by Vicky Unwin
Please don’t make too much fuss about everything – Tom does hate it so – we really can’t have a slap-up wedding – Tom can’t possibly get away from his new job which he’s only just started. We shall get married in London, and I expect in a Registry Office – I know it’s not very glamorous etc. but much more sensible and suitable – I honestly don’t think Tom would survive a proper wedding with hundreds of relations and guests – he’d probably get up and say something awful, or shocking and completely put the tin lid on everything. He’s quite liable to!!! Don’t put anything in the papers – not yet anyway – And (and I wouldn’t have told you this if I’d thought you were going to tell everyone) please don’t rush round telling everyone I am marrying a Czech. They will at once conjure up pictures of somebody akin to the typical Polish officer they have seen in UK during the war. I think Tom’s father was in the Diplomatic Service – but I’m not sure. I’m certain I didn’t make a definite statement – so please, again, don’t go rushing round and tell everyone. Besides, why should everyone know Tom’s ancestry etc? It’s purely a family matter and I hate to think of all the busybodies in Durham clicking their tongues over the latest bit of gossip.
How sweet of Aunty Dorothy to ask if we would like Thurfield – I wonder how far it is from London? We would so much rather live in the country – but I don’t want Tom to have too much travelling to do as he really works very hard.
A long letter from Aunty Rose today, who loved the cheese and (don’t laugh!) wants to know if I can get her some more!!!! I may be able to have a day trip to Denmark on my return to Kiel, but I rather doubt it.
I had a very nice weekend in Berlin – one night there in a most luxurious YWCA, and a sleeper there and back. The first day I borrowed a bicycle, and sped around the ruins and on Sunday I went on a conducted tour arranged by CCG, visiting the Chancellery – now a shattered ruin, but it must have been an awe inspiring place – all marble – the bunker where Hitler is supposed to have committed suicide, and many other places of interest – It must have been a truly beautiful city, such wide streets as I have never seen before, one of them, the Kaiserdamm is a dual carriageway. Each road being far wider than Whitehall, for example – In comparison with other German cities, the people seemed better dressed, and there were a few little shops with trinkets and antiques, and one or two dressmaker’s shops as well, with quite smart clothes in them.
Today we were let loose in the kitchen and each of us had to prepare a meal for 3 people – made shepherd’s pie and marvellous treacle tart –
I’m not very expert at pastry, and it was terribly short, but most sumptuous! I dressmade this afternoon, and now, after all that, and a somewhat disturbed night in the train – I feel worn out! Only Tom’s Turkish Delight is keeping me awake!
How far is Thurfield from the station and shops? It would really be necessary to have a car, which is entirely out of the question as we could never afford to buy – Tom hates being without me, but perhaps the I.F.A.P will turn up trumps!
Please don’t be cross with me for my words of caution – I expect you are almost as thrilled as I am – and naturally when people ask questions – out it all comes. But I can’t bear to be the subject of bridge party gossip and I know Tom would collapse if he thought he was causing such a stir.
No more,
Lots of love
Sheila
Sheila’s letters to her mother gloss over the utter turmoil that was going on behind the scenes and which is revealed in the letters Tom wrote to her every day, reflecting his insecurity and anxiety, inability to make his mind up (something he never lost) and his deeply depressive nature. On a couple of occasions he was in fact contemplating suicide:
… because life just didn’t seem worth living … I now know what they mean when they talk of ‘balance of mind disturbed’. I wonder whether these periods are not really not periods of very intense sanity, when one sees things so clearly, so unembellished by day to day palliatives that one takes the logical answer and draws one’s consequences.
He was his father’s son indeed.
❖❖❖
It must have put great stress on Sheila when she came home for the wedding after leaving the WRNS. Presumably overjoyed at seeing one daughter married, and apparently charmed by her future son-in-law, nevertheless I suspect Grace, like most bourgeois British people, was a little disapproving of his foreign background and unconventional ways. Sheila would have had to do a lot of defending of her choice, especially when he was compared unfavorably, no doubt, with the likes of John, Bruce or Robin, all conventional and successful career soldiers, who would have been a much better match in the eyes of the bridge players of Durham city.
Several times Tom asks Sheila about the ‘battle royal’ and encourages her by saying, ‘it wont be for long, she’s losing a daughter now, so be nice to her for your last few days of iniquity.’ After his first visit to meet her parents in early December, he writes that he ‘rather liked your folks. Don’t put their backs up the last week you are with them. I think when your Ma talks about “Findlay says this” or “F says that” she really means SHE suggested it to F and he weakly nods approval. I don’t suppose he gives a damn one way or the other.’
As the day draws nearer, he seems to be a bit more sympathetic: ‘How is the battle on the home front? Don’t let the buggers get you down, it’s our wedding, our life. So even if they have their own way a little, well, Maleesh, sweetheart. Once we are out of that kirk, its just you and me ever after and damn the last man.’
❖❖❖
They married at St Cuthbert’s Church in Durham on 23 December 1946. They then went on a short honeymoon to the Lake District, staying in Coniston, before returning to the flat in Leinster Square. Tom soon became fed up with IFAP as he felt it was not aggressive enough, especially towards the Americans, who were hide-bound by the ‘power of Yankee farmers who want more money and command lots of votes now … I will NOT work for an organisation whose aims run counter to the general prospects of mankind.’ Marriage had not dampened his ideals.
He managed to obtain a position with the United Africa Company to be part of the Groundnut Scheme, the brainchild of the post-war Labour government, with the aim of providing food – groundnut oil – for ration-weary Britain. Sheila was to join him in July 1947. They spent the next three years of their marriage living in a tent in the middle of Tanganyika.
When the Groundnut Scheme failed in 1951, Tom managed to switch to the Colonial Service where he became first a District Officer, then a District Commissioner (DC), before becoming Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, working for the new Prime Minister, then President, Julius Nyerere, until 1964. Sheila worked on and off from her arrival in Tanganyika, for the head of the Groundnut Scheme in Kongwa, in the District Office according to the opportunities afforded in the middle of nowhere and, later, for the British Institute (of Archaeology) in East Africa.
My parents on their wedding day, 23 December 1946, St Cuthbert’s, Durham City.
I was born in Kilwa in 1957, where my father was DC; their marriage, already shaky, disintegrated completely in 1966 and they were divorced in the early 1970s.
There is no denying that Tom made a huge impact on Sheila’s life, even if the marriage was unhappy. It enabled her to fulfill the wanderlust she had inherited from her father and had nurtured during the war; living in Africa gave her the freedom and opportunity to develop her passion for ethnography and archaeology and, most of all, to further shape her own compassion for others. Without him, she might have become just another army wife, living her mother’s suburban dream. Instead she developed into a feisty and fascinating woman, loved and admired by many, from all backgrounds and races, young and old.
As her beloved cousin Hazel said to me as I was completing this book, ‘she would have been so happy that you did this for her.’ It is only thanks to Sheila and her mother, keeping this collection of letters over the decades, that I have been able to do so.
Notes
9 The victorious Russian army even raped survivors of the concentration camps, according to Sarah Helm.
10 Peter Stuyvesant, National Journal 20/3/2012
11 The army had introduced new pay scales, which in fact left personnel worse off than before.
12 I still have the typewriter.
13 Excerpt from Dieter Südhoff, Hermann Ungar: a Life and Works.
14 Both Commanders of the Kriegsmarine; Raeder received life imprisonment and died in 1960, while Doenitz only received 10 years, despite briefly being President of Germany after Hitler’s death.
15 Excerpt from Dieter Südhoff, Hermann Ungar: a Life and Works.
Bibliography and Sources
Primary sources
Sheila’s letters form the bulk of primary source material, along with her photos and mementos from scrapbooks, including newspaper cuttings, dinner menus, service sheets and other ephemera.
Interviews with Sheila’s surviving older sister, Rosemary, then 95, but whose memory was poor. She went to Egypt with the WAAF towards the end of the war, and met with some of Sheila’s old boyfriends. She was also aware of the family history.
Interview with Sheila’s cousin Hazel Dixon.
A recorded interview with my father shortly before he died in 2012.
Secondary sources
Artemis Cooper, Cairo in the War: 1939–45 (John Murray, 2013)
Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet (Faber & Faber, 2012 edition)
Sarah Helm, If This Is A Woman (Little, Brown, 2015)
Eric Lomax, The Railway Man (Jonathan Cape, 1995)
Olivia Manning, The Levant Trilogy (The Danger Tree, The Battle Lost and Won, The Sum of Things (Phoenix edition, 1983))
Alan Moorhead, African Trilogy: The North African Campaign 1940–43 (Cassell, new edition, 2000)
S.W.C. Pack, Operation Husky: The Allied Invasion of Sicily (David and Charles, 1977)
Dieter Südhoff, translated by Angela Ladd, Hermann Ungar: a Life and Works (available to download from smashwords via www.hermannungar.com)
Evelyn Waugh, Sword of Honour (Penguin Modern Classics, 2001)
Plates
Sheila, in her late 70s, travelled to Baluchistan as part of an archeological team; she was the ethnographer.
Rosemary with Granny Proctor in Downham Market c. 1930.
Grace with Sheila and Rosemary as babies.
Captain Percival Findlay Mills, MC, Royal Engineers, Sheila’s beloved father.
Sheila on the left, with sister Rosemary, as teenagers.
Sheila and Rosemary while at St James’s in London, 1940.
Official portrait of Sheila in her uniform.
Warrant card for 3rd Officer Mills.
Miss Boyd, Director of the WRNS Dundee, carrying out an inspection.
Formal OTC photo at Greenwich, Sheila is the fifth on the right, second row up, her height obscuring another girl’s face.
Alexandria, the Cecil Hotel; looking down the Blvd Saad Zaghloul.
Sheila, taken on the morning of 29 June 1942, as plans for ‘The Flap’ were being executed.
Sheila and Mary Dugdale, ‘the night we left Alex in a hurry’.
‘Old’ Kay Way, also waiting for evacuation orders. Kay was with Sheila in Methil and for much of her time in Egypt.
Sheila in Ismailia.
Paddy.
Kay Way and Ann Halliday on the balcony of their shared room at 11, Rue Rassafah in Alexandria.
The Mohammed Ali mosque and citadel.
Catacombs and Pompey’s Pillar.
Idwal and Sheila on top of the Great Pyramid.
Sheila on a camel at Giza.
Polyphoto of Sheila showing off her whites.
‘To Sheila: with love from 13 Corps; for one who helped make it possible. Bruce (on behalf of all!)’ – on top of Etna. Bruce is at the top left.
John Pritty’s regiment, the 51st Highland Division, after the fall of Tripoli in 1943.
Beirut, looking towards the mountains.
Gezira race card.
John Pritty on his OCTU course; he is third left, bottom row, I think.
In the mess, ‘the bar at lunch time’, at Suez (l–r) Sheila, Mary Benton, Kay Chase and Monica Powell.
Sheila with two colleagues on the ‘fearsome Tewfik camel’.
Sheila on one of the main streets in Damascus.
Beirut bathing belle.
Sheila (back row, left) and the WRNS at Plön.
Formal photo of Sheila in uniform, showing her two stripes, taken in Germany.
Tom Unwin in his naval uniform.
Copyright
First published in 2015
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
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This ebook edition first published in 2015
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© Vicky Unwin, 2015
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