Winged Victory - V M Yeates

I've just finished reading this. I found it powerful - movingly written and gripping.



'Winged Victory', by V M Yeates,  is one of the greatest books about First World War aviation - that oft mythologised aspect of the war, in which young men made up the rules as they went along about aerial combat and clashed with each other in machines made of wood and fabric.  Although it could be argued that the horror of being an infantry soldier in the trenches was without equal,  the life of a Western Front pilot was brutish and short, with more pilots dying in training than in combat, victim to a mode of warfare in technology that was barely a decade old.

The novel describes a few months in the life of a young pilot, Tom Cundall, during the final stages of the war in the Western Front, as the fledgling Royal Flying Corps morphs into the Royal Air Force. The novel is set against the final set piece battles, with Cundall taking part in suicidal ground-strafing missions during the Spring Offensive and the later battles of Amiens.

I grew up being fascinated with aviation in the Great War, and I was a keen reader of Biggles. However this novel is very different to the work of Captain W E Johns,  where Biggles seems to treat the war as a great game and escapes all kinds of tricky situations by the skin of his teeth. In comparison, Cundall is a mess, as he tries to blot out the stress of ever-more dangerous missions with 'binges' in the mess that often result in him throwing up and having to complete missions with a hangover, or even in one instance, completing a sortie while 'tight' (drunk).  Cundall is far from being a hero, and indeed his main pre-occupations are with avoiding unnecessary danger and staying alive, as one by one his friends disappear in a mess of flame and smoke around him.

What I found interesting about the novel was the sense of 'keeping up appearances'.  Cundall clearly has had enough of the war,  but appears to keep him motivated is not just the will to survive, but also not to appear 'windy' (cowardly) in front of his friends, particularly when Cundall repeatedly, but accidentally, crashes his Sopwith Camel, until he realises, with some mortification, that his comrades are suspicious that he is doing it on purpose. On one memorable occassion, Cundall is found out by a new C.O who sees through Cundall's avoidance of fighting, to his anger and shame.

The novel is clearly a thinly veiled autobiographical account of the author's own experiences. Yeates also flew Camels during the last year of the war on the Western Front, and was also invalided home.  One can only speculate how many of the characters and incidents are based on real incidents that Yeates experienced.  Unfortunately, the author died of tuberculosis while still in his thirties, his novel a commercial failure. I have to admit that I had never heard of it before.  However, having read it, I now consider it to be one of the greats, not just of literature about those early days of aviation, but of Great War literature as a whole. I highly recommend it.

Revision quiz

Hodder education have a number of revision quizzes specifically focussed on each aspect of the course. Well worth a look to help you identify areas of weakness http://www.hodderplus.co.uk/myrevisionnotes/a-level-history/the-experience-of-warfare/index.asp

Year 10 book review 'Alone in Berlin'

This isn't connected to the usual topic of this blog, but i was so impressed with this I thought i'd put it on here anyway. I'm really keen on encouraging reading amongst History students, and recently I gave a reading list of books to my GCSE group.  Emily Moody, a Year 10 student, read 'Alone in Berlin', in my mind one of the greatest books ever written about life in Nazi Germany, written by someone who had actually experienced it's horrors.  I doubt many people of Emily's age have read anything like 'Alone in Berlin', let alone written such a mature review of it!

 

 

Alone In Berlin – Book Review by Emily Moody

 Alone in Berlin is a novel by Hans Fallada, inspired by a true story.  It follows the story of a working class couple in Nazi Germany, in Berlin (as suggested by the title), who quietly start to oppose Hitler after they learn that their only son has fallen in the taking of France. The novel was one of the first anti-Nazi books to be printed in Germany after WWII. Its first English release was in 2009, where it became popular almost instantly.

The story mainly follows a working class couple, Otto and Anna Quangel, in Berlin under Nazi control, struggling to keep afloat within all the chaos that has divided the German society. We learn, within the very first chapter, that their only son, Otto Quangel, has died in the war, as a telegram is delivered to them. This greatly upsets and troubles Otto and Anna, as well as Trudel, dead Otto Jr.’s fiancée. Otto and Anna quietly begin to oppose Hitler, blaming him for the death of their only son. They drop postcards, in crowded buildings with messages like ‘Mother! The Führer has murdered our son. Mother! The Führer will murder your sons too. He will not stop till he has brought sorrow to every home in the world.’ Otto knows that even this small bit of resistance could cost both of them their lives, but he continues to drop the postcards.

This scheme soon turns into a cat and mouse game, with Inspector Escherich of the Gestapo, who attempts to catch the mysterious postcard writer. We see Escherich as an intelligent detective who is able to make clever inferences based on the smallest of clues. It seems that Otto is soon going to be found out, yet each time he manages to escape Escherich. Otto also refuses to join the ‘Party’ at work, even though it costs him a promotion, refusing any connotation to the Nazis, who ‘murdered’ his son.

There are also other little plots going on within the book, although all of the protagonist take residence, or have connections, at 55 Jablonski Strasse. There are lots of different characters that live in the range of apartments, from Baldur Persicke, a Hitler Youth Leader who puts Hitler and the Nazis before his own family, to Enno Kluge, who is determined to stay out of the army on health grounds, to Frau Rosenthal, an old Jewish woman whose husband has been dragged off by the Gestapo.  A mix of all types of people, 55 Jablonski Strasse is an allegory to Nazi Germany, and how the Nazis had split even the tightest of communities.

Alone in Berlin is based upon the true story of Otto and Elise Hampel, who started opposing due to the loss of Elise Hampel’s brother. They started committing deeds of civil disobedience, like writing leaflets and postcards, and dropping them in crowded areas and post boxes, despite knowing that this was a capital offense.  They worked for a year, until they were betrayed, and arrested. They were tried by a Nazi and sentenced to death. Soon after they were executed in Plötzensee Prison.