The Polish Connection 21

December 1916

I thought it would be interesting to tell John and Peter about one of
main news stories this week. I have copied out most of the front page
from the Daily Mirror – not a newspaper we normally get, but someone lent me theirs.

One of the most heroic rescues in history, Sir Ernest Shackleton's 750
mile voyage in a small boat. No writer of books of adventures has
ever conceived such a wonderful story as that of Sir Ernest
Shackleton's voyage across the Atlantic from Elephant Island to South
Georgia. Four days after the expedition had landed he left in a small
boat with five volunteers, Captain Worsley, Tom Crean, MacNish,
Vincent and McCarthy – to seek aid for his comrades, and here (a
picture is shown) the party is seen setting out on its perilous
voyage. “We decked her with sledge runners, box lids, and canvas,
and made her as seaworthy as we could,but she seemed a crazy craft in
which to sail 750 miles through the ice and glaciers glaciers,”
said Mr. MacNish in relating their adventures. The journey, he
marked, was almost worse than anticipated, and the greatest handicap
was the ice, which formed on the boat. One man was constantly
employed in cutting it away with an axe. After being driven out of
the ice hole, the party lived on this inhospitable spot on Elephant
Island until rescued by Sir Ernest. In the background (picture) are
glaciers from which avalanches were always threatening to break away
and fill the bay and by the waves created, to sweep them off the
spot. Here some of the explorers are seen skinning Gento penguins, their
principal food for four and a half months

We have some more of our rather interesting items in the local paper
too.

FROZEN MILK

The recent severe weather has been taken advantage of to send milk from
Marple to France to our soldiers. A Marple resident lady has put milk
in a basin, let it freeze solid and then set it in a parcel to France.

GROWING POTATOES FOR THE WAR

The Marple Urban District Council have decided in consequence of the
enormous advance in the price of food, to plough up the centre
portion of the recreation ground and let it out in plots of 30 by 10
yards for the purpose of allotments for the growing of vegetables.
The rent of each plot is to be 7/6 a year. Early applications from
those desiring an allotment is advised. 

Here it is another Christmas. John is not able to come on leave this year,
but he has sent us a card and suggests that I take money out of our
account to buy nice presents for the girls from him. I shall also buy
a present to send to Peter, perhaps another book.

We had a beautiful card from Peter, made by the inmates from the camp.

Another Christmas

The war drags on and yet the sprig of Love

Stays green throughout the Winter

A star winks announcing peace throughout the Night

True Greetings from Knockaloe camp

Peter told us about the message they had from their Commandant, Colonel
Panzera.

“I am sorry that the size of the camp prevents my seeing you all, which
I should do if it were small, and thus possible. It would be a
mockery to wish you a Happy Christmas, I am afraid, but I wish you as
happy a one as is possible under the circumstances. I most earnestly
wish you a happier New Year. May the New Year bring peace and restore
you to all dear to you. I hope that prosperity and happiness may come
to you in the future, and may in time obliterate the memory of the
present period of sadness.

“I should like to take the opportunity of saying how much I appreciate
the general good behaviour of the camps during the present year.
There have been little lapses, as there must always be in a mixed
community of 23,000 people, but on the whole the conduct has been
extremely good, which has been a great help to those placed over you.
Once more I wish you as good a Christmas as possible, and a better
New Year.”

Peter says they will have a rather full meal with as similar contents as
one would normally have for an English Christmas. But of course they
will have different traditions in the part of Poland/Germany he comes
from. I must remember to ask him about it.

He seems to be very busy now at camp. He takes various classes and is in
charge of several activities. He seems pleased to be making
sufficient money and has said I must not send him any more for the
camp bank. In fact as soon as he has saved £10 he will send me back
the money I put in for him earlier. He has sent a small packet for
Beth, and I know that it will be something home made from the camp.
He didn’t send anything for me which is fine, as I don’t really
want reminding of the present that he gave me for my birthday when he
was here. He didn’t mention my birthday at all this year, and I
don’t know if he forgot, or remembered and purposely didn’t
mention it.

For the past two years we have had a big remembrance party in Marple for
the servicemen and we all put pictures of our men in the services in
the windows of one of the shops. Everyone who is in the forces from
this area will get a card and package from the village as well as
whatever they get from their families. I feel very grateful that we
live in such a close and loving community.

Miss Fanny Marion Hudson, the current owner of Brabyns Hall, each
Christmas invites the locals to come to a Christmas party at the
hall. Even though she now has turned her house into a convalescent
home for wounded soldiers, she has still carried on with this
tradition. It was on this last Sunday, just before Christmas, and I
took the girls with me. It was our first visit to Brabyns Hall, and
we were all impressed by the grandeur of the place, not spoiled by
the many tents set out on the lawns for the overflow of soldiers. I
decided that on this special occasion we should all have new dresses.
Little Beth has been very happy wearing Rebecca’s old clothes, but
it is time she had something new of her own. I walked to Marple and
got a Butterick pattern and some lovely bright red and green plaid
woolen material and made her a simple dress with a square white
collar, pleating in both the bodice and in the skirt and a little
white apron that goes on top, trimmed with lace. She loves it.

Rebecca has more sophisticated tastes, and I took her shopping in Stockport
one Saturday. She bought a sailor outfit, but with a bit of
difference. The under dress is a simple black satin gown with tons of
covered small buttons for decoration. The overtop is a textured black
silk with white, clear and black beading in a floral pattern front,
collar, cuffs. There is a “peek-a-boo” design of the over top
with black satin piping and detailing. I wondered about such a young
girl wearing black, but there is enough white in it to make it both
smart and yet young looking.

I also wanted to look my best for our visit to Brabyns Hall, so I wore
a suit that I have had for some time, but being well designed, it
could never look out of fashion. It is a sheathe shape, with long
pleated chiffon scarves that hang from the sleeveless armholes over
the arms. It has chiffon pleating at the sides with lovely
rosette decorations and roped pearl trim. Then there is a jacket with
a classic high collar covered with matching rosettes and kimono
sleeves. There is also a chiffon tie which also has the same
rosettes. I expect I will be overdressed, but it makes me feel better
when I know I look smart.

So we set off on our exciting visit by walking down our road, through
the village and then up Brabyns Brow. One goes down through a white
wooden entrance gate, past the Brabyns Number 1 Lodge, down a very
long drive from just above the train station in Marple and the road
descends gradually, crosses the railway on a bridge and curves around
and ends up not very far from Station Road, but inside a huge walled
area, with the house and gardens thus protected from the outside
world.

We were told that the house was built in 1745 by Henry Brabin, a surgeon
who practiced in Stockport. His estate passed down through his family
until 1800 when it was sold to Nathaniel Wright a mining engineer who
made his money by extracting coal in Poynton a village some seven
miles south of Marple. When he died his son John inherited and lived
the life of a country gentleman at Brabyns Hall until he in turn died
in 1866 without direct heirs. It was then passed to a cousin Ann, who
was married to Thomas Hudson of Surrey. He however never lived in it
but after he died, his widow, and their daughter Marie, and
granddaughter Fanny moved in. I have heard that in its heyday the
Hudsons had more servants than even at Marple Hall, which of course
is owned by the Bradshaw-Isherwoods, and of course that reminds me of
the death last year of Colonel Isherwood.

The Hudsons had St. Martin’s Church and hall built in their grounds, an
Anglo-Catholic church – so they could worship as they had in
Surrey.

At Brabyn's Hall we went through the front door, into a long corridor.
You could see that the billiard room was on the left and the dining
room on the right. Then a bit farther on the right we went into the
large drawing room where the party was being held, and the library
next door also was full of guests. There are huge windows and
we could see through them the very spacious and beautifully laid out
gardens. We were offered a glass of mulled wine, (fruit juice for the
children) and a mince pie, and we felt like honoured guests.

Christmas day itself was very special even though we only had the three of us
in the house. We cut a tree down from the stream behind the house and
decorated it with red berries and popcorn – the bits that we
managed not to eat. Popcorn is a treat that we all love, but can’t
indulge in when John is at home as he so much dislikes the smell and
taste of it that he has banned it from the house. I had a huge supply
sent me from the States before the war, and who knows when I will be
able to get more, so I must use it frugally.

I played the organ for Mass on Christmas morning, and the girls both
came with me. Then we had a large meal, roast chicken with all the
trimmings and sang carols until we couldn’t think of any more. Then
we went for a long walk up to Mellor Church and back round by the
Primrose Mill and then settled down with board games for the rest of
the day.

Peter’s present to Beth is a tiny hand crafted doll, dressed in native Polish
costume. She is delighted. From the money that John suggested I get
out, I bought a fur muff for Rebecca, as she needs to keep warm for
her daily trip into Manchester on the train. I bought myself a pair
of pearl earrings, and wore them with my necklace that Peter had
given me on my birthday that fateful day in the past. I sent John two
books, Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg and The Mysterious Stranger by
Mark Twain. For Peter we bought Mountain Interval by Robert Frost and A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

Just after Christmas I got a surprise Christmas card from Paul in Wakefield

Dear Barbara,

May I wish you and your family a very Happy Holiday period. I am sorry I have
been so derelict in writing as I promised you I would.

Settling in to Lofthouse Park Camp was much more traumatic than I thought it
would be. I told you before that I regretted my decision to transfer
here, and I think that was part of the problem. It has taken me
months to settle in here, as I was entirely out of sympathy with my
new surroundings in the early days. This contrasts to how I felt at
Knockloe – there the early days were rough but it was always
stimulating; it was dynamic. Wakefield has settled into a routine
which continues in endless monotony; it is static. Wakefield in fact
is dead. Dostoevsky recalls memories of his life as a prisoner in
Siberia and calls the inmates, “The Dead”, and no better terms
could be found for Wakefield as it describes its atmosphere most
admirable.

Wakefield is an extremely orderly place, as orderly as a lower middle-class
suburb, but it is a suburb where all its inhabitants are suburbanites
out of work. Everything is ordered. The huts have captains, the head
captain is an adjutant with so little sense of humour he signs
himself Adjutant L and wishes to be addressed by everyone with this
title. There are committees for everything and I am a member of one
or the other. Nearly all take a part in the government and
administration of this place, because its participants have a feeling
of their own importance. You know doubt want to ask - “Are you
treated well?” The answer is yes. Other than being confined to the
camp, served tasteless but adequate food, and mustered multiple times
a day to be counted, I am largely left alone by the authorities and
guards. Yet it is not the fact of being imprisoned that makes the
experience horrible. What is horrible is that one has ceased to be an
individual and has become a number. Any decisions made about the
conditions in the camp are made based on an abstract concept of the
enemy alien prisoner, and not on any aspect of his individual actions
or nature. I see this as a fundamental effect of war: it creates an
abnormal state in which no one can be honestly considered responsible
for his actions. The obliteration of personal responsibility undoes what education has built up in years of struggle, or rather in many centuries of effort.

We are about 1500 in number in three compounds, with about 50 men in
each hut. But we do have more freedom to move about. We need to get
permission the day before if we wish to visit any of the other
compounds, but it is nearly always granted. We have a fully
equipped gymnasium we can visit, and a theatre which puts on plays
regularly. There is an orchestra and every sort of social club
imaginable.

You will no doubt remember all the exotic characters that we wrote to you
about from Knockaloe. Well, here, there are only “gentlemen” and
ones that I don't for the most part wish to be friends with. I
suppose I am more comfortable here – and with the help of money
from my mother, have been able to suit myself out in a manner
befitting a gentleman. Here we have Barons and Counts among our
numbers, but they haven't a fraction of the personality of Peter and
the others that I encountered at the other place. There is a lot of
bribing of guards – and I have even heard that some prisoners have
been allowed to go to Leeds on a shopping expedition.

However, one thing is better here. I can find a place of peace and quiet and
get on with my own work. I have done some more painting, but I have
now decided to write a book about the Far East. Perhaps when I write
again, I can tell you more about that.

Best wishes

Paul