Kitted Out E-Book

Caroline Young

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 522

Beschreibung

When war was declared in September 1939, young people around the world were expected to put on a uniform and fight in a conflict not of their making. They may have been dressed in regulation khaki or air force blue, or restricted by rationing, but driven by angst, patriotism and survival, they took every opportunity to express themselves by adapting their clothing. Away from the war their lives were shaped by swing music and its fashions, allowing individualism to flourish despite repression and offering a rebellious reaction to the fearful sound of jackboots marching in unison. It was a time of new identities, factions and hierarchies. From the British Tommies and the American GIs, to the 'Glamour Boys' of the RAF, the 'Spitfire Girls' of the ATA and members of the French Resistance, Kitted Out is a fresh take on the history of the Second World War through a fashionable eye. The poignant and inspiring stories behind the uniforms, styles and self-expression in Britain, the United States, North Africa and occupied Europe will be painfully resonant to a new generation of young people.

Leseprobe

Kitted Out

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Caroline Young, 2020

The right of Caroline Young to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9580 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

1 Debutantes, Blackshirts and Life Before the War

2 Battledress and ‘Brown Jobs’

3 The Long-Haired Boys

4 Where Were the Boys in Blue?

5 Women in Uniform

6 Dreaming of the Sea and the Sky

7 Bomb Girls, Land Girls and Lumberjills

8 The Desert Rats

9 Women in North Africa

10 Female Flyers

11 American Culture Before the War

12 Government Issue and Olive Drab

13 WACs, WAVES and Rosie the Riveter

14 Coca-Cola and Pints of Bitter

15 Victory Girls and Zoot Suits

16 Mae Wests, Tin Hats and the Invasion of Normandy

17 London Nightlife

18 Scavenging in Occupied Europe

19 Fighting in the Pacific

20 Paris Under Occupation

21 Resistance in Nazi Germany

22 Women in the Resistance

23 Victory in Europe

Selected Bibliography

1

Debutantes, Blackshirts and Life Before the War

When Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, The Wizard of Oz had just been released in the United States, and the Bette Davis melodrama Dark Victory had brought audiences to tears in the UK over the summer. British youths in the 1930s dressed as if they were in an American gangster movie or a Hollywood romance, smoked cigarettes and bought make-up, waltzed at town hall dances, sang ‘Run Rabbit Run’ in unison in the cinema or on buses, and played Judy Garland’s ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ on the gramophone, the most popular song of that year.

Young people born during or just after the First World War were the ones who were expected to put on a uniform for a new global conflict. They resented the older generation who were taking them on this path, yet they knew that when the time came, they would do their duty and take up arms with the clear goal of defeating Hitler. By the end of the decade, towns across Britain were awash in a sea of khaki and blue serge as men and women enlisted in the armed forces, and difference of dress had become eclipsed by uniformity.

The 1930s was a decade marked by tribalism; whether one was a blackshirt or a communist, a pacifist or a patriot. When war broke out, uniforms, and a love of jazz and movies, became an equaliser; but still, even in wartime, hierarchies were forged, and young people continued to express their individuality despite the army regulations.

In some respects, the thirties were optimistic times, as towns were transformed by the bright lights of entertainment venues, households bought radios and motor cars, and new suburbs sprung up in the countryside to ease the pressures of overcrowding in cities. There were also increased rights for workers, resulting in more leisure time. However, tensions grew across Europe during this decade as fascism and populist movements seemed to offer alternative answers to the problems caused by the Great Depression.

During the period between the two world wars, from 1918 to 1939, huge economic and social changes directly impacted on youth culture. The twenties was a decade famed as the ‘Jazz Age’, a time when women found new freedoms of expression; where they could drink, smoke and go on unchaperoned dates to the cinema or in a motor car. The end of the Great War brought a mini-boom of low unemployment and high wages, and those who had fought, known as the ‘lost generation’, lived to forget the trauma. However, their shocking and debilitating injuries were all too evident.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 triggered a global recession, and in the UK in January 1930 over 1.5 million people were out of work. By December of that year, unemployment figures had risen to 2.5 million. Britain did not suffer as greatly as Germany, but the slump was still evident, particularly in areas that were reliant on heavy industry, such as northern England and Wales.

The motivation of the twenties had been pleasure, with elite young people like the ‘Bright Young Things’ behaving outrageously with their fancy-dress parties. But by the 1930s, the focus had fallen onto the disadvantages of youth. A sociologist, W.F. Lestrange, travelled across England and Wales to demonstrate how the state was squandering the lives of millions of youngsters, and he published his findings in his book, Wasted Lives.

In 1935, 80 per cent of boys and 81 per cent of girls went straight into work from school, with the majority leaving at the age of 14. They were hired as delivery boys, shop workers and lift-boys, and Lestrange called them ‘blind-alley children’ as there was little chance of their progressing on to something else.

Lestrange met a 19-year-old called Joe at a boys’ club in London, who was thrilled at receiving a 10s a week raise, because he could now buy an outfit to impress the girl he was ‘nuts’ about. Yet, the 1931 Means Test meant that Joe’s father lost public assistance money due to the extra family income, and Joe had to support his family with his wages. ‘Fat chance I’ll have of ever getting spliced with a ready-made family to look after,’ he said. With no money for leisure time or for hobbies, Lestrange reported the ‘hideous boredom’ of youth unemployment and ‘the lounging listless groups of youths at the street-corner encouraged by friends, “Let’s knock off a car and get out and have a bit of fun”’.

Work opportunities for young women during the interwar years were limited. Domestic service accounted for 30 per cent of girls’ work, while more than 40 per cent were employed in low-skilled factory work. By 1939, 7,600 girls were employed at J. Lyons and Co.’s tea rooms across Britain, as ‘Nippies’. These waitresses wore a distinctive white headdress, black buttoned-down dress, and white collar and cuffs. They were provided with two meals a day and had special opportunities for a social life and recreation, with many getting married to fellow employees. Picture Post wrote of the typical Nippy, ‘She is young, enthusiastic, hard-working, attractive … They are selected on deportment, condition of hands, and a variety of other qualifications.’

American culture seeped into Britain with Woolworths stores, dance halls, cafés, cocktail bars and, of course, Hollywood cinema. Bored young men terrorised the cinemas and dance halls dressed in the American gangster style of Oxford bags, winkle pickers and bowler hats – they were the pre-war Teddy Boys, who emulated James Cagney or other tough guys on the screen. Movie theatres offered a cheap form of entertainment in the midst of unemployment, and with the advent of mass-produced clothing it was easier than ever for working-class people to choose how to dress.

George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, illustrated how the magic of the movies in the thirties allowed for escapism. He wrote:

The youth who leaves school at fourteen and gets a blind-alley job is out of work at twenty, probably for life; but for two pounds ten on the hire-purchase system he can buy himself a suit which, for a little while and at a little distance, looks as though it had been tailored in Savile Row. The girl can look like a fashion plate at an even lower price. You may have three halfpence in your pocket and not a prospect in the world, and only the corner of a leaky bedroom to go home to; but in your new clothes you can stand on the street corner, indulging in a private daydream of yourself as Clark Gable or Greta Garbo, which compensates you for a great deal.

It’s often reported that the consumption of cheap luxuries often surges during times of depression, with lipstick and nail polish becoming a way to buy a small moment of happiness. As Orwell noted in 1936:

A luxury is nowadays almost always cheaper than a necessity. One pair of plain solid shoes costs as much as two ultra-smart pairs. For the price of one square meal you can get two pounds of cheap sweets. You can’t get much meat for threepence, but you can get a lot of fish and chips …

The glamour of the silver screen also shaped how young women dressed. The twenties had seen a revolution in female fashions. Corsets were loosened, hems raised and waists lowered, and hair was bobbed and shingled. This ‘flapper’ look answered the call for increased freedom of movement. The Depression led to a return to the feminine, with floor-skimming, luxurious gowns and waved hair that came straight from the pages of Film Weekly. It was a romantic look that offered a nod to the prosperous pre-war Edwardian era.

British youth often suffered from poor health, whether through smoking, diet or childhood illness. A 1937 Mass Observation study found that 56 per cent of male smokers started before they were 14, while 58 per cent of women began smoking between 15 and 21. With such behaviours inspired by film stars and royalty, men who didn’t smoke were treated suspiciously.

Joining the army could be one option for the unemployed, but up to 45 per cent of young men failed the medical tests as they were unfit and undernourished. Unfortunately, it was these boys who would eventually be expected to be booted up and trained to battle Germany at the outbreak of war. George Orwell bluntly wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier, ‘If the English physique has declined, this is no doubt partly due to the fact that the Great War carefully selected the million best men in England and slaughtered them, largely before they had had time to breed’.

Young people in the 1930s were political, speaking out against the older generation who appeared to be leading the country into another war, and choosing the extreme right or the extreme left as representatives of their idealism. At Oxford and Cambridge universities, pacifism and communism became increasingly popular. Strong anti-war beliefs led to what became known as the ‘Oxford Pledge’, when in 1933 the Oxford Union vowed that ‘under no circumstances will we fight for King and Country’. It was a cry of youth, and many across Britain strongly agreed.

As a handsome Oxford University student at Trinity College from 1938, Battle of Britain pilot Richard Hillary considered being a conscientious objector, as he, like his friends, believed war only led young men to their deaths. In his 1942 memoir, The Last Enemy, he wrote, ‘We were held together by a common taste in friends, sport, literature, and idle amusement, by a deep-rooted distrust of all organised emotion and standardised patriotism, and by a somewhat self-conscious satisfaction in our ability to succeed without apparent effort.’

He and his friends were members of both the university rowing team and the University Air Squadron, which had been formed between the wars to create a reserve of trained officer pilots. With youthful arrogance, they called themselves ‘the long-haired boys’, for their rebellious image and attitude. But as war grew closer, it was inevitable they would do what was expected. He wrote, ‘We were cliquey, extremely limited in our horizon, quite conscious of the fact, and in no way dissatisfied about it. We knew that war was imminent. There was nothing we could do about it. We were depressed by a sense of its inevitability, but we were not patriotic.’ Richard and all his Oxford University friends who joined the RAF were killed in the war, demonstrating the sheer devastation of the young students of the thirties.

With mass unemployment came anger and resentment at the government, and the need to find a scapegoat. Fascism was an attractive prospect through its supposed promotion of family values and patriotism. Oswald Mosley, a former minister in Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Government, set up the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932. Tall and dashing, with a severe moustache and his dark hair parted down the middle, as was the fashion of his public school, Winchester College, Mosley was often described as a ‘Savile Row Fascist’. He was at Sandhurst when war broke out in August 1914, keen not to miss ‘the adventure of a lifetime’, and as he later recalled, ‘never had men appeared more eager to be killed’.

Mosley spoke for the ‘Trench Generation’ and had at first championed socialism. A conservative MP at the age of 22, he switched to the Labour Party as he believed in housing, health and child welfare for all. After being deeply inspired by Mussolini’s blackshirts, he founded the BUF to promote a ‘Britain First’ policy.

Mosley, like Mussolini and Adolph Hitler, believed it was the youth who held the key to revolution, embracing aviation as the future and promoting the importance of agriculture and a return to the soil. In his biography of Hitler, Wyndham Lewis defined Nazism as ‘a hatred of parliamentary and bourgeois democracy, a horror of money and finance and a cult of youth’.

Under the Nazis, the future was the Sonnenkind, or the ‘Sun Children’, who were bronzed and strong and devoted to the Fatherland. They were nurtured at youth camps, where indoctrination took place under the guise of camping and hiking expeditions. There were 50,000 members of the Hitler Youth at the beginning of 1933, and by the end of the year there were over 2 million. This number grew as other groups such as the Boy Scouts were banned.

Mosley was influenced by the Nazis to establish the Biff Boys, the youth wing of the BUF. Many of those who signed up felt disenfranchised, angry at the older politicians, and had lost fathers in the First World War. According to Mosley, the BUF aimed to appeal to the ‘little people, the shopkeepers, clerks who wore a white collar under their black coats’ – the class ‘most threatened by the economic crisis because they were not organised as were the blue-collar workers’.

The black BUF uniform, launched in October 1932, was a symbol of posturing masculinity, taking inspiration from the Italian blackshirts and Mosley’s own black silk fencing tunic, with the button fastened on one shoulder. Their heavy jackboots menacingly clomped in unison. Mosley saw fencing as chivalric and potently masculine, envisioning himself as an ‘Elizabeth swashbuckler’ in his clinging outfit. And when Mosley described his concept of his ‘Storm Troops’, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told him, ‘You must be mad. Whenever the British feel strongly about anything, they wear grey flannel trousers and tweed jackets.’

Mosley adopted the Fascist symbols of the bundle of sticks and the axe, representing unity and the power of the State, but it was perhaps too much for the British population. He was told by Harold Nicolson, ‘If we ever have fascism in this country, it will creep in disguised in the red, white and blue of patriotism and the young conservatives’.

Mosley encouraged his blackshirt stewards to be as aggressive as possible at meetings, as he believed that by provoking his opposition into retaliation, he would achieve victory for his party. At rallies across the country, in Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Rochdale, his blackshirts forcefully ejected protesters, most notably at Olympia in June 1934. At this notorious rally, many on the anti-fascist side were charged, despite the strong evidence that the blackshirt stewards were the aggressors. The Times reported that Nellie Tuck, a 17-year-old factory girl from Shepherd’s Bush, was fined for using insulting words and for assaulting a woman who was wearing the blackshirt uniform.

Women formed 20 per cent of the blackshirt membership and were trained by the St John Ambulance in jiu-jitsu in order to protect themselves from ‘communist women’. Male and female blackshirts paraded through London, inspired by the youthful military demonstrations in Italy and Germany. The BUF Women’s Drum Corps marched to the beat in their black berets, black sweaters, black leather gloves and grey skirts.

Many former suffragettes were attracted to the British Fascists in the 1930s, seeing it as the modern incarnation of their revolution. Mary Allen was considered, according to Stephen Dorril in his book Blackshirt, to be ‘part of an upper-class lesbian subculture among militant women’s groups on the extreme right’. She dressed in a dark blue tunic and breeches, black boots and peaked cap and visited Hitler and Goering in Germany to discover the truth ‘of the position of German womanhood’. But masculinity was at the heart of fascism, and women were expected to know their place – with men dictating policies on birth control and abortion.

Rich society women were drawn to the ‘charms’ of Mosley’s brand of fascism. At the wedding of Pamela Dorman and Ian Dundas, Mosley’s chief of staff, the bride trimmed her gown with golden Fascist symbols to match the wedding cake, and the groom proudly wore his black tunic and shining belt buckle with the BUF insignia.

Diana Mitford was willing to sacrifice everything for Mosley, the man she called ‘the Leader’. Like many young people in Britain, the six upper-crust Mitford sisters, the children of the 2nd Baron Redesdale, were divided by politics. Their parents regarded educated, intellectual women as ‘rather dreadful’, and so the girls were schooled at home. The girls rebelled in different ways against their staunchly conservative parents, each representing a different aspect of 1930s life.

Born in 1904, Nancy came of age in 1920 and quickly took up the burgeoning flapper fashion trend. Jessica wrote in her memoirs of:

… the hushed pall that hung over the house, meals eaten day after day in tearful silence, when Nancy at the age of twenty had her hair shingled. Nancy using lipstick, Nancy playing the newly fashionable ukulele, Nancy wearing trousers, Nancy smoking a cigarette – she had broken ground for all of us, but only at terrific cost in violent scenes followed by silence and tears.

Beautiful, glacial Diana Mitford, born in 1910, gained a reputation as one of the Bright Young Things when she married Bryan Guinness in January 1929. Her group of spoiled socialites held decadent themed parties, such as ‘baby’ or ‘bath and bottle’ parties. After meeting Sir Oswald Mosley at a dinner party in 1932, Diana fell hard for the womanising Fascist. She believed he held the answers to Britain’s problems and sacrificed her high-status marriage to wed Mosley in 1936 at Joseph Goebbels’ Berlin home.

Nancy and husband Peter Rodd considered themselves left wing, yet they flirted with fascism by attending BUF rallies and buying their own blackshirts. In a letter to Evelyn Waugh, Nancy wrote that Peter ‘looked very pretty in his black shirt’. But she added, ‘We were younger and high-spirited then, and didn’t know about Buchenwald.’

The three younger Mitford daughters, Unity, Jessica and Deborah, were teenagers of the 1930s, and at a time of greater political awareness, they represented that era’s conflict between fascism, socialism and conservatism that defined the decade. Conceived in the Canadian town of Swastika and born just four days after the outbreak of the First World War, Unity Valkyrie Mitford’s name was quite prophetic. At 6ft tall she had the appearance, according to Jessica, of a ‘flaxen-haired war maiden’ and a ‘huge and rather alarming debutante’.

Sensitive and creative, Unity rebelled against the boredom of her first debutante season, taking her pet snake Enid with her to dances and stealing writing paper from Buckingham Palace and using it to write to friends. But, as Jessica wrote, ‘Her efforts to brighten up the social scene gained few adherents … to try that sort of thing in, say, 1926, it might have caught on. But the debutantes of 1932 just weren’t in the mood.’

After enrolling at art school in London in 1933, Unity would often visit Diana, and it was here, at her sister’s home, that she met Oswald Mosley. Unity was immediately enthralled by his debonair charm and enthusiastically signed up to the BUF, soon dressing in black shirt, leather gauntlets and BUF badge. Unity tried to persuade Jessica to be a Fascist too, as Jessica recounted in her memoirs. ‘“It’s such fun,” she begged, waving her brand new black shirt at me. “Shouldn’t think of it. I hate the beastly Fascists. If you’re going to be one, I’m going to be a Communist, so there.”’

Jessica, teasingly nicknamed a ‘ballroom communist’ by her family, was moved by the plight of workers in Britain during the Depression, and with youthful idealism, she decided to become a socialist. ‘The little I knew about the Fascists repelled me,’ Jessica wrote in her memoirs. ‘Their racism, super-militarism, brutality. I took out a subscription to the Daily Worker, bought volumes of Communist literature … rigged up some home-made hammer-and-sickle flags.’

At their family home of Swinbrook, Unity used a diamond ring to carve swastikas into the windows, while Jessica embellished them with rival hammer and sickles. Their drawing room became a microcosm for Britain. One side was decorated by Unity with Fascist symbols, photographs of Mussolini and Mosley, and a record collection of Nazi and Italian youth songs, while Jessica’s side was a communist library, decorated with a small bust of Lenin.

With an obsessive ambition to meet Hitler, Unity’s fanaticism led her to Munich on the proviso of learning German. Both Diana and Unity had been warned by Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl on arrival in Munich that they wore too much make-up to please Hitler, as he liked women to be pure and traditional. Yet Unity successfully found her way into the Führer’s inner circle by going daily to the Osteria Bavaria where he regularly ate lunch.

Back home, Unity would use the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute on ‘family, friends, the astonished postmistress in Swinbrook village’, and her collection of Nazi souvenirs and postcards of the Führer grew and grew. Nancy sent Unity a cheque for her twenty-first birthday in 1935, teasingly to ‘buy yourself some pretty little Nazi emblem with’. Gathered round the family after dinners, Unity would sing loudly ‘Deutschland über Alles’, while Jessica blasted out rival words of communist songs to the same tune.

Unity, Deborah and Jessica were taken on a Mediterranean cruise by their mother in the spring of 1936. Disembarking at Granada, Unity insisted she wear her swastika brooch. Locals gathered to take a look at the tourists, but when they saw the brooch, rage grew and soon Unity was surrounded by an angry crowd who tried to rip the symbol from her blouse.

‘I no longer found their antics funny,’ Jessica recounted of Diana and Unity, and held a fantasy that she could pretend to convert to fascism, accompany her sister to Germany to meet Hitler, then pull out a pistol and shoot him dead. ‘Unfortunately, my will to live was too strong for me actually to carry out this scheme, which would have been fully practical and might have changed the course of history.’

Jessica, as a card-carrying socialist, was intrigued by her rebellious, blue-blooded cousin, Esmond Romilly, who ran away from school to publish a left-wing underground journal for schoolboys, called Out of Bounds. Nancy later described Esmond as ‘the original Teddy Boy’. Esmond wrote, ‘I had a violent antipathy to Conservatism, as I saw it in my relations. I hated militarism, as this meant the OTC [Officers’ Training Corps], and I had read a good deal of pacifist literature. Like many people, I mixed up pacifism with Communism.’

Philip Toynbee, a football and cricket player at Rugby, took a stand against class systems by resigning from the OTC and wearing a hammer and sickle on his lapel. He also made the decision to run away from school, in search of the editor of Out of Bounds, who ran the publication from Parton Street Bookshop. Philip spent days at the bookshop, as ‘beautiful visitors’ drifted into the shop, including ‘a man with a beard and leather trousers who drank whisky from a flask, smoked cigars and talked about “Jimmy Joyce” and “Ginny Woolf”’.

Philip and Esmond became firm friends and, to prepare for Mosley’s meeting at Olympia, they bought ‘knuckle-dusters at a Drury Lane ironmonger, and I well remember the exaltation of trying them on. We flexed our fingers. “A bit too loose here.” “Not very comfortable on the thumb.” We were expert knuckle-duster buyers.’

They crowded into the packed auditorium at Olympia, where they came face to face with the ‘black-jerseyed stewards with hands on hips, complacent and menacing’. As protestors were ejected from the meeting, Philip remembered the ‘coarse rub of a jersey against my cheek’ and was left ‘tearful, bruised and broken’.

Idealistic British youths like Esmond and Philip were fascinated by news of the Spanish Civil War and went to join Franco on the front line. Knowing little about the International Brigade, Esmond cycled to Marseille and boarded a cargo ship for Spain. His battalion was sent to the Madrid front, and a week before Christmas all but two of the English fighters had been killed. He was invalided home but remained a committed fighter of fascism.

Picture Post reported in November 1938:

Over 2,000 English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, went out to join the battalion, over 1,200 were wounded, many more than once, their reasons for fighting, the politics of anti-fascism. A cloth tied around their neck, a beret, they looked rough around the edges, with an army jacket or leather jacket to make do.

Jessica, on hearing of Esmond’s exploits, was also occupied with thoughts of the Spanish Civil War. She cut pictures of female revolutionaries from the papers – ‘determined, steady-looking women, wiry, bright-eyed, gaunt-faced, some middle-aged, some almost little girls’. These revolutionary women fought alongside men wearing culottes, workers’ dungarees known as the ‘mono’, and handkerchiefs around their necks, which became a symbol of the rebellion.

In 1937 Jessica met Esmond for the first time at a dinner party, and she persuaded him to take her to Spain, where he was returning as a News Chronicle correspondent. For Jessica, ‘he seemed part hero, part adventurer, part bad boy’ and, despite her parents’ horror, they ran away to join the fight and made the decision to marry. She selected ‘a good running-away outfit’, based on the images of Spanish guerrilla women fighters in the weekly illustrated papers. ‘I knew exactly what I wanted, and found it; a brown corduroy ski suit with a military-looking jacket and plenty of pockets.’

Leaving behind her life of privilege, Jessica sold off the items that she didn’t require in order to fund her adventures with Esmond. She wrote to Deborah in April 1937, ‘You know my Worth satin dress that’s been dyed purple? Well I don’t suppose I shall need a dress like that for ages by which time it’ll be out of fashion so I wonder if you could very kindly try and sell it for me?’

The October 1936 Battle of Cable Street saw 3,000 blackshirts, three-quarters of whom were under 18, clash with a 100,000-strong counter-demonstration of communists, socialists and Jewish groups. Mosley had unveiled a new military-style outfit with peaked cap, jackboots, SS-style coat and an armband with the red, white and black lightning flash. However, as a response to political skirmishes, in January 1937 the government introduced the Public Order Act, which prohibited the wearing of political uniform in public places.

Pop culture continued to hold a grasp on young people in the late thirties, and it was this lure that was said to have prevented the country from falling into the Fascists’ grasp. In 1938 the Spanish War was driven off the front pages by events in central Europe, as Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland, but George Orwell noted, ‘Fascism and the threat of war aroused hardly a flicker of interest locally’. He explained:

The post-war development of cheap luxuries has been a very fortunate thing for our rulers. It is quite likely that fish and chips, art-silk stockings, tinned salmon, cut-price chocolate (five two-ounce bars for sixpence), the movies, the radio, strong tea and the Football Pools have between them averted revolution … a sort of ‘bread and circuses’ business to hold the unemployed down.

London was the centre of youth culture, and at its heart was Piccadilly Circus, described in Picture Post in 1938 as:

… the most brilliantly lit corner in the world. It is tawdry, with flashing lights, roaring sounds of traffic, the Piccadilly escalator lit up, queues forming for a dozen theatres and cinemas, buskers playing the fiddle, while thousands arrange to meet friends outside the landmark shop Swan and Edgar’s.

Hot chestnuts were sold for 2d on street corners, while milk bars were a new craze for young people, inherited from the United States.

London was particularly irresistible for undergraduates with money to spend, and Richard Hillary and his friend Noel Agazarian would go to the Bag O Nails club in Soho, or the Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street to mix with debutantes. Upper-class girls of 17 or 18, having been brought up in isolation from other classes, went through a ‘coming out’ in London, where they attended lunches, cocktail parties and balls to meet eligible men and new female friends. They wore red lipstick with their pale couture gowns and delicate ostrich-feather headdresses and would regularly catch-up at the soda fountain at Selfridges to gossip about what happened at the ball the night before.

As a debutante in 1936, under the short-lived reign of Edward VII, Diana Barnato, who would become a pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), enjoyed every moment of her season, wearing glamorous gowns by Madame Emilienne and meeting the eligible ‘Debs’ Delights’ – the suitors who were acceptable to their parents. Many of these men would go on to sign up to the RAF, fight in the Battle of Britain, and become dinner companions for Diana at the 400 Club during the war, where they would spend all night talking about flying. Diana said:

Those last years of peace I remember well. There were parties and dances, skiing holidays in Switzerland, with all sorts of friends. I met and danced with any number of young men who, in just a few short years, would make names for themselves in the coming war.

Propaganda poured out of Germany to demonstrate the might of their air force, and with the sense of a gathering storm in Europe, the Ministry of Labour opened ‘Reconditioning Camps’ for boys from derelict areas who were demoralised and undernourished. Following the Munich Agreement in September 1938, gas masks were issued to civilians, bringing back memories of the terrible injuries to young soldiers during the First World War. The mask came in a box, and these would soon become a fashion currency in themselves, which could be decorated in elaborate ways.

The government, in 1937, announced a recruitment drive for volunteers to sign up to the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) wardens’ service, designed to protect civilians from air attacks. In May 1939, Picture Post described how ‘the younger volunteers will drive ambulances, act as messengers, become Air Raid wardens. Older women will roll bandages, cook, look after children.’ The magazine depicted the new female ARP wardens in their shiny jumpsuits, wellies and gas masks, looking like something from a science-fiction pictorial. This was a taster of the uniforms that women would soon be stepping into.

In 1938, as planning for a likely conflict took place, inevitably women would be needed in non-combatant roles. The women’s services of the First World War were revived with the aim of recruiting tens of thousands of much-needed workers. The ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service), based on the earlier WAAC (Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps), was founded in September 1938. In spring 1939, the WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service or, more commonly, Wrens) was reformed, although only women aged 18 to 50 who lived near naval ports were at first considered. The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) was created in July 1939, based on the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) of the First World War. By December 1939, 43,000 women and girls had volunteered as Wrens, WAAFs and ATS, most of them having signed up in the first three months of war.

In May 1939, it was reported that ‘150,000 women were needed to train as nursing auxiliaries, between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five. They were given first aid training and then practical training in hospitals.’ Nursing was the respectable choice for women who wished to help with the war effort, either by volunteering for the Red Cross or St John Ambulance, or by joining one of the services, such as the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps (QAs).

In the Second World War, nurses worked on the front line, carrying out vital but dangerous work. At least 3,076 nurses lost their lives in the conflict, and they were expected to treat the enemy, as well as Allied soldiers. The QAs were posted around the world, including in North Africa, Hong Kong and Singapore. They treated troops on the front line, initially in the traditional grey dress and grey cape with red trimming and white headdress until they were upgraded to tin hats and battle dress. Their uniform didn’t always protect them, and 236 died during the war when the ships they were travelling on were torpedoed, or during the invasion of Hong Kong and Singapore.

Cities across Britain were soon transformed into a sea of khaki and blue, with the flash of a red cross and white headdress on the many nurses now assigned to hospitals. With national rearmament, conscription was all but a foregone conclusion, and Esmond Romilly was certain that Britain would be transformed into a military camp, ‘One vast OTC, with overtones of an eternal Boy Scout jamboree’. He had admired the International Brigade for its lack of discipline but shuddered at the thought of regimented army life.

Because of the threat of war, Jessica and Esmond made the choice to move to the United States in February 1939. They knew little of the country, except for the strange-sounding food, such as hot dogs and cookies, or from watching movies like The Petrified Forest, where Jessica ‘gathered that Americans often made love under tables while gangster bullets whizzed through the air’.

Philip Toynbee’s last escapade with Esmond and Jessica took him to Eton, where they decided to steal the top hats from the school’s chapel. Once they had filled their arms with hats, they sped off in a motor car with top hats on their heads and crammed into the boot. They felt it was symbolic of ‘our hatred of Eton, of our anarchy, or our defiance’. Esmond sold the hats the next day to an old clothes dealer to raise money for his and Jessica’s trip to the United States.

Those who had been enjoying the summer season of 1939 found it difficult to imagine the changes that were coming when Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September. ‘It seems quite hopeless doesn’t it,’ wrote Unity to Diana, on the news of Germany invading Poland. ‘I think Chamberlain and co. are criminals and should be hanged … I fear I shan’t see the Führer again.’ Unity would shoot herself in the head in despair when she heard the news that Britain and Germany had gone to war.

Diana and Oswald Mosley, like other members of the Fascist Party, were arrested and interned for the duration of the conflict. She asked for her luxurious fur coat to be sent to her freezing cell, so she could at least be a little more comfortable.

Diana Barnato was given a Bentley from her father for her twenty-first birthday and in the winter of 1939 drove with a friend to go skiing at Megève. On the way home, she visited Paris where she stayed with Gogo, daughter of Elsa Schiaparelli. It may have been wartime, but she splurged on a new wardrobe from the outrageous designer, including a pink satin evening gown, two silk afternoon dresses and a heavy wool tweed coat lined with patriotic red, white and blue silk. ‘People were beginning to die for their country whilst I was buying clothes,’ she recalled.

Instead of going into his final year at Oxford University, the life path he had once envisioned, Richard Hillary joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserves in August 1939 along with his Oxford friends, Peter Howes, Peter Pease, Colin Pinckney and Noel Agazarian. ‘We were expected to be superior; we were known as week-end pilots; we were known as the Long Haired Boys; we were to have the nonsense knocked out of us,’ he wrote, reflecting on his own path to war.

2

Battledress and ‘Brown Jobs’

In the first weeks of war, the mood in Britain was optimistic. Joining the armed forces guaranteed a weekly salary and was a counterpoint to the unemployment that had marked the last decade. Frederick Carter, who signed up to the Royal Engineers, said:

When I heard war had broken out, I didn’t really worry. It was rough in England at the time; unemployment was very bad, and I thought, maybe, if we had a war, something might happen. I was out of work, and I thought I’d join the Royal Engineers and work as I was used to working – as a concreter. Nobody seemed upset about the war starting. The way old Hitler was taking over the world, we thought we should finish him off.

With the immediate introduction of the National Service (Armed Forces) Act, all men between the ages of 18 and 41 were asked to register for service and choose which branch of the forces they preferred; otherwise, it would later be decided for them. With its prestigious blue uniform, the RAF was by far the most popular, followed by the navy, but the army absorbed the majority of men.

Many British men suffered from a poor diet and lack of exercise, and in their rough, ill-fitting khaki uniform, some of which dated from the First World War, they were nicknamed the ‘brown jobs’, indicating their status as just another cog in the machine. With only a short time to prepare for war, their skinny, malnourished bodies couldn’t compete with the bronzed Germans.

American journalist William L. Shirer, who had been reporting from Berlin in the lead-up to war, travelled into France and Belgium in summer 1940 to witness the German invasion. Returning from Brussels through Holland, he met a group of captured British soldiers and was struck by the poor physical condition of these boys, who had worked in offices before the war. Yet he admired their friendliness and humour, in comparison to the robotic Nazi youth, and noted it was this cheerfulness in the face of unimaginable horror which kept them going. ‘They were a sad sight,’ he wrote:

Some obviously shell-shocked, some wounded, all dead tired. But what impressed me most about them was their physique. They were hollow-chested and skinny and round-shouldered. About a third of them had bad eyes and wore glasses. Typical, I concluded, of the youth that England neglected so criminally in the twenty-two post-war years when Germany, despite its defeat and the inflation and six million unemployed, was raising its youth in the open air and the sun … I could not help comparing them with these British lads. The Germans, bronzed, clean-cut physically, healthy-looking as lions, chests developed and all. It was part of the unequal fight.

These six youngsters were the last survivors of their company, and one of them had lost an eye. But on the whole, he wrote:

[They were a] cheery lot. One little fellow from Liverpool grinned through his thick glasses. ‘You know, you’re the first Americans I’ve ever seen in the flesh. Funny place to meet one for the first time, ain’t it?’ This started the others to make the same observation, and we had a good laugh. But inside I was feeling not so good … I gave them what cigarettes we had and went away.

After war was declared, Arthur Ward and his friend Bill Turner signed up and reported to Gibraltar Barracks, Leeds, on 12 December 1939. Arthur observed the intake of ‘pale looking young lads having just left home for the first time, looking a bit bewildered and lost … we looked a motley crew dressed in all types of civvy clothing and carrying suitcases, bags etc. which did not help us to “march” very well.’

He and Bill were posted to Scarborough as gunners in the 70th Field Regiment Royal Artillery. Their first time away from home proved to be a sobering entry to life in the armed forces. They slept on the floor above a stable and were expected to wash and shave at a row of cold-water taps outside.

The recruits were issued with their army service uniform, which, for Arthur Ward, ‘included long vests and long johns, which were supposed to keep our legs warm. We also had heavy boots, which I soon became used to, but some of the lads who had been used to working in offices had a terrible time breaking them in.’ These boots caused blisters and sores as they spent hours marching around the surrounding countryside and villages.

One of the greatest issues for the government was being able to produce enough equipment for every soldier, and many of the new recruits were given the service dress of the Tommy in the Great War. Trials for a new field uniform were carried out in the 1930s to better suit modern warfare, including an innovative ‘overall’, similar in style to the fashionable ski suits of the time. Production of the new ‘battledress’ began in 1938, but they weren’t issued until 1939.

Initially the short blouson jacket and baggy trousers were made in light denim, but the fabric wasn’t tough enough to withstand long periods outdoors, and so a rough but warmer khaki wool serge fabric was used instead. This new battledress, considered the most efficient of army uniforms, would inspire the US Army’s field jacket, and would also be copied by members of the RAF, who asked for their tailors to run up a blue version for them.

In preparation for being sent to France, the army’s British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was issued with a full kit, consisting of battledress, Glengarry cap, socks, jerseys, long johns, heavy boots and puttees, which were long khaki bandages wrapped around the bottom of trousers. To wear under their steel helmet they were given cap comforters, which were an adaptable wool garment that could also be worn as a scarf or turned partially inside out to be worn as a hat. During the war, they became an unofficial symbol of the commandos.

Despite gripes that the puttees were uncomfortable and the jacket and trousers of the battledress came apart, they felt proud to wear their uniform. Sergeant John Williams, of the 6th Battalion Durham Light Infantry, recalled, ‘We felt sorry for people who weren’t in the army. We were having such a good time! We were being soldiers, and all the girls thought we were smart and handsome, and these poor sods were still working in the pit and the office.’

Ray Ellis was born in 1920 in Nottingham to a father who survived the First World War, and he was brought up ‘to know where my duties lay. First to serve God by trying to be good. Then to be fiercely patriotic and to serve the King by being brave.’ Coming of age in the 1930s, he was exposed to images of the Nazi rise to power, their swastika banners and Nazi salutes, and realised he would have to fight. ‘It was in 1938 that we all began to waken to the idea that the country was in danger and every young man worth his salt wanted to play some part in its defence,’ he wrote in his memoirs.

That year, at the age of 18, Ray signed up to the Territorial Army. When he saw the red, yellow and blue of the 107th South Nottinghamshire Hussars with its silver acorn and oak leaf insignia, it immediately appealed. He was issued with his uniform of service dress tunic, riding breeches and spurs, a leather belt, peaked cap and a white commemorative lanyard. ‘It was all very exciting; I was brim-full of patriotism and regimental pride and found every possible excuse to wear my uniform,’ he recalled.

Both of Ray’s brothers, Rupert and George, also signed up to the Territorial Army, having been lured by the promise of adventure, an escape from the humdrum of civilian life and the chance to wear the virile uniform. Ray found that when he was given leave, the girls at home ‘were not loath to be seen on the arm of a soldier’.

The Territorial Army were mobilised in preparation for war, and they marched daily in full kits and army boots, which chafed their feet until they were broken in. ‘The short period that we remained in Nottingham was something like a holiday,’ Ray said:

Almost every evening I was able to return home and strut about in uniform with buttons and badges shining, winged riding breeches and puttees, and gleaming spurs which clinked and jangled as I walked proudly around the town. I was a real homespun hero who had never fired a shot in anger but I enjoyed every minute of it. Sadly it did not last very long.

In January 1940, they were given orders to move south, in preparation for going into France to push back the Germans. After squeezing aboard the train with their kit bags, rifles and webbing equipment, the 107th South Nottinghamshire Hussars were transferred to the SS Devonshire, bound for the Mediterranean and the North Africa campaign.

Arthur Ward recalled that his fellow recruits were from all walks of life, with many from inner-city slums like the Gorbals in Glasgow. Their life experience was in marked contrast to the army officers, who were often from the upper classes and raised on country sports. One weekend, when some of the officers took part in a fox hunt, many of the lads like Arthur were horrified at the barbarity of the creature being chased and torn apart by dogs:

The huntsmen in their red coats thought it very amusing and the young ladies with them were just as bad, one of them proudly carried away the fox’s tail which was covered in blood. Our officers who took part lost our respect for quite a long time.

The obvious class system was evident in the army, more so than in the RAF and navy. When undergoing their training at Sandhurst, army officers, almost all having attended prestigious schools, were officially known as ‘Gentlemen Cadets’ and, with few disciplinary rules, they were even treated deferentially by their instructors. Once in the army, they were assigned a ‘batman’, whose responsibility included ensuring their uniform was pristine.

The raw recruits may have been given baggy khaki, but officers could have their uniform fitted by Savile Row tailors. The officer greatcoat, which was double-breasted and in smooth Melton or doeskin fabric, remained unchanged from the First World War. The cuffs, originally designed for turning down over hands in cold weather, were now for decoration and rank insignia were emblazoned on the epaulettes. Officers could also wear their own double-breasted, belted trench coats, and tended to choose a manufacturer depending on what was fashionable in their unit. The most popular was from Burberry, the quintessential English brand that had first introduced the trench coat in the First World War. The ‘British warm’ greatcoat was tailored to order, and these became quite fashionable amongst officers in particular units, who added their own individual touches, such as coloured linings, and were available in a range of fabrics and shades.

Robert Edberg, an American radar expert in the Royal Corps of Signals unit, was stationed in Aberdeen with several British officers and loved every minute:

[of being] served by a batman who woke me in the morning with a large cup of hot tea and whilst I slowly woke he finished shining my shoes and uniform leather belt and he laid out my uniform for the day. I don’t know how he did it, but they were kept spotless and creased to a knife edge.

Some soldiers chose to wear their uniform with particular flare. When couturier Neil Monroe ‘Bunny’ Roger joined the British Rifle Brigade, he brought with him his unique dandy style. As a clothes designer, he was particularly fastidious about his looks, buying fifteen suits a year from Watson, Fagerstrom & Hughes, favouring tartans, Edwardian-cut suits in pastels, or a statement scarf. So when he donned a khaki uniform, he added a silk scarf, some rouge to his cheek, and kept a copy of Vogue magazine close at hand.

Bunny was the second of three sons of an Aberdonian telecommunications magnet, Sir Alexander Roger, and a society beauty Helen Stuart Clark. They grew up in luxury at Ewhurst Park in Hampshire, as tenants of the Duke of Wellington. After miserable schooling at Loretto, near Edinburgh, he was determined to become a clothes designer and enrolled at the Ruskin School of Art. With a reputation for eccentricity at Oxford, he dyed his hair, wore make-up and carried with him a Pekinese puppy, but he was summoned before a tribunal for suspicions of being ‘a homosexual’, and expelled from Oxford.

Bunny was a regular at Chelsea parties and, using his illustrious connections, he learnt tailoring skills at Fortnum’s tailoring, and soaked up knowledge from his friend, Edward Molyneux. With backing from his father, he was able to open his own couture house, Neil Roger, in 1937, boasting clients including Vivien Leigh and Princess Marina.

He could also deliver a one-liner with aplomb. In bombed-out Monte Cassino in 1944, he ran into an old friend, who asked, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Shopping,’ Bunny quickly replied.

After the war, Bunny became manager of the couture department at Fortnum’s. Having served in Italy, he returned to the country frequently, and it was while on holiday in Capri he was said to have invented Capri trousers in 1949. He was also a promoter of the neo-Edwardian silhouette, worn on Mayfair gentlemen after the war, which would influence the Teddy Boy youth movement of the 1950s.

While all identifying regimental features on their uniform were to be disguised in case of capture when on the front line, troops wanted to stand out as individuals amongst a mass of khaki. The colour of a service cap or regiment sleeve flashes showed loyalty to their own tribe and became increasingly popular as war progressed. Scottish regiments had a long tradition of wearing their regimental tartans on their kilts and trews. In the First World War, the Highland Division was christened the ‘Ladies from Hell’ by the Germans for their kilts; but the traditional uniform was considered by the War Office not to be suitable for modern warfare, and soldiers were expected to hand in their kilts.

Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Wimberley, of the 1st Battalion Cameron Highlanders, wrote:

The kilt as a battledress was being attacked from three angles. On grounds of security, on grounds of its inadequacy in case of gas attack and on grounds of difficulty of supply in war. There was also the tinge of jealousy – why should the kilted regiments be given preferential treatment to wear a becoming kilt. The thickness of the kilt and its seven yards of tartan was extra protection. It was traditional in all Highland regiments never to wear any garments in the way of pants under the kilt. But anti-gas pants were issued.

After training, the clue to where regiments were being sent was often in what kit they were issued. If they were given the tropical uniform, they were likely to be sent to Burma or India, or if they were issued the cold-weather kit, including the heavy canvas ‘Tropal’ coat, balaclavas, scarves and thick woollen socks, they thought they might be sent to Norway or the Arctic.

For those arriving in Cherbourg as part of the British Expeditionary Force, they were met by cheering crowds as they marched with their haversack slung on their shoulders, which contained a woollen pullover jersey, mess tins, cutlery, emergency rations, a water bottle and a green anti-gas cape, treated with linseed oil. ‘Once we were in France, we were issued with battledress,’ said Sergeant John Williams. ‘Away went our regimentals. There was no longer any sign of the Durham Light Infantry, and no buttons to polish. We felt as though we’d slipped down the social scale.’

Despite the innovations of the battledress, they felt that their uniform wasn’t a patch on the Germans. ‘Our battledress didn’t compare with the Germans’ field dress for smartness,’ said Alfred Baldwin, signaller with the Royal Artillery. But in these first days of war, a lot of the men had no idea of what a German soldier even looked like. ‘We knew roughly that the Germans wore grey-green uniforms, that they had different-shaped helmets, but we didn’t know very much else,’ said John Williams.

Author Brian Jewell described those in battledress as looking like ‘an animated sack of potatoes. Those of us with long backs found it impossible to keep the two parts of the uniform together whenever we had to bend over, this manoeuvre being attended by a pinging of buttons and a rapid cooling of the area above the kidneys.’

Sapper Frederick Carter recalled, ‘My battledress was very dodgy. You went to the quartermaster’s stores, and he issued you with a uniform, and you had to do the best you could. Mine was three or four sizes too big. I had to shorten the trousers myself.’

From 1941, the original 1937 battledress, as it was known, was updated with features to make it more practical, such as a collar lined with fabric, following complaints that the blouse collar was abrasive on the neck. There was also a new pocket on the trousers which was useful for holding maps. But, as the war dragged on and the army needed to economise, the battledress was simplified by dispensing with concealed buttons, tightening tabs and replacing brass with cheaper gunmetal.

When British troops first arrived in France, during what became known as the ‘Phoney War’, there was a holiday spirit amongst the men. Sergeant John Williams was billeted in a Normandy village with a plentiful supply of apples, eggs and bread; a welcome change from the rationing back home. ‘When we got to France, it had been like a holiday at the beginning,’ said Sapper Percy Beaton of the 218 Army Troops Company Royal Engineers. ‘It wasn’t until the German breakthrough came and we started getting shelled and bombed and shot at that we realised we might lose our lives.’

There were few entertainments available, and to occupy their time they got drunk on beer and sampled the wine, often for the first time in their lives. And without the regimental rules of army life at home, dress codes relaxed. John Williams said:

Up until October, November, we’d been polishing our brass buttons and wearing our service dress. Then we got into this battledress which had no buttons to clean. Our gaiters had to be blancoed and our boots polished, but discipline’s a strange thing. We weren’t the smart, button-shining people we’d been a month before, but we still knew how to march and conduct ourselves in a proper fashion.

The French soldiers were not the formidable sight that the young Brits had hoped. Many still wore their red and blue uniforms of 1914, and they were underequipped and losing morale. They ‘all seemed so sloppy. Baggy, unkempt clothes, hands in their pockets, necks open sometimes, cigarettes hanging from their mouths. They seemed like caricatures,’ said John Williams. ‘I certainly still had memories of the Great War when the French had put up such a good show at Verdun and places like that, and I was thinking to myself, “I hope they’re better soldiers than they look!”’

The Phoney War came to an abrupt end in mid-May 1940, when the Germans advanced across the Maginot Line. Sergeant Leonard Howard of the Royal Engineers’ 210 Field Company, billeted near Douai, was woken at 4 a.m. by bombing, dressed only in vest, pants and army greatcoat, due to a lack of pyjamas. Outside they could see the German plane swooping down, the pilot touching his forehead and then opening fire. ‘That was our first initiation into real combat. One minute we were saying, “Why the hell’s that plane got black crosses on it?” and the next moment we hit the deck.’

‘I recall going that afternoon to the village barber and having a haircut. It seemed a sensible thing to do before the start of a battle,’ said Peter Martin, lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion Cheshire Regiment.

As the thousands of refugees made their way along the roads with horses and carts, prams, wheelbarrows and piles of suitcases, a German Messerschmitt machine-gunned them down. It was a tactic to block the roads and to prevent the Allies from progressing, but it was an awakening to the brutality of the Germans. ‘We realised the mentality they had. I couldn’t understand it!’ said Ernest Leggett, a private in the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment. ‘These poor people were getting away from them. They weren’t fighting them. They had no weapons. It was just murder. That sight is still with me. I still dream about it.’

More than a quarter of a million men were pushed north by Hitler’s blitzkrieg, where they would be trapped by the English Channel. As they pulled back, with the threat of attacks from the Germans, they had to eat where they could, finding food in abandoned farmhouses, picking up blankets and sheets for their bedding as they moved on.

The Germans used disguise to cause disruption and to push forward. Some dressed themselves in nuns’ habits or stripped British prisoners of their uniforms and then put on the clothes to impersonate them. Private Edgar Rabbets said:

There were German infiltrators – in British uniforms – who were well briefed and knew the regiments in the area. They’d come along and say they belonged to a regiment on the right or left flank of where you were … When they were challenged to produce their papers, they couldn’t. I took one back to the unit he claimed he belonged to, and as the colonel didn’t know him, that was the end of that one. I shot him.

As Sergeant Leonard Howard’s company were preparing bridges for demolition over the Escaut Canal, they saw two nuns pushing a pram over the bridge, along with a group of refugees. When they got to the other side of the bridge, the nuns pulled out a sub-machine gun from the pram, spraying the refugees with bullets. They were German soldiers in disguise, and rumours soon spread to Britain that the Germans were parachuting into France dressed as nuns, and even as hula dancers.

After an exhausting, bloody battle, Ernest Leggett, two other privates and a lance corporal were the only survivors out of twenty-five in his group. In a lull in the fighting, they smoked and talked, picking off any Germans they saw moving in the distance. But as Leggett walked across the floor of a building he was caught in an explosion and seriously injured. His friends cut off his trousers, dragged him out to the railway line and, in his ‘rough old pair of pants’, he crawled and crawled along the line to the safety of his company headquarters.

After being given pain relief, he woke up on the beaches of Dunkirk on a stretcher in the dunes: