Such Stuff: A Story-Maker's Inspiration by Michael Morpurgo
Many trials breached army regulations. An order in January 1915 had effectively reversed the principle that the accused is innocent until found guilty. But regulations stipulated formal legal representation. Most of the accused were not legally represented, although some did have a “prisoner’s friend” (an officer who represented a defendant at a court martial). The condemned had the right to petition the king for mercy, but in practice no one did, suggesting that they were not informed that appeal was available.
In general, the trials were perfunctory and often unjust. In November 1916, Private Peter Goggins and Corporal John McDonald were on guard duty. Sergeant Joseph Stones ran past their position shouting, “Run for your lives, the Huns are on top of you!” They retreated to a reserve trench twenty yards away. Stones gave evidence that he had ordered the retreat, but both men were charged with desertion, and Stones was sentenced to death for throwing away his rifle. All were executed to “set an example”. Private Rochester witnessed the executions, and reported that “the chaplain who prayed with them before their deaths remarked that he had never met three braver men”.
Many argue that we should not apply our modern codes of behaviour to the actions of previous generations, and that we should not even try to right the wrongs of the past. Correlli Barnett, co-author of the BBC television series The Great War, said that to obtain a mass pardon for men accused of cowardice or desertion was “pointless” after all these years. Others, particularly relatives, disagreed. When the suppressed documents of the court martials were released in 1990, the campaign for official pardons was invigorated.
The Shot at Dawn Memorial was established in 2000 at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, in memory of those executed during the First World War. Five soldiers from New Zealand had already won a pardon earlier in 2000, as did twenty-three Canadians a year later. But successive British governments took until 2006 “to acknowledge that injustices were clearly done in some cases, and to acknowledge that all these men were victims of war” (Defence Secretary, Des Browne). All 306 British soldiers executed by their own side in the First World War were finally granted posthumous pardons.
The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips
THE DREAM
Let me tell you about some wonderful neighbours we once had living down our little lane in Devon. They were Commander and Mrs Simpson. He had been in the Royal Navy, his wife had been in the world of politics and his sister who had lived with them had been a head teacher. They were all getting on in years, the sister well into her nineties. He, it turned out, had been an explorer as well as a naval officer, and had as a young man discovered and mapped an unknown inland lake in Greenland. They were all supremely interesting people, and kind with it. But in the end, our little lane in the middle of nowhere was just too remote for them, too far from shops and the doctor. After only a few years, they moved to a village in South Devon closer to their family, and more convenient for them. We would go to see them from time to time in their new home in Slapton Sands; but then, sadly, soon afterwards, and in quite quick succession, they died.
I was asked by the family to speak at Commander Simpson’s funeral service in the church at Slapton. I was honoured to be asked, but knew I would find it difficult to say what I wanted to say about him, about all of them, without finding myself overcome by the moment. So, just before the service began, we went into the village pub, down the road from the church, and had a sandwich and a beer. “Dutch courage” they call it – not sure why. Anyway, we were sitting there in the pub when I happened to notice some small black and white photographs on the wall. They intrigued me. They were old photos, clearly taken during the Second World War, because they were of American soldiers in the uniforms of the time. On closer inspection, I saw these soldiers were in the village of Slapton itself. They weren’t marching about, none were carrying weapons. They were with local villagers, carrying furniture, piling it up on carts.
I asked about the photos at the bar. “What were they doing here, these American soldiers?” I asked. By way of answer, the barman produced a book from under the counter, and put it down in front of me. It was called The Land That Changed Its Face, by Grace Bradbeer. “Here’s a little book that’ll tell you all about it,” he replied. “Local history. All in there. Five pounds.”
Well, after that, I couldn’t very well not buy the book, could I? As it turned out, I am so glad I did!
I didn’t get a chance to read it at once, of course. The funeral was very moving, the Commander’s naval sword on the coffin. At the burial, Bercelet, our lurcher dog, who he loved and who loved him, lay at the graveside, head resting on her paws, watching. As soon as I got home, I read the little book from cover to cover. Here, in brief, is the remarkable story I found in it.
In 1943, the villagers of Slapton, and six other villages near by, were called together and informed that they had six weeks to move out as the American army needed the villages, the farms, the beaches as an exercise area. They had to practise landings from the sea, in preparation for the projected liberation of France and Europe the next year. The beach at Slapton was perfect for this, because it resembled the kind of beaches they were going to land on in Normandy.
The families moved out to wherever they could go, friends, relations. All the farm animals were evacuated, houses and churches sandbagged and protected as much as they could be. It was a difficult and traumatic time for everyone. One farmer killed himself, I later heard. He could not and would not leave the house he had grown up in.
But there was another personal story in the book that I found almost incredible. A small girl, a farmer’s daughter, was preparing to leave the farm with her whole family on the very last morning before the perimeter wire was to be closed, before they were to be separated entirely from their farm for months, years, maybe – they did not know. The last cart, piled high with their belongings, was about to pull away when the little girl said, “Where’s my cat?” The family searched everywhere, in the farmhouse, in the barns, all over the farm. They could not find her. They called for her again and again. She would not come back. In the end, time ran out and they had to leave. The little girl was distraught of course. This was her precious beloved pet, a ginger cat called Adolphus Tips, and she was having to abandon him.
The months of training began, the American soldiers landing on the beaches from landing craft, with live shells being fired over their heads onto the countryside beyond, onto the farms and houses and churches and schools. They had to make these exercises, these war games, as real as possible. For ten months, the villagers and farmers had to stay away, and the exercises and the shelling went on. The little girl feared the worst. How could any cat survive that? Then, in June 1944, the Americans, as well as other Allied soldiers – British, Canadian, French, Indian, African – thousands of men – set off in their ships on D-Day to Normandy to liberate the continent, the biggest invasion armada the world had ever seen. A few months later, the perimeter wire was lifted and the local people, villagers and farmers, were all allowed back home. Many homes were in ruins. Most were damaged.
The little girl returned, still hoping but not believing for one moment that her beloved cat could have survived. The windows and doors of the farmhouse were all blown out, the barns destroyed. But as they walked up the path to the front door, the cat came bounding out of a broken window to greet them. Adolphus Tips had survived. How wonderful was that! What a story! What a name! Adolphus Tips! I knew at once that I had to tell his story, the story of the little girl and of the local people and the American soldiers too, so far from home.
I remembered then, as I thought about it, the first American soldiers and sailors and airmen I had ever seen. Just after the Second World War, there were hundreds and thousands of American servicemen and women still in England. I remembered how smart they were, how smiling and confident they seemed, how they liked kids and always had chocolate to give you, Hershey’s bars. And I remember in particular the black soldiers. I think the first
I read all I could about the millions of US troops who came across to England and I went to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial overlooking Omaha Beach, where so many Americans had died, maybe some of those very soldiers who had practised their landings at Slapton, maybe some of the soldiers in those photographs in the pub. I stood there by the gravestones and thought about how young they were and about how old they would now be fifty years later, grandfathers, perhaps, like me, and about how lucky I was to have lived my life in comparative peace and how they had missed so much.
I returned often to Slapton, to walk the beach, to see where the old hotel had been, to see the tank they discovered after the war and dragged up onto the seafront, which stands now as a memorial to the American soldiers who died. And one day, there happened to be an American veteran there at the tank, visiting. I went closer. He wore a cap from his old uniform and was wearing his medals. He was telling his family how he had been there on this beach as a young man, how he had lost so many good friends, the best friends he ever had.
I went up to the village shop of Slapton and what did they have for sale? A picture of Adolphus Tips, the cat who would be at the centre of my story. With that picture, that cat, looking up at me, I sat down and wrote his story, a story of then and now, of sadness and hope, and of a great and hidden tragedy too.
I dedicated the book to our old friends, the Simpson family, without whom I would never have written the story. I hope they would have liked it. I think they would. I think they would like the play too. Kneehigh Theatre have made a wonderful stage adaption, which they call 946. It is on now, as I write this, in a huge circus tent that seats five hundred people, in a field in Cornwall. A field where, very probably, some of those Americans camped all those years ago.
THE AMAZING STORY OF ADOLPHUS TIPS
Wednesday, May 10th 1944
Adie still hasn’t come back to see us again. I’ve been hoping and hoping every day. I wonder if he ever will. I can’t stop thinking of him walking away down the lane, and that maybe it’s the last time I’ll ever see him. Mrs Blumfeld keeps saying the invasion must happen soon, any day now, she says – when the weather’s right. They’ve got to wait till the weather’s right. It’s rough out at sea today. I hope it stays rough for ever, and then Adie won’t have to go on the invasion, and he’ll be safe.
I helped Barry and Mum pull off a calf this afternoon. The calf was walking inside ten minutes. I’ve seen lots of lambs born, lots of calves, and each time it surprises me how quickly they can get up and walk on their wobbly legs. What takes us a year or more, they can do inside an hour.
Mum’s a bit down. It’s because she hasn’t had a letter from Dad since he left. We don’t even know where he is. We think he’s in England still, but we don’t really know. We were kneeling there in the field, watching the calf trying out his first skip and falling over himself, and Barry was laughing. But Mum and me weren’t laughing because our minds were elsewhere. If Barry hadn’t been there I think I’d have told her there and then: “I know what it feels like, Mum, to miss someone you really really love.”
I can’t tell Barry that I love Adie, that’s for sure, because he’s too young and he wouldn’t understand, and even if he did understand he’d be upset. He’s never said it, but I know he wants me to be his girlfriend. I never will be, not now. Barry’s more like a brother to me, more like a friend, a really good friend. With Adie, it’s different, so completely different.
Saturday, May 20th 1944
Mrs Turner has come to stay, Barry’s mum (she likes us to call her Ivy). Last Tuesday she just turned up out of the blue, to give Barry a nice birthday surprise, she said – that’s in two days’ time. She gave him a surprise all right. She gave us all a surprise. We got back from school and there she was sitting with Mum at the kitchen table, her suitcase beside her. She hugged Barry so tight and for so long that I thought his eyes might pop out, and she pinched his cheek, which I could see he didn’t like at all. She’s got lots of powder on her face and bright scarlet lipstick, which Barry’s always wiping off his face after she kisses him, and that’s very often. And her eyebrows are pencilled on, not real, just like Marlene Dietrich in the films, Mum says.
Barry hasn’t said much since she’s been here, nor has anyone else. No one can get a word in edgeways. His mum never stops talking. She could “talk the hind legs off a ruddy donkey” – that’s what Grandfather says. And she smokes all the time too, “like a ruddy chimbley” – Grandfather says that too. Ivy’s nice though. I like her. She came with presents for everyone, and told us again and again how kind we’d been to look after Barry for her. All through supper tonight she told us story after story about the Blitz in London, about the air-raid sirens, running to shelters and sleeping at nights down in the underground stations. She talks in a “townie” accent just like Barry does, only a lot louder and for a lot longer. She’s very proud of her big red London bus. “I’m tellin’ you. Ain’t nothin’ goin’ to stop my number seventy-four from gettin’ where she’s goin’,” she said this evening. “’Oles in the road, busted bridges, tumbled-down houses. They can send over all the hexplodin’ doodahs they like. Will they stop my bus from gettin’ where it’s goin’? Not bloomin’ likely, that’s what I say.”
Barry tries to stop her talking from time to time, but it’s no use. In the end he just goes out and lets her get on with it. He spends even more time now out on the farm with Grandfather and Uncle George. Barry’s mum makes no bones about it: she doesn’t like the country one little bit, and farms in particular. “Smelly places. All that mud. All them cows. And the bloomin’ birds wakin’ you up in the mornin’.” Yesterday she was washing up at the sink with Mum after supper when all at once she burst into tears. “What is it?” Mum asked, putting an arm around her.
“It’s all that green,” she said, pointing out of the window. “It’s just green everywhere. And there’s no buildin’s. And it’s so empty. I ’ate green. I don’t know why, I just ’ate it.”
She hardly ever goes out, just stays in the kitchen, smoking and drinking tea. Mum likes her a lot because she’s good company for her and because Barry’s mum loves to help out. She likes to be busy, fetching and carrying, scrubbing floors, ironing and polishing. She’s black-leaded Uncle George’s stove for him so he’s happy too. Barry never actually says he wants her to go home, but I can feel he does. I don’t think he’s ashamed of her exactly, but you can tell he’s uncomfortable with her around. He either wants to be at home with her in London, or down here with us, but not both. That’s what I think anyway.
Preparation for D-Day landings
In 1943, the Allies were preparing to invade German-occupied countries and liberate Europe. They were about to launch a huge seaborne attack, “Operation Overlord”, on German-occupied France. Nothing on this scale had ever been attempted and it needed careful planning and preparation. One dress rehearsal for the landings the Allies would need to make in France took place on a stretch of the Devon coast at Slapton Sands. This resulted in the death of 946 American servicemen – one of the worst military training disasters of the twentieth century.
In 1943, Slapton Sands was a quiet backwater. It seemed an ideal place to practise beach landings because its unspoilt gravel beach was similar in layout to Utah Beach on the coast of Normandy. This was where the Americans planned to land.
Before “Exercise Tiger” could begin, the villages and farms had to be cleared of the civilian population. A compulsory mass evacuation was carried out, involving 180 farms and 3,000 local residents. Many had never even left their villages before. Pam Will-Strete was the
Exercise Tiger started as it ended, disastrously. Live ammunition is commonly used in military training to acclimatize troops to the sights, sounds and smells of a bombardment. After the use of live rounds, there should have been time to declare the beach safe and then to land the American troops. However, the officer in charge had delayed the bombardment, because some British vessels were late arriving. Crucially, the radio message notifying the delay did not get through to all the landing craft because the radio frequencies to be used were mistyped in the orders. As a result, the landing craft were using a different radio frequency from the ships further away, and many were still dropping off men when the bombardment started. The terrible mix-up of timings meant that as the American soldiers came onto the shore, the British were still bombing the beach.
A nine-boat patrol of German motor torpedo boats, attracted by high levels of radio traffic, slipped undetected through the Royal Navy’s protective screen. Unwarned, the landing craft carried on towards the shore, and became sitting ducks for the nine German E-boats.