The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II (59 page)

The seventy-year-old father
“News in Brief,”
Times
(London), 18 January 1945, p. 2.

Bain was propelled
Paul Trewhela, “Vernon Scannell, a Poet in Bohemian London,”
Times Literary Supplement
, 5 December 2007. Trewhela added that Cliff Holden was then “the oldest surviving member of the London Group, which was founded before the First World War and included [David] Bomberg, Walter Sickert, Wyndham Lewis and other celebrated British painters of the last century.”

“Very good fighters”
IWM Interview.

About half of
“20,000 Youths Drafted to British Mines Desert,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, 24 October 1945, p. 2.

“one of the greatest”
“London in the Grip of Gangsterism,”
Baltimore Sun
, 10 December 1945, p. 1.

London’s commissioner of
“Crime Since the War: Theft and the Shortage of Goods,”
Times
(London), 23 January 1948, p. 5. The
Times
’ “Special Correspondent” added, “The deserter, by reason of his being more or less outlawed, tends to gravitate into a life of crime. Even if he has succeeded in establishing himself in normal society as a law-abiding citizen, which necessitates some degree of deception, he is dogged by the fear of being unmasked.”

A prominent criminal
Duncan Campbell, “London in the Blitz,”
The Observer
, 29 August 2010. See also Harry Mount, “The Kray of South Ken,”
Times
Online, 29 March 2002, www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/incomingFeeds/article759674.ece?print=yes&randnum=1248020486302.

While they cordoned
Ibid.

Of the 15,161 men
“Question 15,161 in London Drive on Crime Wave: Comb City for 10,000 Army Deserters,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, 16 December 1945, p. 21. See also “Huge Roundup of Deserters,”
Los Angeles Times
, 15 December 1945, p. 1, and Jones and Hulten.

“He told me”
John Scannell, interview with the author, London, 15 February 2011. Paul Trewhela wrote, “But how did he acquire his new surname? He does not say. [Cliff] Holden recalls that it was provided by a prostitute, who worked for a brothel-owner friend.” Trewhela, “Vernon Scannell, a Poet in Bohemian London.”

In the freezing
Vernon Scannell, “Coming to Life in Leeds.”

“in a sense”
Ibid.

“I started to”
Scannell,
Tiger
, p. 37.

“For the first”
Vernon Scannell, “Coming to Life in Leeds.”

“I was delighted”
Scannell,
Tiger
, p. 41.

The position seems
Letter from Woodrow Wyatt, MP, to Prime Minister Clement Attlee, 20 November 1946, British National Archives, CAB/128/9.

“any mitigating circumstances”
“House of Commons,”
Times
(London), 23 January 1947, p. 8.

This fell short
“Few Deserters Give Up,”
New York Times
, 1 April 1947, p. 14.

In a letter
“Deserters from the Forces,”
Times
(London), 17 October 1947, p. 7.

At this time
Prime Minister’s Private Office Memorandum, 27 November 1947, British National Archives, CAB/128/9.

“If sleep should”
Vernon Scannell, “On the Run,” typescript (original version 1970, rewritten March 1996), Alan Benson Collection of Vernon Scannell, 2008-10-07P, Box 4, Folder: 5.1 Scannell—Correspondence—2007, January–March, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.

One Sunday afternoon
Scannell,
Tiger
, pp. 45–46.

“And they looked”
Parkinson interview.

“Something has gone”
Vernon Scannell, “Casualty—Mental Ward,”
Of Love and War
, p. 34.

“After a short”
Vernon Scannell, “Coming to Life in Leeds.”

“The shades of”
Scannell,
Tiger
, p. 60.

A former army colleague
John Scannell, interview with the author, London, 15 February 2011.

THIRTY-TWO

“But,” he wrote
Whitehead Diary, p. 200.

“I questioned the”
“Summary of Evidence in the Case of Whitehead, Alfred T.,” in Whitehead Court-Martial File.

“They were still”
Whitehead Diary, p. 200.

“Witnesses requested by”
Headquarters Seine Section Casus 1 Command (Prov) APO 887, 17 December 1945, in Whitehead Court-Martial File.

Asked on a form
“Memorandum to accompany the record of trial in the case of U.S. v. Alfred T. Whitehead,” Whitehead Court-Martial File.

As in the court-martial
Court-Martial Transcript, p. 9, and “Review of the Staff Judge Advocate,” p. 1, Whitehead Court-Martial File.

At 10:25 that
Court-Martial Transcript, pp. 1–9, Whitehead Court-Martial File.

EPILOGUE

When the army remitted
“Memorandum for: The Secretary of the Army,” from S. Harrison, Jr., Acting Chairman, Clemency and Parole Board No. 2, 22 June 1949, Whitehead Court-Martial File.

“I find a one-inch”
R. C. Kash, Letter, To Whom It May Concern, 23 March 1949, reproduced in Whitehead Diary, p. 228. This letter is not in the Whitehead Court-Martial File, which indicates it was not sent to the Department of Defense as part of his appeal.

In response to Whitehead’s
“Memorandum for the Secretary of the Army,” from S. Harrison, Jr., Acting Chairman, Clemency and Parole Board No. 2, 22 June 1949, Whitehead Court-Martial File.

“I am writing”
Letter, C. Alex Meacham to the Honorable Jimmy Carter, 14 March 1977, Whitehead Court-Martial File.

“The day it arrived”
Whitehead Diary, p. 230.

Division veteran Jesse
“Friends of U.S. 2nd Division” site (Message 4208), http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Friends_of_U.S._2nd_Infantry_Division_WWII/message/4208.

“I listened to”
Thomas Lindsay, e-mail to the author, 13 October 2009.

“For years Dad”
Whitehead Diary, p. 230.

Jenkins recalled his
Simon Jenkins, “Created on a Canvas of Needless Pain: A Poet Who Inspired the Underbelly,”
The Guardian
, 29 November 2007.

“I was meant”
John Scannell, interview with the author, London, 15 February 2011.

The ex-deserter received
E-mail from John Scannell to the author, 9 March 2012.

On 11 May 1970
Vernon Scannell, letter to James Gibson, 11 May 1970, J. Gibson Collection, Recip., Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.

“And then they came”
Vernon Scannell, “Walking Wounded,”
Of Love and War
, p. 17.

“Would like to know”
www.bydand.com/intch5.htm.

Captain Horton immediately
Darkes, “Twenty-five Years in the Military,” pp. 19–20.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Addison, Paul, and Calder, Angus, eds.,
Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of War in the West, 1939–1945,
London: Pimlico, 1997.

Army Ground Forces Board,
Report 639
, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1945.

Barkley, Cleve C.,
In Death’s Dark Shadow: A Soldier’s Story
, published by the author, 2006.

Barnes, B. S.,
Operation Scipio: The 8th Army at the Battle of Wadi Akarit, 6th April 1943, Tunisia,
New York: Sentinel Press, 2007.

Beevor, Antony,
D-Day: The Battle for Normandy
, London: Penguin, 2009.

Bierman, John, and Smith, Colin,
Alamein: War Without Hate
, London: Penguin, 2003.

Bowlby, Alex,
The Recollections of Rifleman Bowlby
, London: Cassell & Co., 1999, reprinted 2002) (originally published London: Leo Cooper, 1969).

Brager Bruce,
The Texas 36th Division: A History,
Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 2002.

Chambers, John Whiteclay,
OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II
, Washington, DC: U.S. National Park Service, 2008.

Churchill, Winston S.,
The Second World War:
Vol. VI,
Triumph and Tragedy
, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953.

Clark, Mark,
Calculated Risk: The War Memoirs of a Great American General
, London: Harrap, 1951.

Clarke, Jeffrey J., and Smith, Robert Ross,
Riviera to the Rhine, United States Army in World War II: The European Theater of Operations
, Washington, DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1993.

Committee of the National Research Council with the Collaboration of Science Service as a Contribution to the War Effort,
Psychology for the Fighting Man, Prepared for the Fighting Man Himself
, Washington, DC: The Infantry Journal and Penguin Books, 1943.

Cooke, Elliot D.,
All But Thee and Me: Psychiatry at the Foxhole Level
, Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press, 1946.

Cooper, Artemis,
Cairo in the War, 1939–1945,
London: Penguin, 1998.

Corns, Cathryn, and Hughes-Wilson, John,
Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War
, London: Cassell, 2001.

Craig, Norman,
The Broken Plume: A Platoon Commander’s Story, 1940–1945,
London: Imperial War Museum, 1982.

Crozier, S. F.,
The History of the Corps of Royal Military Police
, Aldershot: Gale and Polden Ltd, 1951.

Delaforce, Patrick,
Monty’s Highlanders: 51st Highland Division at War, 1939–1945,
Brighton: Tom Donovan, 1991.

Douglas, Keith,
Alamein to Zem Zem
, London: Faber & Faber, 2008 (originally published by Editions Poetry, 1946).