A WATERBIRD

I had been invited to stay at a grand country house by a friend high up in the art world and in the City. 

The occasion was a shoot, were the important and rich would set out in the morning after breakfast with their guns, loaders, dogs and wives.

The whole occasion appeared to be rather haphazard, but, in fact, was highly organised.

Breakfast in the “big house” was probably a little more elaborate than was usual. There was kedgeree, bacon, eggs, sausages, cold pheasant and partridge. Porridge, was there, too, for those who might like it, served with local cream.

My place in this jamboree of nature and slaughter was quite clear. I was a beater among locals, yokels and farm workers, but not quite, as I had orders to walk behind the beaters who rattled sticks on trees to make pheasants fly. I was to shoot any birds that cleverly flew away from and not over the invited “guns” but back over me (lucky birds).

We were a merry crowd us beaters from all layers of society and in great spirits.

We were to be traditionally correct by keeping our lines straight, under the orders of the head keeper.

The banter, tapping of trees and bushes with sticks, and voices urgeing birds to fly was all amid the delicious smell of winter woodland, of dead leaves and wet earth. It was just lovely.

The weather was cold and dry, as hoped for, and our dress was appropriate, being Wellingtons, heavy socks, jeans, sweaters, warm coats, and many outrageous hats that gave character to their wearers.

Our host was ahead in his large Range Rover and having trouble getting out of the muddy mire to firmer ground on the far side.

We beaters were perched on straw bales in a wagon towed by a tractor, behind the Range Rover.

We watched as our host’s car wallowed in the mud.

       Then someone noticed that below us and to the side was a wire cage, and inside this cage was a bird - a lovely and exotic-looking dark bird with slightly curved reddish beak and large feet, one that I had never seen before. It was a water rail, now caught in a trap, set for the voracious mink that, during that time, and probably now, was killing off much of England’s natural furred and feathered wildlife. 

We all wanted to relase that lovely creature, but we were under the head keepers orders. 

At last, when our host reached dry land, he was told of the water rail and was furious that no-one had gone to free it.

The head keeper then arranged for someone to set the bird free, which ran away, flapping its wings and with its big feet hanging down, to live another day in the freedom of its boggy world.  

A140

A WARTIME CRICKET MATCH IN AMERICA

Those who run cricket are trying to establish our very English of sports in baseball-mad America. In time we will know how successful this has been - after all, our rounders became baseball and soccer is establishing itself well there.

My connection with a sport that is so divergent, that a cricket match can take a few hours or five days depending upon what aspect of it has been chosen as a contest, is inbred.  

My physical participation took place as a player mainly in my school days.

My father, who played cricket for his county, Berkshire, was obsessed with the sport. So, as children we exercised fingers and wrists, hardening our hands, and batting and bowling in the nets at our house in Silchester on the Berkshire/Hampshire borders. 

When we played Australia at a Test Match in their faraway country, an aerial was strung from the top of a nearby tree to connect with our PYE radio, which needed a wet battery (like a car battery) and a huge and heavy dry battery. Inside the wooden case of the wireless were glowing valves looking like today’s light bulbs.

My sister captained her school team, my brother Nigel played (but I think he was keener on golf), and I won most of our school cricketing competitions of catching and fielding where the prizes won were of cricket equipment. So that was very handy when money was abnormally short during the time of the great depression. 

My father died from a form of anemia when he took Madame Currie’s cure-all of radium in 1938.

Then war was declared and I left school to become a refugee in America.

Just who organised it and just how I was known in Connecticut as a refugee I do not know, but I was asked to play in an exhibition match on Empire Day 1941 between English refugees and an American team from the Boston area at Trinity College, Hertford, Connecticut (I was 16 years old).

I don’t know if I scored runs or took wickets, and the event would surely be lost in time had it not been recorded by two press photographers standing at silly point and short leg on this rather unique occasion. The profits from the match ($130) went to British War Relief. 

I happened to be batting at the bowler’s end when the photographs were taken and my copy of one of them with basic details, remains in my photograph album as a rather special occasion in my early life. (We beat the Bostonians.)

The reproduction of that photograph has been sent to the archive at Lord’s and probably sits in a file marked “Cricket played during the Second World War”.

It might surface again one day as a wartime example of eleven young men supporting their homeland when abroad, before becoming old enough to return to fight and probably to die for it. 

                                                                    

IN CONTACT WITH THE ENEMY

Being in the RAF and based mostly in England and America during the last war I had not a great deal of contact with live Germans and their war machine.

I will relate them to you later (as I may have done before), but now I will tell you about Fred Scott, my cousin, who was in the Army and very much in live contact with enemy tanks and soldiers.

Fred, well-educated, joined up as an ordinary private soldier. His first job was part of the defence of Shoreham Airfield on our south coast. His fellows were mostly guilty ex-criminals who had been told by the judiciary to become soldiers or go down the mines.

Fred learned from them about the rougher side of life and, in particular, a special skill.

His father was a Brigadier General. When in Fred’s district, the Brigadier ordered Fred’s presence. They were then together and alone - a hig-ranking soldier and an ordinary private soldier.

“Well, my boy, what have you learned in the Army?” 

“How to pick a lock, sir.”

“Well, Fred”, said his father, open the padlock on that gas meter in the corner.” 

Fred opened the lock and a cascade of coins fell to the floor.

“Now put the coins back and lock it up again.”

“Sorry, sir, I can’t do it. I have only learned how to unlock locks.” 

You might well imagine the following consternation caused by this episode of army life. 

Fred was flown into the Normandy battlefield by glider on the second day of the liberation, rose to become a Major, and was aworded the Militairy Cross by Field Marshall Montgomery on the battlefield.

My own first and closest contact with Germans came when, having returned to the UK in 1942 from America when old enough to join the RAF, with a view of becoming a pilot, I was given an RAF number and told to wait in civilian life for a flying vacancy.

The first job I took as an RAF/civilian was being a farm labourer. It was at a time of extreme food shortages and farm produce was vital. 

I was in the middle of a field weeding rows of mangels (cattle feed) when I heard approaching engines in the sky. A German Ju 88 bomber approached so low over my field that I could see the pilot and gunner quite clearly. The gunner could have so easily killed me, but chose not to do so. I suppose the German airmen were too tense, flying so low and trying to find their way to bomb Reading railway station - which they missed, hitting a school and killing many children. 

A dangerous meeting with the enemy came when I was posted to Davidstow Moor, in Cornwall, as a trainee pilot, now with the RAF proper, to experience real operational flying.

We flew Warwick Aircraft in RAF Coastal Command, with a lifeboat designed to fit beneath the fusilage of our rather ponderous twin-engined aeroplane. It was to be dropped by parachute. 

I was taken on sorties over the Bay of Biscay to find baled-out aircrew. With most of those on board looking downward to the sea, my job was to scan the sky for German Condors, four-engined aeroplanes that could easily fly faster than us and outgun us with cannon fire. I did see one in the far distance but communication broke down at that moment so had to point it out to the skipper beside me. As we had no chance of survival in a fight, we dived to just above sea level and headed for home at full speed. (All aircrew were given a fried egg on their return. That was special.)

The next four encounters were the following:

Arriving by train in the western suburbs of London on leave, an air raid was in progress. The train I was aboard was halted and, although advised not to leave the carriages for our safety, many of us climbed out and down to the rails to witness searchlights combing the sky to the sound of anti-aircraft shells, and bombs falling, mainly on the East End of London. I wrote to an American that I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. 

Then came the unmanned, V1 flying buzzbombs (doodlebugs). They were directed haphazardly with London as their target. If the noise of its one ram jet engine stopped before the bomb reached you, you dived for cover. If it continued overhead then all was well and it would fall and explode elsewhere - and one could continue one’s interrupted bath if having one. 

After the buzzbombs came the V2 rocket. I was mending roofs in the East End of London (Plumstead) waiting for a posting to the USA when on top of a roof I heard an explosion and then a swooshing sound. It was one of the first V2 rockets to fall on London and far enough away. The noise of its explosion was followed by the sound of its arrival.

My last possible encounter with the enemy was when posted to RAF Skellingthorpe, near  Lincoln, at an RAF bomber squadron.

A Lancaster bomber had returned from a raid on Germany overnight with one of its engines shot up. Another was substituted and had to be tested before the next night raid took off for Germany. 

The rear gunner, for some reason, was unable to be aboard for this test flight to Scotland and back. So I took his place - with four Browning 303 machine guns to fire at a German aircraft should one cross the North Sea to interrupt our flight.  I was not required to press the firing button, but it was a great experience to have flown in such a famous bomber - even though my only duty was to line up my guns with the landscape beneath and read off the drift and pass on this information to the navigator by intercom.

These were my most exciting wartime experiences. Had I been born one year earlier I doubt very much if I would have been alive to write about such minor wartime episodes.

And I am also grateful to that Ju 88 air gunner for not bothering to kill me when I was hoeing weeds just beneath him. 

                                                                            

FLYING FISH

I am a bit vague about dates, but the 1950s stand out in my memory as very creative and imaginative years.

The residues of war were still around, mainly in the form of general shortages and food rationing. And the war itself had taken its toll on me in as much as it encroached on my education and left me with TB in the lung.

So in those 1950 years I had a lot of life to catch up with, not only in the acquisition of knowledge but also with bodily health.

My RAF war service had left me with the then incurable TB which returned when I studied medicine. 

I was now back to starting again at square one. And that square one was based on art. So I was able to incorporate my art into whatever I did.

Art school and theatre design school taught me a certain amount but their basics are also learned with constant practice combined with imagination.

With paintings, I sold landscapes, had one-man exhibitions, exhibited in mixed shows at top London galleries and painted and designed scenery for television and the theatre.

Buying a bombed-out house in London’s Fulham Road and rebuilding it happened to be, unknown at the time, a satisfactory and remunerative life decision.

By 1958 it was time for change. And changes have reinvigorated my life. 

I sold the London house and, with travel and art in mind, bought not only a steamship ticket to Japan but also the remains of a tumbledown cottage in the Berkshire Downs. This small bit of England was to maintain a foothold in my home country. 

On a cold and drizzling day I took a train to Liverpool and a taxi to Birkenhead where the “Achilles” merchantman was about to leave in ballest for warmer climes.

Aboard, on the plus side, was my own cabin that had been extremely well designed. On the minus side were fellow travellers in the form of parents with some very ill-behaved children.

We plied through the Bay of Biscay into a cold Mediterrainian Sea and on to the warmth of the Red Sea at Port Sudan. 

My overall aim was to live and draw throughout the Far East, skipping the Near East that did not lure me - confirmed in the shortest of contacts by sight from the Suez Canal and a short stay in Sudan.

After we took on fuel at Aden, in Yeman, we set sail across the Indian Ocean toward Malaya. 

It was then that I suddenly felt that to go straight to Japan was pointless when an event occured when our ship, now deeply laiden with Sudanese cotton, ploughed into a deep swell, sending not only warm sea spray right over our superstructure but with it masses of small, blue flying fish that looked like clouds of dragonflies, many landing on deck.

There was something about this exotic occasion that made me feel that at the next port of call, Penang in Malaya, I must disembark, and there to start my world tour of drawing and discovery.

So, lowering myself to the pilot boat with my suitcase of clothes and art kit, 

I set out on a great adventure, leading eventually to two exhibitions of paintings, a travel book, and tremendous satisfaction. 

LOIRE MANOR HOUSE

In 1953, based on a clapped-out builder’s lorry, I had built a sort of car in which I could sleep for the nights during a Grand Tour of Europe.

After Paris I headed south toward the Loire valley to visit an artistic family whose painter and architect sons I had become friends with in their capital city. 

It was to be a curtesy call on my journey toward Spain.

Except for the address that included “Manoir” in its title I did not know what to expect.

Certain items of the visit stand out in my memory.

The family had once been landowners of consequence but because of their strong religious belief and  artistic abilities, their fortunes had dwindled away in good works and ambitious artistic projects.

Their Manor house had fallen into disrepair over time, compounded by the Germans, who had commandeered it during the war and had left it in a dilapidated state. 

The lavatory for the main house was some way away from it which might be described as an in-convenience. 

My friends’ parents were delightful and as hospitable as they could be.

I was invited to stay the night and, in the morning, their cat appeared with a small rabbit struggling in its jaws.

With a large depiction of a crucified Christ in the background, the importance in the house of that little rabbit temporarily became of greater interest to my hosts.

We ate the small creature for lunch.