Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos (19 page)

BOOK: Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos

8.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

Sarah Churchill was responsible for inviting several theatrical friends from West End theatres to entertain at Medmenham. Possibly the most famous of these was the Russian-born pianist Moiseiwitsch, who agreed to give a concert open to all ranks. There was concern that the thumped-out canteen piano would not be a suitable instrument for the maestro and Sarah asked Charlotte Bonham Carter for advice. She had a grand piano stored away, which, if transport was arranged, she was prepared to lend for the occasion. Another PI, Robin Orr, a composer and future professor of music at St John’s College, Cambridge, agreed to tune the instrument. All those able to leave their duties crowded into the hall when Moiseiwitsch arrived and he expressed delight at the piano. Unfortunately, as Sarah recalled:

After a few crashing chords of Beethoven, a string chose to leave the piano and wave like a daddy-long-legs in the air. Moiseiwitsch did his best, but once you have one note out of order it is impossible to avoid it. He struggled valiantly with this difficulty, but whatever he tried, going rapidly to the softer tones of Schumann, the tentacle of that note would appear, beautifully illuminated by the harsh lights of the hut in which he was performing. He went red in the face at first and then became statuesquely calm. The concert ended, we naturally all applauded, he stood up and bowed and Charlotte swept onto the scene.

‘Thank you Mr Moiseiwitsch, for
ruining
my piano’.

The tension broke as he shrugged and said the Russian equivalent of ‘C’est la guerre’.
25

Stella Ogle spent some her off-duty time saving works of art.

One morning I was walking down Bond Street delicately picking my way over the broken glass and debris from the raid of the previous night. As I approached the lower end where the picture galleries are, it suddenly struck me what an awful anxiety the owners must have in looking after their works of art in these raids. It struck me so forcibly that I went into the nearest one, which happened to be the Leger Galleries, and asked to see the proprietor. Rather surprised, they went and found Mr Henry Leger for me and I put forward my idea. The Officers Mess, well camouflaged and built of solid brick down at High Wycombe, could, in my opinion, be considered a safe haven compared to London and I asked Mr Leger whether he would loan some of his collection for the duration of the war. He accepted my ideas and the result was that a nice selection of minor works of art were sent down and eventually arrived at Bomber Command. There they looked very well and came to no harm, the only violation done to them being after one party in the Mess when someone stuck a label on the middle of the ‘Rape of the Sabines’ bearing the legend, ‘Wing Commander Opie spends his gratuity’.

We were living in Phyllis Court at the time when it was the WAAF Officers Mess – Mollie Thompson was President and I was Vice-President. We replaced an old stag’s head that hung over the fireplace with an 18th century portrait.

I absolutely hated those stags’ heads, they were gigantic moose with horns and everything in a state of mouldering moth. The climax came one day when a crumbling bit of moth eaten fur fell off a moose’s head into someone’s soup. I organised some RAF friends and got them taken down and we put them in the Phyllis Court boathouse where, as far as I know, they went on mouldering away until the end of the war.
26

With many young men and women in their twenties and thirties working and living close to each other, it is not surprising that a number fell in love. Some married from Medmenham and more were wed after the war. In true Medmenham fashion, many weddings were inter-service and international. Assistant Section Officer Pamela Dudding WAAF and Pilot Officer Robert Bulmer RAF claimed to be the first Medmenham ‘alliance’ and their air force example was soon followed by others. A regular interchange between RAF Medmenham PIs and RAF Benson PR pilots to discuss past and future sorties obviously had a social side too, as several WAAF PIs married pilots. Diana Byron met her pilot husband-to-be in the mess at RAF Benson and they were married in 1943. Mary Winmill WRNS married an army PI, and Section Officer Lavender Bruce WAAF married an RNVR PI in Medmenham church. Jean Fotheringham, a WAAF PI in the Night Photography Section, and Earl Hollinger USAAF, a PI in Second Phase, were one of the several international couples to be married in Hambleden church.

Jean Fotheringham WAAF and Earl Hollinger USAAF married at Hambleden church, in a nearby village to Medmenham.

Corporal Pat Peat met her future husband, who was also an American, at RAF Medmenham during the presidential campaign in 1944, when she was busy encouraging US servicemen to vote:

Well, there I am on a soapbox addressing these American soldiers, who are all artists in the Model Making Section, and telling them that they had to vote. And this man (Bill O’Neill) shouted out across the yard, ‘I can’t vote – I live in the District of Columbia.’ I didn’t know that – and they still can’t vote in the District of Columbia, which most Americans don’t know. Bill was impressed because here was a girl in a British uniform telling Americans to use their vote.
27

Jeanne Adams married a medical officer in the Royal Navy, who was soon to be posted to the Far East:

I was married in June 1943 from Medmenham and I hitched a lift to our wedding on a coal lorry. It was an almost entirely service wedding – even our bridesmaid was in uniform. My dress was made from lace curtaining, one of the few materials that was not rationed. Sophie Wilson, who lived in the same hut as me, sat and hand sewed my underwear for the day, cut out of a parachute. Owing to shortage of sugar, our cake had a pretty top made of cardboard. On the night watch before our wedding, my friends and I made confetti with old maps and a punch. The maps had to be censored, just in case they carried classified information!
28

The unmilitary air that prevailed at RAF Medmenham did not sit comfortably with the RAF hierarchy, despite its efficient working in the production of intelligence and all its achievements. Periodically, attempts were made to bring some military conformity to Medmenham. Jane Cameron recalled:

The Air Ministry, in its wisdom, decided that this Unit must be ‘licked into shape’ and sent down a Warrant Officer (Drill) to conduct this operation.

We broke his heart and within three weeks had him on the run back to where he came from. The first crack in that hard heart was made on the first morning by a charming mediaeval archaeologist who had described his peace-time occupation on his official form as ‘scraper of church walls’. (Dr Clive Rouse, the expert on mediaeval wall paintings.) He was a tall handsome man and was chosen by the Warrant Officer to act as Adjutant of the parade and instructed in the commands that were to call us all to order. He was to call the male squad to attention first and then ‘fall in’ us women auxiliaries behind it. But the ‘adjutant’ was a well brought-up gentleman who believed in ‘ladies first’. Having listened to the shouted instructions very solemnly, he strolled towards us of the distaff side, swept his hat off and said: ‘Good morning, ladies. Would you mind …’?

As we walked back to our desks after this first drill, a Section Officer, one of the most individual members of the unit, said to me: ‘Really, the impertinence of that young non-commissioned officer, trying to chase us all about as if we were –
rabbits!
’
29

However, the determination to make RAF regulations prevail continued and in 1943, a new station commander, responsible for administering RAF Medmenham, was appointed. His predecessor, a ‘laid-back’ man who had recognised the necessity of independent thought in the PIs, had recently departed swiftly and under somewhat of a cloud. The new OC, a strait-laced ‘regular’ with instructions to ‘sort out those academics and instil some much needed military discipline’, was met at the main entrance:

by a young and extremely comely WAAF officer, who introduced herself to me as my Personal Assistant. This came as a surprise since I was under the impression that PAs were the perquisite of Officers of ‘Air’, (that is to say General), rank and were in any case normal males of the ADC type. I took an early opportunity to enquire of her the nature of her duties which appeared to me to be of a rather personal nature, and not, as far as I could see, closely connected with my job as a Station Commander. I pointed out that I was shortly expecting my wife and daughter to join me, who in the past had looked after such matters, and would, I hoped, continue to do so.
30

Starting as he meant to go on, the OC’s first order was for regular station parades and inspections. These would begin on the following Saturday morning and off-duty personnel of all services were ordered to attend. This caused a minor panic amongst those officers who had joined the RAF at the very beginning of the war without going through the normal training process. Many had thus never served in the ranks or ‘square bashed’ so they beat a hasty path to the Army Section, seeking instruction on how to march and recognise elementary commands. Saturday morning duly arrived and the Medmenham personnel marched on with varying levels of competency, one squad managing to appear from the opposite direction to that expected. Eventually they formed ranks and waited for the station commander to commence his inspection. Suddenly, a short figure bustled on to the parade ground, carrying an umbrella and a bulging string shopping bag – it was Charlotte. She stopped, breathless, in front of the bemused NCO in charge of the parade. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘I’ve found some tomatoes in Marlow. Isn’t that wonderful!’
31

Notes

1
. ‘Jane’, personal memoir (Medmenham Collection).

2
. Muszynski (
née
Donald), Pat, conversation and correspondence with the author, 2010.

3
. Benjamin (
née
Bendon), Susan, memoirs.

4
. Obituary of Charlotte Bonham Carter.

5
. ‘Jane’, personal memoir.

6
. Cussons (
née
Byron), Diana, audio recording for the Medmenham Collection, 2002.

7
. Sowry (
née
Adams), Jeanne, memoirs.

8
. O’Neil (
née
Peat), Pat, audio recording, at her home in Maryland, by Paul and Harriet Richard, 2009–10, and conversation with her daughter, 2010.

9
. Chadsey (
née
Thompson), Mollie, correspondence.

10
. Colles, Dorothy, IWM papers.

11
. Carter, Joan, IWM papers.

12
. Cussons (
née
Byron), Diana, audio recording.

13
. Sowry (
née
Adams), Jeanne, memoirs.

14
. Duncan, Jane,
Letter from Reachfar
, p.20.

15
. Carter, Joan, IWM papers.

16
. Stone, Geoffrey, letters, 2011 (Medmen ham Collection).

17
. Colles, Dorothy, IWM papers.

18
. Abrams, Leonard,
Our Secret Little War
(International Geographic Information Foundation, 1991), p.36.

19
. Scott, Hazel,
Peace and War
, pp.52–3.

20
. ‘Jane’, memoir.