I attended the launch of an autobiography by Eric Sanders at the Commonwealth Club http://tickets.commonwealthclub.org/ last night. Eric has been a very long standing member of my old local Labour Party in Hammersmith and at 90 years of age shows no sign of flaggng having just finished the autobiography. The title is: Secret Operations, From Music to Morse and beyond.
He and his wife have made a great contribution to the local community in so many ways. I knew that he had fled the Nazi’s after they moved into his native Austria. What I did not know was that he also composed music and was about to have his first musical performed in Vienna when the Nazi’s moved in and he moved out! I also did not know that after he joined the British Army he was initially in the Pioneer corps before being moved into SOE (Special Operations Executive http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWsoe.htm ). I am not sure what would have happened to a Jew had he been caught behind enemy lines in civilian clothing – I shudder to think.
The book makes fascinating reading. I don’t think it is on general release as it seems to have been produced as a limited edition and edited by local historian Dr Helen Fry http://www.awasteofmoney.com/NewPressReleases/freudswarlaunches.htm .
I have suggested to Eric that he sends a copy to the Imperial War Museum http://www.iwm.org.uk/ as I believe they are keen on collecting memories from a fast receding age.
The Pioneer Corps apart from digging trenches suffered casualties in their role of crawling ahead of the infantry attack right in close under the enemy machine-guns, dragging drainpipe-torpedoes (‘bangalores’) to shove under the enemy’s barbed-wire fences and the blow a hole through which the infantry could then charge with fixed bayonets.
The frontline of the SOE suffered much worse casualties due to failed-security and being put up against walls in France and wherever-else and shot by the Nazis (Wehrmacht, Gestapo, or WaffenSS, whatever [one refrains from saying ‘whoever’ there]).
I played piano in a dance band to entertain the Troops during WW2, then joined up and was trained as a signals-officer instructor, in Kent where a Lieut John Morse also qualified as an ‘above-average’ and went on much higher, whilst I went merely to HQ G3 and in my spare time studied to Royal Schools of Music teacher level.
So both morse-code and music still mix creatively in my blood at age 82, and I shall look forward to ‘meeting’ Eric Sanders, and the people of his life, through the pages you recommend.
In Alan Beattie’s just-published “False Economics: a surprising economic history of the world” we read:
(“)If we are going to learn from history rather just record and read it, we need to stop reasons becoming excuses(“).
And “Nothing can call back the finger of history to cancel even half a line of what has been written. But still we can compose the script for the remainder of our lives and beyond”.
He must have been acquainted with our old late friend Alfred Reynolds then, who had a similar career path and ethnic background, and was rewarded with an inadequate job in the foreign office in the 1950s unto retirement. He was from Budapest at the same time, and equally, composed some sonatas published on Radio 3 a couple of years ago. His literary publications were of a different order.
JSDM has got a marvellously late literary development if my reading is right. Very enjoyable John. thank you.
Alfred Reynolds whom I have mentioned, and is/was certainly to Eric Saunders lived until the age of 100+ and I last met him outside the HoC FAC,in about 2003 when he was going to give me a lecture on the evils of UK foreign policy, which must be obvious to most people, so I did not let him tarry further.
May JSDM and Eric tarry a good while yet.
Clive, our only other correspondent on this thread so far, may do what all former govt chief whips do…..for all I care and there is plenty of time yet! He’s a spring chicken
by comparison, as am I.
Enjoy!
I’m hoping Eric is reading these – however let me tell you I was never a government chief whip