Our Land at War

by Duff Hart-Davis

  miles away in thought: Ibid., p. 13.

  suffered from hay fever: In 1952 Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality, and submitted to chemical castration, rather than to prison; but in 1954 he died from cyanide poisoning. Although the inquest recorded his death as suicide, his family believed it had been accidental. In 2009 the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, apologized on behalf of the Government for the appalling way in which he had been treated, and in 2014 the Queen granted him an official pardon.

  manor pets were buried: There were two other main bombe locations, in north London, each with about 100 machines, separated from Bletchley to preserve them if the Manor site were bombed.

  came through unscathed: After the war the establishment was used for training telephone engineers, but later the house fell into disrepair and the huts began to disintegrate. Then in 1991 the Bletchley Park Trust was formed, with the aim of converting the whole site into a national museum and preserving as many as possible of the wartime facilities. In this the Trust has succeeded triumphantly: such is the fame and fascination of this once top-secret place that it now attracts more than 200,000 visitors a year.

  Thirteen: Rescue Operations

  ancestral white elephant: People and Places, p. 217.

  the country house enterprise: Today the National Trust has nearly 4,000,000 members and employs almost 5000 staff. It owns 200 historic houses open to the public, and 630,000 acres of land. It also owns or protects 700 miles of coast in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

  descended the perron and mounted: Ibid., p. 9.

  … I agree: Ibid., p. 80.

  shortly be called up: People and Places, p. 73.

  Only a char left: Ibid.

  passed to the Trust: Ibid., pp. 68–83. In 2012 Stourhead attracted 350,000 visitors.

  laundry maids, lamp-men: The Destruction of the Country House, p. 172.

  favour of Lord Sackville: People and Places, pp. 166–83.

  spoke with a peevish lisp: Ibid., p. 94.

  tiresome and stupid: Ibid., p. 100.

  his demise very much: Ibid.

  on a modest scale: Ibid., p. 125.

  May Day 1946: Ibid., pp. 122–33.

  subordinates as barbarians: Ibid., p. 34.

  peas-in-a-pod likeness: The Estate Magazine, Winter 1941, pp. 717–18.

  scarcely boil an egg: private reminiscence.

  ‘not at all the thing’: Queen Mary, p. 596.

  Mary, Duchess of Beaufort: The Duchess’s father, the first Marquess of Cambridge, was Queen Mary’s younger brother.

  delight of the family: King George V, p. 202.

  ‘So that’s what hay looks like’: Queen Mary, p. 600.

  proverbial at Sandringham: Ibid.

  one never knows: Ibid., p. 601.

  without the Queen’s knowledge: Ibid., p. 602.

  enemy’s land advance: Badminton archive.

  churches and private houses: Details from the Badminton archive.

  does not remember seeing it: Badminton archive.

  smiled a glorious welcome: School Days at Chatsworth.

  a punishable sin: Ibid.

  in the cleared areas: Details from the Chatsworth archive.

  empty for years: In 1945 an oak in the Old Park was blown down. When sawn up for timber, the trunk revealed a ball shot enclosed by 400 rings of annual growth.

  other side of the house: Details from the Queen Margaret’s School archive.

  in the antiques corridor: Soon after the fire Anne Hollis left school to join the WRNS. After the war she married Robert Warin, who was training to be a consultant dermatologist, and they had five children. When all five had been to university, she decided it was her turn to get a degree, and obtained first class honours in Humanities at the Open University. She wrote poems and children’s stories, and put together a book called Dear Girl, I Escaped from her father’s diaries and her mother’s letters from the First World War. She then wrote a life of the eighth-century Abbess Hilda of Whitby, and she had almost completed a study of Hilda’s arch-rival Wilfrid of Hexham when she and her husband were killed in a car accident in 1992.

  ‘firm and sound’: Private conversation.

  our great meeting hall: Ibid.

  carefully-controlled ‘accident’: Ibid.

  Fourteen: Plane Fields

  at our expense: Lincolnshire Airfields in the Second World War, p. 167.

  US Air Force moved in: The land has now reverted to agriculture, but a few wartime buildings remain.

  a large model ship: community.lincolnshire.gov.uk/bardneyvillagehistory/

  hardly a lavatory door left: Lincolnshire Airfields in the Second World War, p. 178.

  successes of the war: Bomber Command, p. 183.

  tranquil once more: BBC PW A2204326.

  airmen and women: Lincolnshire Airfields in the Second World War, p. 272.

  the invasion had begun: Ibid., p. 49.

  scarlet women from the cities: Bomber Command, p. 241.

  numerous others wounded: Yorkshire Airfields in the Second World War, p. 89.

  the airfield boundary: The Wartime Memories Project – RAF Marston Moor.

  of one of the dead: Yorkshire Airfields in the Second World War, p. 240.

  a head inside it: Ibid.

  in hospital for months: Ibid., p. 209.

  anyone else about it: Ibid., p. 236.

  when the fog had cleared: The Wartime Memories Project – RAF Marston Moor.

  Fifteen: American Invasion

  pleading for handouts: During the war the annual consumption of meat was 140 lb per head, but GIs averaged 234 lb.

  distrust between them: Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain. Introduction. Pages unnumbered.

  It’s an even swap: Ibid.

  like a shot: Rich Relations, p. 49.

  far from their minds: BBC PW A2742860.

  the search for fun: Rich Relations, p. 54.

  a natural state of affairs: BBC PW A2935749.

  the Brown Bomber: World History Connected, Vol. 5, No. 1. ‘Black and Asian Involvement’. When Joe Louis went to a cinema in Salisbury in 1944, he was told by the manager, who knew who he was, that he would have to sit in a section reserved for black troops.

  in the near future: NARA, RG 107, Box 36, File 291.2

  with money to spend: Rich Relations, p. 218.

  cruelly betrayed: Wycombe Abbey School, p. 106.

  forty different schools: Among the foster-schools were Headington (in Oxford), Benenden (which had been evacuated from Kent to Cornwall), Queen Anne’s, Caversham, Malvern Girls’ College and Cheltenham Ladies’ College.

  ‘If mistress is desired, ring bell’: Rich Relations, p. 115.

  would have been impossible: Wycombe Abbey School, p. 121.

  landed at Polebrook: The Mighty Eighth, p. 7.

  marshalling yards at Rouen: The pilot of the lead B-17 was Major Paul W. Tibbets, who, on 6 August 1945, was at the controls when B-29 Enola Gay dropped the Little Boy atom bomb on Hiroshima.

  105 combat missions: Ghost Fields of Suffolk, p. 51.

  from one of the planes: Rich Relations, p. 284.

  in only eight seconds: www.recordinguttlesford history.org.uk/

  up and down the river: BBC PW 235141.

  grazing in the green meadow: hethersett.org.uk/wars.htm

  or “It’s only a Lancaster”: Action Stations, p. 21.

  sought the thinner air: The Mighty Eighth, p.153.

  to white US soldiers: Life, 23 August 1948.

  Sixteen: On the Wing

  was the heron: British Birds, Vol. XXXVI, 1942, p. 126.

  the rest driven away: Caerlaverock is now a National Nature Reserve, managed by Scottish Natural Heritage, and some 24,000 Barnacle geese over-winter there.

  the strongest possible terms: The colony of gannets has grown to about 34,000 pairs, and the northern side of the island where the birds breed, is so plastered with droppings that from a distance it looks as though it is covered in sno
w.

  breeding British pigeons: NA KV4/10.

  It will take off at day-break: NA CAB 154/35.

  severely reprimanded: BBC PW AD4017809.

  Seventeen: Fun and Games

  on that strange contradiction: The Lost Seasons, p. 40.

  the English sports clubs: The Times, 10 July 1940.

  except RAIN!: The Lost Seasons, p. 65.

  had been sounded: War Games, p. 98. Stallard was expelled from the British League of Racing Cyclists which he had helped found; but he is still regarded as an important force in the development of the sport, and was instrumental in planning the Tour of Britain.

  Martlesham Heath in Suffolk: Such was Obolensky’s renown that a building is named after him at his school, Trent College; a statue of him stands in Cromwell Square, Ipswich (where he was buried in the cemetery); an annual Obolensky Lecture is given in his honour; the stadium at Twickenham has an Obolensky restaurant, and an annual Prince Obolensky award is presented by the Prince Obolensky Association at Rosslyn Park Football Club, for which he played.

  to face unpleasant facts: The History of the Derby Stakes, p. 527.

  immune from attack: Ibid.

  a division of troops: Orwell, Diaries, pp. 306–7.

  were in uniform: Mervyn Jones was killed in action two years later.

  very large sums indeed: The History of Steeplechasing, p. 157.

  its very life?: Hansard, 13 June 1940.

  available to the workers: Ibid.

  cannot get supplies?: Ibid., 5 June 1940.

  Penalty one stroke: War Games, p. 82.

  importance to the war effort: Ibid.

  Eighteen: Field Sports

  or anyone in particular: NA MAF 44/25.

  ‘the most blimpish peer imaginable’: People and Places, p. 218.

  We then went on hunting: Wyndham and Children First, p. 63. When the Queen went down to inspect Canadian troops stationed on the Petworth estate before D-Day, Lord Leconfield declined to meet her, on the grounds that he was too busy.

  for Brain of Britain: Raoul Millais, p. 40.

  did conform to the Rules: Badminton archive.

  ‘a large increase of cur-dogs’: Ibid. Master’s obsession with foxes lasted until his death. It is said that one day at the end of January 1984, when he was eighty-three, in the graveyard of St Michael and All Angels’ Church at Badminton he saw three foxes apparently predicting his demise. One was sitting on the grave of his grandfather, one on that of his father, and the third on the spot under which he proposed to be buried. He died a week later, on 5 February 1984.

  into the nearest field: Wartime Diaries, p. 152.

  not lectured them upon: CL, 9 December 1939.

  as soon as possible: Come Dawn, Come Dusk, pp. 111–12.

  coming from one engine: Ibid., p. 114.

  few people left to fish: FG, 9 September 1939.

  what tactics to employ: FG, 16 September 1939.

  ‘a first-rate season for flatfish’: Ibid.

  trying their luck: Ibid.

  for ever in peace: Fishing and Flying, pp. 22–3.

  absolutely FULL OF GRAIN: NA MAF 44/48.

  to be of any use: NA MAF 44/29.

  absence of manpower: Information contributed by grouse moor managers.

  but in hundreds: Private source.

  seems rather drastic: NA MAF 44/27.

  to initiate culling: Twenty years passed before the Deer Act (1963) set close seasons and laid down minimum calibres of weapons for shooting deer. Paradoxically, as the human population of Britain has expanded to sixty million, and more and more land is taken up by houses, roads, industrial sites, airports and so on, deer numbers have grown to over one million – easily the highest total in recorded history. Some 50,000 deer are involved in traffic accidents every year, and more and more stalkers are being trained by the British Deer Society and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation; yet numbers are still increasing.

  Nineteen: Animals Under Fire

  they were very high: Huxley, Memories, p. 248.

  not a kicker: Ibid., p. 255.

  to survey the damage: The Story of Bristol Zoo, p. 78.

  to “our gallant ally”: Ibid., p. 80.

  one of a panda: Clifton College had been evacuated to Bude, in Cornwall.

  break the barriers instantly: Diaries 1939–72, pp. 82–3.

  destroyed overnight: Bertram Mills Circus, p. 128.

  Twenty: Slate Country

  finding people for work: Anglesey and Gwynedd in the War Years, p. 132.

  assembling aircraft components: By 1943, when conscription was extended to include women up to fifty, more than half all Welsh war-workers were female.

  seek out his enemy: Sniping Manual, p. 3. In 1956 Wills succeeded his father as the second Baron Dulverton. A skilled forester and naturalist, he became President of the Timber Growers’ Organisation, Chairman of the Forestry Committee of Great Britain, and President of the British Deer Society.

  training and practice: Sniping Manual, p. 8.

  great sport of sniping: With British Snipers to the Reich, p. 284.

  ‘a bag of something like fifty Huns’: In 1946 Major General G. H. A. MacMillan, Director of Weapons and Development at the War Office, wrote to Wills’s father saying, ‘He did an extremely good job when in command of the Sniping School, and the Army owes him a great deal more than is known generally.’

  blowers in the dining halls: During the war Billy Butlin was recruited by the Ministry of Supply as an unpaid morale-raiser in Britain, and in Europe, at the invitation of General Montgomery, he set up leave centres for the 21st Army Group. After the war he opened many more holiday camps in England, and in 1964 he was knighted for his charitable work. In 1973 the Rank Organisation launched a takeover of his empire for £43 million – over £400 million in today’s figures.

  Twenty-One: Evictions

  we enjoyed ourselves: Rich Relations, p. 122.

  roared over the heath: The training carried out at Stanford was realistic enough to cause several deaths, but must have contributed to the success of Operation Overlord. Families were told that men who died on exercises had been killed in action.

  Britain for the British: Farming on a Battleground, p. 32.

  to land his planes on: Ibid.

  more specially the tanks: Ibid., p. 63.

  way of life were to go: BBC PW AD3258362.

  when the war was over: Hansard, 4 July 1946.

  ever discovered in Britain: The treasures found at Sutton Hoo are now in the British Museum.

  to live in Imber: Imber’s buildings survived the war more or less intact, but many of them were damaged by shellfire or explosions when British troops trained on Salisbury Plain in the 1940s and 1950s.

  In October 1961 2000 people gathered on the site, demanding that the villagers be allowed back, but in January 1962 the Ministry of Transport announced that the closure of rights of way on the ranges would be permanent, and a public inquiry found in favour of Imber’s continued use by the army. During the 1970s several dummy houses were built, to make the place a more realistic scenario for street fighting. Military training continues, but the village is open to the public on specified days.

  Public attachment to Imber has remained exceptionally strong. Concerts and festivals have been staged in the village. In 2008 St Giles’s Church was restored (after being struck by lightning five years earlier); annual services are still held there, and there is a carol service on the last Saturday before Christmas.

  Southern Command: Dorsetshire.com website.

  over the ridge: Tyneham: A Lost Heritage, p. 2.

  aged ninety-three: Tyneham was never reoccupied. In spite of vigorous and sustained protests by local people, the Government reneged on its promise of allowing the inhabitants to return, and in 1948 compulsorily bought the whole valley for £30,000. By then the weapons being fired on the gunnery ranges at Bovington, five miles to the north, were so powerful that Tyneham had become a dang
er zone, and it has remained a military training area ever since. Strange to relate – in view of the frequent explosions – the valley has proved a haven for wildlife, and is frequented particularly by Sika deer.

  In 1967 the Ministry of Works demolished the Manor House, which had become unsafe; but the church and schoolhouse have been repaired and preserved as museums. Tyneham is now open to the public at weekends and in August – the mysterious and melancholy remains of a village peopled only by ghosts.

  on 20 December: Reg Hannaford’s story appeared in The Wartime News, Vol. 4, 2nd edition, May 1999.

  had been destroyed: FW, 11 August 1944.

  Twenty-Two: Far North

  or anyone representing me: Cameron-Head papers L/D27, The Highland Archives, Lochaber Archive Centre, Fort William.

  roof over my head: Ibid.

  and down steep hills: Paramilitary Training in Scotland, p. 3.

  weapons is first class: Gavin Maxwell: A Life, p. 55.

  with a Colt .45: Ibid., p. 57.

  most beautiful place in the world: Ibid., p. 61.

  eels floating on the water: Paramilitary Training in Scotland, p. 69.

  have been collected: Cameron of Lochiel Papers (CL), The Highland Archive Centre, Fort William.

  without a permit: After the war timber merchants became reluctant to buy wood from the estate, because so much shrapnel was embedded in the trees. Live mortar bombs and hand grenades are still being found in the peat. In 2011, before excavation started for a new water system, an electronic sweep of the ground revealed seven bombs and a hand grenade.

  with automatic weapons: Private information.

  on the South Forest: Private archive.

  Lieutenant Tony Younger: Blowing Our Bridges, pp. 83–5.

  were incinerated in 1945: Gruinard was finally cleaned up in the 1980s at a cost of £500,000. Nearly 300 tonnes of formaldehyde diluted in seawater were sprayed on the land, and the worst contaminated soil was taken away in sealed containers. A flock of sheep put onto the island remained healthy, as did rabbits, black and brown, which had survived throughout, and in May 1990 the original owners were allowed to buy the island back for £500.

  however good it was: www.rememberingscotlandatwar.org.uk

  its master returned: www.WW2inthehighlands.co.uk