BY ED CHURCH (OCTOBER 2024)
Death, taxes, and Hollywood war films portraying the Brits as pompous idiots. Some things in life you can be sure of… Recently, the Apple TV series “Masters of the Air” continued the longstanding tradition. In fact, it may even have taken it to new levels.
In an East Anglian pub, the US airmen of the 100th Bomb Group come across their RAF counterparts, prompting Lord Peregrine Toffington and his chums (that may not have been his exact name) to go through a hackneyed superior-obnoxious-arrogant routine, before being dumped on their backsides by the good guys… Plus ça change.
I actually rather liked Masters of the Air, but that whole scene was so high on cliché and farce, it reminded me of Tom Conti’s cameo in Friends as Ross’s prospective English father-in-law: “Come on, you scoundrel. Put up your dukes and see me box your ears. I’ve an Oxford Blue to my name, don’t you know?”
Of course, it would be strange if the producers and scriptwriters of these World War 2 epics were genuinely anti-British in any meaningful sense. Certainly, the cast and crew tend to come from both sides of the Atlantic. More likely, is that the source material on which these productions tend to be based – the interviews and memoirs of US veterans – contain a wide streak of the old Yanks v Brits rivalry, and this gets translated onto the screen. Fair enough.
But here’s the thing. As Queen Elizabeth II once put it during one of the Harry & Meghan debacles: “Recollections may vary.”
A while back, when I was researching Stalag IV-B for Non-Suspicious, I came across a good example of just that. It involved two books published in the early 2000s by former POWs: “Stalag IV-B” by US serviceman Rev. A. W. Ishee, and “Survival at Stalag IVB” by New Zealander Tony Vercoe. Both men recalled a number of similar incidents in the camp, but their accounts of the British reaction to Americans captured at the Battle of the Bulge (of which Ishee was one) were, let’s say, somewhat divergent…
Ishee: “Next our captors marched us over to another barrack. They put us in an area with British soldiers. These men had been prisoners for quite some time and were pretty neat and clean. They had gotten Red Cross parcels and clothes from home. They had extra clothes that were clean and bunks to sleep on. The British resented us Americans coming into their barracks because we had lice on us. These fellows would not let us sleep on the bunks.”
Vercoe: “Americans were moved into the already overcrowded huts in the camp. The British doubled up on the bunks, freeing up others onto which the new arrivals could slump. The RAF men were shocked by their condition and immediately did whatever they could to help them. Later, in a critical meeting, they debated whether to go ahead with their planned Christmas dinner or forgo it and hand their carefully hoarded food to the Americans. There were a few dissenting voices suggesting “give half, keep half,” but in the end the “give all” vote was overwhelming. The RAF boys knew in their hearts that the Americans needed it so much more.”
Suffice it to say, a viewer’s impression of the British would vary considerably depending on which book got the nod to be dramatised.
Still, as with Masters of the Air, a poor opinion of the Brits did not stop me enjoying Rev. A. W. Ishee’s book. While Tony Vercoe’s work is a great collaborative achievement – interweaving his own memories with the sketches, records, and recollections of dozens of detainees – Ishee’s is a freewheeling personal account of his war from draft to capture, to homecoming, and beyond. It also contains a great description of the moment of liberation, courtesy of Russian cavalry:
“I had seen Russian Cossacks in some of the movies I had seen, and in books, but now I was seeing them in the flesh. Buddy, I had never seen such a colourful bunch of troops riding horses as those coming towards our camp. I will never forget how that Russian in the front reared up his horse, pulled out a pistol, and shot the lock on that gate. He shot it again. Then he reached out and kicked the gate. With the help of the horses the Russians forced the gates open… Boy! We exploded out of that place.”
Of course, the points on which the two books concur (the horseback liberation… the friendly-fire strafing of the camp by Mustang P-51s…) make the points of difference stand out even more. And, for whatever reason, those points invariably involve feelings towards the British. It’s easy to imagine how views formed in wartime become entrenched over the years… find their way into books and interviews… which become scripts… which become screenplays… and, decades later, it all ends with someone in the UK rolling their eyes at the condescending twit of a British tank commander in Band of Brothers, or Lord Peregrine Toffington and his chums in Masters of the Air.
Come to think of it, though, the Rev. A. W. Ishee – who committed his life to God after surviving the war – didn’t really need to wait for his views of the British to become entrenched over the years. After liberation, in a dispute over who boarded a C47 transport plane first, he recalls making his feelings known.
“We yelled, “They are not Englishmen. They are limeys. They didn’t treat us right. They treated us ugly in that prisoner-of-war camp. We are not going to let them go first.”… Finally, an officer, a major, I think, came out. He had them unload the Englishmen. The Englishmen were fussing and cussing as they exited the plane… We told them we would bust them in the head if they did not get out of the way.”
Blimey. Not the best advert for the Special Relationship.
So, were the British really so hideous to their American allies at Stalag IV-B? Is the book by Kiwi Tony Vercoe, with all its talk of generous behaviour, doing some whitewashing of events in favour of his Commonwealth cousins? While these things rarely have a definitive answer (too many prisoners, too many individual experiences) for the purpose of this little blog, I propose author Kurt Vonnegut as arbiter.
Aged 22, and fighting with the U.S. 106th Infantry Division, Vonnegut was another of those captured at the Battle of the Bulge and sent to Stalag IVB. Quoted in Vercoe’s book, he recalls the “welcome feast” laid on by the British, followed by an uproarious performance of Cinderella in the camp theatre to lift the new arrivals’ spirits. The hospitality from such downtrodden men moved him.
“These lusty, ruddy vocalists were among the first English-speaking prisoners to be taken in the Second World War… They had not seen a woman or a child for four years or more. They hadn’t seen birds either. Not even sparrows would come into the camp.”
Harmony restored (and no need to bust any limeys in the head).
Yep, recollections – they may definitely vary.