RFC 3: Beware the Malevolent Archival Hoarder
Captain Albert Ball VC
Part I
As I approach the final chapter of Chaz Bowyer's earlier biography (1977 and republished in 1994), following Captain Ball's death on 7 May 1917 I am deeply disturbed.
Alarm bells immediately rang upon reading Colin Pengelly's Introduction to his much later and excellent 2010 biography of Albert Ball VC. It has weight because Mr Pengelly had discussed disturbing matters with Chaz Bowyer before Mr Bowyer’s death in 2008.
A prolific writer, researcher and historian for both the Royal Air Force and its foundation stone, the Royal Flying Corps, Mr Bowyer (1926-2008) was and remains a long-established world authority on the histories of both the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force.
Colin Pengelly is also Royal Air Force retired and thus writes with undeniable authority; an authority denied some researchers and historians or self-appointed researchers and historians.
He brings a very fresh breeze to the life of Captain Albert Ball VC.
He also sounds an alarm bell that, in the same week as we read of wanton mismanagement and regular thefts from The British Museum (2023) over the last five years we should be very careful about ever releasing original records from family archives.
Part II
Reading Pengelly’s Introduction, I learned that a New Zealander had purchased by auction through a Swindon sale room in Wiltshire in 2005 ‘one of the most important last known letters written by Albert Ball’. Fine.
Then I read this:
“...[and] who has refused to let it be copied for the purposes of this work.”
That, to me, denotes a cruel and spiteful person.
Let us be clear. Not everyone scurrying around auction rooms has the public interest at heart. They do not necessarily even have the intent to ‘make a fast buck.’ They are the squirrels. We all know of the English term ‘to squirrel away.’ These people are the secret hoarders, harbouring vendettas against society because of usually totally unfounded personal grievances.
Our loss, and our problem, is that these people have wealth at their disposal to ransack history.
Part III
I have custody of a very small family archive. It is of no interest to anyone outside the family. There are personal letters from my parents' brothers, both serving with Royal Air Force Bomber Command - Main Force and Pathfinder Force respectively - to their parents, my four grandparents. They give an airman's eye view of life at war during the Second World War.
I speak of total war.
I state this controversially, simply to enable Generation Z and, just entering the fray in 2023 at age 13, Generation Alpha in order to grasp an understanding. It is this.
During the Strategic Air Offensive waged by the Royal Air Force during 1942-1944, Bomber Command could "mariupol", in one night, whole towns and vast areas of cities of the Third Reich. And they did. Night after night.
The cost was the loss of 55,573 airmen, which excludes those who survived as prisoners of war, and of the wounded and those who miraculously made their way back to Britain from Occupied Europe, often with the efficient and very dangerous assistance of the French resistance, and Resistance Movements in other occupied countries. That fatality figure is the conservative estimate. As researchers continue their work, facts continue to emerge that inevitably increase the death toll. That is the same in every sphere of war. And it is crucial when looking at the impact of total war upon civilian populations of all countries on all sides.
The International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC) based within sight of the twin spires of Lincoln Cathedral in Lincolnshire has an enormous archival undertaking. As it increases, so too, does our understanding of the past. The IBCC has now been able to collate the deaths of Bomber Command personnel between the Command’s establishment in 1936 and its closure 32 years later in 1968. Thus, the wartime loss-rate of 55,573 falls within the Command’s overall losses during its 32 years of operational life of 58,438 personnel.
My family’s correspondence includes, for example, a letter from my father’s brother to their mother in 1942 in which he describes learning to fly by night. He had qualified as a sergeant-pilot in the USA in April 1942. He had seen the wealth and splendour of the States, the lights, the skyscrapers, a nation without rationing, a land of plenty. He noticed, too, the attitude. Supportive yet distant.
Then came 7 December 1941. I remember my father referring to it as one of the most ‘exciting days’ of his brother’s life. Within the hour, attitudes had changed. Now, seven months later flying over Oxfordshire, he speaks of the blackness over Britain. In the far distance, the light is from fires and searchlights, anti-aircraft batteries, ‘someone’s getting it’. He enjoys the challenge of flying and navigating the twin-engine Oxford. It is smooth and responsive. He talks of dead-reckonings.
Airspeed Oxford AS 10
A very popular aircraft design by AIRSPEED, the Oxford was commissioned in 1937 and immediately entered service with the Royal Air Force.
It is worth noting the Wikipedia introductory note:
As a consequence of the outbreak of war, many thousands of Oxfords were ordered by Britain and its allies, including Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, Poland, and the United States. Following the end of the conflict, the Oxford continued to achieve export sales for some time, equipping the newly formed air forces of Egypt, India, Israel, and Yugoslavia. It was considered to be a capable trainer aircraft throughout the conflict, as well as being used as a general-purpose type. A number of Oxfords are preserved today on static display worldwide.
I confirm that I am a fully paid up monthly subscriber to Wikipedia. KTW.
Airspeed Oxford AS 10 Twin Engine Trainer
The twin cockpit was perfect for training newly qualified RAF pilots in the very difficult subject and discipline of advanced navigation.
He then makes an observation that when I first read the letter several years ago in my father’s study working through Dad’s papers while Mum was downstairs, caused me to pause for quite a while. It’s best if I let Sergeant Pilot Ken Webb explain in his own words, in this extract from his letter to his Mum (my Grandmother) on 17 August 1942.
Kenneth Ernest Webb, writing home on 17 August 1942 from RAF Leconfield, East Yorkshire.
Ken Webb 1315766 RAF
At Craig Field, Alabama, USA in April 1942
Mrs Isabel Alice Webb
Ken’s Mum. This photograph is taken on 2 April 1949 seven years later on the occasion of my parents’ wedding. The reason? The deaths of their brothers killed in action over Germany in 1943 and 1945 respectively brought my parents together. At last, they could express themselves to each other, and of course that in time led to marriage.
In a letter from my mother’s brother, flying as a flight engineer on Avro Lancasters with the Pathfinder Force, he writes to their father that he’d like a corrugated sheet erected for all the chaps at work to see, listing the targets he had so far had to attack. This caused a very different pause. Anger swelled within me. I think of my many German friends.
The letter was safely returned to the archive. But that was five years ago. Since then, I have done a great deal of research and come face to face with the bestial mindset. I mentioned this to the chief archivist of the RAF Pathfinder Association. And whilst I will not release the original letters, I will certainly release photocopies for the Pathfinder archive.
Part IV
But why hold on to the originals at all? What is the point?
Let me return to what Colin Pengelly discovered to his horror and I quote directly from his Introduction to his Biography of Captain Albert Ball VC ibid.
Colin Pengelly Extract
Albert Ball has been the subject of four previous biographies: two almost contemporary with his life, one in the 1930s by R. H. Kiernan which remained for many years the standard biography and, some thirty years ago, the late Chaz Bowyer produced a further biography, which was the first modern appraisal of Albert Ball and his achievements. [1]
Bowyer was still able at that time to talk to members of Ball's family and his fiancée as well as people who had flown with and known Ball as a friend or a squadron companion. This makes Bowyer's work important for the contribution it makes to the knowledge of the family background, which is now irreplaceable.
An historian looking to reappraise Albert Ball has this basis of previous research and the private and official letters and correspondence to work from.
It is unfortunate that, after the appearance of Bowyer’s book [in 1977], the Ball family were prevailed upon to part with certain family papers, which were never returned. At some time Albert Ball’s diary, which had been recovered by the family after his death, along with other papers, disappeared and is not held in the Ball Papers in the Nottingham Archives. The loss of the diary is particularly unfortunate for the biographer.
The last biographer to see it was R. H. Kiernan in the 1930s who describes it as ‘an honest record and in its sum reveals a love of fine motives, a realisation of frailties, a clean and manly heart’. Ball himself told his father that if he ever went missing, ‘You’ll find my diary, from the day I joined the war - every day and every single thing’. It would be interesting to know his thoughts on various happenings of his career but this is now denied to us. The whereabouts of this document is no longer known and it seems to have gone missing before Chaz Bowyer completed his work for he confirmed to me that he never saw it during his research.
Mr Pengelly continues later...
Air Commodore Fullard told me many years ago that he had suffered a similar loss of almost his entire set of records. The information available on which to construct a history of Albert Ball is therefore less full than might be desired.
Most to be regretted is the fact that no letters to Ball seemed to have survived, even from his first girlfriends and then his fiancée. The problem is of course familiar to all servicemen serving abroad, lack of space.
Mr Pengelly continues, ‘My own experience is typical: while serving with the RAF in Kenya I wrote and received letters every week both from my parents and from girlfriends. I had no space to keep all the letters I received and once replied to they were destroyed while my parents kept all my letters. I assume a similar situation existed with Albert Ball who received and wrote many letters but only those sent by him now survive.’
End of Quoted Extract from Mr Pengelly’s Introduction.
Do not give anyone the chance to ransack history.
26 May 2024
All Rights Reserved
LIVERPOOL
© 2024 Eyes to the Skies
Last published 22 September 2023