Entertaining the Troops in World War II, by Carol Drinkwater

 

                   A very proud me on Remembrance Sunday, 9th November 2024, in London.

Below, I am in the company of: (left) Alan Wolven in the chair. Alan is a pianist. Now in his nineties, he is still playing. He was entertaining troops from the age of fourteen; (to my right) Suzie Cliff  was marching for her Mum, Doreen Thompson. See, she is wearing her mum's badges. Doreen entertained with ENSA. Colin Bourdiec in the splendid brown trilby, has a very mellifluous singing voice - he was humming and singing to us throughout our long cold wait before the march began. He is an entertainer who specialises in WWII material. On the far right, Steve Wolven, son of Alan.

The sashes we are wearing represent ENSA, the Entertainments National Service Association.

                                                              Remembrance Sunday 2024. 

This year of 2024 was the first time that members of ENSA, or family members of those who had entertained troops during WWII, were represented in the march on Remembrance Sunday. We were a tiny band of six but we were strode proudly for the thousands of men and women who had entertained servicemen and women while they were fighting for their country. 

On a personal level, I was marching in memory of my late father. 

Peter Albert Drinkwater (later he used the stage name Peter Regan). This photo was taken, I believe, in Palestine sometime around 1943.

One of the inspirations for much of what I have spent my life doing: working as an actress, travel writing, entertaining, came from my late father who was a musician and an agent. My father signed up with the Royal Air Force in 1940 when he was 18. He wasn't keen on the idea of weaponry, or of any kind of fighting, but he was rather taken with the possibility of entertaining the servicemen and women. "Bringing a smile to their faces." So, he took himself off to the Drury Lane Theatre in London where there were auditions being held for those who wished to join one of the entertainment corps. Because Daddy had already enlisted with the Royal Air Force, the choice available to him was Squadron Leader Ralph Reader's Gang Show entertainment troupes. Daddy auditioned and was accepted.

I am not sure he had had any previous theatrical experience, I doubt it, nothing besides a dream of going on the stage. Even so he was accepted.

Here we are again marching past the Cenotaph, wearing the sash of ENSA. It was a very memorable and moving moment. Our wreath was laid amongst the thousands of others. Red upon red, all those poppies for peace. 

Above is the same small band of six of us. This was while we were waiting to march. In the foreground of this shot is Alan Crowe who is a marvellous individual. It was Alan who managed to persuade the British Legion that representatives from ENSA should be offered the opportunity to march with those who served. Alan is also the man responsible for the raising of funds to build a memorial in honour of all those who entertained.

What is ENSA? 

ENSA is the Entertainments National Service Association. It was established in 1939 by Basil Dean and Leslie Henson (both names my father mentioned frequently during my childhood). Leslie Henson was the grandfather of the television presenter Adam Henson. ENSA was established to provide entertainment for British Armed Forces personnel during World War II. ENSA operated as part of the Navy, Army and Air Force institutes. 

There were many artistes who did not go abroad but spent their time travelling Britain entertaining in service bases, ammunitions factories or gun and balloon sites.

There were several classes of shows from the larger ones to small shows. The B shows were the lesser known stars and including performers who were not known at all.

Apologies that this photo is a little blurry. These are my father's medals. I had never really asked myself what they were awarded for until I started to write this History Girls post. The first medal, I believe, is a WWII British Africa star. Daddy would have been awarded this one because he spent all his war in Africa and the Middle East. 

Every ENSA member was awarded the Defence Medal. In Daddy's collection above, it is the third one along.

                                             Dame Very Lynn. 1917 - 2020

Dame Very Lynn, an abidingly famous ENSA artiste was a symbol of the wartime spirit, also a symbol of all that was waiting back home: wives, sweethearts, sisters, mothers. She was greatly loved and became known as the 'Force's Sweetheart'. She was awarded the Burma Star for entertaining British guerrilla units in Japanese-controlled Burma. She was also awarded the War Medal 1939 - 1945.  She and I met on many occasions later when I had started working as an actress and we were involved in various charity shows together. Vera was a truly lovely lady, modest, gracious and generous.

Daddy's War Medal is above: the fourth one along in the pic.

When my father used to recount his tales of those 'exotic' days in Africa, it all sounded such fun and gung-ho but it could also be very dangerous. 

It was compulsory for West End Stars to entertain the troops during at least one six-week tour a year. Sometimes entertainers who were not in the armed forces were sent abroad to entertain. Basil Dean worried that if any of these artistes were captured, they were at serious risk.  If they were caught and not in uniform, Dean feared they might be taken for spies, which was a very real possibility. At Dean's behest uniforms were introduced for those civilians/stars who had accepted to entertain in war zones. The uniforms consisted of standard pattern battle dress and war theatre uniforms such as Jungle Green bush jackets. The only insignia allowed on the jacket was the standard ENSA shoulder titles. Although the civilian performers had no rank, all ENSA performers were granted officer status so that they could use the mess facilities. History has it that the only artiste never to wear uniform was Tommy Trinder who, when offered the uniform, said, "No, thanks. If I get captured, I deserve to be shot!"

As far as I am aware, the only ENSA member killed in the war was a nineteen-year-old girl, a tap dancer and acrobat. Vivienne Hole performed under the stage name of Vivienne Faye. On 23rd January 1945 in Normandy, she was being driven between shows as a passenger aboard a truck carrying stage scenery which strayed into a minefield and exploded. She was buried with full military honours in the Sittard War Cemetery. What a tragic end for one so young and at such a late stage in the war.

When I was a child, RAF Gang Show reunions were held in London on an annual basis. Daddy always attended. He was immensely proud of his contribution to Ralph Reader's shows. Amongst the soldiers he performed with were Peter Sellers and Tony Hancock. Peter Sellers began with ENSA as a drummer. Later when performing with Gang Show units, he developed his extraordinary skills for improvisation. Both Sellers and my father loved to play the ukulele and I have often wondered whether they performed together. My father's ukulele, and his banjo, sit in my writing room and they a great source of comfort and inspiration.

Ralph Reader created twenty-four Gang Show units and two WAAF units. They toured and performed in almost every theatre of war from Iceland to Burma. It is believed that in total they entertained some 3,500,000 servicemen and women. Quite an achievement.

On several occasions Daddy took me along with him to a reunion and I was privileged to spot a few of the famous faces. I remember Daddy discreetly pointing people out to me. At the end of the evening, everyone would get up together and sing "On the Crest of a Wave". Written by Ralph Reader, it was the Gang Show's signature tune. I can still hear it ringing in my ears today.

Not everyone in ENSA went on to make a name for themselves in show business and not everyone was a naturally talented entertainer, but many did become stars in the world of show business.

A little joke: Because sometimes the shows were a bit of a shambles and not always entirely properly rehearsed, the troops used to joke that ENSA actually stood for, 'Every Night Something Terrible.'

As I have written above, ENSA has never been recognised at the Remembrance Day March, until this year. We little band of six were the first to march and give the salute for al those wonderful people. Also, importantly, no Memorial exists to honour all those hundreds of thousands who spent the war entertaining others, but there is a move to change this. Below is a crowdfunding site to help pay for the cost of the memorial stone and its placement. If you or someone in your family have ever been entertained by anyone from ENSA, please think of making a small donation.

I have posted the same photo twice because the first version is clearer but cuts out the gentleman standing on the left. My father is the lad giving all the ladies a piggyback. I think these 'girls' performed in the shows with Daddy, or were in military service in Africa. According to Daddy's writing on the pic, it was taken in Durham in South Africa in 1944. If anyone knows who the other man is or can recognise any of the ladies, I would be thrilled to hear from you. 

Please email me at olivefarmbooks@gmail.com

After my generation, there will be no one left to remember all these past performers if no Memorial stone is erected in their memory. There is a link below for donations. Thank you.

Also, below, is a link to an article I wrote for the Mail on Sunday Travel recounting a visit I made this year, 2024, to Alexandria in Egypt. I made the journey partly to follow in the footsteps of my father.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-13582619/Alexandria-Egypt-Carol-Drinkwater.html

My travel book The Olive Route covers many of the countries where my father was stationed in Africa and the Middle East.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/ensa-memorial-appeal-1202671

The London Under London by Miranda Miller

 

This is a photo of the Great Hall of the Guildhall which has been the City of London’s civic and ceremonial centre since the 12^th century.  In the Middle Ages the Lord Mayor of London was almost as influential as the monarch. The hall you see today, which dates from the early 15^thcentury, has stained glass windows, magnificent carvings and a medieval crypt.  The banners and shields of London’s 110 Livery Companies are on the walls. For six hundred years it has been the setting for state events, banquets and state trials, most famously that of Lady Jane Grey in 1553.  The 16 -year- old who was Queen of England for nine days was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death in this hall. It survived the Great Fire of London when, as Samuel Pepys recorded, “the horrid malicious bloody flame” destroyed the roof.”  The Great Hall was also damaged in the Blitz when the ancient carvings of Gog and Magog were destroyed, but it was rebuilt yet again.  

 The Guildhall is a fascinating place to visit and, surprisingly, not too touristy. Another reason to go there is to catch a glimpse of Londinium: in 1988, after more than a hundred years of searching, London’s only Roman amphitheatre was finally rediscovered hidden beneath Guildhall Yard by Museum of London archaeologists digging in preparation for building the new Art Gallery.

 

 The curved band of dark stone on Guildhall Yard you can see in this photo marks out the perimeter of the amphitheatre beneath the piazza. The first Roman amphitheatre was built in 70CE from wood but was renovated in the early 2nd century with tiled entrances and ragstone  walls, and enlarged so that it could seat six thousand people – an astonishing number at a time when it’s estimated that the population of the city was between 45,00 and 60,000. The amphitheatre was used for public events such as gladiatorial games, entertaining soldiers and the public with fights between wild animals, public executions of criminals and also for religious ceremonies. Although these violent spectacles were sometimes criticised, particularly by the growing Christian community, they attracted huge audiences. St. Augustine, writing in the 4th century CE, describes his own reluctant excitement at these spectacles: “He opened his eyes, feeling perfectly prepared to treat whatever he might see with scorn... He saw the blood and he gulped down the savagery... He was no longer the man who had come there but was one of the crowd to which he had come.”

Here is a map of Roman London showing the amphitheatre. Londinium soon became the largest Roman settlement in Britain. There were public baths, temples, a fort, a forum, a public square surrounded by shops and an enormous hall known as a basilica. In the 2^nd century CE Tacitus describes it as “Famous for its wealth of traders and commercial traffic.” Londinium was a major centre of international trade where merchants imported luxury goods such as wine, oil, and cloth and exported raw materials and slaves. 

After the Romans left in the 4th century, the amphitheatre lay derelict for hundreds of years.  In Peter Ackroyd’s novel The Clerkenwell Tales, set in London in 1399, citizens assemble in the ruins of this building, just a few hundred yards from St Paul’s Cathedral.

 

 

 

These photos show what you actually see when you go down to the amphitheatre, with holograms designed to show you the scale and human proportions. A few months ago, I took my grandsons to see the Guildhall, which is a fascinating building in its own right. Then we took the lift down from the art gallery to the amphitheatre, a really thrilling experience. This place has been at the centre of London life for two thousand years and nobody who is interested in history could fail to be excited by this opportunity for time travel.

 

www.mirandamiller.info

My ninth novel, When I Was, about a child growing up in London in the 1950s, will be published in March by Barbican Press.

THE FAMILY DOLL by Elizabeth Chadwick

 

In the earlier days of THE HISTORY GIRLS, we used to have a 'Cabinet of Curiosities.'  I think this family heirloom I am briefly going to talk about would make an interesting addition to the said cabinet.  


 My family has a wax doll that has been handed down the generations in the female line (of my father's side)  to the youngest daughter in the family since the mid 19th century.  It's first owner was a little girl called Mary Lees, who was born on June 9th 1775, fourteen years before the French Revolution.  On her tenth birthday, her uncle presented her with a wax doll in a glass and wooden case and she kept it and passed it on to her daughter in due course.  We know this because there is a note inside the doll's case that tells us her intentions for the doll for when she had passed away. 

"This doll is the property of Mary Blunt and was presented to her by her uncle on her 10th birthday in the year 1785.  And at her death she wishes it to be for her youngest daughter Elizabeth. October 24th 1857"

 Mary Lees married a William Blunt, and the doll became the property of their youngest daughter Elizabeth, born in 1823. Elizabeth passed it to her youngest daughter, Martha, who in turn passed it on to her own youngest, Elizabeth, my great aunt, born in 1901,and now it has come to me. 
We don't know the purchase place of the doll. Oral family history says Paris, but it wasn't written down. She stands in her glass case, blue eyes, bright rosy cheeks and ash-blonde hair, surrounded by a hoop of artificial flowers, and two delightful,  smiling china poodles either side of her body -which is stuffed and encased in linen.  The face and the hands are the only parts made from wax as far as we can tell. She was never a child's toy in the way that toys are played with today, but certainly a treasured piece handed down from mother to daughter through the centuries.  Who knows what she has heard and seen! 

 Her flocked gown is in two layers and the white, semi-transparent upper fabric turns her gown a soft pink.  The under-dress is a fabulous rose-coral.  She has stood in her case down the generations of my family and with her written provenance for two hundred and fifty years. The next custodian will either be my niece or my granddaughter, but that will be decided in time.  For now she dwells with me.  It has been said that she is a bit creepy, but when I look at her smiling poodles, I am totally reassured that she is a benign heirloom.

  I wonder if my great, great, great, great grandmother's uncle ever thought when he gave his niece Mary Lees this doll for her 10th birthday in 1785, that although generations have come and gone, his gift would still be here now, seeing in 2025 with her family.  

Foundling Stories - Stacey Halls and Rose Tremain by Judith Allnatt

In 1747, in a fine room at the splendid buildings of London’s Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright holds her one-day-old baby girl. Alongside other mothers, Bess draws a ball from a bag in a lottery held to decide who will win a place for their child as a pupil. This game of chance is played out under the eyes of invited benefactors, wealthy ladies and gents, who witness the show of human drama. Thus starts ‘The Foundling’ by Stacey Halls. 

In 1850, a baby, wrapped in sacking is abandoned at the gates of a wintry park in London where she is scented by wolves from the Essex marshes. She is found by a policeman, who hears the wolves’ howling and takes her to the Foundling Hospital. Thus begins ‘Lily’ by Rose Tremain. 

A separated family is a powerful engine to drive a story and perhaps the most poignant separation of all is that of a mother and baby. Stories of ‘foundlings’, babies found abandoned by parents or handed over in desperation to foundling hospitals, start with this heart-breaking premise and immediately fire the reader with a strong desire to see parent and child reunited. For me, this desire would probably be enough on its own to keep me reading but the two books above offer so much more in their examining of the relationships of adults caught up in the drama.

Receiving day at the Foundling Hospital. Wellcome Images

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/fgqknntr

In ‘The Foundling’ poverty and the shame of illegitimacy force Bess to give up her baby, Clara. Like other brokenhearted mothers, as well as leaving the baby’s name and details at the hospital she leaves a token to identify her – half of a heart made of whalebone given to her by the baby’s father. All kinds of things were used as such tokens: slips of paper, embroidered ribbons, rings and pierced coins. Then if the mother were able to drag herself out of poverty and also save enough to pay a fee to the hospital for the child’s upkeep (a difficult feat), even when the hospital had given the child a new name they could be sure of reclaiming the right child by describing the token they left with them. 

Token on Marchmont Street, Author: Matt BrownNo changes made https://www.flickr.com/photos/londonmatt/53413014277/

                                  

The story takes a leap and the stakes are raised when Bess, after six years of scrimping, returns to claim her child only to find that a stranger has claimed her the very day after Bess had placed Clara in the hospital’s care. Avoiding spoilers - the exploration of what it is to be a mother deepens as the two women are brought up against each other. The genius of the book for me is the way in which Stacey Halls balances the representation of the needs of the two women so that despite the reader’s natural urge to see mother and daughter reunited there is also feeling for the damaged woman who has claimed Clara. This creates powerful dramatic tension and pulls the reader’s emotions in different directions, resulting in a gripping read that one can’t put down.

The Foundling Restored To Its Mother 1858 painting by Emma Brownlow
  1858. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

In 'Lily', subtitled ‘A Tale of Revenge’, Rose Tremain writes of poverty, cruelty and crime in Victorian London. The infant Lily is first placed in a loving foster family but is then wrenched away and returned to hardship as a pauper at the hospital. Now, as an adult, Lily has committed a murder and lives in fear of discovery. Tremain holds back the nature of the murder and the identity of the victim, masterfully managing the dramatic tension and creating a mystery that kept me turning the pages into the night.
However, the truly fascinating thing for me was the relationship between Lily and the policeman who rescued her as a baby. She feels he may hold the key to her salvation but she dare not confess to him for fear of the rope.

Tremain writes with all her usual subtlety and feeling, imbuing everyday objects with the emotional charge they hold for her characters so that they become powerful symbols of love and loss: a scarf that Lily knits for her only friend at the hospital, a deep, black well at the farm where Lily was happily fostered that comes to symbolise her worst fear of discovery and execution.

One of Tremain’s great strengths is that she looks unflinchingly at human darkness whilst still maintaining a feeling of authorial empathy and understanding. This novel moved me to tears – it is heartrending, compassionate and brilliant.

To find out more about the fascinating history of the Foundling Hospital and see examples of the tokens left by parents, do visit https://foundlingmuseum.org.uk