Jambusters

by Julie Summers

  That’s the spirit for Christmas 1939. We might be expected to black out our windows and doors but not our heart, intelligence or hospitality. The season of plenty must, like a well run WI, make a little go a long way. The festival, in fact, must tie its Christmas sash a little tighter. And be thankful that our Government doesn’t tell us to wear imitation wool and make our tea of blackberries, as Dr Goebbels was recommending the Germans to do the other day. Poor old Germans! Once the best Christmas keepers of all.10

  The British government had indeed spoken about Christmas, suggesting that ‘reasonable expenditure on Christmas festivities will help trade and lessen unemployment’. There were still plenty of toys in the shops that year. Toy soldiers and models of the Maginot Line were hot favourites among the little boys. Parents and children were all keen to keep the spirit of Christmas going and when the calculations were made the economic figures showed that spending was up on the previous Christmas by 10 per cent.

  Goostrey in Cheshire had initially planned to have their party from 6 to 10 p.m. but at their November meeting they decided to run with their usual format after all and to start at 7.30 p.m. and go on until midnight. And there would be dancing. The Christmas party was a great success, allowing the secretary to note in the end-of-year minutes: ‘all felt that the WI was carrying on in a splendid way in spite of the difficult times’. Barthomley, just down the road, decided not to hold their Christmas party and ‘Members resolved instead to give a party to the children, both Barthomley children and the evacuees in the village’. Lindsey WI in Suffolk was one of hundreds of WIs who decided to have a village-wide Christmas celebration. It started at noon at the institute hall with a meal for a hundred children. After lunch there was a grand procession to the school led by Father Christmas and followed by a jazz band of small village boys. The under-fives rode in decorated handcarts or pranced behind the procession on hobbyhorses, the whole scene was made yet more magical by the light snow that fell during the walk to the school. After games, carols and the lighting of the Christmas tree the party went home to tea, each with a little bag of goodies. Ashover in Derbyshire had so many children to entertain that they had to hold a series of parties in order to be able to accommodate them all.

  The following year things were completely different for large swathes of the country and most especially in the cities. The Blitz was at its height and some 40 per cent of the population spent the majority of their nights in shelters. Christmas 1940 was ‘under fire’. Parties, though still held, were often disrupted. Radley WI decided in December 1940 that it was not possible to put on a Nativity Play since ‘it had been considered inadvisable to undertake anything that would bring children out at night or assemble them in one place in considerable numbers’. A New Year’s Party held in January 1941 in Audlem was not unusual: ‘The Party had just got livened up when our unwelcome visitors were heard overhead after which the lights went out and we were left high and dry. Anyway we managed to have something to eat and drink in candle light and then all had to leave to report on various ARP duties.’11 Barrow WI had a Christmas meeting when they invited guests, including children, to join them. Caroline Dickinson said:

  I remember those Christmas meetings. The women were all dressed in slightly tight dresses and the hall was decorated. There were dances held to raise money as well as monthly whist drives. The war years were not unhappy times for us children but I think they must have been very difficult for women like my mother. So much was expected of them and many of them had husbands away from home so that in addition to all the extra work they also had to look after all aspects of the household, even things that previously would have been done by men.

  The fact that so many women had been members since the First World War meant that they had a great understanding of the suffering of those who were being damaged by this current conflict, whether at home or abroad. ‘Women who were grown up in the last war remember, as hardest to bear, the thought that young lives were being paid for their safety. Young men are defending us now, in a manner beyond praise. But this time we have the honour of sharing a little of the danger.’12 The Second World War had a much bigger direct impact on the civilian population than the Great War. Out of the 752,091 British deaths attributed to the 1914–18 war only about 1 per cent were civilian – some 8,000 casualties. The number of civilian casualties in the Second World War was far higher – about 20 per cent of all deaths, or 63,655 out of a total of 334,342. Like Mrs Milburn and Edith Jones, many of the women living in the rural communities had sons or husbands in the forces. Some were prisoners of war, others were missing and more still fighting in far-off countries. The constant stream of letters to and from family members provided a welcome link but also a constant reminder of the pain of separation. The King broadcast a message on Christmas Day 1944 in which he acknowledged this, saying that the separation of families was one of the great trials of the current war. ‘Indeed it is. No one can imagine what it means until they have experienced it,’ wrote Mrs Milburn that night.

  The war was never far from people’s minds and despite it usually being referred to as ‘this difficult time’ it does occasionally find a way into record books. On 15 July 1941, Mrs Dainty in Oxfordshire was warmly congratulated on her son being awarded the Military Medal. At that meeting the WI had enjoyed ‘a delicious repast of fruit shortcake & coffee with real sugar’. At other times the news received was of tragedy, husbands, brothers, sons of members. And then there was the general loss in the Blitz and other aerial attacks that killed, wounded and rendered people homeless. In almost every edition of Home & Country from late 1940 there were tales of bombed-out families being rehoused in villages, of collections for specific areas of London, Coventry, Bristol to give people the most basic of materials. Warwickshire ‘rolled up its sleeves in earnest this morning after the bombing of Coventry’, wrote the county secretary to Miss Farrer. ‘Thousands of refugees slept at the WVS Rest Centre, and WI members who have been on duty all night served early breakfasts to men going to work, and women returning to ruined houses in the hope of salvaging their belongings.’ Mrs Milburn lived just a few miles from Coventry and her diary is full of stories from the air raids on the city and the terrible destruction and loss of life. ‘Poor, poor Coventry! The attack is described on the wireless as “a vicious attack against an open town comparable to one of the worst raids on London, and the damage is very considerable”. The casualties are in the neighbourhood of a thousand, and the beautiful fourteenth-century cathedral is destroyed. I feel numb with the pain of it all . . . the loss of life and the injuries make one’s heart ache.’ Her institute catered for refugees from the city and she had people staying at Burleigh. ‘They just want bed,’ she wrote after she had shown a couple up to Alan’s bedroom.13

  The city came under attack again, the following spring. On 28 May she wrote:

  The morning sped swiftly away and at the WI this afternoon we were glad to welcome evacuees, three of whom had been injured in air raids. One young woman, a native of Coventry, rode here on a bicycle with plaster cases on her legs! Her husband was killed in the raid on Coventry. He was on duty that night but looked in for a moment to see how his wife was getting on in their shelter. When a direct hit was made there, he threw himself upon his wife and saved her life, but lost his own. Poor girl, she does not want to go back to the house again. It is too full of memories.14

  A personal tragedy struck her family when she heard that her nephew, Colin, had been badly injured in an air raid on London and had to have his foot amputated. His wife Peggy had been killed. That evening Mrs Milburn was meant to be playing the lead part in her WI’s sketch, which she and others had written and rehearsed over the last four months. During the afternoon she worked in the garden, sowing seeds and digging: ‘one just had to be doing,’ she wrote in her diary that night.

  Then the evening came and I went across and did my part with the ‘properties’ for the entertainment and stood at the end as ‘Britannia’ with a very sad h
eart. But it is best to go on, with whatever is one’s job at the moment . . . The young go and we old ones are left. They seem the ones so fitted to build a better world after this madness is over. Peggy, so capable and so sane, killed by this ruthless enemy. And what of Colin? If only we could hear more.15

  Mrs Blewitt’s family suffered several bitter tragedies. Her nephew, Bill Blewitt, was killed over Tunisia in January 1943. He was in the Parachute Regiment. Fourteen months earlier another Blewitt nephew had been killed: Richard Budworth died in North Africa and was commemorated on the Alamein memorial. His remains were never found and his mother, Helen, was completely broken by his death. She had lost her husband, Major General Budworth, in 1921 in the First World War and his body too had not been found. Mrs Blewitt was deeply touched by both the deaths. And then, in 1944, came the closest tragedy. Her sister Kitty’s only child was killed in Burma. The war took its final toll on the Blewitt family when Johnnie Fenwick, another cousin, was killed in France. Every time a death was announced her concern for her own son, James, grew stronger, but he was fortunate to survive the war and she was spared the horror of losing her only son.

  These were personal tragedies and individual families bore the pain. One event over all others united the Women’s Institute in collective grief in January 1940 and that was the announcement of the death of their vice-chairman, Miss Hadow, after a brief attack of pneumonia. She was only sixty-five and the news came as a terrible blow to everyone. Lady Denman wrote: ‘How ever shall we do without her? – not only her great ability, but her absolute unselfishness, her cool judgement, her cheerful confidence, her complete integrity, her warm understanding of and sympathy with the weakness of others, her oratory and her wit: qualities which made a combination we cannot hope to find again. The loss to the Institute movement is irreparable, as is the personal one to her friends and colleagues.’16 A member of her own institute of Quarry in Oxford, which met the night she died, said simply: ‘worse than the war’. One of many stories that abounded about her after her death was that of a day in Oxford when she, as the newly appointed Principal of the Society of Oxford Home Students, was invited to take part in commemoration events. She was seen dressed up in her smart grey dress and shoes ‘with her academic hood, the trickiest part of her costume, already pinned on, gardening zealously to the last’.17 She felt it summed up Miss Hadow perfectly: the academic with the countrywoman’s touch. The WI set up a holiday fund in her memory and asked institutes to contribute to it. Several sent in the profits from their jam-making work while others made special collections and the amount of money raised reflected the very great affection members felt for this remarkable woman.

  One effect of the war was the strong sense of camaraderie that it created. A WI member wrote that the local ARP had celebrated its 100th air-raid warning. ‘Later, after the “all clear”, in the strange stillness that follows the noise of battle, we agreed that there are things about the war that we shall miss in the peace. Beautiful things – searchlights, weaving those flat, milky patterns across the sky; balloons, like bubbles rising out of our seething cauldron; the amazing loveliness of stars and dawn, that for years we have slept too soundly to think about at all.’18 She went on: ‘We should miss, indeed, if we lost them now, the general friendliness, the humour and courage, common sense and imagination, that break out in such unexpected places. Most of all we should miss what the Prime Minister calls the feeling that “we all stand in together”.’19

  That sense of standing together was celebrated at every meeting when the women stood to sing ‘Jerusalem’ and closed with the National Anthem. This routine seldom changed, except for special occasions or events. In November 1942 the Audlem minutes’ secretary recorded: ‘As this week the news had been broadcast that the Eighth Army in Egypt had won a great victory against the German and Italian forces, Mrs Williams suggested we opened the meeting with the National Anthem.’

  Mobberley WI in Cheshire, founded in 1928, prided itself on working hard to ensure the highest quality in everything they did. During the 1930s they engaged a conductor to help them sing ‘Jerusalem’, as members had decided it was badly sung. ‘This must have done the trick for in 1937 the visiting VCO, Miss Forbes, in her Organisers Report writes: “I have never heard ‘Jerusalem’ sung with better rhythm and spirit; it gave the key-note for the whole meeting which was excellent in every way.”’20

  Music has always played a major role in WI life, from community singing at social half-hours to performances at national events by WI choirs. In 1940 six musicians were appointed by Sir Walford Davies ‘to inspire and organise musical activities among civilians in rural areas’. The scheme was originally funded by the Pilgrim Trust. It was later taken over by the newly formed Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, which was the forerunner of the Arts Council of Great Britain. One of the six musicians was the composer Imogen Holst, who had returned from Switzerland at the outbreak of war. In February 1942 she attended Oxfordshire’s annual general meeting in Oxford and the minutes read: ‘Miss Imogen Holst conducted community singing and practised members in singing “Jerusalem”. This was her farewell visit, a spray of Christmas roses and other winter flowers was given to her as a token of affectionate appreciation and gratitude for her music and her help given in the County.’21

  Oxfordshire also supported a school for conductors, specially designed to encourage village choirs. The school was taught by Sir Adrian Boult, and Mrs Woods, a Headington WI member, recalled her own experience of it:

  His demonstrations in handling the baton to give clear and well-timed directions are unforgettable. Sir Adrian Boult has recently written of the Deneke Sisters, both of whom were members of our Headington WI that they were ‘a great beacon in Oxford Music’. The beacon spread its light far into Oxfordshire villages through Helena Deneke’s devoted and untiring work during the long years of her secretaryship of the OFWI. Of Margaret Deneke Sir Adrian writes: ‘that one could not meet her without sensing the great power of character and musicianship which was poured out for others, and for so many others’.22

  Her most poignant memory, however, was of the WI choir of Charlton on Otmoor singing ‘Jerusalem’ unaccompanied. ‘The singing was delicate but assured – it stays in the mind like the fragrance of wild flowers. Too often we have heard Parry’s beautiful but difficult piano part played on a bad piano – why do we not more often sing unaccompanied?’

  Surrey County Federation had an exceptionally successful music festival in 1943 when 200 members met at Guildford Technical College to sing under the direction of Ralph Vaughan Williams. They rehearsed for two and a half hours before giving their performance. One member wrote about how much she had enjoyed singing under his guidance and that she lost herself in the beauty of the music and being part of something that was bigger than herself. ‘We learn from this to find our true selves in others – and here music can help.’23

  Bradfield WI had elected to hold its meetings in the afternoons rather than the evenings during the war. They lost their meeting place, the Connop Room, in early 1941 so met in the president’s house, Horseleas. As Mrs Sims was keen to attend the WI meetings she had no option but to allow her two children, Ann and John, to come to the house after school to meet her. Ann said: ‘I remember cycling down to WI meetings. I must have been about six or seven. We used to be allowed to sit in the back of the room as long as we were mousey quiet. I suppose we used to arrive in time for the social half-hour because my main memory is of music and the drama. Some of what they put on was excellent and of a high standard.’

  A particular success that Ann remembered, and Mrs Ward wrote in the record ‘how greatly did we enjoy it’, was the dress rehearsal for two scenes from Pride and Prejudice which were to be performed at the county drama competition in 1943. ‘Mrs Bennett was played by Mrs Bird and Elizabeth by Mrs Clarke. She was an evacuee from London, young and very pretty. She brought a great deal to Bradfield WI including her talent for acting. We missed her sorely w
hen she went back home.’ Mrs Clarke rented a house in Bradfield for the whole of the war and became a liked and respected member of the community. ‘Mr Collins was played by Mrs Reeves. She always got the man’s role because she had an Eton crop and could carry it off with great success. She was a real stalwart of our WI. She was keen on bell ringing and she rode around the village on a bicycle. She was one of many great characters in the institute. When the younger postmen were conscripted she took over as postwoman.’