Wartime friendships – wartime secrecy

This photograph of three young women having a picnic with three un-named men dates back to July 1944. I have added masks to their faces to protect my copyright of the photograph, but that factor is loosely linked to the subject of this blog – wartime friendships and wartime secrecy

The legend on the back of the photo which I found in one of my aunt’s photograph albums, says ‘American CSA Convalescents Malvern 1944’ and the full names of the three women – I will use their first names only: Nellie, Olive and Betty.

Betty was my aunt and the recipient of the letters from her soldier fiancé Ron which form the basis of the book I am writing. Ron had some unexpected 48hour leave on Friday and Saturday, 28 & 29 July 1944, and on Saturday 22 July he wrote to ask Betty if she could spend the time with him. This was at a time when Ron was still in Britain, but anticipated being sent overseas within a matter of weeks. The following day he said My brain is beginning to remember one or two things about my suggested weekend. Is it the weekend you were going to Malvern with the CD or are you visiting Ken and Lichfield. Although only dated with the year, and in the absence of Betty’s letters, I have nevertheless been able to pinpoint the photograph to July 1944, through this and later letters from Ron in which he responded to her letters.

Subsequent letters confirm that Betty honoured whatever commitments she had previously made (including a visit to see ‘Ken’ in hospital), and so did not meet Ron. There is no further mention of her Malvern trip, but part of Ron’s letter written on Saturday 29 July had a section missing – my guess is that it was removed by the censor, and in light of what I have learned about the circumstances that took Betty and her friends to Malvern, I can imagine that in her letter she told him more than she should have.

So what were the circumstances that led to this picnic? The words ‘American’ and ‘convalescents’ are crucial to understanding why the men were there. In 1942, in advance of the planned invasion of occupied Europe by the Allies, American troops began arriving in Britain, initially intended to provide a defensive force in the absence of British men who had been conscripted to serve with the British Armed Forces. When America then joined the European Theatre of operations, around 73,000 members of the American armed forces were committed to ‘Operation Overlord’, the invasion of occupied Europe by the Allies which began on D-Day, 6 June 1944. More followed in their wake. In anticipation of high casualty numbers, they began negotiations with Britain to set up hospitals for their troops.

The word ‘hospital’ in military terms describes a team of medical and surgical staff and their equipment and supplies rather than the place where sick or injured people are treated. It is the latter meaning of ‘hospital’ that I refer to. Of the 94,100 beds that were required, 51.220 were to be accommodated in newly constructed installations, the rest in a range of modified buildings. There were 5 American hospitals in the Malvern area – at Wood Farm, Brickbarns Farm, Merebrook Farm, and two at Blackmore Park, each run and staffed by American personnel..

I know nothing about these three men (I have assumed a third who was the photographer) – which military service they belonged to, which hospital they were patients at, what brought them there, whether they returned to active service after their period of convalescence and rehabilitation etc. Neither do I know how Betty and her friends came to be there – although no great distance from where they lived in Stourbridge (approximately 55km), travel by public transport would not have been straightforward or cheap. It is possible that one of the other two women drove a car (Betty did not), perhaps justifying the journey under the VCP (Voluntary Car Pool) provisions at the time of fuel shortage and restrictions on travel, but these tended to be confined to local journeys. It is far more likely that they were transported, along with many other young women, by bus or coach. As Ron referred to ‘CD’ (Civil Defence) perhaps she went as part of her voluntary role as a Civil Nursing Reserve. Or perhaps my assumption that the picnic took place in Malvern was wrong – that the word ‘Malvern’ indicated where these convalescent men came from, and that they had been brought to Stourbridge?

As well as the Americans, an influx of people from other parts of the country placed a demand on local services and on the local population which had conversely been diminished in number by the conscription of many adult males into the Armed Services. Malvern had changed out of all recognition for its residents, as was the case in so many parts of the country. New war-related industries required workers who needed accommodation as well as the evacuees from other parts, but in May 1942 an influx of some 2000 men and women, not wearing uniforms of any kind, descended on the area. They were accompanied by 100 Pickford’s removal vans containing their belongings and, unknown to the general population, laboratory equipment. They attracted suspicion and hostility and were despised by many locals, some who considered that they must be conscientious objectors. They were in fact scientists, who had moved with their families when the Telecommunications Research Establishment was moved from Swanage in Dorset after the German radar station at Bruneval, near Le Havre had been invaded and a German Würzburg radar system and its operator had been captured, Reprisals from Nazi Germany were anticipated and the whole enterprise was cloaked in secrecy

One voluntary organisation which stepped into the breach to support the war effort in general, and the visitors in particular, was the Women’s Voluntary Service for Civil Defence in Malvern – WVS, of which there were two branches – Malvern Link and Malvern Urban. The latter were heavily involved in supporting the American hospitals. The monthly narrative reports completed by the organisers for each branch have been a mine of information, as has the Curator of Malvern Museum of Local History, who informed me that ‘…Movies and American-style variety shows were enjoyed as were concerts at Birmingham Town Hall…’. She also informed me that ‘…Dances were also held, with young women being brought in by bus from Worcester, Upton and beyond…’. Perhaps ‘beyond’ included Stourbridge. The Malvern Urban WVS reports for 1942, 1943 and 1944 make reference to American troops, and a letter of appreciation from an officer of the U.S. Army in January 1943, referred to picnics and dances the previous year. The dances were ‘by invitation’, with the WVS playing a role in recruiting dance partners who were ‘hand-picked’. The hospitality provided by WVS, and the excursions to places of interest were rewarded by the appreciation and generosity of the Americans, who were described in one report as being ‘very nice people’, ‘a very generous race’ who ‘suit us well.’

The women of the WVS were also involved in catering for the military and scientific communities, serving around 1000 people an hour in the Winter Gardens restaurant.

Between 1944 and the summer of 1945, over 79,000 American servicemen and women were treated in the five hospitals – thousands were discharged and returned to duty, but nearly 49,000 were deemed unfit and returned home to America. It is worth noting that figures taken from the Census of 2011 gives a total population for the Malvern Hills as 74,631, and for the town of Malvern, 32,900. http://www.visitoruk.com/GreatMalvern/. An article in the Gloucester Echo in November 1944 referred to the population of Malvern being 17,812. I have been unable to reconcile these differences, but they serve to illustrate the impact on Malvern with the itinerant and long-stay arrivals. I wonder how long it took to revert to some semblance of normality after the war ended?

From April 1944, the Malvern Urban WVS reports by the Centre Organiser were cloaked in mystery. Quite why these reports should suddenly be so secretive is unclear – the report for April 1944 was completed by a different person from previous ones so perhaps she was more sensitive to matters of security – or maybe instructions to that effect had come from on high? Reference was made to Malvern now being ‘a closed area‘. The April report included ‘certain places‘, a ‘member of a certain country‘, ‘Salute a certain person‘, a letter ‘from a certain source‘, another letter from ‘a certain man in a certain district‘, and a parcel of books for men ‘in a certain service‘. In June, a section entitled ‘Excursions (Dash) Welfare for (Dash) Allies‘, reported that ‘.. We are planning excursions to take the (dash) to see the beauties of the district‘, the itineraries for which were ‘...made the subject of advanced talks by the (dash-dash), so that the (dash) shall gain the most from their trips.’ I wonder if Betty, Nellie and Olive were sworn to secrecy? If she had written to Ron with information about the men from Malvern and he had quoted from her letter, the censor may have decided it was too sensitive if it fell into the wrong hands. ‘Careless talk costs lives’ was the mantra on many posters issued by the Ministry of Information.

As has so often been the case when I have looked at Betty’s photographs, they have intrigued me to try and understand the story behind them. And so often they have taken me off at a tangent away from what I know of Betty and Ron’s stories, but always they have given me further insights into the contexts in which their story plays out, in this case life on the Home Front. The WVS narrative reports in particular paint pictures of astounding levels of service and rôles provided by the women – and in this instance a very powerful rôle in supporting our wounded American allies so far from home. I wonder what happened to those three men – were they fit enough after their convalescence in Malvern to return to duty, fighting for the freedom of European civilians whose cultures were so varied and different from their own? And did they survive to tell their folks back home of the hospitality of the Brits in general and Malvern in particular? I hope so – and I hope they remembered with pleasure Betty, Olive and Nellie and the day of their picnic.

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 [1] http://catalogue.royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk/calmview/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=WRVSA%26HC%2fWRVS%2fHQ%2fNR%2fR9%2f1944-WORC%2fMLV+UD&pos=12

 [2] Ibid