Despatches winter 2013

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IWM CONTEMPORARY

MIKE MOORE LEE CRAKER Perspectives on Iraq 1991 – 2011

Despatches

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Support us and enjoy an exclusive pass to all five branches By joining IWM Friends you are giving invaluable support to a range of projects that will help future generations to understand the causes, course and consequences of war. In return you can enjoy: Unlimited free entry to IWM London paying exhibitions including Horrible Histories: Spies Free entry to IWM Duxford* Unlimited free entry to the Churchill War Rooms Unlimited free entry to HMS Belfast Despatches, the Friends magazine, delivered direct to your door Exclusive Friends events

To join or to purchase a gift membership please call us on 020 7416 5255 or visit iwm.org.uk/friends *except special events and airshow days at IWM Duxford Discounts and free admission are at the discretion of IWM and IWM Trading Company

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Despatches LEE CRAKER

Number 17, Winter 2013

Left: A staircase in ‘Victory Over America Palace’.

Baghdad, February 2010. Photograph: Lee Craker.

Front cover: The dome of Shahid Mosque photographed against a backdrop of oil fires lit by the Iraqis in an attempt to confuse Coalition bombers.

Baghdad, March 2003. Photograph: Mike Moore. ©Mirrorpix/ The Daily Mirror.

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Comment Graham Boxer, IWM North IWM Friends News IWM News IWM News Obituary: Rod Suddaby IWM Contemporary: Mike Moore and Lee Craker Hilary Roberts on a new photographic exhibition at IWM London Vision as power Kathleen Palmer offers an insight into a new exhibition by the photographer Donovan Wylie Out from the shadows Amanda Mason on IWM London’s updated Secret War Art and conflict in a media age Sara Bevan on IWM North’s new exhibition of contemporary art Help IWM tell eight million life stories Melanie Donnelly on a new major project: Lives of the First World War Behind the scenes Gina Koutsika gives an overview of the First World War Centenary Partnership

28 Essay: Beethoven, Swing and Three Ladies: Music that crossed the lines Patrick Bade on music from the Second World War 32 Your country needs you James Taylor on Alfred Leete’s comic propaganda postcards at the outset of the First World War 36 Illustrating captivity Jenny Wood’s insights into IWM’s collection of Far East Prisoner of War drawings 38 Roger Bushell, the ‘Great Escaper’ Simon Pearson on the life of the mastermind of the famous escape from Stalag Luft III 41 Books 45 Shop 47 Friends Events 48 What’s On 50 And Finally Sir Jonathan Evans Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 3

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Comment “IWM North – for ‘Guardian readers only’”. This was the heading of a Trip Advisor review for IWM North recently. For those who may not be aware, Trip Advisor is a website which enables anyone to write a review in a response to a visitor attraction or venue and give it a rating out of five stars (five being the highest). At IWM North, we frequently look at Trip Advisor as it is essential that our visitors have the best experience possible and these reviews can provide an early warning on what we need to improve.

I wasn’t sure what the reviewer meant by ‘Guardian readers only’.

The Guardian is a well-respected newspaper that relates stories of global conflict to all in the UK. Isn’t this what we should be doing too? Graham Boxer, Director, IWM One of the reasons I was excited to join IWM was because of our North values – Courageous in approach, Authoritative in our telling, Relevant to our audiences and Empathetic with the people whose experiences we recount. The other reason is the subject matter; communicating the cause, course and consequences of war has never been more relevant; tricky to relate in a museum context, yet so important to understanding the world we live in. Are the experiences of a traumatised child in Iraq today that much different from the experiences of a child in 1940s war-torn Europe?

The nature of conflict may have changed, but the consequences remain the same.

I therefore expected the review which accompanied the ‘Guardian readers only’ heading to be positive and was surprised when the reviewer only gave us one star! IWM North has a strong record on Trip Advisor – in 2013 we received a Certificate of Excellence for our consistently positive reviews. The supporting narrative stated: ‘A very politically correct look at the war. A very, very expensive snack bar. Can be awkward getting in.’

‘Awkward getting in’ – yes, it may seem so. The IWM North building, designed by Daniel Libeskind, represents the globe shattered by war into three shards, reflecting conflict on land, sea and in the air. Libeskind designed a building that reinforced the feelings of war as uncomfortable and disorientating, hence, perhaps rather unhelpfully for visitors, the conscious decision to make the entrance less obvious than one would expect with a visitor attraction! ‘A very expensive snack bar’ – no, not exceptionally. We compare very favourably with our competitors within the region and we have a chef who is second to none (although, how this relates to Guardian readers I’m really not sure). Perhaps this reviewer was looking for a different experience from the one he encountered.

‘Politically correct’ – I hope so; I would not want us to be otherwise.

How could we be recognised as an authority on the subject – and therefore trustworthy in our communication – if we did not strive to be as impartial as is humanly possible? The subject of war evokes strong emotions and some visitors have pre-conceived ideas about the nature and meaning of war. As a museum, it is our neutrality that provides an environment for our visitors to see different perspectives, and allows them to reflect on some of the most challenging and complex issues facing our world today. We attract a wide spectrum of visitors, for different motives. Certainly not just Guardian readers.

Lambeth Road, London, SE1 6HZ Registered Charity No. 294360 Telephone: 020 7416 5255 Email: friends@iwm.org.uk Website: www.iwm.org.uk/friends Honorary Members His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales His Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales His Royal Highness The Duke of York Patrons The Rt Hon the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury The Archbishop of Westminster His Excellency the Secretary-General for the Commonwealth His Excellency the High Commissioner for Australia His Excellency the High Commissioner for Canada His Excellency the High Commissioner for India His Excellency the High Commissioner for New Zealand His Excellency the High Commissioner for Pakistan Her Excellency the High Commissioner for South Africa His Excellency the High Commissioner for Sri Lanka General Sir Peter de la Billière KCB KBE DSO MC and Bar DL Dr Alan Borg CBE FSA Field Marshal Sir John Chapple GCB CBE Sir Robert Crawford CBE Dr Noble Frankland CB CBE DFC Sara Jones CBE DL The Rt.Hon The Countess Mountbatten of Burma CBE CD JP DL Sir Harold Walker KCMG President: Professor Sir David Cannadine Friends Council Members Chairman: David Long Major General David Burden CB CVO CBE Emma Burrows Tony Hine Diane Lees FMA FRSA Donough O’Brien Professor Paul O’Prey Foster Summerson Marina Vaizey CBE Margaret Watson Head of the Friends: Victoria Thompson Membership Services Manager: Laura Whitman Founder: Air Commodore Dame Felicity Peake DBE AE Editorial Committee Chairman: Marina Vaizey CBE Lindsay Ball Elizabeth Bowers David Long Emily MacArthur Amanda Mason Professor Paul O’Prey Hilary Roberts Victoria Thompson Kieran Whitworth Despatches Editor: Victoria Thompson 020 7416 5372 Design: Smith+Bell www.smithplusbell.com Advertising and Print: George Young 020 7861 3915 To request additional copies or back issues call 020 7416 5372

Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 5

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IWM FRIENDS NEWS

Rewarding long service IWM Friends volunteer Jill Hicks recently received a highly commended nomination at the London Volunteers in Museums Awards, held on board HMS Belfast on 28 October, in recognition of long service.

Jill joined the Friends in 1992 and starting volunteering in 1996. She was originally part of a team fondly known as ‘the stuffers’ who inserted Despatches into envelopes

to be mailed out to members. Four years ago Jill joined the IWM Friends Membership Desk team which operates at IWM London at weekends. She also helps at various Friends events, in particular our AGM and our Friends talks and lectures. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Jill for the great support that she has given us over the past 17 years.

Dan Snow to judge IWM Friends essay competition We are delighted to announce that Dan Snow (pictured) will judge the winning entry for the IWM Friends essay competition launched in the last issue of Despatches.

All Friends are invited to write an article or essay on the subject of ‘What does the First World War mean to you and why should we commemorate it?’ There has been much discussion on this subject in the media and we are interested in your opinion – be it a personal or a family connection, or the result of

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your own research into the subject.

Submissions must be between 1,500 and 2,500 words in length. The winning entry will be published our Summer 2014 issue of Despatches and the writer will also receive a £50 voucher to spend in IWM’s shops. There will be two runners-up prizes of a selection of IWM books.

Please send all entries to Victoria Thompson, Head of IWM Friends, IWM London, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ or to vthompson @iwm.org.uk. The closing date for entries is 31 January 2014.

Field Marshal Haig inspecting troops.

IWM Friends Battlefield Tour with Gary Sheffield: 9–12 May 2014 To commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, The Cultural Experience has devised a bespoke battlefield tour exclusively for IWM Friends and Patrons, led by the distinguished Great War expert and historian Professor Gary Sheffield.

Itinerary 9 May: To Ypres. Depart from IWM London by coach to Ypres, via the Channel Tunnel, with anintroductory talk by Professor Sheffield en route.

During the afternoon we examine the opening moves of the war, and in particular the First and Second Battles of Ypres, visiting Messines Ridge, Gheluvelt and Langemarck.

10 May: Passchendaele and the 1915 battles. The morning will be spent exploring the attacks at Passchendaele before driving south to visit the lesser-known 1915battlefields of Neuve Chapelle and Loos.

11 May: The Somme. We spend the whole day on the Somme, visiting Thiepval, La Boisselle, Pozières, Bazentin Ridge, Flers and Newfoundland Park.

12 May: The Kaiserschlacht and The Hundred Days. A look

at the German 1918 spring offensive, visiting the first tank vs tank battle at Cachy and the Australian surprise night attack at Villers-Bretonneux, before seeing how the tide finally turned in the Allies’ favour as we follow the march to victory of the Hundred Days Offensive through Chipilly Ridge and Ricqueval Bridge. We will arrive back at IWM London that evening.

The cost of the tour is £660 per person, based on sharing a twin room, with a single room supplement of £135. The price includes three nights bed and buffet breakfast in centrallylocated hotels in Lille and Amiens, three three-course dinners in restaurants with wine, return Eurotunnel crossings and luxury coach transportation throughout, and all entrance fees for visits detailed in the itinerary.

If you would like to reserve a place on this tour please contact Victoria Thompson on 020 74165372or at vthompson@iwm.org.uk.

Or alternatively complete the enclosed IWM Friends events application form, attaching a cheque deposit (payable to The Cultural Experience) for £100.

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IWM FRIENDS NEWS

£240,000 – £230,000 – £220,000 – £210,000 – £200,000 – £190,000 – £180,000 – £170,000 – £160,000 – November 2013

£150,000 – £140,000 – £130,000 – £120,000 – £110,000 – £100,000 – £90,000 – £80,000 – £70,000 – £60,000 – £50,000 – £40,000 – £30,000 – £20,000 – £10,000 – 0–

IWM Friends Appeal

Your Country Needs You update Our IWM Friends First World War campaign has now raised a total of £155,000 – more than half of the required £250,000 to support the Your Country Needs You display in IWM London’s new First World War Galleries.

The display will explore the recruitment campaign in both Great Britain and the Empire at the start of the First World War and will look at how those who stayed at home did what they could to help and support their country. It will comprise three sections – recruitment, the practicalities of becoming a soldier, and the efforts on the home front. £110,000 of the funds raised has been given in grants to IWM and a further £45,000 has been donated by members in response to a direct appeal. We are immeasurably grateful to all IWM Friends who have contributed in this way.

Every donation, however large or small, will help us to explain to our visitors why millions of people were driven to support the war effort in so many different ways. Those contributing £250 or more will be invited to a special opening event in summer 2014. If you have not yet made a donation and would like to do so please call us on 020 7416 5255 or visit www.justgiving.com/ yourcountryneedsyou.

Introduce a friend to the Friends and receive a free gift Purchase an IWM Friends membership as a gift by 31 January 2014 and you could receive a gift from the following selection: Music Wars 1937-1945

By Patrick Bade East and West Publishing have donated five copies of Music Wars 1937-1945 by Patrick Bade, a chronicle of a musical era that persisted and thrived despite, and sometimes because of, the course of the Second World War. The First World War in 100 Objects

By Peter Doyle The History Press have donated five copies of The First World War in 100 Objects by Peter Doyle. The book shows 100 items which best reflect the experience of the men and women who were affected by the First World War. World War I Companion Edited by Mathias Strohn, with a foreword by Gary Sheffield Courtesy of Osprey Publishing we have five copies of the World War I Companion to give away. The book combines a selection of articles by 14 respected academics focusing on different aspects of the Great War, ranging from the war at sea and in the air, to the Allied leadership and command strategy, and from the Arab Revolt to the final offensives of 1918.

Downton Abbey Series 4 DVD Universal Pictures have donated copies of the DVD of the fourth series of the popular television programme Downton Abbey. The DVD includes behind the scenes features with the cast and crew.

Downton Abbey series 4 and the complete series 1-4 box set are out on Blu-ray and DVD on 11 November, from Universal Pictures (UK).

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IWM Q 002756 / PHOTOGRAPHER: LT ERNEST BROOKS

£250,000 –

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IWM NEWS

Service personnel waiting for departure at Brize Norton.

War Story: Supplying Frontline Afghanistan Camp Bastion, the huge British military base the size of Reading in the Afghan desert, exists to support troops fighting in the front line. From keeping thousands of troops hydrated in temperatures exceeding fifty degrees Celsius, to the complexities of moving equipment, ammunition and supplies around the war-torn Helmand Province, IWM London’s new display War Story: Supplying Frontline Afghanistan will take the visitor behind the scenes to reveal the challenges of supporting and maintaining troops in the front line.

The modern soldier is issued with more kit and equipment than ever before. It’s the job of logisticians, battling a landlocked, stifling hot and hostile country with poor infrastructure and a deep history of conflict, to ensure that specialist equipment, as well as the basics such as food, water and morale-boosting mail from home, reaches the troops on the ground.

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This new display follows the journey and logistical challenges from RAF Brize Norton in the UK to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan and on to the Forward Operating Bases and Patrol Bases in the front line. Visitors can put their skills to the test to see if they have what it takes to keep the front line supplied in our interactive logistics challenge.

War Story: Supplying Frontline Afghanistan features brand new materials including

photographs, interviews and time-lapse footage collected

by IWM staff on a series of expeditions to Afghanistan in 2012 and 2013. This is the first time since the First World War that IWM teams have visited an active theatre of conflict.

In co-operation with the Ministry of Defence, IWM’s War Story project started in 2009, offering British personnel an opportunity to record their role and preserve their personal accounts and experiences of the current conflict in Afghanistan in IWM’s unrivalled national collections for future generations. Since the project began, over 1,600 soldiers and family members from more than 75 regiments have registered to share their stories and there are already over 70 interviews in IWM’s collections.

War Story: Supplying Frontline Afghanistan is at IWM London, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ until 27 April 2014. Open every day (except 24, 25, 26 December) 10am to 6pm.

Field Marshal Lord Bramall Field Marshal the Lord Bramall, will celebrate his 90th birthday this December. Lord Bramall served on IWM’s Board of Trustees for 15 years, and was its Chairman from 1989 to 1998.

Lord Bramall took part in the Normandy Landings in 1944 and and served with his regiment in north-west Europe during the later stages of the

Second World War, receiving the Military Cross on 1 March 1945. He was Chief of the General Staff from 1979 to 1982 and subsequently Chief of the Defence Staff. Lord Bramall was created a life peer in 1987. Among numerous appointments he has served as Lord Lieutenant of Greater London and is a Knight of the Garter.

IWM Patrons one year on As many Friends will recall IWM launched a Patrons scheme last September. Patrons give additional support to IWM and enjoy a particularly close relationship with us. They receive special privileges such as invitations to private views and behind the scenes events where they can meet our specialists and gain a closer insight into our collections.

Patrons are acknowledged both in Despatches and in IWM’s Annual Review.

There are three levels of patronage – the Endeavour Circle (£1,250 per year), the Honour Circle (£5,000 per year) and the Valour Circle (£25,000 over five years). In addition to private views and special events, Patrons at the Honour and Valour levels receive bespoke tours of IWM’s collections and are invited to exclusive events hosted by IWM Directors and Trustees.

If you would like further information on becoming a Patron please contact Victoria Thompson on 020 7416 5372 or at vthompson@iwm.org.uk Our Patrons are listed below.

IWM Patrons Jeffrey and Elizabeth Boyling Lord Black of Brentwood Mark and Susan Bradley Rae Byrne David Cannon The Civil Service Club Lt Cdr Paul Fletcher Clare Jakeman Mark and Sarah Keating Dame Judith Mayhew-Jonas DBE Adelaida and Gunnar Palm Air Chief Marshal Sir Peter Squire GCB DFC AFC DL DSc FRAeS Tony Yoseloff

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IWM NEWS

Obituary: Roderick Suddaby Phil Reed, Director of the Churchill War Rooms, pays tribute to Roderick Suddaby, IWM’s former Keeper of the Department of Documents.

On 26 June this year the world of archives lost one of its greatest figures, Rod Suddaby.

Rod joined the Imperial War Museum in 1970 as a Research Assistant, before being appointed Acting Keeper of the inchoate Department of Documents just two years later. While Rod would never have claimed credit for the creation of the Department, there can be no doubt that he was, for 37 years, its principal driving force. Over the course of those years, Rod established a global reputation for the Department, making it a sine qua non for any author or student of, or merely enthusiast for, the history and experience of conflict in the twentieth century.

In 1976 the historian John Keegan published his seminal book Six Faces of Battle, which in one volume transformed the study of history, shifting the emphasis from strategy and tactics to the experiences, above all, of those ‘at the sharp end’, the citizen soldiers who have traditionally populated Britain’s armies in wartime for centuries. Full credit should go 10 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

to John Keegan, but it must also be noted that Rod Suddaby had already been mining this particular field for years and was a veritable pioneer in both preserving the private papers of a wide range of individuals, from Field Marshals to privates, and in making them available to the widest possible public.

While IWM could rightly vaunt stellar names in its collections of documents such as Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, Lieutenant-General Percival, and later Field Marshals Montgomery and Sir John French, under Rod it also operated a policy of collecting the papers of people of all ranks, as well as auxiliaries and civilians who, in a variety of capacities, experienced the wars of the twentieth century. In this way treasures such as the diary of a bus driver in the blitz, an ambulance driver on the western front, nurses in Serbia, children evacuated from London and prisoners of war in Europe and the Far East were preserved for posterity.

Rod recognised the unique value of such sources for anyone wanting to gain a personal insight into how war affected ordinary individuals.

However, it was also one of Rod’s greatest achievements to encourage a readership for these sources. The Department’s reading room –

for many years in the dome at IWM London, where readers laboured under the emblazoned ten commandents on the wall of what had been the chapel of the old Bedlam lunatic asylum – was increasingly thronged with visitors of all ages and following a wide variety of pursuits.

While recognising the unique value of the sources and the preciousness of their preservation, he believed that not only should the collections be made available to professional authors and academics – and the legions of books prefaced with acknowledgments to Rod’s massive help in finding relevant sources are a testimony to his success and recognition in these areas – but also to tertiary and even secondary students. He would assist each in the same exhaustively helpful way, using his legendary memory of the collection to pinpoint just the right collection for the reader’s needs – usually accompanied by a smacking of the lips as he revelled in finding a perfect match!

His relations with the donors of these papers were such that he was able to convey to them easily the historic importance of the records in their possession, no matter how humble the owner felt they might be. With his unique

Rod Suddaby in conversation with Dr Nigel Stanley at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s Far East Prisoners of War round table meeting, 15 February 2010. (Photograph by Nick Parkes.)

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IWM NEWS

wealth of knowledge of the relevant subject, combined with an ability to relate easily and personally to each and every one he met, particularly empathising sincerely with those who had suffered or who had lost loved ones, he never applied the slightest pressure.

His absolute sincerity and integrity were as persuasive an argument for the records to be given to IWM as one could ever encounter.

The result was a collection that is without equal in its range, its depth, its richness and its variety. His cataloguing style was crisp, succinct and always captured the essentials of a collection, but he was in himself by far the best finding

aid IWM could have. With an ease and a real sense of delight, he could recall the name of almost any collection that had arrived at IWM since 1967, long before his own arrival and including collections acquired by a variety of hands down the years. Any visiting VIP would always be introduced to Rod, as he could be counted on to unearth a letter or a diary entry that related closely to the individual in question, more often than not on the spot, based simply on small details arising in the course of the conversation.

I joined IWM in February 1975 as a Research Assistant working under him (though

Rod would never allow ‘under’: one worked ‘with’ Rod).

We could scarcely be more different: I the scruffy, long haired eternal student, carrying all the baggage of a working class background, he the smart, ex-public schoolboy, far more qualified and knowledgeable than I could ever hope to be. But we worked well together, possibly because I shared his stakhanovite attitude to work and as I gradually learned through years of working with him, the absolute need for precision and attention to the finest detail. Like so many others who worked as juniors to him and went on to other jobs, even other disciplines, I carried with me the values and work ethics that I had grown to appreciate as a result of my 18 years with Rod and which have served me and so many others well down the years in our new professions.

His passing was marked with a half page obituary in The Times, itself a mark of his standing. At his funeral the church swelled with a crowd drawn from those who had worked with him, those who had benefitted from him sharing his wisdom with them, lifelong friends (and fellow cricket enthusiasts) and family.

All were deeply attached to him and were still reeling under the shock of his premature death. This

followed years of treatment and a mixture of prognoses, though each based on the certain knowledge that his condition could never be cured, but at best kept under control for a time. His attitude was typically unsentimental and pragmatic, never weakening his sense of humour or his deep appreciation of others’ support for him. When I asked him, weeks before he died and knowing that the end would not be far off, what made him most proud in his long career at IWM, he instantly said that it was the support given to him over the years by so many people.

At his funeral and in the tributes in The Times, online and in messages sent to IWM after his death, it was clear that this was a man who had touched so many lives and whose support, help and encouragement was unequalled. It was typical of his selflessness and his fundamental belief in meeting his commitments that, just two days before he died and already very weak, he insisted on having a meeting with a PhD student whose thesis he was supervising.

He is and will long be missed, but the collection that he established and the tradition of making it widely available that he imbued will ensure that he is never forgotten.

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IWM CONTEMPORARY

MIKE MOORE LEE CRAKER Perspectives on Iraq 1991 – 2011

Curator Hilary Roberts on a new exhibition at IWM London showcasing the work of photographers Mike Moore and Lee Craker.

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MIKE MOORE ©MIRRORPIX / THE DAILY MIRROR.

R

The dome of Shahid Mosque photographed against a backdrop of oil fires. The fires were lit by Iraqis in an attempt to confuse Coalition bombers. Baghdad, March 2003. Photo: Mike Moore.

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➜ In July this year, IWM London launched IWM Contemporary, a new exhibition programme featuring responses of contemporary artists and photographers to war. The programme’s first exhibition, Omer Fast’s acclaimed art film 5000 Feet is the Best, attracted a very positive response from visitors during its three month run. The latest exhibition, IWM Contemporary: Mike Moore and Lee Craker, which opened in October, represents IWM Contemporary’s first foray into documentary photography.

The transformation of photography during the last 25 years presents the IWM Contemporary programme with many exciting opportunities. The evolution of digital technology and the internet, combined with the corresponding decline in analogue photography and print-based publications, has required photographers to develop new techniques; but has also enabled them to explore new creative opportunities.

Iraq reflects this transformation perhaps more than any other recent conflict. The Gulf War 1990-1991 was the first war to be photographed primarily in colour for the benefit of newspapers (as well as magazines). Professional war photographers, well versed in the art of black and white photography, were now required to master the difficult art of colour composition, while their publishers faced the equally challenging task of reproducing colour photographs accurately in newsprint. The Iraq War 2003 is widely regarded as the first digital war. Again, photographers faced new challenges, including primitive support infrastructures and image manipulation software which offered them unprecedented artistic opportunities, but also threatened to undermine public faith in documentary photography. The response of photographers to Iraq’s subsequent violent insurgency reflects their growing enthusiasm for and confidence in the digital medium.

It is therefore particularly appropriate that IWM Contemporary ’s first exhibition of photography should address the theme of conflict in Iraq. It presents the first public exhibition of work by two pioneering and award-winning photographers. The photographs of Mike Moore and Lee Craker present striking yet very different perspectives of the impact of war on the Iraqi people and the soldiers 14 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

MIKE MOORE ©MIRRORPIX / THE DAILY MIRROR

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Left: An Iraqi fighter strikes a defiant pose on the gun barrel of a captured American tank. The tank was destroyed from the air a few minutes later.

Baghdad, March 2003.

Photo: Mike Moore.

LEE CRAKER

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Right: Lieutenant Colonel Johnson holds the American flag at Multi-National Force – Iraq Headquarters, Al Faw Palace, Victory Base Complex, Baghdad, May 2010.

Photo: Lee Craker.

LEE CRAKER

Below: Captain Sam Brown, who was severely injured by an IED, with his wife Captain Amy Brown at Multi-National Corps – Iraq Headquarters, Al Faw Palace, Victory Base Complex, Baghdad, December 2010. Photo: Lee Craker.

that served there. Moore’s dramatic colour photographs show the British and Iraqi experience of conflict in Iraq during 1991–2003. They are displayed alongside Craker’s beautifully realised monochrome studies depicting American involvement in Iraq from 2008–2011. Together, the photographs of Moore and Craker convey the photographers’ shared concern for those affected by the conflict.

Mike Moore is a British press photographer with 30 years’ experience of photographing conflict and the Third World, primarily on behalf of the Today and Daily Mirror newspapers. As a pioneer of colour documentary photography, his pictures demand our attention and wherever possible tell a story without recourse to words. Moore worked extensively in Afghanistan, Rwanda, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Northern Ireland, but was particularly drawn to Iraq. During the Gulf War in 1991, he became the first British press photographer to document a war entirely in colour, as well as the first to embed with the British Army. His spectacular photographs showing Pte Thomas Gow, Scots Guards, in action in south Iraq are amongst the most famous of the Gulf War. Moore was also the first foreign photographer to enter Iraq after the Gulf War. Although he was always objective, Moore’s perspective was inevitably constrained by limitations on his freedom of movement and the demands of the newspapers for which he was working. In 1998, he photographed President Saddam Hussein’s birthday celebrations and the impact of United Nations sanctions for the Daily Mirror. When the 2003 Iraq War began, Moore photographed the US-led Coalition’s ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing campaign from Baghdad. A searing set of photographs showing Najem Khalif with his dead daughter are amongst his most powerful images from this period.

Lee Craker, the first American photographer to be accorded an IWM exhibition, worked extensively in the United States and the South Pacific for thirty years. An early convert to digital photography and web-based technology, Craker started working for the US Armed Forces Public Affairs Office (PAO) in a civilian capacity in 2005. After transferring to Baghdad in 2008, Craker worked ➜ Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 15

Complex until American forces finally left Iraq in 2011. As PAO Lead Photographer, Craker photographed key events such as the visit of President Barack Obama, as well as more mundane activities.

The Victory Base Complex, situated around Baghdad Airport, was vast. At the peak of military operations, approximately 62,000 military personnel and civilian support staff lived and worked in the complex. Heavily fortified by 27 miles of blast walls, razor wire and sandbags, the complex endured regular rocket and mortar attacks. As a civilian, Craker was unable to leave it without a military escort. He therefore saw little of the Iraqi people or events outside, andseeking an outlet for mounting creative frustration, Craker turned to portraiture and architectural photography in his spare time.

Craker’s portraits of US service personnel, many of whom had completed multiple tours of duty in Iraq, were taken during the American troop ‘surge’ which constituted a final attempt to enforce security in Baghdad and the surrounding area. Craker posed his subjects at Camp Victory’s Al Faw Palace (thereby becoming the only known photographer in history to establish a working portrait studio in a warzone) or at forward operating bases reached by helicopter or armoured vehicle. Formal, yet sympathetic, the portraits convey the individuality and diversity of the men and women serving with the US armed forces.

Sepia tones and heavy shadows evoke memories of First World War portraits taken nearly a century earlier. Craker’s architectural studies of ruins and defences within the complex, also in sombre monochrome, are likewise eerily reminiscent of First World War devastation. They are a sombre reminder of war’s lasting impact on the landscape and infrastructure of Iraq.

Moore and Craker pushed the boundaries of contemporary war photography in Iraq. Their work is a lasting reminder of the tragic yet complex nature of Iraq’s recent history.

IWM Contemporary: Mike Moore and Lee Craker is at IWM London, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ until 5 January 2014.

Open every day (except 24, 25, 26 December) 10am to 6pm.

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LEE CRAKER

➜ primarily in the vast Victory Base

LEE CRAKER

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Above: Sergeant First Class Clarissa Brown, Inspector General, Lead Inspection, Multi-National Corps – Iraq, photographed at a US Army Forward Operating Base, Iraq, January 2010. Photo: Lee Craker.

Left: Private First Class Starks in 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49°C) heat at MultiNational Force – Iraq Headquarters, Al Faw Palace, Victory Base Complex, Baghdad, August 2011. Photo: Lee Craker.

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VISION AS POWER Kathleen Palmer, IWM’s Head of Art, offers an insight into a new exhibition by the photographer Donovan Wylie.

‘Vision creates a virtual architecture and is an essential component to the system of control.’

Donovan Wylie

DONOVAN WYLIE

Vision as Power brings together ten years of work by Donovan Wylie, one of Britain’s leading contemporary photographers.

The projects on show explore the impact of modern military surveillance on landscapes, the environment, the observer and the observed.

Between 2002 and 2003 Donovan Wylie photographed the Maze prison prior to redevelopment. The prison was a product of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, housing nearly 2,000 paramilitary prisoners between 1971 and 2000. The Maze series was to define Wylie’s ongoing practice. The disorientating repetitions of the prison layout led him to create a series of similar images, using a cool, neutral aesthetic.

In 2008 Wylie was commissioned by IWM to photograph in the Green Zone, also known as the Victory Base Complex, in Baghdad, Iraq. The heavily-fortified zone provided secure accommodation and workspace for 62,000 military and civilian personnel attached to Multi-National Corps-Iraq. Although this base served a Canadian Arctic, 2013.

LAB-1 Royal Canadian Air Force Short Range Radar installation, North Warning System, Cape Kakiviak, Torngat Mountains, Labrador.

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completely different purpose, Wylie saw many parallels with the Maze prison.

Donovan Wylie grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Observation by the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary as well as covert observation by paramilitary forces was part of daily life. Wylie’s practice as an artist and photographer has allowed him to use his own power as an observer. He reveals the mechanisms of control and communicates his vision to others.

In British Watchtowers, Outposts and Arctic, Wylie presents both observation structures and the terrain they dominate.

Knowledge of the landscape, its inhabitants and those who move through it, is invaluable to those seeking territorial control. Overt observation may influence behaviour, intimidate or antagonise.

British Watchtowers (2005) documents the matrix of British Army watchtowers and observation posts in South Armagh. The area was notorious for cross-border smuggling as well as constant paramilitary attacks. Wylie photographed the towers weeks before they were decommissioned as part of the Northern Ireland peace process.

In 2010 IWM and the National Media Museum worked together to embed Wylie

with Canadian forces in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, as they prepared to withdraw.

He became the first IWM official photographer to work in a war zone since the end of the First World War. The Canadians had constructed a network of observation posts, or forward operating bases. Built on natural promontories with multiple lines of sight, these outposts form a protective visual architecture. Wylie’s photographs also reveal their vulnerability.

Arctic (2013), on display for the first time, explores Canada’s military presence on its northern frontier. Wylie photographed LAB-1, an unmanned North Warning System short range radar station on the northern tip of the Labrador coast. In this series Wylie undercuts the idea of vision as power. The station, when it can be seen, resembles the watchtowers and outposts in situation and purpose. However, it operates electronically, seeking to detect an invisible threat in a seemingly empty landscape.

Donovan Wylie’s work straddles the border between contemporary art and documentary photography. The exhibition was jointly curated by Hilary Roberts and I in what has been a fruitful exchange. We have discussed not just the interpretation of Donovan Wylie’s work, but also the ways we both look at, understand and interpret photography.

Donovan Wylie: Vision as Power is at IWM London, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ until 21 April 2014. Open every day (except 24, 25, 26 December) 10am to 6pm.

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Out from the shadows

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Amanda Mason, of IWM London, takes a closer look at IWM London’s updated Secret War exhibition and highlights some of the new acquisitions on display.

Secret War opened in 1995 and its aim was to ‘…recognise the importance of the “Secret War” and convey to its visitors both the history of clandestine warfare and, at the same time, address the question of its contemporary significance.’ The exhibition covers Britain’s intelligence services – MI5 and MI6, signals intelligence, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) – and the role of special forces. It has proved enduringly popular with visitors.

Despite representing best museum practice when it opened, in the last few years it became clear that the exhibition content, design and multimedia all needed updating, particularly as the rest of the museum is undergoing an extensive transformation.

Since Secret War opened, IWM has acquired a considerable number of items relating to the SOE and other aspects of clandestine warfare. Many of the new SOE acquisitions have come to the museum through a dedicated collecting project 20 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

funded by The Gerry Holdsworth Special Forces Charitable Trust. The project began in 2003, and through the efforts of Dr Rod Bailey, more than 100 collections were secured. In addition Dr Bailey conducted oral history interviews with surviving SOE agents and staff.

The temporary closure of IWM London early this year provided an ideal opportunity to carry out some muchneeded work to the fabric of the displays and the gallery itself, and to start work on a programme of updates and additions.

So far, the most obvious changes that visitors will have seen are to the beginning and end of the exhibition. In the entrance, a new colour scheme and lighting effects have been added, along with a new display of film posters and clips from some of the most well-known spy films, both old and new. These introduce the visitor to the fictional world of spies before finding out the real stories in the exhibition.

The end of the exhibition has also been

transformed. The new displays begin by looking at the issues surrounding collecting and displaying material relating to the subjects covered by Secret War. Despite more information about Britain’s intelligence services being in the public domain, there remain strict limits on what information reaches the public.

The SOE collecting project – which features in this area – is an excellent example of how new material is uncovered many years after the events in question. Several of these new acquisitions are now displayed in Secret War for the first time.

The items include a uniform jacket worn

by Major Walter Freud, the grandson of Jewish psychologist Sigmund Freud.

He came to Britain in the 1930s to avoid Nazi persecution, but in 1940 he was interned as an ‘enemy alien’ and deported to Australia. Freud was allowed to return to the UK in 1941 and joined the British Army, transferring to the SOE two years later.

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Clockwise, starting opposite page: New entrance to Secret War; Major Walter Freud’s uniform jacket and cap on display (far right) in Secret War; Secret War Today – new digital interactive and artefacts relating to the 9/11 attacks on America and the 7 July London bombings; Updated display on Operation ‘Nimrod’ including the SAS briefing model used to plan the operation.

His first mission was to Austria in April 1945, where he single-handedly secured an enemy airfield. After VE Day he worked with a war crimes investigation unit in Germany.

There is a continuing fascination with the female agents who were sent by the SOE into occupied France. Noor Inayat Khan GC, an agent of Indian Muslim descent, was the first female wireless operator sent there by the SOE. She arrived in Paris in June 1943, but when one of the major SOE networks was betrayed, her job became increasingly dangerous and she was arrested that October. After interrogation, Inayat Khan was transferred to Dachau concentration camp, where she was killed with three other female SOE agents in September 1944. A letter sent from Noor Inayat Khan to Vera Atkins, assistant to the head of the SOE’s French Section in London, is on display for the first time.

This would have been brought back to Britain by an RAF aircraft returning from a clandestine landing.

One of the noticeable features of the material acquired over the last ten years is that it covers many more of the countries in which SOE operated and a wider range of the work carried out by its staff. The rest of the new items on display reflect this, ranging from weapons acquired from head-hunting tribes in Borneo to a scorecard for Bridge games played in a Romanian prison. Visitors are also able to listen to extracts from some of the latest interviews with SOE veterans.

Other additions to the collection will be added to the existing themed displays throughout the exhibition. In the SOE area which covers operations in Greece and the Balkans, visitors will soon be able to see the cosh used in the kidnap on Crete of German General Kreipe, an exploit later immortalised in the book and subsequent film Ill Met by Moonlight. Alongside will be the medals of SOE operative and renowned travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, who led the kidnap operation.

Elsewhere in Secret War, new material will be added to the displays relating to espionage during the Cold War. Highlights include material on the discovery of the Portland Spy Ring and the prosecution of MI6 employee George Blake who was revealed in 1961 to have been working as a Soviet spy since the 1950s.

In the Secret Soldiers area of the exhibition, which deals with Britain’s special forces, the section relating to the 1980 Iranian Embassy Siege has been updated. Now on display for the first time is the original roughly-constructed model of the embassy building used by the SAS team who planned and carried out Operation ‘Nimrod’, which ended the five day siege.

Throughout the whole exhibition, new graphics will not only make the exhibition look much smarter but should also improve legibility and clarity for visitors.

As part of the redevelopment, multimedia displays will be introduced.

These will bring more content into the gallery – particularly from IWM’s film and sound collections. In the Secret Communications area, there will be a new digital interactive which will replicate the operation of the Enigma machine, allowing visitors to code and decode a secret message and look inside the machine itself.

One of the original aims of the exhibition was to address the contemporary significance of secret warfare. The prevention of attacks on the UK is one of biggest challenges facing the Security Service today. New material on display from both the September 11 attacks on America and from the 7 July London bombings illustrate the shattering impact of terrorism. A digital interactive also looks at the types of threat facing the UK, from large-scale terrorist attacks to the still little-understood threat of cyberterrorism.

When looking at this subject over the last hundred years, it is apparent that, while the nature of the threats facing Britain and its armed forces have changed, many of the principles behind intelligence-gathering, surveillance, counter-intelligence and code-breaking have remained relatively constant.

The additions and updates to the Secret War exhibition will allow visitors to explore this fascinating subject for many more years to come.

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Art and conflict in a media age

COLLECTION IWM © KENNARDPHILLIPPS

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Curator Sara Bevan gives an insight into a new exhibition at IWM North, showcasing IWM’s contemporary art collection What do artists contribute to our perceptions of war and conflict in a time when our general understanding of conflict is increasingly shaped by the media and the internet?

Working outside the pressures of journalism, artists can propose ideas, urging the viewer to think deeply about what war is, about its immediate impact, its long-term repercussions and how we remember it. They invite us to consider our definition of conflict in a time when war no longer has easily-defined geographical limits. Often taking their personal history as a starting point, many artists navigate this broad-ranging subject matter as observers, activists or philosophers.

At a time when there is a growing emphasis on the media spectacle and an

expectation of immediate access to events as they unfold, our new exhibition Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War takes works from IWM’s unique art collection and explores the rich, varied and moving artistic response to conflict in a media age.

COLLECTION IWM © ANNABEL DOVER

COLLECTION IWM © STEVE MCQUEEN. PRESENTED BY THE ART FUND

Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War is on display until 23 February 2014 at IWM North, The Quays, Trafford Wharf Road, Trafford Park, Manchester M17 1TZ. Open daily (except 24, 25, 26 December) 10am to 6pm (1 March to 31 October) and 10am to 5pm (1 November to 28 February) Opposite page: Photo Op, kennardphillipps, 2007.

Above: Queen and Country, Steve McQueen, 2006.

Right: Cyanotype [RAF Sock], Annabel Dover, 2010.

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Help IWM tell eight million life stories Melanie Donnelly on Lives of the First World War, IWM’s major digital project to commemorate the First World War Centenary.

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When Eliza Tickle sent the photograph of her ‘Billie Boy’ to the newly-established Imperial War Museum in 1917, she could never have imagined that his cheeky grin would be the inspiration for a global project led by IWM to mark the First World War Centenary – Lives of the First World War. Billie was born in north London in 1898.

By 1911 the 12 year old was already claiming to be 18. Three years later Billie managed to persuade the army that he was not only old enough to enlist but also to serve overseas. He arrived in France on 24 August 1915, just 17 days after his seventeenth birthday.

On the night of 2 July 1916 Billie and the men of the 9th Battalion, Essex Regiment moved up to the front line. Before dawn on 3 July they were ordered to capture the village of Ovillers. The trenches were clogged with the wounded from previous attacks and the German defenders had well-placed machine guns which covered Billie and his friends from all sides.

Somewhere in the darkness and confusion Billie disappeared. Initially listed as Missing in Action, by October Eliza knew for certain that her ‘Billie Boy’ was dead.

Now that the global conflict that shaped the world we live in today is outside living memory, we are the custodians of stories such as Billie’s. In deciding on the most fitting way to give them a voice for the centenary of the First World War, we returned to the founding vision of IWM: The ‘very heart and focus of the building should be... of a memorial character... not a monument of military glory, but a record of toil and sacrifice’. It should be so complete that ‘every individual, man or woman, soldier, sailor, airman or civilian who contributed, may be able to find an example of the sacrifice he made or the work he did…’

In what was perhaps the very first exercise in crowd-sourcing, the Imperial War Museum began asking ordinary people to contribute items ‘even of a trifling nature’. Eliza Tickle responded to this appeal and her photograph, inscribed with the words ‘one of the very best’ has been carefully preserved for almost 100 years.

The digital age has enabled IWM to reinterpret its original vision in a new and innovative way. Lives of the First World War will present a digital Life Story page for each of the eight million men and women from across Britain and the Commonwealth who served in uniform or worked on the home front between 1914 and 1918. It will bring material from museums, libraries and archives across the world together in one place. We need your help to build the permanent digital memorial by uploading images of your own precious family mementoes and linking records from the archive sources to each Life Story.

Life stories such as Bertha Stevenson from Harrogate. Her work as a YMCA driver ‘for the relatives of the dangerously wounded’ is documented in IWM’s Women’s Work Collection. Betty, as she was known, wrote vivid accounts of her

Above top: The Cemetery, Etaples, 1919 by Sir John Lavery, where Betty Stevenson was buried. Above left: Ted Stratford. Above right: Tom Stratford.

Opposite page: A photograph of Private William Tickle donated to the Imperial War Museum by his mother, Eliza.

Palestine in November 1917. Will chose to be discharged from the army in London and never returned to Australia, although he kept the ostrich feather from his Light Horse hat. After being wounded with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge, Bill West returned to London and married Martha in 1939.

M DONNELLY

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heartbreaking work, describing the funerals in the ever-growing cemetery at Etaples. Killed by shrapnel while sheltering in a ditch during an air raid in May 1918, Betty is buried in the cemetery she had written about, ‘her face towards England, a soldier amongst soldiers’.

Then there are those who are not recorded in IWM’s archives. The Stratford family and friends kept in touch from across the British Empire with letters, postcards and souvenirs sent home from their travels. Adding information from this family collection to official records reveals a global story.

By the outbreak of the war brothers Tom, Will and Ted Stratford and their school friend Bill West hadn’t seen each other for years. Regular soldier Tom had served in South Africa and India with the South Wales Borderers. In 1914 he was in China fighting alongside a Sikh regiment, supporting the Japanese attack against the German naval fort of Tsingtao.

Bill West had left London for Canada in 1913, the cost of his passage paid for by the Salvation Army. Adventurer Will had departed for Australia in 1911. In 1915 he enlisted in the Australian Light Horse and embarked for the Middle East where, as he wrote to his mother, he was ‘batman to one of the richest men in Australia’.

Younger brother Ted had joined the Territorial Army before the war. By September 1915 he was serving in Egypt with the Middlesex Regiment, writing to his sister Martha about her fiancé Horace.

By chance Will and Ted met when they were both on leave in Cairo, but it would be another three years before they would all be re-united. By spring 1916 Tom, now a company sergeant major, had recovered from wounds suffered at Gallipoli and was in the front line of the Somme sector. Ironically his life was probably saved when he was seriously wounded during a trench raid in May. Had he not been in hospital he would have been one of the first to go ‘over the top’ at 07:20 on 1 July 1916 at one of the most infamous locations on that day – Hawthorn Ridge. He was to die from the consequences of his wounds in 1935.

Ted was also wounded in France in the summer of 1916 and again in Belgium in the autumn of 1917, leaving him with permanent hearing loss and a piece of shrapnel lodged in his neck. Martha’s beloved fiancé Horace was killed in

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Watch the short film about the project and sign up to be kept informed at www.livesofthefirstworldwar.org Lives of the First World War launches at Who Do You Think You Are Live at London Olympia 20-22 February 2014.

Tickets £16 advance/£22 on the door.

Exclusive IWM offer: Two tickets for just £26!* Quote IWM2426 when booking on www.whodoyouthink youarelive.co.uk or by phoning 0844 873 7330. Offer ends 14th Feb 2014. *£2.25 transaction fee per order applies.

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BEHIND THE SCENES Gina Koutsika, Head of National and International Programmes and Projects at IWM, gives an overview of the First World War Centenary Partnership, led by IWM, bringing together almost 1,800 not-for-profit organisations to commemorate the centenary.

Centenary Partnership The centenary of the outbreak of the First World War is fast approaching and interest from the media and members of the public is increasing. At IWM, we have been thinking about and planning the commemorations for over three years.

Our history is inseparable from that of the First World War. We were founded in March 1917 and were collecting while the war was still raging. Our intention then, as it is now, was to collect and display material as a record of everyone’s experiences during that war – civilian and military – and to commemorate the sacrifices of all sections of society. Now that the First World War is outside living memory, IWM is the repository of the stories of those veterans and eyewitnesses and it is our responsibility to share them with the public. Our research into the public’s perceptions of the First

World War and its centenary highlighted that audiences are indeed interested in understanding the war and engaging with the commemorations. The younger generations prefer to learn about their locality while the older ones like to focus on their family stories.

Our history, our collections and our expertise in engaging the public best places IWM to lead the cultural commemorations of the centenary. There is, however, a wealth of experience and expertise around the world and it made sense to work in partnership together to reach and inspire a much wider audience.

With that in mind, we developed the First World War Centenary Partnership, adopting a model that is both inclusive and democratic. Any not-for-profit organisation that wants to commemorate the First World War Centenary can join.

Membership is free and everyone has an equal voice in the network. Through the Partnership, we bring together nations, communities and organisations of different sizes, interests and remits to commemorate and remember the lives of those who lived and died in the First World War. Almost 1,800 local, regional, national and international organisations from 38 countries have joined the Partnership.

Our members vary from museums, galleries, libraries and archives to universities and colleges; from embassies and governmental bodies to local community groups; from performing arts to specialist societies. Our membership includes large establishments, such as the Smithsonian Institute and smaller ones like Crich Parish History & Heritage. Our membership is international, including Australia, Austria, America, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Slovenia and Turkey, reflecting that the First World War was a global conflict. Ultimately, we hope that all the countries involved in the war will join and become involved. Together, we will provide a vibrant global programme of cultural events, activities and digital platforms for a wide audience, and will leave a legacy for future generations.

You can recognise the Partnership Programme by the Partnership brand mark which is available in both English and Welsh for our members to use in their cultural and educational programmes, alongside their own brand marks.

We have selected and curated a number of resources for our organisational members to use: 100 labelled digital assets from the IWM collections – photographs, images of First World War objects, documents and sound archives – cover the broad sweep of the war’s history; historic timelines giving the dates of all major events throughout the war; and DIY exhibitions on the First World War that can be downloaded and displayed. We have also brought together a range of Useful Guides on art, collection and research, learning, communications and audience research, sharing information, skills and ideas to help organisations with their centenary planning.

For further information about the First World War Centenary Partnership please visit www.1914.org

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ESSAY

Beethoven, Swing and Three Ladies: Music that crossed the lines Patrick Bade, author of Music Wars: 1937-1945, takes a closer look at the music of the Second World War. In the Second World War music was no respecter of national borders nor of political, ideological or military lines. It passed from side to side with remarkable alacrity. The Nazis took immense pride in the Austro-German musical tradition and boasted that the Reich was ‘The Land of Music’. In a broadcast speech shortly after the outbreak of war between Germany and Britain, Hitler claimed that Beethoven had ‘achieved more than all the English put together’. The BBC responded cheekily to German accusations of British philistinism with a compilation of British music and literature presented by the actor Marius Goring and the pianist Myra Hess, entitled ‘Britain’s reply to Goebbels by Hess and Goring’.

If one classical composer can be said to have supplied the soundtrack of the war, it was undoubtedly Ludwig van Beethoven. In every country involved in the war Beethoven’s music was the most frequently performed of any classical composer. His music provided

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hope, comfort and inspiration to all. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of the Auschwitz women’s orchestra, described the spiritual and psychological nourishment she gained from playing a string arrangement of Beethoven’s Pathétique. ‘We were able to raise ourselves high above the inferno of Auschwitz into spheres where we could not be touched by the degradation of concentration camp existence.’ Janina Bauman, who survived the Warsaw Ghetto, and the young French musician Hélène Berr, who was later deported to her death from occupied Paris, described the nourishing and uplifting effects of Beethoven’s music in remarkably similar terms.

In London, during the seasons of Promenade Concerts that became a symbol of defiance against the Nazi threat, Friday night was always Beethoven night. Beethoven was by far the most frequently performed composer (128 works), followed by Wagner (111 works) with the most popular British composer Edward Elgar trailing far behind (33 works). Only in Paris was the appeal of Beethoven slightly tarnished by association with the German occupier. The Swiss composer Arthur Honneger, resident in Paris, complained about the endless repetition of Beethoven and Wagner over the winter of 1940-41.

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It must have been especially galling to Goebbels when the BBC stole a march on the Germans to appropriate the opening motto theme of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for the ‘V for Victory’ campaign. It was wonderfully convenient that Beethoven’s three short notes followed by a longer one formed the letter V in Morse Code. Played on a kettle drum and repeated with pregnant pauses, Beethoven’s theme was used to introduce the legendary BBC broadcasts to the French resistance. After the opening drum signals the programme continued with the announcement ‘Ici Londres’ (‘This is London’) followed by a snatch of the hornpipe from the Water Music by another German composer, Georg Friedrich Händel.

From this time on, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony remained stubbornly associated with the Allied cause and there was absolutely nothing that the Germans could do about it. For Fania Fénelon in the Auschwitz women’s orchestra, re-arranging the first movement of the symphony for performance for the SS was a gesture of secret defiance. ‘They saw no connection with the signature of the Free French broadcasts on the BBC. For them it was Beethoven, a god, a monument to German music and they listened in respectful rapture. Their lack of a sense of humour was almost touching. There was intense jubilation when our orchestra played the piece. It was one of my most perfect moments.’

On a more popular level it is surely the sound of Swing that provided the musical background to the war. As far as popular culture was concerned the Americans had won the war before it had begun. The craze for Swing that swept the world in the years immediately before the Second World War was so inexorable that even the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Vichy France – all essentially disapproving of jazz in all its forms as something alien and potentially subversive – could not stand in its way. Nazi authorities played a game of cat and mouse with German dance bands who tried to keep themselves up to date by clandestine listening to foreign radio broadcasts or American records smuggled in through neutral countries.

Though the Nazis were viscerally opposed to music of African and Judeo-American origin, they had to come to terms with the fact that young people of fighting age in every country wanted to dance and this was the music they wanted to dance to. All the Opposite page: Les Ondes was the house magazine for the collaborationist radio station Radio Paris; ‘In the Mood’ was a

signature tune for the most popular dance band of the war years.

Below: Madama Butterfly, an Italian opera with a Japanese

heroine, continued to be popular in Britain; this production of Lehar’s Merry Widow travelled from London to Cairo and Tel Aviv.

combatant nations in the Second World War recognised the power of this exuberant music and attempted to harness it. The most bizarre manifestation of this was Charlie and his Orchestra, a highly sophisticated jazz ensemble put together in the service of the Nazi propaganda machine. Aiming to demoralize allied troops, Germany broadcast versions of popular American songs with Nazi propaganda lyrics. Cole Porter’s ‘You’re the top’ became: You’re the top – You’re a German flyer.

You’re the top – You’re machine gun fire.

You’re a U-boat chap With a lot of pep.

You’re grand – You’re a German Blitz, The Paris Ritz, An army van.

You’re the Nile An attack by Rommel You’re the mile That I’d walk for a Camel, etc..

But Swing, like Beethoven, was kinder to the Allied than to the Axis cause. The Wehrmacht Hour, broadcast in the final months of 1944, with Glenn Miller’s comfortable Swing and his clumsy attempts to speak German, was more likely to induce enemy soldiers to surrender than Charlie’s clod-hopping humour.

It is often forgotten that the other popular musical idiom of universal appeal in the Second World War was operetta. Richard Tauber’s Old Chelsea was recorded on disc to be sent to North Africa for the entertainment of troops there and Ralph Benatzky’s light-hearted Bezauberndes Fraülein (Charming young lady) was staged in Auschwitz in order to lift the spirits of the SS. Dutch operetta star Johannes Heesters paid a visit to Dachau to entertain the camp guards. The most popular operetta of all, The Merry Widow, raised morale in Berlin, London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Cairo, Tel Aviv and countless other cities.

There is every reason to believe that Hitler and Goebbels secretly preferred The Merry Widow to Götterdämmerung. Before the war Hitler attended no less than six performances in a single run of The Merry Widow starring Heesters as Danilo. In 1943 a production in New York starring the Polish tenor Jan Kiepura and his Hungarian wife Mártha Eggerth, conducted by Robert Stolz, was a smash hit and went on to tour major American cities. The equally successful London production with the Australian husband and wife Madge Elliot and Cyril Ritchard toured North Africa and the Middle East and must have brought nostalgic tears to the eyes of many refugees in Palestine. Whilst all this was going on, Franz Lehar, the composer of The Merry Widow, and his Jewish wife enjoyed the personal protection of Joseph Goebbels. This protection was unfortunately not extended to Lehar’s favourite librettist Fritz Löhner-Beda, who was brutally murdered in Auschwitz in December 1942.

The operatic heroine who melted all hearts (or nearly all) in the Second World War was Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. The exceptions were New York and Marseille. At The Metropolitan in New York, the spectacle of a Japanese woman being mistreated by a uniformed American was deemed inappropriate and the ➜ Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 29

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ESSAY ➜ opera was dropped from the repertoire. In Marseille in the winter of 1942-43 after the American landings in North Africa and consequent Nazi occupation of the south of France, Butterfly was banned for fear that Pinkerton and Sharpless’ toast ‘America forever!’ might provoke popular demonstrations.

Though Britain was at war with Japan from December 1941, Madama Butterfly (always sung in English) continued to be one of the most popular and frequently performed operas. Three sopranos – Victoria Sladen, Joan Cross and Joan Hammond, all of large build and somewhat unlikely as 15 year old geishas – were particularly associated with the role. The statuesque Joan Hammond, who possessed the impressive shoulders of a former golf champion, elicited astonished glances when she had to rush from a performance in Glasgow to the main station, still dressed in her kimono, in order to catch the last train back to London where she was due to sing the next day.

Hammond recorded the love duet in English with Webster Booth in 1943. A copy of the record was offered to my mother Josephine Crombie with the words ‘With love from Bill’ inscribed across the title ‘Ah! Love me a little!’ as a delicate token of affection by a member of the Royal Army Service Corps she met on board a ship returning from Egypt in 1944.

In Berlin the ravishingly beautiful Romanian soprano Maria Cebotari with her Slavic high cheekbones must have made a much more convincing geisha. Butterfly continued to be popular across the German Reich, where thanks to the alliance with Japan the disgraceful behaviour of an American naval officer presented fewer problems to audiences. In Auschwitz-Birkenau the French singer and musician Fania Fénelon escaped death because she knew and could perform the aria ‘One fine day’ and the ‘Flower duet’ for the pleasure of the infamous women’s camp commandant Maria Mandel. Responsible for the deaths of up to 500,000 women and children, Mandel nevertheless had a soft spot for Puccini’s fragile heroine. ‘Could it be that she regarded herself as a sentimental geisha?’ Fénelon asked. It seems to have been Mandel’s identification with Butterfly and her child that led her to briefly adopt a curly-headed Polish boy as a plaything before sending him to his death in a gas chamber.

Each nation had a special song in the Second World War. The British had ‘We’ll meet again’, sung by the incomparable Vera Lynn.

The Germans had ‘Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen’ that expressed similar sentiments of longing to be reunited in this world or the next with a loved one. Only one song transcended almost all boundaries and that was ‘Lili Marleen’ (‘Lily Marlene’ in English and French).

‘Lili Marleen’ is the prime example of a common phenomenon in the Second World War – a song that became freighted with new meanings as a result of political events. The chances are that one of the most famous songs of the twentieth century might have disappeared without trace had it not been for the outbreak of war and a whole series of quite specific circumstances. When it was first issued on record in the summer of 1939, ‘Lili Marleen’ made little impact and sold a mere 700 copies. The poem concerning a girl waiting for her soldier lover outside a barracks had originated in the previous world war. It was set to music (not for the first time) by the composer Norbert Schultze on commission from the baritone Jan 30 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

Behrens. Schultze claimed that he conceived the melody in a Berlin beer hall during the antisemitic riots of Kristallnacht in November 1938, though it has also been asserted that he had previously used the tune as a jingle for an advertisement for toothpaste.

Taken separately, neither the text nor the music of the song is particularly distinguished. But they are a perfect match for one another. Schultze crafted his song immaculately. The slightest deviation from the melodic line changes the emotional impact, as we hear from versions by low-voiced singers such as Anne Shelton and Suzy Solidor who cannot manage the awkward upward leap in the refrain on the words ‘mit dir, Lili Marleen’.

Without that interval the song loses something of its freshness and innocence.

Schultze was lucky in that the song was rejected not only by Jan Behrens but by three popular female singers – Zarah Leander, Marika Rökk and Rosita Serrano, none of whom would have been appropriate. The song found its perfect interpreter in the as yet little-known Lale Andersen. The Scottish soldier-adventurer Fitzroy Maclean heard Lale Andersen’s record over the radio countless times both in North Africa and later while fighting with Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia. In his memoirs, EasternApproaches, his description captures the effect of Andersen’s performance very precisely. ‘Husky, sensuous, nostalgic, sugar-sweet, her voice seemed to reach out to you, as she lingered over the catchy tune, the sickly sentimental words.’ The sugary sweet sensuality is in the

The German song ‘Lili Marleen’ triumphed on all fronts and in a multitude of languages.

winter2013_pp28-31_essay_print 01/11/2013 11:58 Page 31

timbre of the voice and the lingering, sentimentality in her repeated use of downward sliding portamenti.

Despite all these qualities, the record would still have gone unremarked if the Germans had not found themselves in April 1941 without suitable records to broadcast to their soldiers in the Mediterranean theatre of war, at the radio station of the recently conquered Belgrade. An urgent request was made to the nearest major radio station in Vienna for any records they could spare.

Amongst them was ‘Lili Marleen’. According to Schultze it had been rejected for broadcast in Vienna because the bugle call (added by the conductor Bruno Seidler-Winkler in imitation of two great pre-war hits, ‘Mon Légionnaire’ and ‘Adieu, mein kleiner Gardeoffizier’) was Prussian rather than Austrian.

Initially, due to a continuing shortage of material, the record was broadcast twice or more an hour. After a short time the staff at Radio Belgrade were sick of the song and it was dropped. To their surprise, the station received a deluge of protest from listeners.

Schultze’s insinuating melody had caught the fancy of Rommel’s Afrika Korps and of other listeners all over Europe. Later attempts for various reasons to drop Andersen’s record and replace it with other versions always met with the same irresistible wave of protest. Goebbels loathed the record, but not for the first time he discovered that music had a power that he could not control.

Eventually the record was used each night to sign off Radio Belgrade programmes before the 10pm news bulletin. By this time

the melody had jumped across enemy lines and gained the affection of the troops of the British 8th Army as well. Every evening at 9.55pm brought a brief truce between the opposing German and British armies encamped within hearing distance of one another. Lale Andersen claimed that her song saved hundreds of lives in this way.

By the end of the war well over 75 versions of the song had been recorded in languages as diverse as English, Dutch, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Estonian and Finnish. Only the French refused to adopt the song as their own. Though it was popular and frequently heard in France, it remained firmly identified with the German occupiers and the sultry French chanteuse Suzy Solidor suffered greatly through her association with the song after the Liberation.

For those who lived through the Second World War and are still with us, there is nothing more evocative of that time than its music. My father John Bade, who fought on several fronts, always remembered the extraordinary shock of hearing the voice of Vera Lynn, played on a wind-up gramophone, emerging unexpectedly from a hidden foxhole in the desert. I remember visiting IWM London with him and his reactions were not triumphant but deeply sorrowing.

Music Wars: 1937-1945 by Patrick Bade, published by East and West, is available to buy priced £25 (paperback).

Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 31

IWM PST 002734

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A

B

Your country needs you Historian James Taylor on Alfred Leete, and his contribution to the comic propaganda postcard at the outset of the First World War. Alfred Leete (1882-1933) was a successful self-taught cartoonist and commercial artist who worked for a wide variety of companies and magazines. He had a long and rewarding relationship with London Opinion (LO) the popular black-and-white weekly magazine that privately produced the recruitment poster with the wording ‘BRITONS (Lord Kitchener) “WANTS YOU” – Join Your Country’s Army!’ [A] with the words ‘God Save The King’ printed below.

The poster derived from the LO cover of 5 September 1914 that combined his eyecatching and forceful Kitchener cartoon with the memorable slogan ‘Your Country 32 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

Needs You’. More than 250,000 copies of that magazine were printed and later small-scale reproductions were issued on fine art paper for readers to purchase for personal enjoyment. Leete’s powerful combination of image and words has now seeped into the collective British consciousness to the extent that a poster reminiscent of the LO cover is widely believed to have been the most popular recruitment poster – the dominant one of the war.

What is certainly true is that Leete was able to create memorable cartoons that struck an immediate chord with the public.

Like many of his contemporaries, including Bert Thomas, he would also create cartoons for postcards that were sold in cities and seaside towns. Thomas, another LO regular and a deviser of war posters, was celebrated for producing the cartoon-poster of a grinning Cockney Tommy lighting a pipe with the caption ‘Arf a “Mo”, Kaiser!’, which appeared in the Weekly Dispatch of 11 November 1914 as part of the paper’s tobacco-for-troops fund, which raised an estimated £250,000.

Fortunately for Leete and Thomas, among many others, they were able to profit from the postcard boom that spread

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through Britain in the 1910s. Earlier in 1894 the Royal Mail had given permission to publishers for the manufacture and distribution of picture postcards.

Although Leete was the son of a farmer from Northamptonshire, as a boy he had moved with his family to settle in the North Somerset seaside resort of Westonsuper-Mare because of his father’s ill health. Leete was schooled there and then sent to work in an architect’s office in Bristol where he was encouraged to submit drawings to the local magazine The Bristol Magpie. Some appeared in a style reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley and the Czech Art Nouveau and decorative artist Alphonse Mucha. The latter influenced several notable British poster designers including John Hassall, who was also a contributor to LO and another war poster artist.

Hassall is best known today for his image of the jolly fisherman in ‘Skegness is So Bracing’, originally created in 1908 to promote regional rail travel. Leete produced his own wartime parody, entitled ‘The East Coast Is So Bracing – To Recruiting’ (which included an acknowledgement to Hassall’s poster), for LO on 26 December 1914. In Leete’s version, the skipping sailor’s pipe has fallen out of his mouth, and he turns with a terrified expression as a large gun shell whizzes past him.

Another popular civilian subject was published by London-based Wildt and Kray and featured three smartly-dressed ladies huddled together in a conspiratorial manner around a dinning table. Their brimmed hats are so large that all their faces are obscured. ‘What are they up to?’ the viewer asks. The answer is in the caption: ‘Another Reputation Gone’ [D].

Official notices and some posters appeared in the First World War to stop people gossiping and spreading rumours for fear that it could give away vital information to the enemy and be counterproductive to morale, although the

C

D concerted campaign ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ belongs to the Second World War. By the outbreak of the First World War postcards were of international interest and importance. Receiving post was one of the highlights of the arduous day-to-day life on the Western Front. Sorting and distribution depots were located in several areas of northern France and millions of items, including postcards, were handled during the war. In Professor Peter Doyle’s British Postcards of the First World War he notes that: ‘During the years 1914–18, at the height of its “Golden Age”, the postcard was ubiquitous; worldwide in use

and popularity. Postcards were sent (and collected avidly) by civilian and soldier alike, and were to cross all social boundaries, from the lowliest private soldier to the loftiest general.’

Today one prominent website promoting the history of First World War postcards – www.worldwar1postcards. com – has neatly summarised their popularity in Britain: ‘The newsagents WH Smith displayed numerous categories of war-related cards in the postcard racks of its 2,000 shops. In addition, booksellers, cinemas, corner shops, stationery stores, public houses, haberdashery stores, post offices and branches of Boots the Chemist and numerous other commercial outlets sold them. By 1915 “war cards” were also displayed and offered for sale in the thousands of YMCA canteens in military training camps at home and on the Western Front and elsewhere.’

LO issued many of its cartoons in postcard form and had an arrangement with several printer-publishers to produce these cards with an acknowledgement on each of them crediting London Opinion.

In 1914 a selection of Leete’s cartoons from LO, later transformed into postcards, were listed as: ‘Ja! I will make meinself bigger or burst’ (15 August) [C], ‘Our Jack, Britain’s Trump Card’ (15 August) [G], and ‘He didn’t know it was loaded’ (29 August) [F]. Sometimes the captions on the cards themselves differed from that of the original cartoon.

The first of these three cards depicts a stereotypical caricatured image of a gargantuan German soldier wearing the spiked helmet – the pickelhaube – worn at the beginning of the war. His waistline has supersized in response to his gluttonous nature as a metaphor for personal greed and imperial expansion.

A sign on the wall indicates that he has been over-indulging in French food and special British beef. Physically he is about to explode. It is captioned ‘Ja! I will make meinself bigger or burst’. ➜ Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 33

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E

➜ ‘Our Jack of Trumps’ [G] depicts a sailor in the form of a playing card with the name Invincible around his hat. It combines a reassuring muscular human face of the ‘Senior Service’ with a ship’s name that brought to mind the valiant service of several earlier British vessels as well as the up-to-date battlecruiser HMS Invincible.

The last postcard ‘He didn’t know it was loaded’ [F] provides an immediate humorous hit. The gunshot that has separated the Kaiser’s nose has been caused by an antiquated looking weapon that is inscribed ‘Belgium’. It is the comic facial variant of the saying ‘to shoot 34 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

yourself in the foot’. The invasion of Belgium was arguably the decisive catalyst that led to Britain’s declaration of war against Germany on 4 August 1914.

Britain was unprepared and desperately short of soldiers. The story of Lord Kitchener’s instrumental role in raising the troops for war service has been well told, notably by former IWM historian Professor Peter Simkins among others.

However, the significant role of LO in terms of its contribution to the war effort through the production of propaganda postcards is perhaps less well known.

On 12 September 1914 LO made the

declaration: ‘We are getting numerous applications from various recruiting organisations for postcards reproducing last week’s LO cover – the Kitchener head, “Your Country Needs YOU” – in colour.

To aid in recruiting we will supply these at the rate of 1s. 4d a 100. Post free.’ These postcards may well have been produced, but locating examples in public or private collections remains a challenge.

In ‘Round The Town’ (a regular feature of LO) of 26 September 1914 it was announced that: ‘A certain publishing firm has just issued a portrait of Lord Kitchener with finger pointing out of the picture, on

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which are the words “You are the man I want”. I seem to have seen something like this before – in a previous existence, probably!’ This ironic statement refers to the colour postcard depicting Lord Kitchener in a red uniform, without his hat, with outstretched arm and pointing finger.

It was captioned ‘YOU Are The Man I Want’.

An example of this postcard, [B] produced in large quantities at the time but now a rare find for collectors, is in IWM’s collections.

Although LO would partner with independent printer-publishers to produce postcards, there would invariably be a printed credit line indicating the original source as London Opinion.

However, in this instance it appears that the creation and ownership of the design ‘YOU Are The Man I Want’ lies elsewhere.

The only details on the card are: ‘The WAR Series, No.1851, Printed in England. The Regent Publishing Co., Ltd, London, N.W.1 (ALL BRITISH) Photo by Bassano.’

The Regent Publishing Co. was based on the Euston Road, London, from 1905 until 1925 and issued cards of various subjects, including actors and royalty and especially views of London, often in the form of original hand-coloured photographs.

During the war the market for cards was fiercely competitive and it is therefore likely, in light of the ironic comment, that this company had adapted Leete’s cartoon and devised a new slogan so as to claim it as one of their own postcard designs. That said, the company had been careful to acknowledge the photographic source of Lord Kitchener as deriving from Alexander Bassano, the leading high society photographer of the Victorian era.

Bassano created some of the most sought-after photographic portraits of Kitchener, although none of them depicted him with an outstretched arm and accusing finger. In fact Leete had transformed the same photographic source (in conjunction with some additional images) in order to create his

F

G memorable cartoon, although he made no reference to Bassano. Leete may well have genuinely believed that as his pictorial design was so radically different to the conventional portrait image of Kitchener there was no need. This image was well known through reproductions in newspapers, stock photographs and in postcard form too.

In the 21 November 1914 issue of LO it was announced that: ‘…some of the most popular of these drawings (war cartoons) are now published in a series of Twelve Postcards Printed in Colour. The cards may be purchased at any bookstall or

newsagent etc. Price 1d each or direct from Lawrence & Jellicoe, Henrietta Street, W.C. (Covent Garden).’ By Christmas that year the number of retailers selling them had expanded to meet the demand.

Picture postcards are now treated seriously by art curators and galleries. In October 2012 a major exhibition entitled The Postcard Age opened at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, showing the importance of postcards at the turn of the century. The Regent Publishing Co. postcard depicting Lord Kitchener and captioned ‘YOU Are The Man I Want’ was one of the 400 items featured in the exhibition.

London Opinion stated that it was going to produce a postcard depicting Lord Kitchener’s head with the caption ‘Your Country Needs You’ to aid recruitment.

My search to find this postcard has so far proved unsuccessful. If any readers know of the whereabouts of such items please do contact me (care of the Friends Office).

Alfred Leete deserves to be better known today as a master of the humorous propaganda postcard. One of my favourite comic war cards of 1914 was published by J. Beagles and Co.. It shows a girl crying after her wooden horse has been stolen by a group of boys who march by. One boy is playing a make-shift drum, while others hold a Union Jack flag and clutch a placard with the words ‘For King And Country’. The caption reads: ‘Commandeered’ [E].

James Taylor is the author of Your Country Needs You – The Secret History of the Propaganda Poster, published by Saraband, priced £16.99 (hardback).

Copies are available in the IWM shops and online shop.

James will give a talk to IWM Friends on the history of the propaganda poster on 2 December 2013. For further details or to book tickets please turn to page 47 or call 0207416 5372. Signed copies of his book will be available to purchase at the event.

Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 35

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ILLUSTRATING CAPTIVITY

36 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

Curator Jenny Wood offers an insight into IWM’s collection of Far Eastern Prisoner of War drawings. was a Justice of the Peace; after capture and internment he became the Mens’ Representative at Sime Road Camp and in 1945 the internees’ Head Commandant.

This collection has a particular significance in art historical terms, illustrating the primacy of drawing for artists caught in difficult daily circumstances. Drawing was pursued during captivity despite the threat of reprisal and acted as a psychological anchor; as a way of maintaining morale; as a lasting record of conditions and

Sick and Dying: Man [Barratt] Sick with Tropical Ulcers and Fever, Three Days before Death, Thailand, 26 July 1943

by Ronald Searle.

privations; as illustration of medical ingenuity and dedication; and, not least, as a way of ‘earning’ through portraits. Feeling a compulsion to draw in threatening circumstances speaks to the fundamental nature of creativity and underpins the constant challenge faced by all war artists.

The abilities of the artists vary from trained artists such as Ronald Searle and John Mennie to gifted draughtsmen and to those who learned to draw in captivity. All have an authentic voice and offer insights into the experience of captivity – how individuals brought together under harsh and often unexpected circumstances find ways of surviving and supporting one another, using their talents to entertain and acknowledge the individuality of their fellow captives.

IWM ART 15747 95 © RONALD SEARLE 1943, BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST AND THE SAYLE LITERARY AGENCY

Rod Suddaby, IWM research associate and previous Keeper of Documents, was a valued colleague with unparalleled expertise in the area of Far Eastern Prisoner of War (FEPOW) history. His death this summer was marked by tributes from across the globe and he is sadly missed by colleagues and researchers alike.

In February 2012 he completed an unusual study project, having worked with me to review IWM holdings of FEPOW artwork found in both the art and documents collections. This review revealed the quality and unexpected quantity of FEPOW drawings in our care and examined the scope of subject matter and service history of the artists themselves.

The particular documentary value of this material, done in circumstances where almost no film or photographic evidence survives, is substantial. It records aspects of life in captivity experienced by many thousands of Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees in camps in Singapore, Thailand, Java, Hong Kong, China, Formosa (Taiwan) and Japan. In addition to illustrating the demands of daily camp life and work parties, the drawings also include portraits, topography, travel and transport, cartoons, entertainments and medical services. The use of prisoners to work on the construction of the Thailand-Burma railway is recorded and a small number of drawings illustrate maltreatment of prisoners by Japanese and Korean guards.

By combining a careful examination of the drawings themselves with corroborative information from FEPOW documents, it was possible in many cases to confirm topographical locations, dates and the sitters’ identities in portrait drawings. One discovery of the review was a quantity of drawings made by civilian internees in Changi Gaol in Singapore.

Single name inscriptions on portrait drawings were linked to contemporary listings to restore the full name and identity of the sitter. For example, a drawing by Thomas Wilfred Douglas labelled simply ‘Collinge’ was found to be a portrait of Cyril Ernest Collinge, born in 1897, a British merchant, manager for Joseph Travers & Co. in Malaya. In 1940 he

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IWM / BUSHELL COLLECTION

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Roger Bushell, the ‘Great Escaper’ Simon Pearson, author of The Great Escaper: The Life and Death of Roger Bushell, takes a closer look at the life of the man who masterminded the ‘Great Escape’ from Stalag Luft III.

38 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

heel that would torment him through four years of captivity in Nazi-occupied Europe.

In late July 1935, Bushell accompanied Georgie to the marriage of her brother Edward to the heiress Priscilla Weigall in the chapel of St Michael and St George in St Paul’s Cathedral. Perhaps, just for a moment, Bushell allowed himself to dream of his own wedding in equally grand surroundings.

But Earl Howe was having none of it: Bushell had come too close, and he was not going to allow ‘that penniless, South African barrister’ to marry his daughter. © LINDY WILSON

As Roger Bushell’s relationship with Lady Georgiana Mary Curzon grew in passion and intensity during the giddy summer of 1935, her father, Earl Howe, made a fateful decision that would have tragic consequences for them all.

Photographs taken by Georgie, a beautiful débutante, suggest that the affair started in 1934, and letters written later confirm it was both romantic and serious.

Pages of a photograph album show a joyous affair: on the beach, picnicking, and in each other’s arms. One in particular (inset, right) shows a couple sitting on a lawn against a backdrop of trees and bushes, Georgie’s left arm hanging around Bushell’s shoulder, the two of them smiling gently, at ease in each other’s company.

Roger Bushell, the man who would lead the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III in 1944, was a great romantic – a powerful man, not quite six feet tall, with a thick mop of dark brown hair, a strong deep voice and striking, bright blue eyes who was loved by women – but romance was an Achilles’

Roger Bushell with Lady Georgiana Mary Curzon during the mid-1930s.

Earl Howe’s intervention was decisive.

Lady Georgiana distanced herself from the man she loved and married a friend of the family later that year. Bushell was left to concentrate on his career as a barrister – ‘a fledgeling to watch,’ wrote the Empire News – and his role as a part-time pilot with 601 (County of London) Squadron, an Auxiliary Air Force unit known as ‘The Millionaires’ due to their ostentatious wealth. But it would not be the end of the affair with Georgie. She was one of three women who would play a significant role in his tumultuous war.

While many people know the story of the Great Escape in 1944, few are familiar with the magnetism of Roger Bushell, his highvoltage life and the extraordinary nature of his achievements.

Almost exactly fifty years ago, I sat with my father, who had served with the RAF, in a cinema in the Midlands and watched a film that gave a dramatic account of events in the forest south of Sagan, the site of Stalag Luft III, just 100 miles south-east of Berlin.

© GEORGINA THYNNE

IWM / BUSHELL COLLECTION

Opposite page: Stalag Luft III. Left: Roger Bushell, back after escaping.

Below left: Prisoners of war at Stalag Luft III Below right: With 601 Squadron.

IWM / BUSHELL COLLECTION

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As with many boys of my generation, the Hollywood epic The Great Escape left an indelible mark. A year or so later, I found Paul Brickhill’s book of the same name among my Christmas presents.

Perhaps it was not surprising that in a house where bookshelves were lined with the biographies of airmen, and bombers and fighters made from Airfix kits hung from ceilings, I should be interested in this story, but my curiosity about events at Stalag Luft III remained with me and, if anything, became more intense.

In one of the war stories most cherished by the British, the man at the centre of events was largely forgotten. While the main characters in two of Brickhill’s most popular books – Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who led the Dambusters; and Douglas Bader, the disabled fighter ace – became national icons, Roger Bushell, the hero of a third, faded away.

He did not make the transition from paperback to celluloid in the same manner as Gibson or Bader in British-made films.

Hollywood chose composite characters for The Great Escape rather than real people and Bushell – played by Richard Attenborough in the film – became Roger Bartlett. In dozens of books, Bushell appeared in cameo roles, but no one told the story of his life. Why was this? Who was Roger Bushell?

Years later, while working at The Times, I came across a memorial notice in the archive which marked the anniversary of Bushell’s birth and celebrated his life. It quoted Rupert Brooke: ‘He leaves a white unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, a width, a shining peace, under the night.’

It was signed ‘Georgie’.

At that moment, I realised there was a love story to be told as well as a war story.

A friend at The Times, the author Ben Macintyre, told me to stop dabbling: the time had come to write the book. Within a few hours, I had written to IWM, outlining what I wanted to do and asking for help. In one of those remarkable twists of fate that can define the outcome of any endeavour, the response thrust open the door to the story of Roger Bushell’s life.

His family was, at that moment, corresponding with the museum with the intention of donating his archive. IWM, in the guise of Tony Richards, would be happy to pass on a letter from me. It was the start of a remarkable collaboration.

The archive, which contains a collection of letters, his mother’s diary, newspaper ➜ Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 39

IWM / BUSHELL COLLECTION

IWM / BUSHELL COLLECTION

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➜ cuttings and photographs, provides a partial – and often fragmented – record of Bushell’s life, but it yields three substantial veins of information. The first is the diary of Bushell’s early life, written by his mother, Dorothy, which sets out the extraordinarily close relationship between mother and son. It is an important document, and chronicles the development of a man who clearly needed a woman’s love at every point of his life.

Many of the letters Bushell wrote to his family during the four years he spent as a prisoner of the Germans are also contained within the archive. A handful of these provide insights into his state of mind at critical periods of the war. Others mask his true intentions, but display the wit of a Cambridge graduate even in adversity. A third strand of information – often in the form of clarification – is provided by his father, Ben Bushell, who made notes in the margins, added after the war as he tried to make sense of his son’s life.

Among the many facts I discovered was that the leader of the heroic escape through a 340ft tunnel named Harry was claustrophobic. Roger Bushell hated tunnels.

He feared enclosed spaces, even though he grew up on a South African gold mine. In January 1924, just as Adolf Hitler was making his first bid for power, Bushell was sent to Wellington College in England, where he excelled at languages and sport. Four years later, Bushell’s final school report attributed his popularity to his ‘indomitable spirit’.

After studying law at Pembroke College, Cambridge, he skied for Great Britain, joined 40 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

Above left: ‘With his sister Rosemary and their dog.’ Right: ‘Even as a teenager Roger had a sense of style – and a smartness and confidence that would turn many heads.’

legal chambers in Lincoln’s Inn – and fell in love with his beautiful débutante. While Georgie’s father forbade them to marry in 1935, the relationship was rekindled through letters years later as Bushell engineered the Great Escape. Georgie’s marriage to Home Kidston, the son of a renowned racing driver, collapsed after her husband had an affair with her own stepmother.

But Georgie was not the only girl to turn Bushell’s head. In the winter of 1939-40 he became engaged to Peggy Hamilton, a cabaret girl who would herself later marry into a noble family. She abandoned him after his Spitfire was shot down south of Dunkirk on 23 May 1940. The third woman to feature in this story was a Czech resistance fighter called Blazena Zeithammelova, who gave him shelter – and a bed – in Prague after his second escape from German captivity in 1941.

Bushell had arrived in Prague just as ‘Hitler’s Hangman’, the SS chief Reinhard Heydrich, took over the running of the country with orders to stamp out Czech resistance. The RAF officer was in the Czech capital as British-trained agents planned the assassination of Heydrich – and the Germans suspected his involvement in the plot.

Betrayed by Blazena’s former lover, Bushell was arrested by the Gestapo just before the attack on Heydrich. He was taken to Berlin and interrogated for three

months before the Luftwaffe secured his release. Blazena and her immediate family were shot.

Bushell was then sent to Stalag Luft III. From the moment he arrived, he was determined to wage war on the Nazis.

He led an international brigade of prisoners – more than 600 worked on his escape project – and they became one of the most belligerent, imaginative and mischievous ‘armies’ ever to confront Hitler’s tyranny. As ‘Big X’, the head of the escape committee, he told his fellow prisoners: ‘The only reason that God allowed us this extra ration of life is to make life hell for the Hun.’ While escape became the principal industry, Bushell, who was registered with British intelligence in 1940, had other targets. With Wing Commander Harry ‘Wings’ Day, he co-ordinated an intelligence operation that communicated with London through coded letters and, among other things, provided the Allies with information about Germany’s secret weapons. Stalag Luft III became an operational outpost of British intelligence working in breach of the Geneva Conventions.

The Gestapo warned Bushell in 1942 that he would be shot if he ever found himself in their hands again. But Bushell was a maverick who challenged authority all his life – and he was determined to get home to Georgie in spite of pleas from fellow officers that he remain behind.

After the mass breakout in March 1944, when 76 Allied officers got away from the camp, Hitler demanded the execution of at least 50 of them. Bushell was probably at the top of the list of condemned men.

His father Ben had the last words, composing the epitaph for his son’s gravestone in Poznan, Poland: ‘A leader of men, He achieved much, Loved England, And served her to the end.’

The Great Escaper: The Life and Death of Roger Bushell by Simon Pearson, published by Hodder and Stroughton in association with IWM, is available in IWM shops and the online shop at www.iwmshop.org.uk, priced £20 (hardback). Friends receive a 10% discount.

winter2013_pp38-41_great-escaper_print 01/11/2013 15:36 Page 41

BOOKS Cartography of the First World War Mapping the First World War The Great War Through Maps from 1914 to 1918

by Peter Chasseaud Published by Collins in association with IWM Mapping the First World War is an account of the conflict through maps and photographs from the extensive collections held by IWM with a commentary by the author, Dr Peter Chasseaud, a historian of military cartography and founder of the Historical Military Mapping Group of the British Cartographic Society.

The book features some 150 maps, which range from those of a small-scale showing national boundaries, overseas and occupied territories, to large-scale maps of significant battles and offensives; trench maps showing front-line positions and objectives; barrage maps for use by artillery; and those produced to accompany intelligence reports. There are also examples of Admiralty charts and maps produced for newspapers. The latter include ‘Bird’s Eye – Maps of the British Front’ and ‘Zeppelin and Aeroplane Bombs on London’, both published by the Daily Mail; German poster maps; and even a town plan of Sarajevo. Aerial photography was used by all sides during the conflict and played an important part in mapping; examples of these, and how they were used, are included together with numerous other photographs from IWM’s collection.

There is a useful and comprehensive introduction which explains mapping terms and sets the scene, tracing the growing public interest in and use of maps in Britain and Europe in the nineteenth century which led to the development of new map printing technology. The military had long recognised the importance of mapping and developed their own survey and mapping organisations, with those of Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the USA being outlined. The author also records the remarkable figures for wartime map production, noting that the UK printed some 34 million war maps (of which an estimated seven million were printed by field survey units overseas), France 30 million and Germany 775 million.

The book’s ten chapters take the reader from the causes of the war, through the 1914 campaigns in the

east and west, and then geographically to those in Italy, Gallipoli, Macedonia, the Caucasus, Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia and – often lost sight of – Africa. The remaining chapters deal with the 1915–1918 western and eastern campaigns, with a separate chapter on the war at sea and in the air. The concluding chapter deals with the peace treaties and their aftermath. On every page the commentary is illustrated with extracts from maps (some never published since they were first issued), plans, charts and photographs. Perhaps the most chilling is an example of a burial density map showing the number of bodies collected after the war from each 500 yard square in the ZonnebekePasschendaele area.

The quality of reproduction throughout is excellent, with many of the maps or map extracts being in colour; the book’s 265 x 221mm format allows much of the information shown on the maps to be seen without difficulty. Indeed, for me, and I suspect for others, it takes a degree of concentration to avoid being sidetracked from text to the fascinating array of maps and photographs which illustrate it. But given the subject matter of this book, that is as it should be!

Foster Summerson ISBN: 978-0-00-752220-0 Hardback: £30 Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 41

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BOOKS

Many of the featured books are available in IWM shops and online at www.iwmshop.org.uk where Friends receive a 10% discount

Stunning and powerful The Great War Edited by Mark Holborn Historical Texts and Chronologies by Hilary Roberts Published by Jonathan Cape in association with IWM This substantial book is a stunning achievement. It is a scrupulous pictorial history of the First World War, once described in all its horror as ‘the war to end all wars’ – which, as we know, it did not. It was the war that changed not only all wars, but the world: the industrial revolution came into play with deadly results, the machine age bent to the will of mutual destruction.

The history of the Great War is revealed through the superb reproductions, arranged chronologically, of nearly 500 photographs taken from the enormous collection of First World War photography (some 500,000 images and counting) held at IWM. The photographs are a day by day record, painstakingly and succinctly annotated – the factual captions are invaluable and often surprising, showing us, for instance, snipers being trained in the pastoral setting of Richmond Park, west London. The only flares of colour are modern photographs of uniforms from IWM’s collection, including, astonishingly, a Russian cavalry officer’s greatcoat worn by Kaiser Wilhelm II in pre-war Russia; and the ripped, blood-stained tunic, now housed in a museum in Vienna, that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was wearing when he was assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 – poignantly, the tunic's gold braid and gold buttons are still intact.

Otherwise it is a procession of black and white photographs by many named photographers (including women) working for the Red Cross, the British Army, the Canadian Army, the Royal Flying Corps, the British Grand Fleet, the Imperial German Army and many an individual regiment, as well as scores of personal photographs taken by both participants and observers, some anonymous.

Aerial reconnaissance was used extensively for the first time, resulting in images both surreal and beautiful. All together the images build up a terrifying momentum, a description of those four years from June 1914 to November 1918 as powerful as the best of written histories, an infinitely memorable record.

Each of the five sequential sections is introduced by an outstandingly comprehensible and comprehensive chronology – we start in 1888 and end in November 1918.

Mass media and technology, war photography and world events march in parallel columns. For each year you can look up any month – almost any day – in this history, and come upon the telling image. In 1914, among the photographs of 42 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

optimistic gatherings, all smiles, of troops across Europe, there is a photograph from the archives of a savage letter accusing a railway porter of being a girl for not joining up.

From July 1916 there is a trench on the Somme, as bleak as the other side of the moon, with two shrouded German corpses, an image taken by a Canadian Army photographer.

We are told that photographers, understandably, rarely photographed their own dead nationals.

Many of the images are terrible: a German Army photographer shows us the blackened corpse of a wounded British soldier who died of thirst marooned in no man’s land between the opposing lines of battle. Many are strikingly beautiful, however horrible the subject: figures advancing through a mist of poison gas on the Western Front in September 1915 is, if you did not grasp the implications, as romantic as any fog-shrouded scene could be. A bleakly poetic image of October 1917 shows a quintet of Australian soldiers walking through the remains of Chateau Wood, Ypres, the charred, branchless tree trunks a desolate punctuation: it is as powerfully evocative as any of the painted masterpieces by the war artists.

Photographs document the disaffected Russian army joining insurgents in July 1917 to foment the Russian Revolution, and in November 1918 show us the Kaiser leaving for a long exile after his abdication, also triggered by mutinying troops.

If you have but one publication to mark our twenty-first century view of 1914–1918, to show us the old order vanishing in the maelstrom that has formed the modern world, this should be it.

Marina Vaizey ISBN: 97802240960553 Hardback: £40

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BOOKS

Also recommended

Housewife’s Home Front

A global battle of wits

Mrs Miles’s Diary The Wartime Journal of a Housewife on the Home Front Edited by S V Partington Published by Simon & Schuster in association with IWM

The Kaiser’s Pirates: Hunting Germany's Raiding Cruisers 1914-1915

By Nick Hewitt Published by Pen and Sword in association with IWM

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Constance Miles was living with her husband in the Surrey village of Shere. A prolific correspondent with a keen interest in current affairs, Mrs Miles kept a war journal from 1939 to 1943, recording in vivid detail what life was like for women on the Home Front.

She writes of the impact of evacuees, of food shortages and the creative uses of what food there was, and the fears of the local populace who wonder how they will cope. She tells of refugees from central Europe billeted in village houses and later in the war of the influx of American servicemen. She travels frequently to London, mourning the destruction of familiar landmarks and recording the devastation of the Blitz, but still finds time for tea on the Strand.

A woman of strong convictions, Mrs Miles is not afraid to voice her opinion on public figures and her worries about the social upheavals she feels certain to follow the war. But most of all her journals record an overlooked aspect of the conflict: the impact on communities outside major cities, who endured hardships we find hard to imagine today.

ISBN: 9781471125584 Paperback: £7.99

By 1914 Germany had ships and sailors scattered across the globe, protecting its overseas colonies and showing the flag of its new Imperial Navy. After war broke out on 4 August there was no hope that they could reach home. Instead, they were ordered to attack Britain’s vital trade routes for as long as possible. Under the leadership of a few brilliant, audacious men, they unleashed a series of raids that threatened Britain’s war effort and challenged the power and prestige of the Royal Navy.

Rounding up the ‘Kaiser’s Pirates’ became the top priority for Winston Churchill, Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, and Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord at the outbreak of war; and then for Churchill’s erstwhile friend and mentor Admiral ‘Jackie’ Fisher, who took over as First Sea Lord just before the Battle of Coronel. The next year saw a battle of wits which stretched across the globe, drawing in ships and men from six empires. By the end, the Kaiser’s Pirates were no more, and Britain once again ruled the waves.

Nick Hewitt has drawn on the full resources of IWM, including photographs and compelling first-hand accounts of the events from the museums’ sound archive.

ISBN: 9781848847736 Hardback: £25 Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 43

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IWM SHOP For Christmas, shop for gifts inspired by an Edwardian Christmas in 1913 or brush up on your baking skills with our wartime cooking range. New gifts and books have also been added to our First World War selection. As an IWM Friend you enjoy a 10% discount. To use this discount online simply register and email iwmshop@iwm.org.uk to confirm your IWM Friends membership.

Edwardian bauble Edwardian-style ridged bauble decoration £4

Pocket watch necklace A contemporary twist on the classic pocket watch £12

Heart photo frame Heart-shaped photo frame with vintage detail £5

Enamel bread bin A practical accessory for the kitchen £30

Kitchen utensil bookend Add a bit of colour with this themed bookend £19

Victory is in the Kitchen tea towel Design taken from a First World War poster in IWM’s collection £6

Food economy mug Mug featuring a First World War proclamation against food waste £7

You Are The Man tin Tin featuring a First World War recruitment poster design £4

The Great War A photographic narrative of the First World War published in association with IWM £40

Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 45

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Talk: Montgomery and the First War on Terror 27 November, 2.30pm IWM London Bernard Law Montgomery, later Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, was Britain’s most able counterinsurgency commander during the inter-war period. Robert Oulds will argue that the insights of ‘Monty’ need to be remembered in today’s war in Afghanistan.

IWM Friends: £8; guests: £10, includes tea and coffee.

Talk: Your Country Needs You 2 December, 2.30pm IWM London James Taylor takes a closer look at the history of the propaganda poster, including First World War recruitment posters.

IWM Friends: £8; guests: £10, includes tea and coffee.

Christmas Evening 5 December, 6pm-8.30pm IWM London An informal drop-in event with carol singing and mince pies.

IWM Friends and guests: free St Clement Danes Carol Service 8 December, 2.30pm Meet at RAF Church, St Clement Danes, Strand, London WC2R 1DH Tickets: Free (members only) Tickets will be issued in late November.

Visit: The National Archives 28 January, 2pm The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU Clive Hawkins leads a behind the scenes tour of the National Archives.

IWM Friends: £8; guests: £10 Tour: Harrow School 5 February, 2pm Meet at Harrow School, 5 High Street, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex, HA1 3HP A two hour guided tour of Harrow School, alma mater of Sir Winston Churchill, focusing on its wartime connections.

IWM Friends: £15; guests: £18 Film screening: Operation Grapple Z 11 February , 2.30pm IWM London Curator Rebecca Harding will introduce the film Operation

Grapple Z, never screened in public before. The film was produced by the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment and focuses on the Christmas Island atomic weapons trials in 1958.

IWM Friends: £8; guests: £10, includes tea and coffee Visit: The RAF Club 27 February, 2pm 128 Piccadilly, London W1J 7PY A guided tour of the Royal Air Force Club.

IWM Friends: £10; guests £12 Visit: Bentley Priory 6 March, 2pm Bentley Priory, Stanmore HA7 3GA A visit and guided tour of Bentley Priory, the headquarters of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, recently re-opened as a museum.

IWM Friends: £12; guests £15 Talk: Damien Lewis and Stuart Tootal 15 March, 2pm IWM London An in-conversation event with Damien Lewis, the best-selling author of Zero Six Bravo, and Colonel Stuart Tootal, author of Danger Close: Commanding 3 Para in Afghanistan, the first account written by a senior commander of the fighting in Afghanistan.

IWM Friends: £8; guests: £10, includes tea and coffee Walk: Spies and Spycatchers’ London 19 March, 2pm Meet outside the Clydesdale Bank, near subway exit 3 of Piccadilly Circus underground station.

Richard Walker leads a walk focusing on spies, both real and fictional, venturing into the covert London of MI5, MI6 and the American OSS, progenitor of the CIA. IWM Friends: £15; guests: £17 Talk: Guy Gibson VC 22 March, 2pm IWM London Geoff Simpson, author of Guy Gibson: Dambuster, takes a closer look at the life of the complex and flawed hero of the Dams Raid.

IWM Friends: £8; guests: £10, includes tea and coffee.

IWM FRIENDS EVENTS November 2013 to June 2014 IWM TR 001125/ROYAL AIR FORCE OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPHER

To book tickets for IWM Friends events please complete the enclosed application form or call us on 020 7416 5372.

All events include a donation to IWM Friends.

Wing Commander Guy Gibson pictured sitting in a poppy field reading a book, 22 July 1943.

Visit: RAF Scampton 26 March, 2pm RAF Scampton, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, LN1 2ST A tour of RAF Scampton, once the home of the 617 ‘Dambusters’ Squadron, including a visit to the RAF Scampton Heritage Centre.

IWM Friends: £10; guests: £12 Visit: North Weald Airfield and Museum Date TBC Ad Astra House, 6 Hurricane Way, North Weald, Essex, CM16 6AA A visit to the North Weald Museum which commemorates those who served at the former RAF North Weald from the First World War onwards, followed by a minibus tour of the airfield.

IWM Friends: £10; guests: £12, includes tea and coffee on arrival.

Walk: Piccadilly Circus to Parliament Square 3 April, 2pm Meet at the statue of Eros, Piccadilly Square, London.

Blue Badge Guide Mike Armitage leads a Second World War themed tour which will include: the site of where the planning for D-Day took place; the Carlton Club, bombed in the Blitz; Charles de Gaulle’s headquarters; the old German Embassy; and the Churchill War Rooms.

IWM Friends: £15; guests: £17

Visit: Orford Ness 10 April, 1.30pm Meet at the Quay, Quay Street, Orford, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 2NU A guided tour, on a ‘trailer bus’ of Orford Ness, a site formerly administered by the Ministry of Defence, which conducted secret military tests during both world wars and the Cold War. IWM Friends: £25; guests: £28 IWM Friends Battlefield Tour The Western Front 100 Years On 9-12 May Coach departs from IWM London Professor Gary Sheffield leads a battlefield tour, organised by The Cultural Experience, of France and Belgium covering Ypres, Passchendaele and the 1915 battles, the Somme, and the Kaiserschlacht and the Hundred Days. For further details please see page 6.

IWM Friends and guests: £660, includes all travel and accommodation and breakfast and dinner each day Visit: Duxford in the First World War 10 May, 2pm A guided tour of IWM Duxford focusing on its history in the First World War. IWM Friends: £8; guests: £10, includes tea and coffee.

Visit: Bletchley Park 15 May, 11.30am A guided tour of Bletchley Park focusing on the vital role it played in the Second World War. IWM Friends: £27; guests: £30 Talk: The Lost World of Bletchley Park 17 May, 2pm Sinclair McKay, author of the bestselling The Secret Life of Bletchley Park, takes a closer look at the history of the wartime codebreaking centre and the men and women who worked there.

IWM Friends: £8, guests: £10, includes tea and coffee.

Colonel’s Review 7 June, 10am Horseguards, Whitehall, London The parade does not start until 11am, but it is essential for security reasons to be there by 10am.

IWM Friends: £15; guests: £17 Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 47

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WHAT’S ON

November 2013 to May 2014

For further information visit www.iwm.org.uk

LONDON Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ 020 7416 5000 Open daily 10am–6pm (except 24, 25 26 December) To buy tickets for charging exhibitions and events visit the website or call 020 7416 5439.

Friends receive free, unlimited entry to all charging exhibitions.

Please note: IWM London is only partially re-open and will not reopen fully until summer 2014.

EXHIBITIONS Horrible Histories®: Spies Until January 2015 A family exhibition focusing on Second World War spies and spycraft.

Tickets: Friends: Free; Adult: £5.50; Concession: £3.95; Child: £2.95 A Family in Wartime The story of the Allpress family in the Second World War – looking at both their lives at home and in the wider world at war, from the London Blitz to D-Day. IWM Contemporary: Mike Moore and Lee Craker Until 5 January 2014 Mike Moore and Lee Craker’s photographs present perspectives on Iraq from 1991–2011.

Donovan Wylie: Vision as Power Until 21 April 2014 A exhibition of the Magnum photographer Donovan Wylie, renowned for his interrogation of the impact of modern military architecture on the landscape.

48 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

War Story: Supplying Frontline Afghanistan Until 27 April 2014 The stories of the men and women who supply, support and maintain front line troops in Afghanistan.

Architecture of War To 5 May 2014 Bringing together a range of highlights from IWM’s art collection, Architecture of War presents artists’ responses to the impact of warfare on our surrounding landscape and environments.

EVENTS Talk: Alternative Realities: Iraq and other conflicts 23 November 2013, 2.30pm To coincide with our two latest photography exhibitions – IWM Contemporary: Mike Moore and Lee Craker, and Donovan Wylie: Vision as Power – curators Hilary Roberts and Kathleen Palmer will lead a discussion with all three photographers exploring the blurring of the boundaries between documentary photography and art.

Tickets: Adults: £7; IWM Friends and Concessions: £5.

A Wartime Christmas 20–23 and 27–31 December 2013, 11am to 4pm Visit the Family in Wartime exhibition and find out how children celebrated Christmas in the Second World War. Free, drop-in event Introduction to the Holocaust 25 and 26 January 2014, at 11.30am and 2.30pm An event in which families with children aged 11 and above can reflect on the major themes of the Holocaust, including identity, loss and remembrance, through replica objects, discussion and the use of archive photographs.

Papers Please!

15–22 February 2014, 11.00am– 12.30pm and 2pm–4pm In this craft activity children can create a spy character and learn about work carried out by forgers during wartime.

CHURCHILL WAR ROOMS

HMS BELFAST

Clive Steps, King Charles Street, London SW1A 2AQ 020 7930 6961 Open daily (except 24, 25, 26 December) 9.30am–6pm Admission: Friends: free; Adult: £17; Over 60: £13.60; Children under 16: free To book tickets for events please visit: www.iwm.org.uk

Morgan’s Lane, Tooley Street, London SE1 2JH 020 7940 6300 Open daily (except 24, 25, 26 December) 10am–6pm (1 March to 31 October), 10.00am–5.00pm (1 November to 28 February) Admission: Friends: free; Adult: £14.50; Over 60: £11.60; Children under 16: free

EXHIBITIONS Undercover – Life in Churchill’s Bunker Until 31 December 2013 First-hand accounts of those who worked in the Cabinet War Rooms during the Second World War. Churchill War Rooms Late 14 February 2014, 7pm-9pm (Doors open at 6.30pm) A Valentine’s Day themed evening event offering visitors an opportunity to enjoy drinks and entertainment in what was once the home of the War Cabinet during the Second World War. Tickets must be booked in advance.

Churchill Lecture Series A new series of evening lectures for spring 2014 will be announced in later in the year; please visit our website for further details.

EXHIBITIONS Gun Turret Experience Immerse yourself in the new Gun Turret Experience, a chance to see what fighting at sea would have really been like.

The Operations Room The Operations Room’s rotating radar screens have been recreated for the first time since the ship was operational, giving a sense of the movement and urgency of the room.

EVENTS History in Your Hands 16 and 17 November 2013, 11am and 2pm 18 and 19 January 2014, 11am and 2pm Discover the hidden stories about HMS Belfast and the lives of the men who lived and worked on board.

Codes and Signalling 15–22 February 2014 Learn about signalling in the navy and participate in sending and decoding messages.

Slang at Sea 8 and 9 March 2014 An exploration of navy slang and the origin of popular phrases that link life at sea with British history and culture.

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DUXFORD Cambridgeshire, CB2 4QR 01223 835 000 Open daily (except 24, 25, 26 December) 10am–6pm Admission: Friends: free; Adult: £17.50; Concession: £14.00; Children under 16: free Tickets for the events listed below can be purchased online at www.iwm.org.uk or by calling the box office on 01223 499 353 EXHIBITIONS: Somewhere in England: Portraits of Americans in Britain 1942-45 Until 31 December 2013 Highlights of the Roger Freeman collection of photographs of the US Army Air Forces during the Second World War. EVENTS: Special Interest Day: The First World War Uncovered Saturday 23 November 2013, Commencing at 10.30am An event examining different aspects of the Great War with three authoritative speakers: Dr Geoff Haines will look at the career of Captain W E Johns, the author of the Biggles series of books; Jonathan Krause will discuss early trench tactics in the French Army; and Neil Story will give advice on how to identify the roles of family members in First World War photographs.

Tickets: IWM Friend: £9.90; Adult: £21.50; Child: £9.90; Senior: £16.40; Student: £13.20; UB40: £13.20; Disabled: £13.20; Carer: £9.90

NORTH The Quays, Trafford Wharf Road, Trafford Park, Manchester M17 1TZ 0161 836 4000 Open daily (except 24, 25, 26 December), 10am–6pm (1 March to 31 October), 10am–5pm (1 November to 28 February) To book tickets for family events please contact learningnorth @iwm.org.uk or 0161 836 4000 Admission free EXHIBITIONS Catalyst: Contemporary Art from IWM’s Collection Until 23 February 2014 This major new exhibition of contemporary art will explore artistic attitudes to conflict from the First Gulf War to the present day.

A Star Shall Stride by Chava Rosenzweig Until 5 January 2014 An installation by Manchester ceramic artist Chava Rosenzweig – the latest in IWM North’s Reactions series where artists are invited to display work showing how war shapes lives.

Iraq: Photographs

by Sean Smith Until 2 February 2014 To mark the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, IWM North launches a new photographic display by award-winning Guardian photographer Sean Smith.

EVENTS A Closer Look: Contemporary Art and War Daily between 12 and 30 November 2013 at 3.30pm Discover what motivates artists like Langlands and Bell, Annabel Dover and Steve McQueen to

create art about conflict, and explore the ways in which art can prompt us to think more deeply about current events.

Trench Rat Craft 16, 17, 23, and 24 November 2013 11am–12.30pm and 2–3.30pm Learn more about rats on the frontline and model a rat hero or rat villain in squidgy salt dough.

Oskar’s Journey Across the Berlin Wall 17 and 23 November 2013, 1.30pm Meet our cat puppet character Oskar and discover his tale of adventure on a journey across a divided city, as he seeks out a friend on the other side of the Berlin Wall.

Exhibitions featuring loans from IWM’s Collections The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Kent ME4 4TE 01634 823800 www.thedockyard.co.uk From Shore to Sea: Paintings by Sir John Lavery RA, 1914-18 Until 1 December 2013 By the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 Lavery was already established as a very fashionable and successful portrait painter.

This exhibition looks at his paintings of naval bases around Britain during the Great War. V&A Museum of Childhood Cambridge Heath Road London E2 9PA; 020 8983 5200 www.museumofchildhood.org.uk War Games Until 2 March 2014 Exploring the relationship between conflict and children’s play and providing an insight into the ways toys have been influenced by warfare from 1800 to the present day.

National Army Museum Royal Hospital Road, London SW3 4HT; 020 7881 6606 www.nam.ac.uk Unseen Enemy Until 31 March 2014 The story of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in recent conflicts, focusing on the British Army’s experience in Afghanistan.

Somerset House Strand, London WC2R 1LA 020 7845 4600 www.somersethouse.org.uk Stanley Spencer: Heaven in a Hell of War Until 26 January 2014 A display of Stanley Spencer’s poignant paintings of war from the Sandham Memorial Chapel.

Penlee House Gallery and Museum Morrab Road, Penzance, Cornwall TR18 4HE; 01736 363625 www.penleehouse.org.uk From Darkness into Light – Graham Sutherland: Mining, Metal and Machines Until 23 November 2013 The first ever chance to see pictures the celebrated artist Graham Sutherland produced at Geevor Tin Mine more than 70 years ago, in his role as an Official War Artist.

National Portrait Gallery St Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE 020 7306 055 www.npg.org.uk The Great War in Portraits 27 February–15 June 2014 An exhibition examining the radically different roles, experiences and ultimately destinies of those caught up in the First World War.

Winter 2013 Despatches ■ 49

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AND FINALLY

Metaphors of war Sir Jonathan Evans, former Director-General of the Security Service (MI5), remembers a First World War exhibit that captured the horror of the trenches.

Leather glove, shrunken by gas exposure.

50 ■ Despatches Winter 2013

Service – the Cold War, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the so-called ‘War on Terror’ – and most recently the focus on cyber threats, including cyber warfare.

How the war metaphor has been applied to each is illuminating.

The Cold War was an intense and extended conflict but infinitely preferable to a hot war involving thermonuclear weapons. Espionage, information operations and mutual deterrence absorbed enormous energy and resources, and real proxy wars sprang from it, but the Cold War paradigm managed to maintain a degree of global stability until the underlying conflict dissolved along with the credibility of the communist ideology that had so manifestly failed.

Whether the Troubles in Northern IWM EPH 4377

The Imperial War Museum was part of my childhood. In those days the museum concentrated on uniforms, war-fighting and military equipment. I can still remember the impression made on me by one exhibit, a First World War officer’s leather glove that had been shrunk by exposure to gas. Although it is over forty years since I saw it I can still picture it clearly in my mind. It captured the horror of the trenches in an immediate and personal way. Whose glove was it? And if gas could do that to a leather glove, what did it do to the person wearing it? There is a contemporary resonance with recent events in Syria.

Metaphors of war have been a theme in the conflicts that I worked on in the course of my 33 year career in the Security

Ireland, as they were coyly named, were a war or not was a serious bone of contention. The Republicans wanted to be seen to be engaged in a war; after all they had an ‘Army’ and the hunger strikers in The Maze died in the pursuit of political status. But the British government refused to accept that this was a war and instead placed law enforcement strategies at the heart of its response to the violence. The police took the lead, albeit with ‘Military Aid to the Civil Power’ from the armed forces and with strong support from the intelligence agencies. Although the security situation in Northern Ireland is still not where we would want it to be, the government’s twin track approach of law enforcement and political negotiation has paid dividends.

The phrase ‘Global War on Terror’ – inelegantly shortened to GWOT (pronounced jee-wot) – following the September 11 attacks was assumed initially by most British observers to have been coined by the US authorities as a propaganda term, rather than a legal description. It took a little while for the British to realise that in American eyes this really was a war and was to be fought in that legal context. Some of the consequences of that decision were highly counterproductive, though this country has reason to be grateful to the USA for its success in containing and reducing the al-Qaida threat. As the political climate has changed, GWOT as a phrase has fallen out of fashion again, though the underlying conflict between the West and al-Qaida and its adherents continues.

And today, as cyber threats are multiplying, the prospect of cyber warfare, either on its own or as an additional dimension to traditional warfare, has become part of the language. Defence doctrine is catching up with the cyber world as are the leaders of those multinational corporations that are equally at risk as a result of their extensive and complex IT infrastructures.

Imperial War Museums today take a much wider perspective on war than when I used to come to Lambeth as a child, as the excellent exhibitions Secret War and Horrible Histories: Spies show. It will be fascinating to see what artefacts can be found that demonstrate for future generations the human dimension of these forms of warfare as vividly as that shrivelled leather glove did for me.

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