In June 2020, Danish author and archivist Peter Deleuran acquired almost 300 Second World War glass negatives and photos – nearly 200 of which were from the Planet News archive, owned by Topfoto since the 1970s – long presumed lost in the Blitz. Peter painstakingly researched each image, digitised and restored the files and sent them to Topfoto to reunite them with the rest of the collection. In return, Topfoto gave Peter permission to reproduce the images in a book, the powerful and extraordinary Reflections of War.

In this exclusive gallery, which showcases images from the collection, discover the Second World War like you have never seen before…

A defending tank passes some nuns by the roadside. Members of a tank crew pause on a country road to chat with a group of nuns, out for a walk with their dog, during a break in manoeuvres held in England.

U.S. troops manhandle a jeep along a muddy cutting through a forest on the Western Front, 8 November 1944.

A view in the engine store at an airbase ‘somewhere in Britain’, April 1944.

Mr. Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, leaving for the House of Commons, 1 May 1945. In the evening hours of 1 May 1945, Hamburg Radio announced the death of Hitler. It was later to be made known that it had in fact been suicide. Things moved rapidly after this. Many high-ranking Nazis committed suicide the following day and a domino effect of surrender struck the rapidly sinking German ship.

VE Day in London: Whitehall crowds wait to acclaim Prime Minister. Photo shows: The enormous crowd which assembled in Whitehall and Parliament-square to acclaim the Prime Minister as he appeared on the balcony of the Ministry of Health.

Images reproduced from Reflections of War by Peter Deleuran, in collaboration with Topfoto. All images from the book, and the rest of Topfoto’s Planet News archive are available for licensing, print orders and general browsing at https://www.topfoto.co.uk/.

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Who were they? What did they achieve? How did they come to be overlooked? In Misread Signals, expert codebreaking historian Dermot Turing turns his attention to these long-ignored women and puts their contributions back in the spotlight where they belong.

In Britain, we’re proud of what happened at Bletchley Park, breaking the Enigma cipher in the Second World War. And of the fact that it’s a place where diversity flourished, all those years ago, so that 75% of the workforce were women. You have written a new book about women codebreakers – can you tell us a bit more about why you wanted to do that?

It’s right that, by the end of the war, 75% of Bletchley’s staff were women. But in the years since the story of Bletchley Park became declassified, we have been led to understand that the women of Bletchley were largely employed in junior, menial roles. We know of vast squadrons of Wrens who operated Bombe machines to help solve Enigma, women in the WAAF and the ATS, and an anonymous group of women civilians notionally employed by the Foreign Office who seemed to be deployed on non-specific clerical work like ‘indexing’. The codebreaking, by contrast, was done by men, notably people like Alan Turing, who were hired at the beginning of the war from an ‘Emergency List’ compiled by the head of the Government Code & Cypher School (which became Bletchley Park and then GCHQ), Alastair Denniston. Denniston described these people as ‘men of the professor type’. So, the accepted story is that the male professors did the brainy stuff and the women did the low-skilled tasks.

My book is about whether that’s true. There were, indeed, women doing codebreaking. But were they exceptions? And why didn’t we know about them before?

Joan Clarke is almost as famous as Alan Turing, but maybe as an exception to the general rule of codebreaking being a men’s preserve. Were there many others? Who were the women codebreakers?

In fact, looking at the records – things like official reports in the archives and oral histories – it turns out that there were dozens of women doing full-on codebreaking roles. Right from the outset, when the GC&CS was formed in 1919, women were entrusted with professional codebreaking jobs. This didn’t change when the Second World War began. Rather the reverse: there was a big recruitment drive, particularly across women’s colleges in Cambridge and Oxford, to bring in women with the right skills.

Again there’s a myth here about women at Bletchley Park. Setting aside the women in uniform, who were recruited rather later in the war, the picture we have been shown is one of very posh young women – the ‘Debs’ who were presented at court and who had connections in high places. Because they were upper-crust they could be relied on to keep a secret. Then when they got to Bletchley they were given filing and tea-making to do. I don’t deny that there were a handful of these posh ladies there (and some of them did rather more important things than pouring the tea) but the main cohort of civilian recruits came as a result of a call to the colleges and a fairly stern selection process conducted by a lady called Miss Moore at the Foreign Office.

Can you give us some examples of the characters you came across?

One of my favourites is a lady called Wendy White, who appears in the archives as a ‘superintendent of typists’. She was a veteran of the First World War, kept on when the GC&CS was formed in 1919. She worked in the Naval Section and was the only woman among an irreverent group of men who did the same work. It’s clear from the papers that she was quite able to hold her own, and it’s also clear that she was recognised as a capable codebreaker. Things only went wrong in the Second World War, when there was this influx of ‘men of the professor type’, who didn’t like to be told by someone graded as a superintendent of typists that their work didn’t stack up.

Then there’s the woman who put the post-Watergate Church committee in its place. That was Juanita Moody, who had given the White House an early warning on the Cuban missiles, and then found herself put up as the fall-guy when the NSA was being accused of spying on its own citizens in the 1970s. But she hit back hard. She was a tough nut, most impressive.

And I was quite astonished to find out about a German codebreaker called Erika Pannwitz. She was a mathematician who broke American State Department signals during the Second World War. She was a bit of a stand-out because she dressed in men’s clothing, which seems to have been okay in Nazi times (rather surprisingly) but then the university authorities took against her after the war, and she was denied the academic post she craved. It’s odd that the post-war environment was more hostile than the regime which we thought was completely inimical to unfeminine women. There were surprises everywhere in this exploration!

Your book is called Misread Signals and the subtitle of the book is ‘How History Overlooked Women Codebreakers’. How did they come to be overlooked?

That’s the big question, and it has many answers.

The starting-point is that phrase of Commander Denniston’s – the ‘men of the professor type’. That comes from a file in the National Archives which details his efforts at pre-war recruitment. All those dons from Cambridge and Oxford were taken on as ‘senior assistants’, which meant senior-rank codebreakers, and all the women he recruited were classified as ‘linguists’ or ‘clerical staff’ or even ‘typists’. When historians read these papers they take things at face value. But what’s not obvious, until you dive into it, is that the job titles are not job descriptions. Women’s job titles were different, because they were paid on different scales. To fill the urgent need for more codebreakers, women were taken on as codebreakers, but the job titles they had were completely misleading.

My favourite story to illustrate this was told by Joan Clarke herself. In order to get herself promoted she needed to become a ‘linguist’, even though she was a mathematician working on the naval Enigma problem. She had to fill in a form which required her to list her language skills, and she put ‘None’. Needless to say she got the promotion. But it showed what a nonsense the job-labels were, relative to the work the women were actually doing.

There has been lots of attention given to Bletchley Park in recent years and, indeed, celebration of the role of women there. Why didn’t we recognise that there were women in the top professional jobs too?

A number of factors come into play. First of all, when the Bletchley story was first declassified, all the books were written by men and many of them were about what they, the men, had done. Some were about the ‘notable people’ at Bletchley, some of whom were famous in the post-war era for other things, and some of them were about the people in leadership roles at Bletchley, and as is the way of things the leaders get the credit for everything done in their section even if they themselves don’t wield the tools.
More recently, we have heard the wonderful first-hand stories of women who worked at Bletchley. Typically, of course, these are stories of those who were very young when they worked there, so they were genuinely in junior roles – and their stories got told because they are still here. It’s a rich and colourful collection and we are privileged to have these veterans around to tell them. But the women who actually worked in codebreaking roles during the Second World War were a bit older, so didn’t live to describe their work. Their witness record is more threadbare. It’s a shame, because it reinforces the stereotype that women were only allowed to work on lower-grade things. Perhaps we should say that young people fresh out of school were put to work in junior roles, then it comes into a better perspective.

So, how did you come across this gap in our knowledge?

Some years ago I read a very interesting short paper by Karen Lewis, who volunteers at Bletchley Park. It was called ‘Women of the Linguist Type’ – which was a wry take on that old phrase of Commander Denniston’s. Karen’s paper showed that Denniston had been hiring women from Oxbridge as well, who were taken on as what were called ‘linguists’.

Well, that idea sort of floated about in the back of my mind, but then I kept coming across more and more stories of women who hadn’t been doing menial roles at Bletchley, and I thought I would cross-check in the archives about how they were described.

And it turned out that it wasn’t just Joan Clarke. All sorts of codebreaker women had been classified as ‘linguists’ and also as typists and clerks and what-have-you, because these were the lower-paid job strata where only women were employed. For example, there was Helen Haselden, who was officially an ‘established typist’ but whose job was to reconstruct the ‘subtractor tables’ used by the Spanish to encipher their signals. And Rhoda Welsford, a veteran of the First World War, called back to break codes again in the Naval Section, who was graded as a ‘clerical officer’.
So a piece of curiosity about terminology led to a lot of research about women’s position in the civil service and a wider enquiry about why nobody seemed to have noticed that women at Bletchley did have professional jobs.

Your book isn’t just about Bletchley Park. Tell us about the other dimensions you looked at.

My previous book, which was about the weakness of British codes during the Second World War, involved a lot of research into the efforts of the German codebreaking agencies to master the British systems. In that work I came across the most extraordinary thing: in the heart of Ribbentrop’s Foreign Office in Berlin there was a cohort of women codebreakers. This was the Nazi regime where women had all been fired from professional civil service positions after Hitler came to power. So these women were very interesting, if peripheral to my previous book, and I wanted to look into their stories further.

It’s very curious how there were parallels with the Bletchley Park system, for example in the way that job labels didn’t match the actual work being done. And there were other parallels: for example, in the way that the American codebreaking agencies hired wartime codebreaking staff – huge numbers of young women graduates taken on just like at Bletchley Park.

And then the story got even more interesting: in the United States, modern codebreaking really began – at the time of the First World War – with the work of two women, Elizebeth Friedman and Agnes Driscoll. Mrs Driscoll became the chief codebreaker of the U.S. Navy and Mrs Friedman the main intelligence source acting as a gang-buster in the prohibition era. And yet, even in the U.S., the principal codebreaking stories have usually featured men as the heroes. It seemed that women disappearing from codebreaking history was a world-wide phenomenon, not just a curiosity of Bletchley Park.

So this opened up some different enquiries, comparing what happened in different countries, things like the marriage bar and the attitude to sexual preferences and how things like that affected employability in sensitive jobs.

Were there any surprises when you were doing your research?

I think one of the biggest shocks was seeing how one of the famous American codebreakers – a man – had completely panned the reputation of Agnes Driscoll, who not only founded American naval codebreaking but had a string of very important code-breaking successes to her credit. For some reason this guy had taken against Mrs Driscoll and, when he came to give an oral history interview in his retirement years he let all the poison flow out. He shredded her abilities as a codebreaker and his opinion of her personality was about as negative as you can get.

But the problem was that other witnesses didn’t agree with any of it. The real issue to my mind is why this particular person in his interview had been treated with such reverence and not challenged on anything he said. It might not have mattered except that his view somehow crystallised into the received historical view, and it’s wrong, and unfair – and it tells you quite a lot about how history comes to get accepted. I learned a lot from that. You have to be very critical about your sources and the context in which they say the things they say.

You might sum it up this way: a central theme of my book is about how the archival record was misinterpreted, because historians took too literally what they read, rather than looking into the context. It’s how we failed to see the women codebreakers who were there, in the record, right before our eyes.

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For the main they were a cross-section of ordinary people – our fathers and grand-mothers – who took risks when it mattered. Fortunately, for family and local historians, the records are now largely online. The book will show you where the records are and how to use them. Relatively few civilians received a gallantry medal. When it was decided to recognise their bravery most received an official Letter of Commendation. The paperwork largely survives. As well the men and women directly involved in rescuing the injured, these Letters also recognised the vital work carried out by the gas workers, electricians, train drivers and dockyard workers to keep Britain going during the wider war in general.

One such recipient was 95-year-old Lillian Halles of North Kensington who was commended for extinguishing fires caused by incendiary devices in her house. She carried water and sand from her room on the first floor to put out fires which had started in the attic, before calling for help. She was probably the oldest person on either side to be officially recognised for bravery during the war.

Most men of our civilian heroes just received a letter of commendation, but a few exceptionally brave individuals were awarded a gallantry medal. The George Cross (GC) and George Medal (GM) were established in September 1940 to recognise exception bravery by civilians. The GC is awarded for acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger and is the civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross. The George Medal was awarded for conspicuous gallantry not in the presence of the enemy. Civilians could also receive the Order of the British Empire (OBE), Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) or British Empire Medal (BEM) for heroism. The youngest recipient of the George Medal was 14-year old Charity Blick, from West Bromwich, who received it for carrying messages between ARP stations during a very heavy air raid.

Three members of Twickenham’s Fire Brigade were awarded several gallantry medals for bravery during an air raid on Hampton. Chief Fire Officer William Woods received a George Medal, while Section Officer Ernest Stevens and Fireman Ernest Weller were each awarded a BEM. The citation, which was printed in the London Gazette, read:

‘On the occasion of a serious bombing incident when a number of houses and shops were wrecked [these men] were occupied for nearly three hours in rescue work, obtaining access to trapped inmates through a small hole in the debris. All the time there was the greatest likelihood that tons of masonry would collapse on them. Much of this was only supported by a few bricks.’

We know more about the gallantry performed by William Woods and his colleagues from files now at The National Archives. During the raid Mr and Mrs Tuffin (as well as their dog), became trapped by debris after a high-explosive bomb had dropped nearby, killing four people. Mr Tuffin was found ‘pinned down by a large dining table on its side across his legs and a huge slab of concrete on his back and his chest wedged between the back of the chair’.

His wife, meanwhile, was buried in debris up to the waist under the table, where the couple had been sheltering. Mr Woods and his colleagues, working in the pitch black, ‘had first to cut an aperture in the tabletop to make contact. This was very difficult, owing to the close proximity of Mr Tuffin and the small space to work in, then to relieve the pressure from his legs, the major portion of the debris had to be lifted with a 5-ton jack.’ To release Mrs Tuffin, ‘it was necessary to remove with the hand, and lying on the stomach, about a yard of debris’. Eventually, the Tuffins were pulled free and taken to hospital, where they recovered from their traumatic experience.

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Several Cunarders were requisitioned to support Britain during the Crimean War (1853–56). A total of fourteen Cunard ships served in the campaign. Of those, Arabia transported all the horses used in the Charge of the Light Brigade.

During the American Civil War (1861–65), the Cunard liners Australasia and Persia transported British troops to reinforce the British and Canadian position of neutrality. Cunard ships also served in the first and second Boer wars.

The company’s ships were central to British naval strategy during the First World War. The liner Mauretania (launched 1906) started the war by making several voyages transporting British soldiers to fight in the Gallipoli campaign. Aquitania (launched 1913) also served as a troop ship, after which she became a hospital ship evacuating casualties from Gallipoli. Both ships finished the war serving on the North Atlantic, carrying American troops to Europe, while transporting fare-paying passengers on their westbound passages.

Cunard’s transatlantic liner Carmania (launched 1905) was requisitioned in August 1914. She was converted into an armed merchant cruiser and fitted with eight 4.7in guns for defensive purposes. Carmania was ordered to the Caribbean, where she made history by participating in the first, and so far only, liner-versus-liner naval battle. This was against the German ship Cap Trafalgar, which like Carmania had been converted to an armed merchant ship. The two armed liners encountered each other off the coast of Trinidad in September 1914. Carmania fired a warning shot across the German ship’s bow. Cap Trafalgar’s response was to open fire on the Cunarder. Carmania responded, aiming fire at the waterline of the German ship, causing severe flooding and leading the Cap Trafalgar to roll on her side.

The Cunarder Lusitania (launched 1906) held the prestigious Blue Riband in 1908 for the fastest Atlantic crossing. However, while under the command of Captain William T. Turner she was sunk by the German submarine U-20 (Kapitän Walther Schwieger), south of Ireland in May 1915. Her sinking led to the loss of nearly 1,200 lives, turning public opinion in North America against Germany and contributing to the USA entering the conflict in 1917.

Other Cunard losses during the First World War included Ivernia, Andania, Aurania, Caria, Folia, Feltria, Franconia, Alaunia and Lycia. One of the last Cunard ships sunk by a U-boat in the First World War was Carpathia, sunk by U-55 (Commander Wilhelm Werner). Carpathia had become famous in April 1912 as the ship which responded to the SOS telegraphed by White Star Line’s Titanic after she struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic on her maiden voyage.

In the Second World War, the two Cunard Queens of that era – Queen Mary (launched 1934) and Queen Elizabeth (launched 1938) – were requisitioned. The two Queens were much faster than any other troopships during the war. After being launched, Queen Elizabeth went straight into service as a troop carrier. In 1940, Queen Mary sailed to Sydney, Australia, where she was converted to carry troops. She then carried Australian troops to Scotland via Cape Town. Between them, the two Queens delivered some 80,000 Australian soldiers to Suez and the Middle East. A port that the two ships visited en route was Freetown, then part of British Sierra Leone.

Throughout the latter part of the Second World War, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth plied the North Atlantic, bringing thousands of Canadian and American troops to the UK in preparation for the Normandy landings. ‘Mary’ and ‘Lizzie’, as they were affectionately known, made several transatlantic crossings, carrying as many as 15,000 troops on each eastbound voyage. On westbound crossings they carried wounded military personnel and civilian evacuees from the war in Europe.

German submarines were a constant threat during these crossings. Three Cunard ships were sunk by German U-boats during the Second World War. Two were torpedoed: Carinthia (launched 1925) and Andania (launched 1921). Laurentic (launched 1908) was sunk by a German mine. A fourth vessel, Lancastria (launched 1920) under the command of Captain Rudolph Sharp, was destroyed in June 1940 by Luftwaffe dive-bomber aircraft off the coast of St-Nazaire, France, while evacuating British troops and civilians. Estimates of total lives lost vary but number at least 6,000, the greatest loss of life on a single ship in British maritime history.

At war’s end, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary remained in service transporting troops, making westbound transatlantic crossings to return home some of the victorious troops to North America, and eastbound crossings to bring home British prisoners of war held captive by Japan as well as transporting fresh Canadian and American troops to garrison Germany.

Franconia (launched 1922) served as a troopship during the Second World War. In January 1945, she sailed to the Black Sea to serve as the base for the British delegation to the Yalta Conference between Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. They met to discuss the final stages of the war and the post-war division of Europe. Meanwhile, Aquitania served on the North Atlantic, transporting troops from New York to the UK in preparation for D-Day. She was the only Cunarder to see service in both world wars.

Cunard suffered the loss of ships due to submarine attacks in the two world wars. In the Second World War, there was the additional risk of losing ships to aerial bombing. However, the two wars highlighted the significant strategic advantages that could be gained from using requisitioned ocean liners to transport troops to a theatre of war. At the end of the war, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, said:

The officers and men of the Merchant Marine by their dedication to duty in the face of enemy action as well as the natural dangers of the sea have brought to us the tools to finish the job. This contribution to Final
Victory will long be remembered.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Prime Minister Winston Churchill also spoke with great appreciation:

The Merchant Navy, with its Allied comrades, night and day, in weather fair or foul, faces not only the ordinary perils on the sea, but the sudden assaults of war from beneath the waters or from the sky. We feel confident that the proud tradition of our island will be upheld today, wherever the Ensign of a British Merchantman is flown.

Winston Churchill

After the Second World War, Churchill made several crossings on Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, which, he said, had helped shorten the war by at least a year.

Thirty-seven years after the end of the Second World War, there was no expectation that QE2 would become a troopship as so many Cunard ships had done earlier in the century.

Extracted from The QE2 in the Falklands War by Commodore Ronald W. Warwick OBE and David Humphreys

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Tuesday, 8 May 1945 was VE – Victory in Europe – Day. Germany had surrendered. It was the end of the war in Europe. It was a time for celebration, but it was also a time for reflection. On VE Day, a jubilant crowd of thousands made their way to Buckingham Palace in London. They clamoured for the royal family. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, with the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, went out on the palace balcony eight times. Prime Minister Winston Churchill joined the royal family on the balcony. That day he told the nation:

‘My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not victory of a party or of any class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole.’

Winston Churchill, VE Day 8 May 1945

Far away in Germany, Adelaide Hall was in the middle of her ENSA tour. She was in Hamburg when she was notified that the war had ended. Adelaide then became one of the first entertainers to arrive in Berlin to congratulate the troops after the city had been liberated. She said:

‘There was not a street in sight – nothing. They had all been razed to the ground, and people were putting up little boards, made from bits of wood, to identify the names of the streets that used to be there.’

Adelaide Hall

After the war, her husband Bert couldn’t get her out of the uniform specially made for her by Madame Adele of Grosvenor Street. He told his wife, ‘The war is over now, honey, you can let that uniform go!’

Norma Best, from British Honduras, had joined the ATS in 1944. She was in London for VE Day and took part in the endof-war celebrations on the Embankment. She later reflected:

‘I think the spirit of the war was that we were all fighting to win. All we could think about is to get in there, do a good job, let’s get it over and done with. Colour didn’t come into it.’

Norma Best

In January 1945, the newsletter of the LCP [League of Coloured Peoples] noted that Ulric Cross had been appointed the first liaison officer for West Indians in the RAF. They added that the recent award of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) to Ulric was ‘a joy to every West Indian heart’. Ulric heard on the radio that the war was over, and he went to Piccadilly Circus in London to join the celebrations:

‘Everybody was overjoyed and I just didn’t feel like taking any part in it. So I went back home. I just felt that a lot of people had been killed. This was not a cause for celebration. The war did not stop people from being killed and a lot of my friends were killed, at least four or five from Trinidad. I was extremely glad the war was over.’

Flight Lieutenant Ulric Cross, DSO, DFC

In Jamaica, Connie Mark, who was serving with the ATS, remembered VE Day as a marvellous time:

‘Everybody was happy ’cause as far as we were concerned, the war was finished. Everybody was happy. Everybody just jumped up and down; the war was over, and it meant that no more of our people would be killed. We had parties, and everybody took it as an excuse to have a party, a drink up, and get stone-blind drunk. I didn’t used to drink in those days; I just went to all the parties that there were. Yeah, you were glad that the war was over, and people weren’t going to die. You didn’t have troop ships coming in with people sick, or blinded, or with missing limbs.’

Connie Mark

Cerene Palmer said that everybody in Jamaica wanted to know that Hitler was really dead.

‘They wanted to make sure it was him. They hung Mussolini so everybody could see him. You knew he was dead.’

Cerene Palmer

In England, another Jamaican, Sam King, was at his RAF hangar, repairing an aircraft, when victory was announced on the tannoy. Everyone was given the remainder of the day off, but they were told they would have to be back on duty the next day. Sam put on his RAF uniform and caught the bus into Weston-super-Mare:

‘It was different. The birds were singing. I got off the bus and I was on the right-hand side of the road, passing the George and Dragon. A lady rushed out: “Come along! You must have a drink.” She pulled me in the pub and said, “Bring rum for this airman, he’s from Jamaica.” I said, “I’m very sorry. I do not drink rum.” She said, “How can you not drink rum? You’ve got Jamaica on your shoulder!” She brought the rum and I had to drink the rum. Everybody was happy. It was VE Day. There’ll be no more bombing. No more killing. And especially for the women whose loved ones were coming home. It was good to be alive and I was alive.’

Sam King

Harold Sinson, from British Guiana, served in the RAF in Pembroke Dock in Wales. When asked about his memories of VE Day, he spoke of how everyone just downed tools:

‘Everything was free – there were drinks all over the place, there was dancing in the street. It was really exciting. It lasted all that day and all night – nobody knew what was happening, you just danced away until you had enough and you went back to camp and to bed. We got off the next day – it was wonderful. We spent time with our friends, and felt very humble for the things people did for us and the people who had died.’

Harold Sinson

Eddie Martin Noble was a Jamaican who was also in the RAF and serving in England. He said he was in Cambridge on VE Day when ‘the very the end of the war in Europe was announced’. In his autobiography, published in 1984, he reflected:

‘It is almost impossible for me to adequately describe here, after all these years, the incredible scenes of joy and sheer abandonment which took place in Cambridge that day and night. Complete strangers would hug and kiss you in the streets, shops and parks. There was dancing in the streets, and bonfires everywhere. In a park near the university I saw servicemen and officers take off their tunics and throw them on a massive bonfire.’

Eddie Martin Noble in his autobiography Jamaica Airman: A Black Airman in Britain 1943 and After

Eddie acknowledged that Winston Churchill was ‘a great war leader’. He believed that, without his leadership, the British people would have lost the war, ‘But, to put it bluntly, he was a bastard. As soon as the war ended they threw him out, and let a Labour government in, so that should tell you something.’

On VE Day, the Trinidadian singer Edric Connor was ready to broadcast the first instalment of a new BBC series of programmes called Serenade in Sepia. However, the live broadcast was postponed so that the BBC could do justice to the celebrations of the end of the war. It was decided that Edric and his co-star, Evelyn Dove, would record the programme on VE Day instead and it would be broadcast at a later date. However, getting to Broadcasting House on VE Day proved an almost impossible task for Edric:

‘Most public transport stopped running. Housewives left kitchens. Shops and schools were closed. All commercial and industrial activities ceased. The only way I could get to London that day was in a hearse. As I sat near the coffin I contemplated the dead body it contained. What a day to go to the BBC! Then I thought of the millions of people killed in the war and wept quietly. Somebody has to cry for the steel that is bent and the body broken against its will. Somebody has to cry for the children unborn and those born but hungry. Somebody had to cry for humanity. The hearse put me down at Oxford Circus.’

Edric Connor

Ambrose Campbell, the Nigerian musician and bandleader, was also drawn into the VE Day celebrations. On that memorable day he launched his new band, the West African Rhythm Brothers, in Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. Sixty years later, Campbell reflected:

‘Everybody had been waiting for that day so everybody was happy and jumping around and dancing and kissing each other, so we thought we’d join the celebration. Four or five drummers and two or three guitars and these voices singing. We had a huge crowd following us around Piccadilly Circus. You could hardly move.’

Ambrose Campbell

In Black London (2015), Marc Matera described Campbell’s participation in VE Day as a ‘spontaneous expression of hope for a transformed post-war social order’.

As the war drew to a close, Dr Harold Moody made a broadcast to the people of the Caribbean for the BBC’s Empire Service in their series, Calling the West Indies. Extracts were then published in the News Letter of the LCP. ‘VE Day has come and gone,’ he said:

‘The years of blood and toil and sweat have come to an end in Europe. The tension of war for millions is over. We are free, again in the continent of Europe. I have been in the midst of a peoples whose homes have been shattered, whose families have been battered, who themselves have been maimed. I have seen these people bear all these shocks bravely and with stoic resistance. I now see these same people breathing the air of relief, and, in their rejoicing, lighting those fires the sight of which, a while ago, would have struck them with terror … I have rejoiced in meeting from time to time the fine group of men and women you have sent over from the West Indies, British Guiana and British Honduras. Their doings and achievements have thrilled me beyond telling. They will be coming back to you, we hope, before very long now, just as I hope my five boys and girls in the services will be back again soon. They have all done magnificently as they battled against evil things. Now they and you will have to continue the war against those evil things which are hindering the progress and development of our beloved lands in the West Indies.’

Dr Harold Moody

On 24 April 1947, at the age of 64, Dr Moody died of acute influenza at his home in Peckham. Thousands of people from all walks of life, including many of his patients, paid their respects at his funeral service which was held at the Camberwell Green Congregational Church. In his biography of Dr Moody, David A. Vaughan said that Moody gave to the LCP ‘devotion, sacrifice, passion and zeal for the rest of his life and he held the office of President continuously until his death in 1947’. Sam Morris commented, ‘In his passing, the black people then resident in Britain lost a sound, sincere, dedicated but completely unpretentious champion.’

Pauline Henebery remembered the feeling of relief when the war in Europe was over, but it was short-lived for her because of the shock of what happened to Hiroshima, a city in Japan that was largely destroyed by an atomic bomb on 6 August 1945. Between 70,000 and 126,000 civilians were killed. She said:

‘I remember the news of that, and was just shattered by the horror, and what it was going to mean. It was just so, so awful. I had the most terrible feeling of guilt that this nation which I’d adopted had done this … well, it was the Americans, really, but still.’

Pauline Henebery

Baron Baker, a Jamaican who had joined the RAF in 1944, felt passionately about the role West Indian servicemen had played in the conflict, as well as the sacrifices some of them had made for the mother country:

‘Many of our blue blood blacks died for the establishment. I know it because I buried several … so many of our young Jamaicans, and West Indians, contributed immensely to Britain’s war effort. It should be remembered at all times. It should never be forgotten.’

Baron Baker

At the end of the war, Esther Bruce took Stephen Bourne’s mother Kathy, aged 14, to see St Paul’s Cathedral. Like so many others, Esther found it hard to believe that St Paul’s had survived the German bombardment of London (the Blitz, doodlebugs and V-2 rockets). For many, including Esther, the beautiful and majestic cathedral symbolised the hope and strength of the British people. ‘Look at St. Paul’s Cathedral,’ Esther said to Kathy. ‘There’s not a mark on it. We’re lucky. We’ve still got half a street, but some poor souls have ended up with nothing.’

Extracted from Under Fire: Black Britain in Wartime 1939–45 by Stephen Bourne

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This is the true recollection of Sergeant Fred Hooker, upon leaving Stallag Luft VII, a German prisoner-of-war camp, in the early hours of 19th January, 1945. Sgt Hooker had been captive there since 12th September the previous year, taken after parachuting from the Halifax heavy bomber in which he was upper gunner was attacked, whilst on a bombing raid over Munster, in western Germany. Both the tail gunner on the aircraft and the pilot were killed, failing to escape in time, consumed by the flames. Hooker was reunited the following day with two of his other crew members – Charlie, the flight engineer, and Taffy, the bomb aimer. After a long journey partly on foot and partly on uncomfortable trucks and a train, with little to eat except dry black bread, the three found themselves at Stallag VII, where they were to spend the next four months: until their release into the freezing night air on 19th January the following year, as the Second World War was drawing to a close.

This year will be a busy year of remembrance of the Second World War because of the anniversaries that will – rightly – be marked; not least 8th May will be the eightieth anniversary of VE day, marking the end of the conflict in Europe, followed by VJ day in August – the end of the war in the Pacific, even more significantly marking the end of the entire conflict. Going further back, we will also remember the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain which took place between the middle of July and end of October in 1940; and the 85th anniversary of the Evacuation from Dunkirk at the end of May/beginning of June – when over 330,000 British troops were rescued from France as it fell into German occupation.

I could list so many more turning points of the conflict, of course; markers of the war that changed the course of history and can be illustrated through remarkable acts of individual courage, military strategy or in some cases simple good fortune. It is vital that we do keep WWII in our minds; the service of millions – for many very painful service indeed – who gave us (the sadly only relative perhaps) peace that we have today. Sergeant Fred Hooker (who has now died) is but one of those millions. Fred told me about his capture as a P-o-W, and his release from Stallag VII for my book Remarkable Journeys of the Second World War*, which contains eleven true memories of the war, all equally remarkable, and extraordinary.

Fred, and a further 1,600 or so inmates from Stallag VII, were part of what is now known as the ‘Long March’ together with over 80,000 prisoners of war held at many other camps, that took place between January and April 1945. The prisoners were released by the Russians who, by this point, were successfully pushing into the eastern front; resulting in the German authorities deciding to evacuate the camps. Fred’s release (and that of his comrades) was in the early hours of 19th January, 1945.

The conditions of the ‘march’ were brutal, so tortuous that over 2,000 men perished en route. For miles they endured blizzards, with the temperature falling to below minus twenty; inadequate clothing offered little protection; they were given little, or no, food, forced to eat whatever they could find – cats, rats, grass and raw sugar beet. Many were ill with dysentery, malnutrition, frost-bite and hypothermia. They were afforded very little sleep and rest, too, occasionally stopping for a few hours in empty barns, sheds and warehouses along the way – as and when permitted by the German guards who pushed them along as quickly as they could.

Fred’s journey on foot ended on 5th February – with a transfer for the next stage of his ‘return home’ to a cattle truck, onto which he was loaded with his comrades, squashed ‘like sardines’ into conditions he described as “not fit for animals, let alone human-beings.’ This horrendous journey lasted for about three days, culminating in their arrival at another camp, Stallag III; where they stayed until their eventual release by American troops three long months later, on 5th May.

Fred was taken then to Brussels, where he was lavishly fed and luxuriated in the joy of sleeping in a proper bed, before being flown home, for his recovery to begin.

As ever, through the troubled times that we are living in today, we can and must draw strength from the courage and resilience of Sergeant Fred Hooker, and millions just like him.

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World War I

The Women’s Land Army was established by the British government to recruit women and girls to work in Britain’s agriculture industry in both twentieth century world wars. The necessity was prompted by large numbers of men leaving their employment to join the armed forces, and the knowledge that 60% of British food was imported with the prospect of supplies being disrupted. Numbers of women working in agricultural settings had been falling for decades. Compared with 43,946 identified in the 1861 population Census, there were just 13,245 females recorded as ‘agricultural labourers’ in the 1911 Census.

The First World War started in July 1914 and by February 1916, 250,000 men had left agricultural occupations with another 100,000 following the passing of the Military Services Act that conscripted, with few exceptions, all single men aged between eighteen and forty-one. A plea was made for 200,000 women and girls to replace them, coupled with a dire warning that labour shortages could lead to the country’s food production falling by between 15% and 25%. The prospect of food stocks reducing to just three weeks led to the urgent need for the cultivation of 2.5 million more acres of land, and for females to help supply the additional food.

In November 1917, the likelihood of food queues prompted Lloyd George, Prime Minister, to admit that ‘German submarines are trying to starve us by sinking the ships which are used to carry to our shores the abundant harvests of other lands.’ Food prices had risen by 42% in 1916, and food rationing was imposed in January 1918.

Claims were made that Hampshire was the most successful English county to recruit, train and place women and girls in local farms. As early as April 1915, two years before the Women’s Land Army was formed, a four-week course, devised by David Cowan, Hampshire’s Director of Education, was being taught at the county’s farm school at Sparsholt. Much was made of the students’ social class; ‘far above…the ordinary labouring class’, was a local newspaper comment.

Many people played a part in the recruitment of women and girls to work on farms. Hampshire’s Women’s Land Army committee had a formidable array of responsibilities to fulfil; the selection of suitable candidates, the organisation of a wide variety of training, the provision of accommodation, the allocation of farms, and pastoral care requirements, among them. Approximately one half of Women’s Land Army workers were employed in dairy associated duties, with the others spread around many farming activities.

By the end of the War, Hampshire accounted for about 3,500 of the country’s 23,000 full-time Women’s Land Army members, 12,000 working in “Agriculture”, with the remainder in the “Foraging” and “Forestry” sections. When the disbandment of the Women’s Land Army occurred in November 1919, many members remained in the agriculture sector, leading to a Hampshire farmer being delighted that he would ‘never again have a man to look after his poultry.’

World War II

If the British government was slow addressing the crucial issues following the departure of large numbers of men to serve in the armed forces in the First World War, that was not the case when the Second World War broke out in September 1939. The Women’s Land Army had been re-formed in February that year, and food rationing was imposed in January 1940, not to be completely lifted until 1954. Despite extensive advertising, numbers of females coming forward rarely matched demand for them, accommodation was in short supply, and another appeal for more land for cultivation was needed as German U boats were severely disrupting food and other supplies.

Once again Hampshire was in the forefront of the recruitment of Women’s Land Army members, known as “land girls”, with the county’s National Farmers’ Union Chairman claiming ‘that there were more land girls in Hampshire than in any other county in England.’ By January 1940, 609 land girls were already employed on Hampshire’s farms, a number that steadily grew to 2,611. The national number of employed land girls peaked at 87,000 in 1943 but had fallen to 43,125 in 1945. Most recruits were single women with an age range of 17 to about 45, and from a wide variety of previous occupations. The first week-long courses at Sparsholt’s farm school taught land girls to drive tractors, reflecting the large increase in numbers on farms compared with the First World War.

When the War in Europe ended in 1945, continued food shortages, the reemployment of fewer male workers than expected, the raising of the school leaving age, and former prisoners of war returning to their home countries, led to the continuing encouragement of females to remain in farming to support a “Food Comes First” campaign. The Women’s Land Army was finally demobilised in November 1950. Accolades were commonplace; one was that land girls ‘had obeyed the call of duty in the nation’s hour of great peril and need, and the nation owed them an everlasting debt.’

That was undoubtedly so, but not without justification was the Women’s Land Army described as a “Cinderella” operation. Land girls were not awarded the same levels of leaving gratuities that other female wartime workers received, they were not invited to march past the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day until 2000, and it was October 2014 before a statue was unveiled at the National Arboretum by the Countess of Essex. Over 240,000 women and girls served on British farms in both world wars, and it must be hoped that the 75th anniversary of the disbandment of the Women’s Land Army in November 2025 will be suitably marked.

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He went on to fight in the Battle of Arnhem during the Second World War. Of the 10,000 men who landed at Arnhem, 1,400 were killed and more than 6,000 were captured – a bloody disaster in more ways than one. Arnhem Lift is Hagen’s breathtaking and frank account of what it was like in the air and on the ground, including his daring escape from the German Army by swimming the Rhine.

‘I crawled right under the brushwood and saw and heard the bullets splashing the ground and hitting the branches and tree stumps all round me. I was sure this was going to be the end and kicked myself for doing such an idiotic thing; trying to take a strong German position on my own. I swore that if ever I got out of this hopeless position I would never again be such a bloody fool. I lay completely still, bullets whizzing about me. I wondered if I wanted to pray; that is what everybody is supposed to do in a position like this; but I just did not feel like it, and to calm and steady myself I watched a colony of ants go about their well-planned and systematic business.’

Louis Hagen

This quote describes my Father’s attitude to life; brave , reckless and amusing which hopefully the reader will understand from his newly published autobiography Suddenly An Englishman and Arnhem Lift.

By Caroline Hagen Hall

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The single most serious incident during the Blitz occurred on the night of the 16/17th April 1941 when the Hospital’s infirmary received a direct hit. More than 50 bed-bound patients had to be rescued from the blazing building as the raid continued overhead. The BBC later recorded one of its earliest outside broadcasts as reporter Wynford Vaughan-Thomas interviewed survivors, including 27 year-old nurse Hannah Deasy, who displayed supreme courage in saving her patients and was later recognised for her bravery.

Very little has been written about this period in the Hospital’s history despite the existence of a significant amount of remarkable archives from the war years. Until a decade ago however, much of this material was stored in cardboard boxes in an attic at the Royal Hospital and was simply not readily available. In 2013 the Hospital authorities decided to digitise this material in order to preserve the contents for future generations and make these archives more accessible.

The task of organising this project was given to Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant, (RQMS) John Rochester of the Royal Hospital’s Quartermasters Department. A 22-year Army veteran, John had seen service in the Gulf War with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers and Greys). Taking technical advice from the likes of The National Archives as to how best to proceed, John also recruited some volunteers to help with the workload. Despite my own military connections being limited to four years with the Army Cadet Force during my school years, cap-badged to my local county regiment The Royal Anglian Regiment, John nevertheless accepted me into the ranks of his Royal Hospital Chelsea heritage volunteer militia!

Over the next five years we opened the boxes in the attic, assessing and digitising their contents. The archives contained some remarkable material, including a War Diary compiled by Officers of the Royal Hospital in near real-time, and containing a minute-by-minute account of the Blitz in Chelsea. Some of the material was however contradictory and difficult to interpret, such as for example, apparent evacuation agreements for some, but not all of the Chelsea Pensioner residents. I therefore took the momentous decision to return to university as a very mature student, and spent the next two years at the University of Oxford where I completed a Master’s degree in Historical Studies for which I researched the Royal Hospital’s wartime story.

On completion of my studies my work was recommended for publication given the depth of research and the weight of original archive material used. I expanded my written work to manuscript length and was delighted when The History Press accepted it for publication. The Royal Hospital is now able to use this research in a readily accessible form to tell the wartime story of this much loved and nationally significant institution. In 2024 the annual Founder’s Day parade, in the presence of the Reviewing Officer HRH The Princess Royal, took place on the 6th June, the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. The Governor, when addressing the massed ranks of assembled Chelsea Pensioners, including Second World War veterans, was able to describe the Hospital’s contribution to this significant turning point in the war, when the Chaplain and Physician & Surgeon quietly left the Royal Hospital in June 1944 to ‘take up positions with Southern Command’, as the invasion force headed for the Normandy beaches.

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Colin Bell, now 103, recollects the announcement of the Second World War. Colin was 18 years old at the time, living with his family in East Molesey in Surrey.

“Strangely I wasn’t scared, I probably should have been, but I was eighteen years old at the time and because we were half-expecting war to be announced I remember feeling quite calm.”

This is Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell’s recollection of the announcement, by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, that Britain was once again at War with Germany; at 11 am on 3rd September 1939, 85 years ago. Colin Bell, now 103, was one of millions huddled around wireless sets in kitchens, sitting rooms, village halls and community centres across Great Britain that morning, with his family, listening to the news they had long been fearing. Despite the passing of over eight and half decades, Colin can recall Chamberlain’s words as though they were spoken yesterday. He remembers, too, how he (and some of his friends) were influenced by H.G. Wells’ book The Shape of Things to Come, which they had read at school. This predicted that another world war would take place, with remarkable accuracy, but also predicting the outcome would be a ‘draw’ not victory on either side, which perhaps was reassuring because at least Wells did not write of defeat.

Speaking from the Cabinet Room at 10, Downing Street Chamberlain explained to the nation that war could not be averted because Germany was continuing to refuse to withdraw troops from Poland. He spoke of his profound sadness that his ‘long struggle to win peace’ had failed, but because of ‘evil things’ war was inevitable; that ‘bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution’ had to be fought; and, in the closing words of his address, of his certainty that ‘right will prevail.’

“However,” Colin told me, “Whilst I wasn’t scared, my parents were, they were very frightened indeed. I remember we spent the first few days thinking we would be bombed immediately (everyone did), but it wasn’t really like that – it was more a state of confusion because we didn’t know what to expect.” The Bell family lived in East Molesey, in Surrey, not far from Hampton Court; Colin said he told his parents he wanted to sign up for the RAF as soon as possible, but his father strongly discouraged him, persuading him – instead – at the start of the war to join the Home Guard. “I spent the first few weeks of the War guarding Hampton Court Bridge, which I didn’t find at all interesting, most of all I just didn’t feel useful.” A year later, with his parent’s reluctant blessing, Colin applied to join the RAF; eventually becoming a decorated Mosquito pilot, serving in Bomber Command’s Night Light Striking Force, a member of 608 Squadron. By the end of the war, he had flown fifty sorties; including many over heavily defended German cities – in his relatively small, but very fast and feisty, de Havilland Mosquito aircraft. “Every sortie was different,” Colin explained, “you never knew if you would come back; some operations were more petrifying and risky than others, and you always had to keep your wits about you, but not for a moment did I not want to be part of the war effort; we had a job to do, an enemy to destroy – who was certainly intent on destroying us.”

Dorothy Drew, now two years deceased, also spoke to me about her memory of 3rd September 1939. Dorothy was seven years old at the time, living in Romford, in east London.

She told me: “I was playing on my swing in our little garden. The birds were singing, and the sun was shining, I was having a nice time and was upset when my father suddenly appeared and said to me, ‘Dorothy, you need to come inside. We must listen to Mr Chamberlain on the wireless because what he is going to say is very important’.”

Dorothy told me her father, an engineer, was particularly proud of this wireless, which he had made himself; she described it as a ‘great big set, that sat in an alcove in the kitchen, with big buttons on it.’ Quite often, as a child she said she ‘watched’ the radio whilst people talked, imagining the faces behind the voices.

However, that day, she said, there was no ‘childish fun’ to be had behind the words emanating from the wireless set. She too, like Colin, recalled her parents panic-stricken and terrified reaction to the news. Dorothy, together with hundreds of children her age, some older and many even younger, was a wartime evacuee. This was a generation who had to learn to grieve at a young age; had to live separated from mothers, fathers, grand-parents, brothers, sisters; many witnessed (and suffered themselves) the brutality men could inflict on each other – in a nutshell, this was a generation for whom childhood was cruelly taken.

How could the parents of both Colin Bell and Dorothy Drew; representing this whole generation, not feel anything but fear and absolute dread – not even twenty-one whole years had passed since the armistice of the First World War; a war that was won, but the legacy of so much loss, grief, suffering still impacting the lives of all who learnt on 3rd September 1939 that they were about to experience a second World War in their life time.

It could be argued that, eventually, the ‘right’ Chamberlain spoke of in his speech did prevail; just over five and half years later the Second World War was won when the Allies defeated the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan – but with it the largest loss of life in any single conflict; around 80 million died (about 3% of the population of the whole world …), two thirds of the deaths civilian. Those who survived have lived their lives with an immense range of emotion; the trauma of their own suffering (emotional and physical), witnessing other’s suffering and learning to live with grief at such a young age is undoubtedly an exacting emotional burden. I have been privileged to speak to several who lived through these years, and for whom are gifted with memory to recall their recollections*. Whilst the tragedy of war escapes no-one, some have been able, more than others, to draw strength from their experience, living a life of courage because, quite simply, they know how very precious life is and how every day is a gift. Returning to Colin Bell, only last year, aged 102, he raised over £56,000 for four charities abseiling down the side of the Royal London Hospital. After completing his descent, he spoke of his gratitude that he was given this opportunity, declaring the adventure as “money for old rope!”

The men, and women, from around the world, who have bravely recalled their recollections of the Second World War (as written in my books) have done so, not so much that they might be remembered, but for the thousands each one represents (who could not tell their story) and so that future generations might better understand the Second World War years. When I began writing these history books, back in 2014, it did not occur to me that ten years later I would – tragically – be writing with a third world war potentially looming. The overall message of all the remarkable men, and women, I have spoken to, fought, strove and suffered so much that at the very least this does not happen.

In the words of Lt John Randall (now deceased), who whilst serving in the SAS at the end of the War was one of the first to rescue the few survivors of the of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp:

“In spite of the horrors the survivors have a history of extraordinary bravery, a determination to survive and the indomitable spirit to never give up hope. This must be an inspiration to all of us.”

Sadly, what Mr Chamberlain spoke of on 3rd September 1939 – “bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution” – is all too prevalent in the world today. For the sake of those who lived through both World Wars, for those who did not, and for all who battle for and yearn for peace today, we must not give up hope of a better world.

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