November the month of All Souls' Day Nov. 2 '24
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After some Haiku and an explanatory note, there
will be a resume of Ships JS served on as a Wren.
This Portfolio has been designed for laptops +.
Always read to scroll bottom for Copyrights.
St Paul's Revenant for Sofia post Eucharist Nov 8
Graeco-Byzantine
as at Monreale, glitter Sicily Apse 1174 A.D.+
Norman Roman. Cathedral
Arrest Starmer for The Guardian dicta by Joan
Why no Storm Shadow
long-range missile for Kyiv ?
The Serjeant At Arms
School Invention Heidelberg mid 1850s
An old Germany
crafted The Bunsen Burner.
What were they thinking ? for Wolfgang Munchdu
November 9th
The Last Post Requiem by Gabriel Faure
Heard in a Hampstead At-St-John
Church, shattering clear, again ;
and for the first time. trumpeter Robert Vanryne
the silence went into infinity
Joan Question for The Home Secretary
What did the Moslem
here do, during World War 11 ?
yet still they waddle.
raus raus the enemy within
Sunday November 10th
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In late December 1939, my Rhodesian-born Grandmother Molly,
with her four daughters, boarded the fast Union-Castle Line mail
service R.M.M.V. "Athlone Castle" at Cape Town for the two week
voyage to Southampton to join Ralph, already in England. On New
Year's Eve, the Orchestra would play a Program of Music. Turned
into a troop ship in 1940, the Passenger Liner would survive War.
Molly, Lora Mary Bradford initially, born in 1898 in what was then
Fort Salisbury, came from a Church Family that left Clyffe Pypard,
in Wiltshire, for Rhodesia, to convert. Molly was terrified of being
torpedoed, though travelling First Class. An old English Governess
slept on a lower deck, easy to lose, if not downright disposable. A
Bonham Carter was on the passenger manifest. The Dining Room
Cuisine was superbia...why ? My sister Jane has the Menu card.
War with Germany had been declared on September 3rd, 1939.
My Grand Father Ralph, a descendant of one Peter de Stock, of
Caen, Normandy, took the first available "Empire Flying Boat"
for the Imperial Airways flight from Durban Water, to England.
Since 1934 Short Brothers, of Rochester, Kent had been making
28 Imperial Flying Boats for a unique Air Mail Service. They
could carry 24 passengers ; each one had a Bar. The top speed
was 200 mph. There was a welcome Observation Deck...good
for admiring Lake Victoria, the waters of Alexandria, Athens.
In June 1937, the Cassiopeia began loading the 1st Empire Air
Mail Service, bound at first for Gibraltar, then maybe Malta.
The Short Empire, our medium-range, four-engined monoplane
flying boat : in fact, 42 were built. It evolved into the Short S.25
Sunderland flying boat patrol bomber ; starting 1938, into 1946,
749 were made. Able to sink U-Boats, it flew key in The Battle
Of The Atlantic, in which Joan was to enact an important part
but not until 1942. Risking sailing for London, she but eighteen.
In September 1939, Ralph was flying from Durban for an urgent
meeting at The War Office in London with General (Sir) Edmund
Ironside, Chief of The Imperial General Staff (1939 - 1940) with
whom Ralph had fought with, or under, in The Second Boer War,
and at Archangel, Russia (1918 - 1919) to bear on The Bolshevik
Revolution. Too little, too late. Ironside said to Ralph : you are late
as he, fatigued, knocked into his Office, up from Victoria Station.
The content of their meeting, still redacted ; but one can surmise.
For 1937 - 1938, RSG Stokes had been President of The Southern
African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy ; and today they sport
The Brigadier Stokes Memorial Award flagged on the home page.
Did they adjourn, but later, to The Savile Club in Brook Street ?
I have in my possession the printed Journal of The Savile Club
(1868 - 1923) gold embossed R.S.G STOKES on the book cover.
In 1917, one William Butler Yeats became an Elected Member ;
though Ralph favoured the work of Rudyard Kipling, singularly
If. In 1918, STOKES, Ralph Shelton Griffin, D.S.O, O.B.E, M.C.
was Elected. (His father had brought William Blake to Oxford).
In 1971, staying at Highfield, Dorset, Ralph told me he admired
the work of Ernest Hemingway, and particularly The Grapes of
Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939). He had no time for T.S. Eliot ;
and regarded daffodils as very boring for subject. His bete noire
was Bertrand Russell (he ought to be shot) and the CND Protest.
I heard Molly and Ralph would read Henry James to one another.
Did Yeats and Ralph have brandies together at The Savile Club ?
The centre cannot hold When will we get to Liverpool ? In due
course. Turning back to Joan, she had been schooled at Roedean
(South Africa) and then Heathfield, Ascot. In her Oxford School
Examinations, there she gained three x A1 Grades : in Art (Life),
History and Shakespeare. On July 28th 1939, she went to Tilbury
Essex to board the Union-Castle Line "Pretoria Castle", to holiday
in Natal Province, and the glittering seaboard on Durban, arriving
to South Africa on August 14th. Heathfield wrote, to re-open early,
but she did not return, nor did a Polish aristocrat, never to be seen,
or be heard of, again. The Walzer of Chopin would make Joan cry...
In January 1940, Joan enrolled at The Grosvenor School of Art,
run by the Scottish wood engraver Iain Macnab, in Pimlico ; she
went to live at 30 Parkside, Knightsbridge. Claude Flight taught
Die Brucke lino-cutting, as found at Marlborough ; Frank Rutter
taught a course "From Cezanne to Picasso". That year, the School
merged with the Heatherley School of Fine Art, off Baker Street,
to the north of the Thames. Joan's art blossomed forty years later.
As Joan studied and painted, Ralph was back in uniform again,
re-badged as a Brigadier in The Royal Engineers. After time in
the build-up in France, he had been posted to Norway, to battle
for Narvik in April 1940 on, I believe, The Cruiser Squadron.
This, subject to screaming nerve-racking dive bombing by Ju
87 Stukas. Ralph would say to Joan (as she, later, told me) that :
being dive-bombed at Narvik was the worst experience of his life.
The Stukas had driven British Sea Power from the Norwegian
coast by May 1st. We lost Hurricane fighter planes ; had to sail.
Ralph, who barely survived the terror, was re-posted, to France.
On May 10th, Germany invaded, avoiding The Maginot Line...
by May 26th, the defeated were at Dunkirk, ending on June 4th.
France signed an armistice on June 22nd, in a railway carriage,
leaving Vichy France and The French Empire unoccupied. Did
Joan think of Kimberley, where she was born, due to mining ?
Her father, who she adored, had been Superintendent of Mines
(1920-1928) for De Beers. Bizarrely, some of the soldiers back
from France were packed onto London-bound commuter trains ;
not a few of the bowler-hatted, due up in The City, spat on them.
General Haig, a friend of Ralph, in preparing to blow The Ridge
at Messines, with nineteen mines, when Controller of Mines for
The First Army, became pioneer in a form of Blitzkreig. He had
unique British heavy Tanks at his disposal : yet in 1940, the lead
German Panzers were radio-linked to Command, and Stuka dive
bombers. France had no front line to HQ radio linkage, for static
warfare, only dispatch riders with orders on many clogged roads.
France had no flying columns, despite De Gaulle, unlike Paget's
Horse (1901-1902) in which Ralph rode, in The Anglo-Boer War
in the western Transvaal. In 1971, Ralph told me he had survived
in his elite unit, by exchanging due brandy ration for marmalade.
Was Ralph hinting that I drank too much ? and this, not yet true.
I must drink more marmalade. On June 17th, 1940, Joan dusked
out of an evening, to The London Palladium. Those Prusso-Nazi
Ju bombers had yet to appear. Joan, worried, listened to Variety.
She kept her programme for the evening ; read, noted that Jack
Barclay, of Hanover Square, were engaged in proffering Bentley
and Rolls Royce motor cars, as The finest investment today. At
Debenham & Freebody, in Wigmore Street, there hung jaunty
designs, and Gay Lingerie, which had a nautical air, but no pix.
Did the evoking grant Joan a clue for her deep wartime future ?
The Battle of Britain began in July. What did they leave behind,
in Johannesburg ? They, not of The Happy Valley Set in Kenya
which Ralph, like Churchill, would have had executed for fear
of fighting. He protested them, long after the war was over, but
he preferred a fine Claret, to whiskey on the rocks, or Bourbon.
Was he, like General Monty Montgomery, once photographed
near my father, in North African desert, too much the martinet ?
In 1940, Johannesburg media sang honey-euphoric. Verbatim :
There is no happier sound in the world, or one that goes straight
to heaven, than the sound of childish laughter. "Highfield", home
of Brig-General R.S.G Stokes and Mrs Stokes, in Jubilee Road,
has echoed with the merriment of boys and girls, some of South
Africa's guest-children from England, since they arrived there on
Friday, (to) a permanent emergency home for the guest-children..
set in lovely grounds. (It) has all the mellow graciousness of old
houses, with plenty of sun and light. The verandhas are used for
games...Yesterday, the oaken panelled hall was filled with merry
voices, tread of many feet. Glorious roses filled one large bowl,
and deep purple and yellow irises, others. The gramophone was
playing gay tunes. Thus hymned the inspecting Journalist. Joan
told me they typically kept seventeen local staff, most of whom
slept bare in hammocks, and they lived on a diet of mielie maize.
How many they retained, after they had 'made over' "Highfield"
I do not know. They had not had trouble with a rebel houseboy.
The grounds rural, with ponds, were significant. One is minded,
here, of lines in Burnt Norton 1 (1934) from the Four Quartets.
(Am I able to digress ? Eliot's prior transformative, and without
parallel, oeuvre was Ash Wednesday (1928-1930) and no doubt
Ralph would have seen a going from the bones of war, to Molly
in (arguably) the superbia, and the most open, text ever written.
At first, a Confession, at Saint Silas the Martyr, Kentish Town.
After 1927, the secretive Eliot 'went on retreat' there. In 1930..)
We know for a certainty that, at least from 1930, Eliot had his
'regular confession' heard at St Silas by the new Vicar, to 1963,
one Father Frank Lacy Hillier, in the dark Confessional booth,
most probably at 6.30 pm of a Saturday, fraught off the 24 bus.
With Norway, Denmark, Holland, post Liege Belgium and, ex
Sedan France, again, fallen, The Battle of Britain began on July
the 10th, lasting unto October 31st. Joan went to stay at Denham
Place, at Denham, not far from Bentley Priory, the Dutch aspect
classic of Lord and Lady Vansittart, until the end of the summer.
They were friends of the family, particularly Ralph. Now Grade
1 listed, the house built 1688-1701 ; architect, William Stanton.
There are 'dormer' window, and a hipped roof. A southern-facing
paving, with statuary, points to garden and a lake ; can mind one
of an early scene in The Leopard (1963). I was refused admission.
Record claims there were dog fights above Denham : why, there ?
Did Joan watch for vapour trails high up, at her Earl Grey tea, see,
lower, the supreme beauty of the Spitfire ? with Robert Vanstittart,
of a doomy summer afternoon, the RAF running short of aircraft.
Famous photograph : A View Of The Library At Denham, pre-war
though less seen than one taken during The Blitz, in the tragedy
of Holland (Park) House. Abandoned by SPAB post war, in 1945,
remedy is for another day, the House burnt by a stray incendiary...
not, I suspect, deliberately ; unlike our Lancaster Fleet targeting
of Potsdam, in April 1945. Bomber Command wanted a revenge.
Joan would lament Dresden, until her dying day. I went there, to
photograph, in the early '90s. Anecdote, though, has J. Goebbels
literally undermining (sic) the Dresdner Frauenkirche, teetering
in dawn smog, after the air raids in February 1945. A hostage ?..
Wierdly, a certain book (a copy of which had gone to "Highfield"
Parktown, Johannesburg, and then eventually to Camden NW5)
had Goebbels, again, define the Garnisonkirche (aka Garrison )
in Potsdam, as a target historical for Bomber Command, in April
1945. Stranger still : the book by JG had been in The Hall Library
of Molly, my Rhodesian grandmother ; and 'Bomber Harris', head
of Bomber Command (1942-1945) had, as a rancher, come to see
himself primarily as a Rhodesian. (Post war, BH to South Africa).
The chances of 'Bomber Harris', Molly and Ralph not having had
tea together, before April 1945, would seem to be remote ; Ralph
became Brig. C.E. Airfields, The Middle East, in 1941, unto 1943.
Was Blenheim Palace left pristine by The Luftwaffe, so Churchill
could pen Harris not to devastate The Sanssouci Palace Complex ?
vintage 1745-1747+ for Frederick The Great, le beau, and Prussia.
The railway station for Denham more longer platform than station,
empty, bare mid-afternoon, running straight into infinity east, west
higher up, is very French. There is mystery, and the extendable. If
subject to petrol rationing, the path to The Place is walkable ; as I,
long ago, had been warned not to drive, generally, if at all possible.
Recently, a BBC Radio programme cast light on X cells at Denham.
Lord Vansittart, to be the 1st Baron Vansittart in 1941, was famous
for Vansittartism. Scholarly, and a fine poet, he outlined opposition
to appeasement with Hitler both before, and during, WW II. We can
imagine him correlating with Joan on the terrace, or up at Bentley
Priory, maybe, during that terrible summer. He ran a clandestine X
wing MI6 Cell, or Cells, from Denham, with agents in Washington.
Will Ukraine become a new Poland, if America reverts to a 1930s
refuge of standing alone ? with sad strangled Albion yet to re-arm.
During the Fall of France, the RAF lost 453 Hurricanes in the 900
aircraft lost. Yet, we remained on track to build 14,000 Hurricanes
during WW II ; the factories were not found. By October 31st, '40
at the end of The Battle of Britain, the RAF et al (Naval, Canadian)
had lost no fewer than 1,744 aircraft out of a total air-force of 1,963
aircraft. The Luftwaffe, and the Corpo Aereo Italiano, out of 2,550
aircraft, had no less than 1,977 destroyed. Thus, the fate of the West.
66 (note the number) Allied Fighter Squadrons fought in The Battle.
Of these, two experienced, vital Polish Squadrons, No 302 and 303,
had the greatest 'kill rate' of them all, up to avenge a Warsaw burnt.
All in all, Free Poland flew 16 Polish Squadrons during the War, all
with Hurricane fighters. However, we must return to Denham Place.
Lord Vansittart was involved in intelligence work on multiple fronts.
(Did he recruit Joan, in some way ?) There was another war to fight :
a propaganda war. In 1939, he fought defamation in New York City.
Henry Ford was pro Nazi ; even manufacturing for Nazi Germany....
Well, it has been said The Oxford Union started WW II ; the result
of a debate made Hitler warfare gleeful. Indeed, it was Germany, or
rather Hitler stunning The Reichstag, who declared war on America,
not vice versa, on December 11th 1941, three, four days after Pearl
Harbour. Hitler hesitated, as well he might. Roosevelt was thankful.
This event led to The Fall of Singapore, by February 8th/15th 1942
which, according to Joan, and to Churchill, was the greatest disaster
ever to befall The British Empire, and thus England ; Australia lay
at risk : ahead. Joan never went to America : it was too informal. (In
later years, my mother banned me from wearing jeans in her abode :
Cavalry twills, her order of the day. I never bought any.) She derided
General Percival, often, carrying the white flag of truce to surrender.
We must return to Denham Place and 1940. The wash-over of events.
Did Virginia Woolf write that ? Her suicide was not until March 28th
1941, in The River Ouse ; her world, ruined. She, on a Gestapo death
list, one of two thousand creme de la creme not for escape to Canada.
Lord Vansittart was intermittently, a film financier. In 1936, his close
friend Alexander Korda (later Sir) had founded Denham Film Studios
to the north, to host his production company London Films. Friends
both of Winston Churchill, their task was to make propaganda films.
Korda received a Knighthood, in 1942, for his contribution to the war
effort. In 1939, Korda on his own had made Q Planes and, uniquely
The Lion Has Wings - which shone a light on the power of the RAF...
Attractive, barely eighteen or nineteen, well read, dinner at Denham
thrilled Joan. Did they have staff, one ? ( My MOI Agent Aunt Nancy
did, a cook ). Beforehand, did they group around the Radiogram, hear
the BBC figure enemy aircraft downed, rationing sherry in the Library
as The Battle of Britain ground on, to increasing anxiety. What if we
lose ? Lord Vansittart may have pointed Joan to look at London Films.
In 1940, he was elected as a Privy Councillor : we do not know when,
exactly. What would happen to The Army & Navy Club in Pall Mall ?
or, for that matter, The Hurlingham Club and The Savile Club. Ralph
a member of them all, and Joan no doubt worried, eating, and asked ;
and of a darker fear ? If we lost the war - would German West Africa
then control The Union of South Africa ? The horror of high-ranking
Nazis patrolling the corridors of The Rand Club ! favoured by Ralph.
stanzas 43 plus in Pf November 2
Resource File Samizdat 1 Part 1 2 (London 2011)
Joan Stokes born March 22 1922 Kimberley South
Africa died Nov 27th 2010 Pendean Midhurst
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