A wartime diary of a Norfolk schoolboy

 

Jot 101 Wartime schoolboy diary pic 001 Found among the papers of the academic and occasional writer Patrick O’Donoghue is this tiny diary covering the first four months of 1944, when, from the style of handwriting and the details of his leisure hours activity, he appears to have been around ten years old.   The document is interesting in several respects. Although the entries are often brief and record rather dull events (  I went on a walk’,  ‘ Libraries today’ ) they paint a vivid picture of the life of an ordinary schoolboy in wartime, both in the country and in London. But there are puzzles in this split existence. Although he lived near Ayslsham, north of Norwich,  over the Christmas holidays of 1943/44, he ‘went back’ on January 8th to school in London, where he visited Foyles bookshop and viewed  the bomb damage done to homes in Thorpedale Road, Crouch Hill ( presumably near to where he lived ). Patrick also recorded an air  raid  for January 21st.

 

London seems to have offered far more entertainment for Patrick than rural Norfolk had ever done. There were films to be seen, and one he particularly anticipated was ‘The Phantom of the Opera ‘ starring Claude Rains and Nelson Eddy (1943), which had eventually reached London by February 11th, which is when  Nora ( possibly his elder sister) saw it with Seymour ( possibly her boyfriend) . The previous evening the couple had seen ‘The Girls he Left Behind’. It is likely that Patrick, as a juvenile was barred from seeing both this ‘ romance ‘ as well as the horror film, though he did see‘ Behind the Rising Sun ‘ at the Astoria. One of the films he intended to see was shown at the library. One wonders if this, like ‘The Battle of Britain ‘, which he was to see in Norfolk in March, was a government propaganda film — actually directed by Frank Capra and made in the USA–of which there were quite a few during the War.  There were other forms of entertainment, besides films.  On January 29thPatrick recorded that ‘ Uncle Jim brought a huge load of comics today. I bought 3 comics too. We know that he favoured The Dandy, which had only been published for a few years. And of course, there were books available from the library. Those he borrowed were the usual adventure stories and thrillers ( The City of the Sorcerer and Scouts of the Sky) and T. C. Bridge’s Adventure Omnibus.   Then on February 22nd he ‘came home’ to Norfolk. Here he bought two books in Norwich and on the 23rd listened to the Charlie McCarthy comedy show on radio. Rather alarmingly, he and a friend or two on the following Saturday afternoon made a ‘ bomb ‘, as doubtless many boys did at the time. For every day of the following week he seems to have had a ‘good time‘, with or without his friend Derek.  Continue reading →

A  Nazi sympathizer on The Black Arts

Major-General J.F.C. Fuller (1878  – 1966) was a celebrated military tactician and theorist, an JFC_Fullerinternational expert on the use of tanks in warfare who was a strong influence on the German tactician Guderian, but also a Nazi sympathizer who met Hitler, and the only top-ranking officer in the British Army who in 1939 was not invited to join the fight against the Fuhrer. Nicknamed ‘ Boney ‘ by his peers presumably for his combative mien and brilliance as a strategist, and indeed height ( he was only 5’ 4”) Fuller was disliked by many for his high-handedness and argumentative nature. But some of this unpopularity may also have had its origin in his devotion to the occult, on which he wrote articles and books, including a study of Aleister  Crowley. Indeed we at Jot 101 first came across his name in the April 1926 issue of The Occult Review, where he contributed a long article entitled ‘ The Black Arts ‘.

 

In the piece Fuller agued that throughout time people bewildered by the mysteries of life and death have sought meaning and comfort in spiritual systems. Many of the less curious, and less intelligent, he contended, have turned to conventional religions that encourage ‘ pauperization of thought ‘ while the more adventurous and intellectually inclined looked for answers in what others have regarded as evil forces allied to Satan. However, these occult resources, argued Fuller, were not reservoirs of evil at all, but were in the hands of practitioners like Friar Bacon. Paracelsus and Dr Dee, valid paths to enlightenment and truth. Even Isaac Newton and Copernicus, Fuller contends, can be regarded as ‘black magicians’.

 

And as the age of ‘ strange spells ‘ is succeeded by the ‘Black Age of the steam epoch ‘ the anarchist arises as a rebel against the materialism of Capital; then, according to Fuller, in opposition to the rationalism of a new priesthood of Science ‘ strange forms ‘ arise in opposition—‘ spiritualism, psychical research, theosophy and all the baby prattle of “ higher thought “ ‘. To the rationalist, Fuller argues, these too are ‘black children ‘, but children that will eventually grow into ; strapping boys and girls ‘. Continue reading →

Charles Morgan to Arthur Bryant

IMG_0562Found –an interesting signed presentation from Charles Morgan to the historian, Arthur Bryant. It reads – “Arthur Bryant, more about the froggies from his old friend & admirer, Charles Morgan 7.7.49.” It was in a copy of his 1949 book The River Line.

Morgan had been awarded the French Legion of Honour in 1936 and was elected a member of the Institut de France in 1949. In his time Morgan enjoyed an ‘immense’ (Wikipedia) reputation during his lifetime, particularly in France.

The River Line became a play but was originally written as a novel in 1949 and concerned the activities of escaped British prisoners of war in France during World War II.

The inscription is interesting given Morgan’s high standing in France and his professed love for the French. He is still admired there but has become a  slow seller in Britain. The inscription possibly panders to Bryant’s tastes and views, notably to the right.  Bryant had written a book in 1940 which he had to rapidly repress (see Bookride) due to its failure to condemn Hitler.

Extracts from a soldier’s journal kept while visiting the British Zone in Germany in late 1948

Screenshot 2019-02-09 09.49.46

Immediately after the end of WW 2 Germany was occupied by Allied forces and divided into 4 zones. The eastern quarter was given to the Russians and later became East Germany; the Americans occupied the south, the French had a tiny section to the south west, while the British were allotted most of the north.

It was exciting, therefore, to discover among a cache of ephemera at Jot HQ, a notebook issued to soldiers by the Stationery Office in which one soldier had recorded his brief visit to Altenau, a ski-resort in Lower Saxony in the centre of the British Zone, a few miles from the Russian Zone.

Little can be discerned from the brief journal, dating from the 6th to the 14th November 1948, concerning this anonymous soldier, who intersperses his entries  with postcards of local scenery, apart from the fact that he seems to have been on a furlough for these eight days. When he is not relaxing at the ‘Holiday Inn’ in Altenau, sipping port and reading, he is exploring the local countryside. One of his aims seems to have been to penetrate the border into Russian occupied territory. He certainly appears to have regarded the Russians with a mixture of fear and curiosity, born perhaps of the stories that emerged about their cruelty and barbarity towards the Germans, both during the war and immediately afterwards. He regards the Germans themselves with less fear, although doubtless aware that the resentment felt by them towards occupying forces might be a source of danger, particularly at night. For security reasons all soldiers in the British Zone were under strict orders not to converse with any of the natives—a rule which our soldier assiduously observes.

The journal shows considerable literary qualities, which suggests that the soldier, who may possibly have been born in the early 1920s, might have become a writer or journalist at some point in the future. Take the entry for Saturday 6th November:

Ober: 2.15 p.m.

The blue dusk hid everything but the lights of the town and the black masses of the hills.

Tourist-like I climbed down the carriage-steps on to the six-inch platform. Where were all the other tourists ? In utter solitude I crunched down to the sub-way.

A waiting- room, its atmosphere thick with the smell of German humanity. One large T.C.V. ---one small sergeant. Was I to be alone at Altenau? Utter & sublime solitude?

Continue reading →

Etiquette as Great Grandmother knew it

Blackour book cover 001Found in The Black-Out Book (1939) are these rules copied out in her diary by the editor’s great-grandmother.

 

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices

 

When calling, do not enter into grave discussion. Trifling subjects are better.

 

It is rude to turn a chair so that your back will presented to anyone.

 

In company do not converse with another in a language that is not understood by the rest.

 

If it becomes necessary to break a marriage engagement, it is best to do so by letter. The reasons for your course can be given much more clearly than in a personal interview. All presents, letters, etc., received should accompany the letter announcing the termination of the engagement.

 

During a walk in the country, when ascending a hill or walking on the bank of a stream, and the lady is fatigued, and sits upon the ground, a gentleman will not seat himself by her, but remain standing until she is rested sufficiently to proceed.

 

A dispute about religion is foolish. When it is known that there are fifteen hundred millions of people on the face of the earth, speaking 3034 languages, and possessing one thousand different religious beliefs, it will be easily seen that it is a hopeless task to harmonize them all. Continue reading →

The Channel Islands Monthly Review

Channel Islands Review cover 001When, with the expected takeover of the German troops during the beginning of the Second World War, much of the population of the Channels Islands was evacuated to mainland Britain, Channel Island Societies were established here to serve the needs of the exiles. In time, the Channel Island Monthly Review was established, making it possible for both the exiled and the stay-at-home Islanders to communicate with each other.

Published by the Stockport and District Channel Islands Society from 1940, this A5 sized digest of news proved a godsend, especially to the evacuees. It reported events in the Islands, the activities (whist drives, outings, and talks) of all the various Channel Island Societies in the UK, letters from those who stayed behind, and lists of those Islanders who had been deported to German internment camps. The magazine also carried Births, Marriages and Death notices, adverts and personal enquiries.

For instance, the issue for May 1943 carried a feature describing the still unresolved difficulties faced by the exiles, who were:

‘…struggling under financial or domestic anxieties; the husband without the wife; the wife without the husband ; the mothers with their young children, just existing on the Unemployed Assistance Board allowance; the billeted relying entirely on the goodwill of their billetors; the children, now over school age, who are seeking employment; and the school children themselves…’ Continue reading →

Frances Mundy-Castle: a neglected poet

Democrats Chapbook cover 001The identity of the ‘ quiet woman‘ who wrote A Democrat’s Chapbook (1942), a hundred page long commentary in free verse on the events of the Second World War up to the time when America joined the Allied forces, was only revealed when Anne Powell included two passages from it in her anthology of female war poetry, Shadows of War (1999 ). However, those who had read her volume of Georgian verse entitled Songs from the Sussex Downs ( 1915), a copy of which was found in the collection of Wilfred Owen, might have recognised the style as that of ‘Peggy Whitehouse’, whose Mary By the Sea also appeared under this name in 1946. All three books were the work of Mrs Frances Mundy –Castle (1875 – 1959).

Thanks to her son Alistair, we now know a little more about Mrs Mundy-Castle. We know, for instance, that she came from a wealthy family and that at the age of sixteen she published a volume of her poems. She then married Mr Mundy-Castle, who managed a local brickworks, and the family settled down at Cage Farm, an early eighteenth century house on the eastern outskirts of Tonbridge. Here she seems to have held a sort of salon for local writers and artists, among whom was the cult artist and writer Denton Welch, who lived a mile or so away and was friends with her daughter Rosemary. In his later years, according to his biographer, she was ‘a frequent target of his malicious humour ‘, despite the fact that it was she who had given him the idea of writing his first book. Continue reading →

George Sims and espionage

img_2750Found in a thriller by George Sims (1923 -1999) an interesting letter about the book. Sims was a successful and much admired dealer in rare books, something of a poet and a novelist with several of his books being about the book trade (bibliomysteries.) This book Who is Cato? (Macmillan, London 1981) actually has an art dealer, one William Marshall (rich but disillusioned), as its hero. He becomes involved in espionage through his connection to  ‘Intelligence’ in WW2 and finds himself working against the KGB many years later while on holiday in Majorca…

The letter from Sims to a woman friend, who ran a bookshop, is on headed notepaper from his cottage ‘Peacocks’ in Hurst, Berkshire. It reads:

Many thanks for your helpful cheering letter. I was glad to have it. Probably I’ve told you that when Cato was published we were in America and our daughter phoned to say that there had been a mysterious burglary at our cottage in which nothing was taken. When I came back I was puzzled as to how an entry was made into our cottage and my office; nothing was missing not even some £10 notes in the office drawer… exactly like the burglary which took place at William Marshall’s cottage near Hambleden!!

Obviously someone thought I knew more than I did. I was to blame as I had signed the official secrets document when I was at the SCU, and there was quite a deal of fact mixed with the fiction. Love George.

The S.CU. ‘Special Communications Units’ were outstations of S.I.S (‘Special Intelligence Services’) involved mostly with radio communications. They were disbanded in 1946. Sims, known to be irascible, appears quite philosophic about this incident. His books are collected, especially the bibliomysteries, also his excellent and still mouthwatering catalogues

Guernsey – a WW2 Press Diary

img_2725Found – a small  44-page wire-stitched newsprint pamphlet (no date or printer specified) entitled “PRESS” DIARY of Island Life during the German Occupation 1940-1945. Probably printed in Guernsey in late 1945. It records life under German occupation  in Guernsey through short news items. It is much concerned with the many changing rules and proclamations by the Germans regarding cars, tobacco, potatoes, curfews,  penalties for plunder of unoccupied premises (death) also it  records local crime, entertainment and privations. Cigarette rations were down to 20 cigarettes a week and 2 oz of tobacco. Many notices are brief – ‘’Rat Destruction committee advertise for dogs and ferrets.’  ‘Owners of private cars ordered to report.’ ‘Potato Board report that shortage of potatoes is due to hoarding.’ ‘First case against cyclists for riding abreast. Fined 2/6 each.’ ‘Germans order collections of old bicycle tyres, and tubes, rags, old paper, feathers, rubber, bones, leather and unbroken glass bottles’ ‘Appeal for old felt hats for making into slippers.’

Ships arriving with supplies are noted including  the one ton of delicacies- milk, chocolate, cheese and sweets donated to the island’s children by the Swiss International Red Cross in April 1941. The  Guille-Allès Library of Guernsey allowed residents 2 books at a time (raised from one.) There were many burglaries and break-ins reported and several profiteers and black marketers arrested and fined. One man arrested for breaking into a house and stealing and assaulting a woman received 12 strokes of the whip and 5 years in prison, a few were summarily shot. Continue reading →

World War 1 – the last hours

image1This short piece was sent in by by an anonymous jotwatcher, for which much thanks.  It shows a typed military communique about the end of hostilities in World War 1 that was kept by his  great, great grandfather and handed down through the family. It reads:

After telling the troops, my great great grandfather folded up this piece of paper and put it in his pocket nearly 100 years ago. It’s been handed down since. It marks the end of the First World War:

Translation:
1) Hostilities shall cease along the entire front at 1100 hrs on November 11th (French time)
2) Until further orders, troops shall not move forward of the line seized by this hour and date. Report exactly the position of the line. 
3) All communication with the enemy is forbidden until receipt of instructions by the army commander.

A real piece of history! Now raising a massive gin and tonic to those who gave their tomorrow for me to enjoy my today and I’m surrounded by people I love. Don’t forget to remember. 

The Land Girl

IMG_1510Found at the London 2016 May Ephemera Fair – an issue of this magazine – THE LAND GIRL. (NO. 7. VOLUME 2, OCTOBER 1941.) This was issued by the Women’s Land Army The first article  is an encouraging piece aimed at the new Land Girl, who possibly for the first time, will be meeting other girls from far flung parts of Britain and  the British Commonwealth.

On Being Strange.

At this time of year many members of the Land Army are working far from their  homes. In particular, girls who are threshing and potato lifting have come long distances, and many others have undertaken particular jobs in counties they have never visited before.

This offers a grand opportunity to break down prejudices which have survived from the times (little more than a hundred years ago) when it took many days of laborious travel to traverse this island and the vast majority of people never left their own county throughout their lives. But prejudice dies hard, and in many counties people who have lived in them for less than ten years are still called “foreigners.”

It is the right spirit which makes girls volunteer to go where they are most needed – once they have got there it is very important that they should stay, for they are needed, and a failure to stick it out means a great deal of trouble and wasted time and money, neither of which can be afforded nowadays. Home-sickness is almost inevitable, but it does not last, and a determination to be interested in new places and different people will help it to pass quickly. Continue reading →

Harry Grindell Matthews—inventor extraordinaire

Matthews operating the Death Ray

If ever a man was the epitome of the ‘mad inventor‘ it was Harry Grindell Matthews, though his many supporters would perhaps bridle at the word ‘ mad’. But if he wasn’t dotty, he was certainly controversial and decidedly eccentric. For it was the habit of this electrical engineer, born in Winterbourne, now a northern suburb of Bristol, in 1881, to claim a startlingly interesting innovation while refusing to cooperate with interested parties, including government agencies. In 1911 he claimed to have invented a radio-telephone, which if developed might have been a prototype of our modern mobile; he also boasted that he had created the world’s first talking movie in 1921, but this too was never financed. He is best known today ( if he is known at all) for inventing an invisible Death Ray which he claimed would stop electrical machinery at a distance, thus immobilising enemy threats, such as aircraft and bombs. However, when an eager government stipulated that to convince the scientists he would be required to stop a petrol-driven motorcycle engine remotely, Matthews refused the challenge. In this press photo dated 1930 from the London based Sports and General agency, which found its way into the marvellous El Mundo archive, Matthews is shown on the right, cigarette in hand, while a group of engineers eagerly examine what appears to be the motorcycle engine which he was asked to stop. In another photo we see Matthews operating the Death Ray itself. Needless to say, the inventor’s refusal to cooperate in a controlled experiment spelt the end of this promising piece of technology.

Grindell matthews inventor082

Undeterred, Matthews continued to offer new inventions. The most exciting was a Sky Projector, which he demonstrated with some success. Had this got off the ground we may have had laser-type shows in the 1930s. When at last he did manage to tempt serious investors to part with their money, he used much of it to build a state of the art laboratory and a private airfield overlooking the Swansea Valley at Clydach. His financial state received another boost in 1938 when he married an opera singer called Ganna Walska whose five former husbands had left her with a fortune of around $125m. Unfortunately, he did not live long to enjoy his good fortune. Matthews died in Swansea in 1941 at just 60.

Gloucestershire has produced at least another brilliant electrical engineer. Joe Meek, the equally eccentric electronic music pioneer who produced the cult favourite ‘Telstar’ in 1962, worked on radios as a teenage prodigy. His shed can still be seen at the rear of his father’s old shop (blue plaque) off the Market Place in Newent. [R.M.Healey]

‘The sewer of this vile book’ : one man’s rage against a poetry anthology.

Paths of Glory poems 001

Today, a hundred years on, most historians find it difficult to justify the carnage that was the Great War. Back in 1919, many were morally divided on the issue. One man who saw the fight against German brutality as a wholly justified, glorious crusade, was the poet and playwright Henry Newman Howard (1861 – 1929). On reading The Paths of Glory, an anthology of anti-war poetry, he sent a scathing letter to its pacifist editor, Bertram Lloyd. A typewritten copy of this letter was recently found, tucked in with a batch of press cuttings relating to the offending book, in a copy of it , which may have been Lloyd’s own, that ended up the library of Maria Assumpta College, Kensington and was subsequently de-accessioned into the secondhand book trade.

Here in full is Howard’s letter to Lloyd:

29 Jan 1919

25, Charlbury Road,

Oxford.

Sir,

Your’ anthology ‘of War Poems is a crime. I grieve that the publishing house fathered by noble John Ruskin should be Sponsors to this execrable publication. Never again will I purchase a book bearing the stamp fouled by the guilt of this sinister booklet. Other books there are one recalls as foul things. Il Principe, possibly John Davidson’s Testament; Nietzsche—these last, like the German Empire, died mad of their guilty thoughts. Your book, garbage from end to end—if not in the individual poems, assuredly in their bringing together—carries the sickly unction of a spurious humanitarianism.

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The Army of the Planes

51v-xtwfTSL._SX369_BO1,204,203,200_Found in  The Poetry of Flight, an Anthology (edited by Stella Wolfe Murray, published by Heath Cranton, London 1925) this stirring poem by the American poet Minna Irving (1857 – 1940) Her real name was Minnie Odell Michiner and she was from Tarrytown, New York. She published a poetry collection, “Songs of a Haunted Heart” in 1888, and published poems in turn-of-the-century periodicals such as Munsey’s, The Smart Set, and The Gray Goose. She also wrote a science fiction story  “The Moon Woman” which appeared in the November 1929 issue of Amazing Stories (right.) She has no Wikipedia entry.  The anthology, which has pieces by Homer, Swinburne, Duncan Campbell Scott and W.H. Davies is dedicated ‘..to the memory of all have given their lives for aeronautical progress.’ Her poem could have been written by an Italian Futurist and has all  the excitement of the early days of aviation.

The Army of the Planes
They are coming with the drumming of a million pinions humming
And the purr of mighty motors that are all in time and tune
Proudly soaring with the roaring of the thousand northers pouring
Through the vast and hollow spaces sacred to the sun and moon
They are racing into places filled with radiant star faces

Following the meteor’s speedways and the comet’s ancient lanes,
And the universe is shaking, and the waking earth is quaking
At the terror and the marvel of the army of the planes
Wings of wonder as they thunder sweep the rolling clouds asunder
Sailing great uncharted oceans of the empyrean blue;
Struts are singing, wires are ringing, swift propeller blades are flinging
Spray of diamond dust and silver when they cut a star in two.
Hail the aerial squadrons forming through the fields of azure storming, Battle birds the crimson war god to celestial combat trains,
Swooping down from viewless regions to the aid of earthly legions—
Hail the glorious, victorious, valiant army of the planes!

Group Captain F.C. “Griff” Griffiths and the Maquis

71wD8UA294LFound loosely inserted in his book Winged Hours this account by Group Captain F.C. “Griff” Griffiths (1913-1996) of his time in France with the Maquis and his attempts after the war to trace members of the French Resistance who had helped him escape. In April 1943, Frank Griffiths, then a Squadron Leader, was posted to No. 138 Special Duty Squadron to take part in SOE ‘drops’ taking men and supplies to resistance organisations in occupied Europe. On the night of the 14/15 August 1943 his Halifax aircraft serial JD180 was brought down when flying low over Annecy (near the French/Swiss border) by small arms fire from an Italian Alpini corporal. He was one of two survivors and escaped his Italian captors and was subsequently sheltered by the Maquis and eventually escaped over the border to Switzerland, returning to England around Christmas 1943. The problem with tracing his brave saviours after the war was that none of them had used their real names…

PYRENEAN PICNIC

One of the sad things about Escaping/Evading experiences is that to protect our helpers we did not wish to know their real names or to remember addresses. We thus failed to make contact with many of them after the war.

For over 43 years I endeavoured to trace a helper with whom I had formed a strong rapport. All I knew of him was that his name was “Antoine” (obviously a nom de guerre) and that his French was difficult to understand because he was a Catalan.

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Collecting Spanish Civil War literature

(Merci, Surbouquin)

An excerpt slightly  abbreviated, from Student Magazine issue (January 1963.) Quite prophetic as almost all the books mentioned in it are now valuable, especially the Orwell. Edmond Romilly's Boadilla is almost unobtainable as a first edition and copies of his scurrilous magazine Out of Bounds are thin on the ground. Frederick Grubb, who was a friend of radio pundit Fred Hunter -whose estate of books we bought, was a poet and literary critic much admired in the 1960s.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
 
They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch
Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;
They floated over the oceans;
They walked the passes: they came to present their lives.
 
W.H. Auden: Spain.

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William Loring, academic, soldier and first Warden of Goldsmiths

Found among  the papers of the long defunct literary agency Michael Hayes of Cromwell Road S.W.5  - parts of a manuscript memoir by one L.R. Reeve of Newton Abbot, South Devon. Mr Reeve was attempting to get the book (Among those Present: Very Exceptional People) published, but on the evidence of the unused stamp Hayes never replied and  L. R. Reeve published the book himself through the esteemed vanity publisher Stockwell two years later in 1974.

L R Reeve had in a long life met or observed a remarkable selection of famous persons. He  presents 'vignettes' of 110 persons from all grades of society (many minor or even unknown) they include Winston Churchill, Dorothy Sayers,  H H Asquith, John Buchan, the cricketer Jack Hobbs, J.B. Priestley, H.G. Wells, Marconi, E.M. Forster, Duchess of Atholl, Marie Stopes, Oliver Lodge and Cecil Sharp -- 'it is unnecessary to explain that  many I have known have not known me. All of them I have seen, most of them I have heard, and some of them have sought information, even advice from me."

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The A.A. Gunner’s creed

A.A. RAF team in Normandy.
Many thanks Histomil
Found in The Journal of the Royal Air Force Volume 15, no. 2 Autumn, 1935. pp 229-230 The A.A. Gunner's Creed, by H. W. H. The journal preface the creed by stating "…the origin of this creed is unknown, and the Editor publishes it hoping that he is not infringing any copyright" - a sentiment we also echo. HWH shows considerable wit and was probably a formidable gunner. A.A., as every WWII buff knows, stands for 'Anti-Aircraft.'

Whosoever will be saved: before all things it is necessary to hold the A.A. Faith.

Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled: without doubt he shall miss the target everlastingly.

And the A.A. Faith is this: that we worship Calibration and the Mean of Three Height Readings.

Neither confounding the Height-takers: nor cavilling at their marvellous discrepancies.

For there is one Height of the Mirror, another of the Altimeter: and another of the U.B.2.

And yet there are not three Heights; but one Height.

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki seventy years on–a naval officer’s visit to Japan in 1946/1947

To mark the terrible events of seventy years ago in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, here are some postcards bought by my late father while visiting Japan, late in 1946 or early in 1947, as a commander in the Royal Navy. They were found interleaved in the first volume of a two volume guide book entitled We Japanese, first published in December 1934 and June 1937,by H.S.K Yamaguchi, the managing director of the exclusive Fujiya Hotel at Miyanoshita, situated in the mountainous region of Hakone, eighty miles SW of Tokyo.

The first and second volumes of this four hundred page guide to ‘many of the customs, manners, ceremonies, festivals, arts and crafts of the Japanese’ were reprinted in October and December respectively. A third and final volume appeared in 1949. My father probably bought his copies while staying at the hotel, which was established in 1878 by a member of the Yamaguchi family, and today advertises itself as the oldest ‘Western-style’ hotel in Japan. He wouldn’t have met the guide’s author, who had made great improvements to his hotel in the thirties, because he had died in 1944, but he might have rubbed shoulders with some of its famous guests. During the war one of these was the loathsome ‘Butcher of Warsaw’, Joseph Meisinger, but he had been captured by the Allies in September 1945. At other times celebrities staying at this exclusive hotel included Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Charlie Chaplin, and the Emperor of Japan himself. In 1978 Yoko Ono took John Lennon here.

Today, at £133 pp per night, the Fujiya Hotel no doubt trades on its exclusive reputation, but it is still cheaper than a less famous rival nearby. If you do decide to visit it, the receptionist may let you consult the final issue (1950) of the guide to Japan that my father bought nearly seventy years ago. [RMH]

Salvage (1942)

A piece of  ephemera from Dad's Army days in Kent during WW2 (1942). A sheet of mimeographed paper typed both sides from the Tenterden 'Salvage Officer,' one G.D. Forder. Possibly such leaflets were from a national template, although no record of this leaflet is forthcoming. Bones were much wanted (even if gnawed by a dog) - these could be used in making glycerine (for high explosives) also candles and soap.
 Salvage has now become recycling and generally they don't refuse bones but no longer solicit them.

Tenterden Rural District Council

Hillside
5 East Hill
Tenterden Kent.
6th May, 1942.

G. D. Forder,
Salvage
Officer.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Salvage.

Salvage is vitally important.
Shipping is limited an many supplies formally drawn from the Far East and other countries have been cut off. So we must utilise to the utmost every bit of material which can possibly be got at home.

Local Authorities everywhere have been urged to arrange for its collection. Their resources of man power and equipment are fully taxed, and other overtaxed, and need to be supplemented by voluntary help.

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