry to hear that sir…
Browne: Bit of a mess from the word go, really… Heavy fireworks over the German coast… Blighters must’ve caught Biffo Burleighe-Brockenshawe’s kite … last we heard before he went for a burton were “Cheerio chaps, the party’s been fun...” then he fizzled out…
Mess Sergeant: Very sorry to hear that sir…
Browne: That’s not all, I’m afraid… Next to go for six was Bunny Burpingham-Bathurst... night-fighter pranged him... his machine was a flamer... a couple of them managed to bale out…’chutes opened but somehow the blaze must’ve got to them... poor devils...
Mess Sergeant: Very sorry indeed to hear that sir…
Browne: Yes, and there’s more, I’m sorry to say… Bingo Blankington-Smythe came to grief... dashed bad luck ... coned with every searchlight in the area on him... well, he certainly bought it…a huge explosion... then nothing, just an uncanny crackling on the intercom…
Mess Sergeant: Very, very sorry indeed to hear that sir…
Browne: Yes… and as if that wasn’t enough, next it was Bunty Bolingbroke-Berkeley’s turn… caught a packet on the way back… ditched in the drink, you see…
Mess Sergeant (after poignant pause): Yes sir, I see, sir…
Browne: And you know the rest, don’t you? …Binkie Burlington-Bradshawe…shot up pretty badly... hedge-hopped all the way back…amazingly, he got back to Blighty … a brave attempt at a crash-landing but... deuced rotten luck… his crate hit the deck rather awkwardly, don’t you know… flipped over… and… well, they’re out there now, collecting bits of Binkie and his crew...
Mess Sergeant (after a longer poignant pause, clears throat): Must press on regardless, then, sir!
Browne: Yes, indeed we must, thank you sergeant… so that’ll be two eggs, if you wouldn’t mind, three rashers of bacon, one sausage and a tomato, there’s a good fellow...
Mess Sergeant (with a catch in his voice): Very good sir, thank you sir…
The Real Thing 2
This language is not so far from reality as one might suppose. Just to make sure I am not dreaming, I recently re-visited the (unpublished) diary of an old acquaintance, which he kindly allowed me to take a copy of. The entry for 5 November 1918 describes a shoot-out, which ends:
... there suddenly appeared another Boche in a slit trench about 40 yards to our left, in the act of bringing a light m.g. to bear on us. I fired at him and got him through the head. (Note: This German's helmet is now in the Guards Museum at Wellington Barracks). Another Hun climbed out of the trench and started to run back. I brought him down but he crawled away out of sight. Lucy Vian and I rode up this morning to the scene of yesterday's little battle and found the Hun casualties, and I collected the bayonet knots of the dead Huns as souvenirs.
Those ‘souvenirs’ were displayed on the wall at the foot of the main staircase at this gentleman's London home in Evelyn Gardens, along with an epaulette (from another Horrid Hun): an eerie foil for the wild animal trophies looking down from further up the stairs.
Three days after this incident, the author ‒who had been at the front since October 1914‒ received his one and only wound, which left one hand damaged but still usable. The final diary entry, dated 26 November 1918 and written from a military hospital, reads:
I ate an egg and filled my pipe with my left hand this morning. And that is that!
The inside front cover of the book declares that it is:
Dedicated to the
3rd battalion Coldstream Guards
which never lost a trench
during the whole war
The diary is literally and liberally studded with the language of the books and films of my boyhood. Entirely in line with this style were the author’s attitudes. In telling how his unit moved up to the front to plug a gap in the line in late March 1918, he described the retreating units of General Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army as dispirited and in disorder, adding that they were poorly led “by grammar-school boys”. His words and facial expression suggested a firm belief that leadership should be left in the hands of ‘the Breed’, a class of Englishman who were patriotic, loyal and “physically and morally intrepid”, according to one author. All in all, this gentleman, who lived to the ripe old age of 95, was a splendid but somewhat unnerving character, similar in many ways to another old soldier of my acquaintance...
Plucky Lads in Deeds of Derring-do
The last time I saw my late first wife’s father ‒ shortly before his death in a retirement home in Kent in his 95th year ‒ he was beginning to ramble. So I shouldn’t have been too surprised to be greeted with the words “Hallo Christopher, how’s life on a captain’s pay?” Charles had seen army service from the 1920s onwards and by the time war broke out in 1939 was on the reserve. Although he spoke little of his service during the war, I understood that he had been on active duty throughout, mainly in North Africa and Italy, except for the last few months as a staff officer somewhere in the Middle East, and had come through unscathed.
Perhaps it was because I was training as a lawyer that he mentioned having once sat on a court-martial. The case involved a group of deserters on trial charged with mutiny for having left a gap in the line near Monte Cassino, a conspiracy endangering the lives of their comrades. According to Charles’s account, the outcome of the case was far from settled until the last of the group, caught and arrested in Alexandria, was brought straight into court, where he gave evidence implicating the other defendants. All were found guilty, though their death sentence was commuted, as was customary in World War 2.
Charles was still very much alive in the early 1990s when I drove down to Caserta from Rome airport with an old family friend, stopping overnight at an hotel in the town of Cassino, below the famous monastery, destroyed by Allied bombing in 1944 (pictured).
This was rebuilt after the war (pictured).
The hotel was family-run and I well recall the youngest ‒ twin boys in their early teens: cheeky, chubby, red-haired, freckled ‒ as well as the oldest: the grandmother. When I mentioned that my father-in-law had been there in the war, she pointedly remarked that then, as now, the local Italians regarded the Germans as their protectors: the raping and looting, she added, only started after the Allies came.
Next morning, my friend and I continued on our way to Caserta, where we were staying with a couple I knew, an Italian air force officer and his wife. Carlo was now in the final posting of his career – not, as he had hoped, as air attaché in Washington DC but as commandant of Aeronautica Militare Scuola Sottufficiali: the NCO training establishment for the Italian Air Force. The school, in the former royal palace at Caserta, is in the stables, located at the very top of the building: the only hint of the trainees’ presence was the thundering of boots overhead in the morning. Here is a picture of the Royal Palace, Caserta.
At some point, while showing us around the building, our host mentioned that a good many tableware items were missing, looted in the war, so he said, “by the Americans, who drove up the steps of the palace in their jeeps.” While in Caserta, I sent some postcards to England, including one to Charles. On arrival home in England, I found a letter from Charles to the effect that he remembered Caserta from the war, noting that his unit, having suffered severe losses in men and materiel while crossing the (River) Volturno, had arrived at the palace in American equipment. He added that, once there, still smarting from their recent misadventure, they had relieved the palace of some of its finer tableware, which had since then adorned his regiment’s officers’ mess ‒ legitimate loot, so he said ‒ for use on ceremonial occasions.
Hearts of Oak: Our Boys in the Baltics
At this point, I was thinking to add something about my present wife’s father, who also served in World War 2. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t quite fit the bill as he played for the losing team. Happily, though, he survived his experiences as a prisoner of war in Siberia. But he did mention that from his wartime activities he was familiar with the military base at Kadaga ‒ an outlying village of the town of Ādaži, near Riga, Latvia, situated in a picturesque area (see photo below: view of Kadaga lake - taken by the author).
Kadaga has been a military training centre (photo below of the military training area "the Polygon") for over a century and it is where my present wife and I kept a holiday home for many years.
Indeed, Kadaga is as close as this Englishman ever got to soldiering ‒ as a member of the team that delivered joint training under the Baltic Peacekeeping Battalion (BALTBAT) project from 1994 based at the military training academies of the three Baltic States and at Paldiski (Estonia), Rukla (Lithuania) and Adazi/Kadaga (Latvia) with multinational support. In phase I, training cadres ‒ some thirty or more officers and NCOs from each country ‒ underwent English language training at national defence academies. This was followed by military training in English from Royal Marine (UK) and Nordic trainers at Paldiski, Rukla and Adazi/Kadaga. In Phase II, some 100+ soldiers received English language training followed by cascade military training from the training cadres, who passed on what they had learned from the UK and Nordic trainers, who in turn were on hand to lend support.
Tales of Baltbat would feed an article in themselves: another story, to be told another time, perhaps. But in line with the theme of this article, it cannot be left unsaid that our Royal Marine trainers were impressive ambassadors for our country: always courteous, at the same time outstanding professionals clearly not to be trifled with. A whirlwind of memories conjures up two fleeting images with a whiff of individual whimsy. One is of a diminutive sergeant turning up in union-jack shorts for a run in seriously wintry weather. The other is of a huge sergeant-major telling (because a sergeant-major doesn’t ask, he tells) his junior colleagues “Are we all happy bunnies, then?” ‒ a distant echo of the character of Colour Sergeant Bourne in the film “Zulu”, who, when asked by a frightened young soldier: “Why is it us? Why us?” replies: “Because we're here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.”
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