Whereas it is certainly true I said I was going to stop blogging, I did also add that I was stopping 'for the time being.' This loophole therefore allows me to begin again following a four-month sabbatical, this time intermittently and certainly not at the same volume as before. We shall see. But I will continue, for as long as I can.
SHORT HORIZONS
I didn't take up leisure walking until I was nearly 40, and even then it was an occasional business most often restricted to a particular week once a year. Even so, and accompanied by various intrepid companions, we usually managed ten or twelve miles a day carrying heavy rucksacks, and all the rest of the camping kit, or 23 or 24 miles a day travelling lightweight on things like the then annual Forest Walk, from West Stow to Didlington. Horizons seemed satisfyingly wide. Only hill-climbing seemed out of our physical reach.
Such was the thrill of taking off into the countryside that we did it as often as possible, one of the greatest being the start of Day One of a new week's walk. Hauling on a rucksack and setting off. To what? Something different, that was for sure, even if we were planning to walk precisely the same route we had walked the previous year. No two expeditions were ever the same, each being an adventure in its own right.
In later years my leisure walking evolved into short-distant yomps with small groups; two groups, actually, both based on our workplace. We took it in turns to choose a route, arranged a date about once a month, and set off with the simple intention of walking four to six miles during the morning, eat our packed lunches somewhere along the track, and end at a pub for a pint before returning home to prepare for an evening or night shift at the Press office.
Then a few years' ago I began to be affected by an ailment known as peripheral claudication, which meant that the arteries of both legs were clogging up. It was becoming painful to walk very far, and indeed, it was suggested by one of my companions that I was a walker with three speeds: slow, slower, and stop.
There were treatments, of course, such as a sort of Dyno-Rod job on the arteries. By and large, however, my 'glory' days were over. From a 25-mile yomp through the forest to a leisurely five-mile stroll, I was now restricted to a circuit of the main shops in town.
Shrewd readers will already have spotted a theme here. Shortening horizons. The boundaries of a world drawing forever inward. And that is the reason for this lament. No longer can I contemplate a day out with a rucksack. So there are many tracks and trees, fields and woodlands and landscape nooks and crannies I shall never see again, because my legs no longer work properly and energy levels have dipped.
More recently a fresh difficulty has emerged: low energy levels and a lung fibrosis problem which sometimes leaves me puffing more vigorously than a Poppyland Line locomotive. Now, a short, slow stroll from the car park to the main shopping area is about the limit before I have to stop and 'admire' the display in some shop window or other.
In other words, I've gone from 25 miles to about 75 yards, and if that isn't a case of shortening horizons I don't know what is. Mind you, at my age it is something I know I have to accept. But I tell you what. I don't half miss the walking. I miss it a lot.
Tuesday, 5 May 2015
Monday, 29 December 2014
FINALE?
In about six months' time I shall be eighty years' old and I have decided that, as from today, I shall write no more blogs, at least for the time being. There are a host of reasons: I have been ill, I am running out of ideas, and I want to do other things. None of these reasons are remotely earth-shattering, but to me they seem very relevant.
And what other things do I want to do? Well, daubing acrylics pictures, listening to music, staring at the sea, family history research, and doing as much of nothing as I can get away with.
Seriously, for some time it has occurred to me that I don't have a lot fresh left to say, having scribbled and burbled far too much, anyway, over the last 65 years. Football? Much less interested that I was. Books to read? Absolutely. Transfixed by the boundless possibilities of digital technology? Not really. It's a useful tool, but so was a sharpened flint.
So after about 140 blogs I might have reached the bottom of the bucket. Have enjoyed it, though, and I have enjoyed your company. Perhaps we'll meet again some time.
In about six months' time I shall be eighty years' old and I have decided that, as from today, I shall write no more blogs, at least for the time being. There are a host of reasons: I have been ill, I am running out of ideas, and I want to do other things. None of these reasons are remotely earth-shattering, but to me they seem very relevant.
And what other things do I want to do? Well, daubing acrylics pictures, listening to music, staring at the sea, family history research, and doing as much of nothing as I can get away with.
Seriously, for some time it has occurred to me that I don't have a lot fresh left to say, having scribbled and burbled far too much, anyway, over the last 65 years. Football? Much less interested that I was. Books to read? Absolutely. Transfixed by the boundless possibilities of digital technology? Not really. It's a useful tool, but so was a sharpened flint.
So after about 140 blogs I might have reached the bottom of the bucket. Have enjoyed it, though, and I have enjoyed your company. Perhaps we'll meet again some time.
Sunday, 28 December 2014
BOOKS UNWRITTEN
On my sixteenth birthday my father gave me a second-hand portable typewriter, a clunky contraption by today's standards, I suppose, encased in a stout wooden box complete with carrying handle. I have no idea where he got it from, but there was a deal of good sense behind the gift. I had just left school and was about to start my first job, as a cub reporter on a local weekly newspaper in south Lincolnshire. Now I was able to teach myself how to hammer the keys and write something, a skill which - I recall - impressed my new colleagues for a few seconds when I did finally report for duty.
But the old typewriter - manufacturer and model long forgotten - did something else, too. It brought about what some now call a light-bulb moment. I can remember very clearly sitting with the machine perched on a little table, rolling in a sheet of paper, and starting to write. Starting to write a novel, for goodness sake. Something about Paris, an aircraft which crashed in the Himalayas, a hunt for survivors, and about the rediscovery of letters and diaries thought lost forever in the Nepalese snows. And so forth. I think I wrote twenty or thirty pages of text.
Then I stopped because it slowly dawned on me I couldn't do it. I had never been to the Himalayas or even seen mountains - I came from the Fens, remember, and this was a period of Austerity - had never explored Paris or even flown in an aeroplane. In fact, I had never been out of the country. So a few weeks' later I tossed the pages into a waste bin having learned two valuable lessons: that I now knew that above all else I wanted to write; and that if I write then it would need to be about things I knew set in places I had actually visited.
The thrill of the moment sparked by that old typewriter over sixty years' ago, that light-bulb moment, has never faded or gone away. Even today the desire remains, for I have loved querty keyboards and books ever since. It is true, of course, that during the subsequent sixty years I have written, quite a lot, for newspapers, mainly, and magazines and books, and more recently, this blog. But I was never able to make a living out of fiction. Couldn't make the breakthrough. Didn't try hard enough. Unable to cut the mustard. Not good enough, I suppose.
The trouble is that whereas the actual desire to physically write something can and sometimes does diminish with age, ideas of what to write do not stop flowing. One consequence is that I have three or four completed novels in MS form waiting in limbo in dusty drawers and tatty folders, along with notes for at least five more.
These, I have no doubt, will remain unwritten. They are simply frozen ideas which will never see the light of day. Thus, a shortening of concentration levels is one thing; the thought and frustration of finishing another novel and then simply shoving it in the drawer is another.
So here's a toast to the pile of unread books sitting on my bedside table, awaiting their turn, and to all unwritten books, the forlorn piles of ideas and research notes bundled together with elastic bands. And here's to the time spent on fascinating but ultimately wasted research, to half-remembered ideas and to an inability to do them justice.
Actually, I am beginning to believe that unwritten books are a marvellous resource. There should be a library for them somewhere.
On my sixteenth birthday my father gave me a second-hand portable typewriter, a clunky contraption by today's standards, I suppose, encased in a stout wooden box complete with carrying handle. I have no idea where he got it from, but there was a deal of good sense behind the gift. I had just left school and was about to start my first job, as a cub reporter on a local weekly newspaper in south Lincolnshire. Now I was able to teach myself how to hammer the keys and write something, a skill which - I recall - impressed my new colleagues for a few seconds when I did finally report for duty.
But the old typewriter - manufacturer and model long forgotten - did something else, too. It brought about what some now call a light-bulb moment. I can remember very clearly sitting with the machine perched on a little table, rolling in a sheet of paper, and starting to write. Starting to write a novel, for goodness sake. Something about Paris, an aircraft which crashed in the Himalayas, a hunt for survivors, and about the rediscovery of letters and diaries thought lost forever in the Nepalese snows. And so forth. I think I wrote twenty or thirty pages of text.
Then I stopped because it slowly dawned on me I couldn't do it. I had never been to the Himalayas or even seen mountains - I came from the Fens, remember, and this was a period of Austerity - had never explored Paris or even flown in an aeroplane. In fact, I had never been out of the country. So a few weeks' later I tossed the pages into a waste bin having learned two valuable lessons: that I now knew that above all else I wanted to write; and that if I write then it would need to be about things I knew set in places I had actually visited.
The thrill of the moment sparked by that old typewriter over sixty years' ago, that light-bulb moment, has never faded or gone away. Even today the desire remains, for I have loved querty keyboards and books ever since. It is true, of course, that during the subsequent sixty years I have written, quite a lot, for newspapers, mainly, and magazines and books, and more recently, this blog. But I was never able to make a living out of fiction. Couldn't make the breakthrough. Didn't try hard enough. Unable to cut the mustard. Not good enough, I suppose.
The trouble is that whereas the actual desire to physically write something can and sometimes does diminish with age, ideas of what to write do not stop flowing. One consequence is that I have three or four completed novels in MS form waiting in limbo in dusty drawers and tatty folders, along with notes for at least five more.
These, I have no doubt, will remain unwritten. They are simply frozen ideas which will never see the light of day. Thus, a shortening of concentration levels is one thing; the thought and frustration of finishing another novel and then simply shoving it in the drawer is another.
So here's a toast to the pile of unread books sitting on my bedside table, awaiting their turn, and to all unwritten books, the forlorn piles of ideas and research notes bundled together with elastic bands. And here's to the time spent on fascinating but ultimately wasted research, to half-remembered ideas and to an inability to do them justice.
Actually, I am beginning to believe that unwritten books are a marvellous resource. There should be a library for them somewhere.
Tuesday, 23 December 2014
IN TIME OF WAR
It was a very small moment in time, an inconsequential fragment of the Second World War. All one can say is that it may have been significant to those who actually took part. Or maybe not. Perhaps it was all a little too tongue-in-cheek. Either way, the story is recounted in a copy of a newspaper cutting dated July 22, 1940, and it concerned a Norfolk village detachment of the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers), the hastily organised forerunners of the Home Guard.
Apparently they had built for themselves a fortification, or blockade, on the village green. What sort of fortification was not made clear, but it is obvious they were proud of it because they decided to organise a weekend exercise and place their defences under 'attack.' So they informed the Army and managed to book the services of some 'umpires' to check fair play and rule who was dead or captured, and so on. The ages of the LDV group evidently ranged from 15 to 63, and included one gentleman apparently determined to sort out the invaders with his fists.
On the appointed evening they mustered at the Green. Uniforms and rifles were issued to the defenders, while the 'Germans' were in mufti. Then, suddenly, car loads of Top Brass turned up to watch, as did most of the rest of the population of the village. And the battle did not begin well. As the defenders began to set up outposts, the 'enemy' suddenly appeared and started to lob 'hand grenades' (actually, tennis balls) which, an umpire ruled, had immediately 'killed' the commander of the defenders without a shot having been fired.
Then a mystery car appeared in the distance, drove unchallenged by one outpost and pulled up at the blockade. Suddenly, two more attackers leapt out, hurled their 'bombs' and charged the defences. Again, the umpire ruled both attackers and one defender 'dead.'
The situation appeared grim, but at this point another attacker appeared from out of the long, wet grass and hurled his 'bomb' which, alas for him, hit the side of the fortification and bounced back. The attacker was immediately ruled 'dead,' having been 'killed' by his own bomb.
This greatly cheered the defenders but, alas, they celebrated too soon. Unknown to them, another attacker had climbed to the roof of an adjoining farm house, and from the protection of the chimney stack had thrown his tennis ball with unerring accuracy into the middle of the blockade. The umpires ruled immediately that the entire garrison had been wiped out. Oddly, it did not dampen enthusiasm, for the report also adds that they were all greatly encouraged by the experience.
There are three interesting side issues to all this, one being that shortly after the action the over-confident LDV issued a another challenge, this time to a neighbouring village, to see if they could wipe out the fortification. Also, a typewritten note on the copy of the cutting explains that the article had been 'heavily censored and not sub-edited on its return.' In other words, the EDP printed it exactly as it had come back from the censor's office. Which may or may not explain some of the article's descriptive ambiguities.
A third point is that I have a suspicion - and this is a guess - that the village at the centre of all this excitment was Felthorpe, which is not far from Weston Longville. However, I didn't know Felthorpe had a village green. Or a fortfication for that matter.
(Our Village LDV, cutting, Eastern Daily Press, July 22, 1940)
It was a very small moment in time, an inconsequential fragment of the Second World War. All one can say is that it may have been significant to those who actually took part. Or maybe not. Perhaps it was all a little too tongue-in-cheek. Either way, the story is recounted in a copy of a newspaper cutting dated July 22, 1940, and it concerned a Norfolk village detachment of the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers), the hastily organised forerunners of the Home Guard.
Apparently they had built for themselves a fortification, or blockade, on the village green. What sort of fortification was not made clear, but it is obvious they were proud of it because they decided to organise a weekend exercise and place their defences under 'attack.' So they informed the Army and managed to book the services of some 'umpires' to check fair play and rule who was dead or captured, and so on. The ages of the LDV group evidently ranged from 15 to 63, and included one gentleman apparently determined to sort out the invaders with his fists.
On the appointed evening they mustered at the Green. Uniforms and rifles were issued to the defenders, while the 'Germans' were in mufti. Then, suddenly, car loads of Top Brass turned up to watch, as did most of the rest of the population of the village. And the battle did not begin well. As the defenders began to set up outposts, the 'enemy' suddenly appeared and started to lob 'hand grenades' (actually, tennis balls) which, an umpire ruled, had immediately 'killed' the commander of the defenders without a shot having been fired.
Then a mystery car appeared in the distance, drove unchallenged by one outpost and pulled up at the blockade. Suddenly, two more attackers leapt out, hurled their 'bombs' and charged the defences. Again, the umpire ruled both attackers and one defender 'dead.'
The situation appeared grim, but at this point another attacker appeared from out of the long, wet grass and hurled his 'bomb' which, alas for him, hit the side of the fortification and bounced back. The attacker was immediately ruled 'dead,' having been 'killed' by his own bomb.
This greatly cheered the defenders but, alas, they celebrated too soon. Unknown to them, another attacker had climbed to the roof of an adjoining farm house, and from the protection of the chimney stack had thrown his tennis ball with unerring accuracy into the middle of the blockade. The umpires ruled immediately that the entire garrison had been wiped out. Oddly, it did not dampen enthusiasm, for the report also adds that they were all greatly encouraged by the experience.
There are three interesting side issues to all this, one being that shortly after the action the over-confident LDV issued a another challenge, this time to a neighbouring village, to see if they could wipe out the fortification. Also, a typewritten note on the copy of the cutting explains that the article had been 'heavily censored and not sub-edited on its return.' In other words, the EDP printed it exactly as it had come back from the censor's office. Which may or may not explain some of the article's descriptive ambiguities.
A third point is that I have a suspicion - and this is a guess - that the village at the centre of all this excitment was Felthorpe, which is not far from Weston Longville. However, I didn't know Felthorpe had a village green. Or a fortfication for that matter.
(Our Village LDV, cutting, Eastern Daily Press, July 22, 1940)
Sunday, 21 December 2014
FEN MEMORIES
The diarist Samuel Pepys described the Fens as a 'heathen place,' and Daniel Defoe noted there was a lot of water and, more often than not, fogs. Other members of the literary fraternity have also made use of the atmospheric potential, including Edward Storey and Graham Swift. Even Dorothy L Sayers allowed Lord Peter Wimsey to linger hereabouts and become sucked into a 1934 saga of churches, bellringing, and fenland murder and mayhem.
Of course, there is a lot less water about now, thanks to modern drainage, but a general feeling of loneliness and wateriness is still inescapable. It drips off every map, lives on in place-names (Lakesend, Walsoken, Outwell, Ten Mile Bank, Welney, Sluice Common, Salters Lode, Fen End, The Smeeth, Well Creek, etc) and has even spawned an ancient technical language: leam, sluice, lode, cut, roddon, channel, level, dyke, eau, hyde, drain and drove.
It seems to me there are at least three sorts of fen: the salty creeks of the Wash basin, the brown tones of marshland, and the black peat fens, further inland. We lived in marshland, and by and large, and other than home and home town, I disliked it, hated its raw-toothed scruffiness, its straight-line fields and drains and messy farms. On the other hand, there were moments when the great openness of the all-embracing sky and low horizons plucked a nerve or an emotion. It always was a question of balance, and now that nostalgia has taken over from immediacy I can think again of those vast, threatening spaces with rather more affection.
In a sense this balance, and indeed the fens and marshes themselves, seem directly related to the region's perennial flood/tide conundrum. If these fertile lands are to be used for agriculture and not left vulnerable to waterlogging, then they have to be drained. And if they are drained, then they will gradually sink and begin to erode.
The situation remains the same today. Inches can measure the difference between fertility and flooding, and always there is the brooding knowledge that if rainfall and river levels, high tides and high winds ever do combine - as they have, and doubtless will again - then only banks and sluices stand between safety and inundation.
So the fens (and marshland) exist in a world of their own - albeit greatly changed from Vermuyden's day - where the centuries have bred hard-working, resolute, independent people who know the real price and value of things, and created a no-nonsense landscape of huge fields, waterways, long roads, grassy banks and lonely farms which can, and sometimes do, hint at some future disaster.
As some of the most fertile land in the country it is also some of the most heavily cropped. When I began work in Spalding in 1951 I remember being told that a family, working hard enough to develop frost-knotted hands, could earn a living from a greenhouse and ten to 15 acres of land. Not a good living, but a living. Since then, changing times and agri-business have made inroads into the economics of smallholders, but the fertility - save the occasional fen blow - remains. Wheat, potatoes, vegetables, celery, apples and sugar beet. The spirit of the old 'fen tigers' remains intact.
As a youthful cyclist I recall these fieldscapes and vistas which, at the time, suggested nothingness. Huge skies, tall church spires, and winds that came out of nowhere to buffet and jostle and cajole. And mud. Oceans of it. And solitary trees, and no cover when the rain came. Hated it then, as I have said. Look upon it a little more kindly now.
But I would never go back. Not to live there, anyway. And yet by some means, and after all these years away, it still feels as though I have a little mud left on my boots.
The diarist Samuel Pepys described the Fens as a 'heathen place,' and Daniel Defoe noted there was a lot of water and, more often than not, fogs. Other members of the literary fraternity have also made use of the atmospheric potential, including Edward Storey and Graham Swift. Even Dorothy L Sayers allowed Lord Peter Wimsey to linger hereabouts and become sucked into a 1934 saga of churches, bellringing, and fenland murder and mayhem.
Of course, there is a lot less water about now, thanks to modern drainage, but a general feeling of loneliness and wateriness is still inescapable. It drips off every map, lives on in place-names (Lakesend, Walsoken, Outwell, Ten Mile Bank, Welney, Sluice Common, Salters Lode, Fen End, The Smeeth, Well Creek, etc) and has even spawned an ancient technical language: leam, sluice, lode, cut, roddon, channel, level, dyke, eau, hyde, drain and drove.
It seems to me there are at least three sorts of fen: the salty creeks of the Wash basin, the brown tones of marshland, and the black peat fens, further inland. We lived in marshland, and by and large, and other than home and home town, I disliked it, hated its raw-toothed scruffiness, its straight-line fields and drains and messy farms. On the other hand, there were moments when the great openness of the all-embracing sky and low horizons plucked a nerve or an emotion. It always was a question of balance, and now that nostalgia has taken over from immediacy I can think again of those vast, threatening spaces with rather more affection.
In a sense this balance, and indeed the fens and marshes themselves, seem directly related to the region's perennial flood/tide conundrum. If these fertile lands are to be used for agriculture and not left vulnerable to waterlogging, then they have to be drained. And if they are drained, then they will gradually sink and begin to erode.
The situation remains the same today. Inches can measure the difference between fertility and flooding, and always there is the brooding knowledge that if rainfall and river levels, high tides and high winds ever do combine - as they have, and doubtless will again - then only banks and sluices stand between safety and inundation.
So the fens (and marshland) exist in a world of their own - albeit greatly changed from Vermuyden's day - where the centuries have bred hard-working, resolute, independent people who know the real price and value of things, and created a no-nonsense landscape of huge fields, waterways, long roads, grassy banks and lonely farms which can, and sometimes do, hint at some future disaster.
As some of the most fertile land in the country it is also some of the most heavily cropped. When I began work in Spalding in 1951 I remember being told that a family, working hard enough to develop frost-knotted hands, could earn a living from a greenhouse and ten to 15 acres of land. Not a good living, but a living. Since then, changing times and agri-business have made inroads into the economics of smallholders, but the fertility - save the occasional fen blow - remains. Wheat, potatoes, vegetables, celery, apples and sugar beet. The spirit of the old 'fen tigers' remains intact.
As a youthful cyclist I recall these fieldscapes and vistas which, at the time, suggested nothingness. Huge skies, tall church spires, and winds that came out of nowhere to buffet and jostle and cajole. And mud. Oceans of it. And solitary trees, and no cover when the rain came. Hated it then, as I have said. Look upon it a little more kindly now.
But I would never go back. Not to live there, anyway. And yet by some means, and after all these years away, it still feels as though I have a little mud left on my boots.
Wednesday, 17 December 2014
TEXEL'S TORMENT
Looking back, it must have been one of the most perplexing moments of the Second World War. And no-one was more perplexed at the time than coastguards Reg Earl and Howard Dawes, duty night-time lookouts at Mundesley beach who, during the dark early hours of April 10, 1945, saw a signal light out to sea and glimpsed the outline of an open boat. On board were what looked like armed men in uniform, so while one coastguard rushed to alert the Home Guard, the other prepared to meet the visitors, who-ever they were.
Things were no clearer when the boat beached and 14 men clambered ashore, for it turned out there were ten Dutchmen and four Russians, some of them wearing German army uniforms. It took a long time to sort things out.
This, it should be remembered, was a week before the Red Army entered Austria and one day before the Americans liberated Buchenwald. Indeed, the events behind the beaching went on until May 20, by which time Hitler and Mussolini were dead, the German forces had surrendered, and VE-Day had been celebrated. The boat on Mundesley beach thus represented one of the very last actions of the European War.
The entire episode began when captured soldiers from the Soviet Republic of Georgia were given an ultimatum by the Germans: remain in PoW camps, which meant probable death, or serve the invaders. The 822nd Georgia Infantry Battalion was formed from those who chose the latter, and in the late stages of the War the battalion was sent to Texel (pronounced Tessel), a heavily fortified Dutch island which was a pivotal point in the German Atlantic Wall defence.
On April 5, 1945, and almost a year after D-Day, the 822nd mutined. The Georgians killed some of the German garrison in their barracks and attacked the island's two gun batteries. With no response from the Allies - still preoccupied with the invasion - the reinforced Germans counter-attacked, and did so with brutal intent. Battles raged, and there was awful slaughter and reprisal on both sides, and it did not stop until May 20.
A few days after fighting broke out the group of 14 men stole the island's lifeboat, spent 27 dangerous hours at sea, and eventually landed on Mundesley beach after admitting they had 'got a bit lost.' When it was all sorted out they were given food and drink and taken to London.
Why had they made this brave escape attempt? Well, it seems the escapees carried with them two letters. One evidently pledged the Georgian troops' continued allegiance to Stalin and the USSR (a difficult point for them to argue, because they were actually wearing the uniforms of a German army unit). The other letter apparently urged the Allies to send troops or ships to Texel to bombard the German positions and bring supplies and ammunition.
Who ever had the task of considering the matter - if the matter was considered at all - is not known. And so, again, the Allies did not respond. No doubt the invasion forces already had enough on their plate, and did not have enough supplies to divert some away from the main thrust.
Indeed, the surviving groups of rebels on Texel, and those Texel residents who tried to go to their aid and paid an awful price, received no assistance at all until May 20, when elements of the Canadian army arrived. It is thought, however, that at least one Allied reconaissance aircraft did overfly the island in an atempt to check the situation, but the German commander ordered it should be left alone, in case it brought forth Allied retaliation. Thus Texel, for some time, had to suffer in isolation.
Looking back, it must have been one of the most perplexing moments of the Second World War. And no-one was more perplexed at the time than coastguards Reg Earl and Howard Dawes, duty night-time lookouts at Mundesley beach who, during the dark early hours of April 10, 1945, saw a signal light out to sea and glimpsed the outline of an open boat. On board were what looked like armed men in uniform, so while one coastguard rushed to alert the Home Guard, the other prepared to meet the visitors, who-ever they were.
Things were no clearer when the boat beached and 14 men clambered ashore, for it turned out there were ten Dutchmen and four Russians, some of them wearing German army uniforms. It took a long time to sort things out.
This, it should be remembered, was a week before the Red Army entered Austria and one day before the Americans liberated Buchenwald. Indeed, the events behind the beaching went on until May 20, by which time Hitler and Mussolini were dead, the German forces had surrendered, and VE-Day had been celebrated. The boat on Mundesley beach thus represented one of the very last actions of the European War.
The entire episode began when captured soldiers from the Soviet Republic of Georgia were given an ultimatum by the Germans: remain in PoW camps, which meant probable death, or serve the invaders. The 822nd Georgia Infantry Battalion was formed from those who chose the latter, and in the late stages of the War the battalion was sent to Texel (pronounced Tessel), a heavily fortified Dutch island which was a pivotal point in the German Atlantic Wall defence.
On April 5, 1945, and almost a year after D-Day, the 822nd mutined. The Georgians killed some of the German garrison in their barracks and attacked the island's two gun batteries. With no response from the Allies - still preoccupied with the invasion - the reinforced Germans counter-attacked, and did so with brutal intent. Battles raged, and there was awful slaughter and reprisal on both sides, and it did not stop until May 20.
A few days after fighting broke out the group of 14 men stole the island's lifeboat, spent 27 dangerous hours at sea, and eventually landed on Mundesley beach after admitting they had 'got a bit lost.' When it was all sorted out they were given food and drink and taken to London.
Why had they made this brave escape attempt? Well, it seems the escapees carried with them two letters. One evidently pledged the Georgian troops' continued allegiance to Stalin and the USSR (a difficult point for them to argue, because they were actually wearing the uniforms of a German army unit). The other letter apparently urged the Allies to send troops or ships to Texel to bombard the German positions and bring supplies and ammunition.
Who ever had the task of considering the matter - if the matter was considered at all - is not known. And so, again, the Allies did not respond. No doubt the invasion forces already had enough on their plate, and did not have enough supplies to divert some away from the main thrust.
Indeed, the surviving groups of rebels on Texel, and those Texel residents who tried to go to their aid and paid an awful price, received no assistance at all until May 20, when elements of the Canadian army arrived. It is thought, however, that at least one Allied reconaissance aircraft did overfly the island in an atempt to check the situation, but the German commander ordered it should be left alone, in case it brought forth Allied retaliation. Thus Texel, for some time, had to suffer in isolation.
Sunday, 14 December 2014
STRANGE VILLAGE
The strangest thing about a cutting I turned up recently in a largely forgotten file was not its headline about The Strangest Village, but the fact that someone other than me had snipped off the name of the local newspaper from which it was taken. Only the year of publication remained, 1932, which goes some way to explaining why I cannot remember where I got it from.
Nevertheless, the Special Correspondent who wrote the article had plainly done his homework, visiting this evidently weird place and in the process discovering that:
The village in question had no baker, butcher, fishmonger, draper, tailor, bootmaker or resident policeman. It was close to the coast, yet residents could not see the sea. No-one in the village had the surname Smith, Brown, Jones or Robinson. The 500 or so inhabitants were not able to call upon a loal doctor, chemist or dentist. It had a railway, but no station, and a church but no chapel. And one of the local farms was hitherto in the possession of a family named Crowe, their predecessors being the Rookes, and their neighbours the Owles and the Starlings.
I certainly liked the Norfolkesque story the writer told of a meeting a yokel who claimed they didn't burn much oil in the village. Why not, the visitor asked? Replied the yokel: 'In the summer I potter in the garden until its time for bed, and in the winter go to bed early.' That would drive me to drink, retorted the visitor. ,Well,' said the old man, 'you'd have to go to Trimingham or Trunch for that.'
As for the village, it was (and still is) called Gimingham, and is between Cromer and Mundesley in east Norfolk. As for the description, it seems to me to fit pretty much any present-day Norfolk village.
ENERGY SEARCH
Fracking is the current energy buzzword. It is also a subject which, if it ever visits Norfolk, will provoke a very heated debate. Old-timers, however, will muse that it - or something like it - has happened before.
In 1914 oil-bearing shales in the county were seen as a possible source of paraffin, but a high sulphur content proved a fatal stumbling block. Then six years' later oilmen thought they had struck liquid gold when oily deposits were seen floating down the River Puny (yes, that is correct) at Setch, near King's Lynn. Workers arrived, a shanty town sprang up, and the locality was extensively drilled. But once again, the product was either below par or too expensive to process.
Don't start celebrating yet, however, because in 1986 coal exploration licences were issued for the northen half of Norwich and as far out as Coltishall, Aylsham, Hindolveston and Honingham, and including land in Happisburgh, Acle and around Great Yarmouth. Searches had already covered other blocks of land at Syderstone, East Ruston, Potter Heigham, Saxthorpe and Irstead.
Energy exploration could still be coming to a town or village near you.
The strangest thing about a cutting I turned up recently in a largely forgotten file was not its headline about The Strangest Village, but the fact that someone other than me had snipped off the name of the local newspaper from which it was taken. Only the year of publication remained, 1932, which goes some way to explaining why I cannot remember where I got it from.
Nevertheless, the Special Correspondent who wrote the article had plainly done his homework, visiting this evidently weird place and in the process discovering that:
The village in question had no baker, butcher, fishmonger, draper, tailor, bootmaker or resident policeman. It was close to the coast, yet residents could not see the sea. No-one in the village had the surname Smith, Brown, Jones or Robinson. The 500 or so inhabitants were not able to call upon a loal doctor, chemist or dentist. It had a railway, but no station, and a church but no chapel. And one of the local farms was hitherto in the possession of a family named Crowe, their predecessors being the Rookes, and their neighbours the Owles and the Starlings.
I certainly liked the Norfolkesque story the writer told of a meeting a yokel who claimed they didn't burn much oil in the village. Why not, the visitor asked? Replied the yokel: 'In the summer I potter in the garden until its time for bed, and in the winter go to bed early.' That would drive me to drink, retorted the visitor. ,Well,' said the old man, 'you'd have to go to Trimingham or Trunch for that.'
As for the village, it was (and still is) called Gimingham, and is between Cromer and Mundesley in east Norfolk. As for the description, it seems to me to fit pretty much any present-day Norfolk village.
ENERGY SEARCH
Fracking is the current energy buzzword. It is also a subject which, if it ever visits Norfolk, will provoke a very heated debate. Old-timers, however, will muse that it - or something like it - has happened before.
In 1914 oil-bearing shales in the county were seen as a possible source of paraffin, but a high sulphur content proved a fatal stumbling block. Then six years' later oilmen thought they had struck liquid gold when oily deposits were seen floating down the River Puny (yes, that is correct) at Setch, near King's Lynn. Workers arrived, a shanty town sprang up, and the locality was extensively drilled. But once again, the product was either below par or too expensive to process.
Don't start celebrating yet, however, because in 1986 coal exploration licences were issued for the northen half of Norwich and as far out as Coltishall, Aylsham, Hindolveston and Honingham, and including land in Happisburgh, Acle and around Great Yarmouth. Searches had already covered other blocks of land at Syderstone, East Ruston, Potter Heigham, Saxthorpe and Irstead.
Energy exploration could still be coming to a town or village near you.
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