Yesterday Sam Gearing, a 19 year old Foundation student at RADA, came into the recording studio at Blind Veterans UK. Sam recorded an account written in 1916 by 19 year old Frank G Braithwaite, who was blinded in the Dardanelles.
I won’t say anymore apart from – please listen. I found Frank’s handwritten account incredibly moving and I also find Sam’s reading incredibly moving. Thank you Frank and thank you Sam.
To listen please go to: http://www.facebook.com/blindveteransuk?ref=hl
I was once interviewed for the PR role of account director for a firm that delivered pre prepared food to retail outlets. It was a good job, and had I taken it, one that would have taken me along the logical career path. But I didn’t want to do logical, I wanted to do something that excited me – so I turned it down. I started to have visions of arriving in the office, when walking through reception I would announce to the air – ‘signal failure at Selsdon’ – to explain my late arrival, and how 10 years later I would change my name to Mrs Gossamer and my clothes would be found on a beach.
Instead I took a contract in a charity’s PR dept and after a few years found St Dunstan’s, now Blind Veterans UK, and started work on its monthly Review magazine. And I love it, although of course there are days when I think about returning to the commercial world, but never for long.
For a feature in the November Review I had the great honour to go to Bletchley Park with Nancy Jackson who worked there during WWII. Driving along the motorway with Nancy I saw one of the food company’s trucks heading down the other side of the motorway – no regrets.
That motorway journey was the start of an adventure for Nancy and for me. It was great to spend a day in Nancy’s company, who explained that she was ‘Something very humble during her time at the Park’. It was the first time she had returned since leaving in 1945 as Wren Petty Officer Nancy Atkins. It was also the day Nancy discovered that she hadn’t worked on the Enigma Code as she had believed for the last 67 years. She had in fact worked on the Lorenz Code, the highest level code; it was the code used by Hitler to communicate with his chief commanders and allied leaders. What a day.
And here’s what Nancy said: “I was something very humble; I worked from teleprinter messages using a pencil and paper, a very small cog that made up a computer as we worked on various permutations. I joined the Wrens and think I must have been recruited to Bletchley Park because of my school certificate results. We were billeted at Woburn Abbey and we would be bussed in each day. As Bletchley Park was manned 24 hours a day we worked a watch system that was 9 – 5, 9 – midnight and midnight to 9. It was pretty repetitive work as we sat in a hut working on different permutations. It’s been a wonderful experience to come back and quite incredible to find out after all these years that I worked on the Lorenz Code and not the Enigma Code. At the time we knew we had worked on messages sent to Mussolini, as a high ranking official once came into our hut to say that ‘we had done well’, cracking a message that was meant for Mussolini. I had no idea until today that those messages were from Hitler. The main building brought back memories of my time at the Park as I remember going into it as a young Wren for my meals.”
And that’s why I love what I do. Thank you Nancy and thank you Iain Standen, Katherine Lynch, Teng Chang and everyone at Bletchley Park. It was the second time I’d met Nancy, the first was when she first became a member of Blind Veterans UK and it was at our Rehabilitation & Training centre in Brighton. At the end of the introduction by the IT Instructor, who had explained about speech software, Nancy asked if it would work on her MAC.
The characters of A Dance to the Music of Time have stayed with me and during my time at Blind Veterans UK, as editor of its monthly magazine, I have met people who make me think of Jenkins, Templar and Stringham. I am fortunate to spend time with the men and women who are our members; they invite me into their homes where we drink tea as I listen to accounts of their Service days. I am taken on daring raids in the Apennine Mountains of Northern Italy with the SAS, to Bletchley Park to work on the Enigma Code, through the deserts with General Montgomery and the 8th Army. I hear of their time at the Battle of Maleme, they talk of their capture and how they went on to gain an education in a German PoW camp, where they also performed in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. I sit as they tell me of special operations work in Germany at the end of the war to unearth SS officers who were in hiding and of successful chariot missions in the seas of the Far East. Former Far East Prisoners of War tell me of the nightmares that still wake them some 67 years later, as they relive the horrors of the torturous work on the notorious Railway of Death, and of their work today for compensation from the Japanese government. And I get to hang out with the guys who have been blinded in Afghanistan as we go fishing and abseiling.
All of them are matter of fact as they tell me of their life today and of the skills and techniques they have been taught at our centres to adjust to their sight loss. I am always thanked for my work as they say how much the charity does for them. I tell them it’s not me, it’s the Rehabilitation and Training and care staff at our centres and the countrywide team of Welfare Officers, and the support staff who make the real difference.
Whenever I meet a WWII veteran I am always struck by how philosophical they are. They left everything they knew, and all that was safe to go to war, but they do not moan about it, they just say: ‘It’s what we had to do’. Now when I open A Dance to the Music of time, I picture them crossing the pages in front of me, their lives entwined with those of Jenkins, Templar and Stringham. Although I realise that today the lives of my beloved characters may read more like Made in Chelsea, as they change to Spencer, Proudlock and Jamie.
Many of our members have written their memoirs, as they use the skills they learnt at our Rehabilitation and Training centres. It’s there I meet the young men who have returned from Afghanistan, newly blinded, as they adjust to a life without sight they are taught the skills they once took for granted. How to make a cup of tea, prepare a meal, or walk safely along a crowded pavement. I receive emails and typed letters from people in their 80s and 90s who are using a computer for the first time.
Ronald Blaber who came to Blind Veterans UK in 2007 used the typing skills he learnt at our Brighton centre to write his novel: On the Outside Looking In. Ronald, from Seaford in East Sussex, Served in the Royal Navy from 1940 to 1945. He qualified as gunnery rating before Serving in Hunt class destroyers in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and the Channel where the ship raided German convoys. Ronald has given all royalties from the sale of his book to Blind Veterans UK.
Speaking of his novel Ronald said: “It is a work of fact and fiction, but the fiction is based on fact. I enjoyed writing it and losing myself in my memories. I thought of my Service with the North Atlantic Convoys and the day we lost 12 ships in 10 minutes. We found a raft with three men onboard, still alive, and one of them was holding the ship’s cat. It was a sad day, but someone would always crack a joke. I thought of D-Day when I was a gunner, there were 16 men on deck, most of them 17 and 18 years old. I can still picture them when they hit the beaches – some falling and some running. When I think of those things now I think of the Olympics and how proud we can be. The royalties from the sale of the book will go to Blind Veterans UK as I couldn’t have written it without their tuition and I want to thank them for everything they have done, and continue to do for me. I also want to thank all of our Service men and women for their bravery.”
In summary: When World War I robs Danny’s daughter Violet of the most important people in her life, she’s faced with serious challenges. Against all odds, she overcomes extraordinary difficulties to make a life for herself – and the baby she’s forced to abandon. Victor, as he was later named, grows up unaware of his real background. As a fine young man he travels and Serves his country valiantly in World War II, forging lifetime friendships – his replacement family. But what happened to his real family and will he ever find his guardian angel?
In two parts, On the Outside Looking In, is full of atmosphere and drama throughout its historical settings – an engaging and totally absorbing plot. It is published by Pen Press and retails at £8.99. It is available from Amazon.com, Waterstones.com and Tesco.com