TACA drum

‘The Choir: Military Wives’, and those without a voice

2011-11-09T15:06:00.002Z

Gareth Malone and the RMB Chivenor
Military Wives Choir
(picture courtesy of the BBC).

A new series of ‘The Choir’ has just started on BBC Two. Called ‘The Choir: Military Wives’, it follows choirmaster Gareth Malone as, working with the wives and girlfriends of troops deployed to Afghanistan, he forms the RMB [Royal Marines Base] Chivenor Military Wives Choir. In an interview with Lorraine McBride for Defence Focus, Gareth explained why it was important to him to work with military partners: ‘To my mind, we only ever see military wives when something tragic happens. I wanted to show what they are doing and literally give them a voice.’

All of the choir members live in married quarters/service family accommodation at the tri-service RMB Chivenor, near Barnstaple in Devon, on a ‘patch’ familiar to umpteen army families, past and present (for further details of army families’ accommodation through history, see TACA’s ‘Accommodation’ page). Living as they do ‘inside the wire’ – that is, apart from the wider civilian community, and also typically at a distance from their extended families – these civilian women feel their isolation especially acutely in the absence of their military menfolk. And while they support each other as best they can, putting on a brave face as they try to get on with everyday life, their fears for their deployed partners, as well as their lack of confidence, is all too evident.

Military children are often also badly affected by a parent’s deployment, although this was only touched upon in the first episode of ‘The Choir: Military Wives’, when a young boy spoke of having a nightmare in which the news of his father’s death was about to be broken to him. And while many may be too young to understand that their absent parent may be injured or killed, they certainly miss him or her regardless; do not understand why their beloved parent is no longer at home with them; and may be unsettled by the considerable stress and anxiety felt by the parent – temporarily effectively rendered a single parent – who remains at home, looking after them.

That’s not all either, as a study commissioned by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Children’s Fund found in 2009. ‘The Overlooked Casualties of Conflict’ report makes sobering reading, Julian Brazier, MP for Canterbury and Whitstable, being quoted, for instance, as saying:

Canvassing on the married quarter estate for our local regiment, I met one little boy whose father had been badly wounded the previous night on active service. It brought home to me the stress which young children are bearing as result of their parents’ service.

The section entitled ‘The Stigma of the “Military Brat” Label’ is, moreover, shocking, recording as it does that ‘children of deployed parents are often “prime targets” for bullying’ by children from a civilian background, some of whom may have anti-war parents.

‘The Choir: Military Wives’ shows the members of RMB Chivenor Military Wives Choir finding ‘their voice’ and, through it, winning the support of the civilian community. Talking to Lorraine McBride of the day when the choir sang in front of the locals in Barnstaple, Malone reflected: ‘It was incredibly emotional . . . for those women to know that they have the support of the town and the impact that had on them was unbelievable.’

'Always in our thoughts':
a postcard from World War I.

In an interview with Gerard O’Donovan published in the Telegraph on 7 November 2011 (‘Gareth Malone: Keeping the home fires burning with The Choir’), Malone spoke of trying to tackle ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning (’Till the Boys Come Home)’, a song written by Ivor Novello and Lena Gilbert Ford in 1914, with the choir:

They couldn’t get through it. We all felt it, because it connects you to history, to generations of women who have been in the same position before. When we sang it at the homecoming parade, I had to really hold myself together because I could see some of them cracking. The guys had just had their medals parade, they’d all come home… that’s so overwhelming. I mean, my life isn’t like that. Most of our lives aren’t like that.

In highlighting the reality of day-to-day life for military families on the ‘home front’ in Chivenor, maybe the 'The Choir: Military Wives' will give the wider public a greater understanding of what thousands more are going through, and have gone through, when a life partner and parent is also in the armed forces.

The RMB Chivenor Military Wives Choir will be performing at the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on 12 November 2011.

A catchpenny verse to help the homes that Tommy left behind

2011-07-04T17:56:00.001+01:00

In October 1899, Rudyard Kipling wrote the following poem in response to a request from Alfred Harmsworth, proprietor of the then recently established Daily Mail, whose aim was to raise money through the newspaper for the British soldiers, many reservists, fighting the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa. (The mentions of ‘Kruger’ and ‘Paul’ in the poem refer to Paul Kruger, then president of the South African Republic.) ‘It's catchpenny verse’, Kipling told Harmsworth, ‘and I want it to catch just as many pennies as it can.’ Lord Arthur Sullivan set the poem to music, and it is thought that 'The Absent-minded Beggar' ultimately raised around £250,000 (then a vast sum) through, for example, print and merchandise sales, royalties and admissions fees charged for recitals and performances of the poem. This money was indeed used to help the wives and children of regular and reserve troops financially, just as Kipling had exhorted the nation to do, and to provide the soldiers with small comforts.

The Absent-minded  Beggar

WHEN you’ve shouted ‘Rule Britannia’, when you’ve sung ‘God Save the Queen’,

When you’ve finished killing Kruger with your mouth,

Will you kindly drop a shilling in my little tambourine

For a gentleman in khaki ordered South?

He’s an absent-minded beggar, and his weaknesses are great—

But we and Paul must take him as we find him—

He is out on active service, wiping something off a slate

And he’s left a lot of little things behind him!

Duke’s son—cook’s son—son of a hundred kings

(Fifty thousand horse and foot going to Table Bay!)

Each of ’em doing his country’s work

(and who’s to look after their things?)

Pass the hat for your credit’s sake,

and pay—pay—pay!

There are girls he married secret, asking no permission to,

For he knew he wouldn’t get it if he did.

There is gas and coals and vittles, and the house-rent falling due,

And it's more than rather likely there’s a kid.

There are girls he’s walked with casual. They’ll be sorry now he’s gone,

For an absent-minded beggar they will find him,

But it ain’t the time for sermons with the winter coming on

We must help the girl that Tommy’s left behind him!

Cook’s son—Duke’s son—son of a belted Earl

Son of a Lambeth publican—it’s all the same to-day!

Each of ’em doing his country’s work

(and who’s to look after the girl?)

Pass the hat for your credit’s sake,

and pay—pay—pay!

There are families by thousands, far too proud to beg or speak,

And they’ll put their sticks and bedding up the spout,

And they’ll live on half o’ nothing, paid ’em punctual once a week,

’Cause the man that earns the wage is ordered out.

He’s an absent-minded beggar, but he heard his country call,

And his reg’ment didn’t need to send to find him!

He chucked his job and joined it—so the job before us all

Is to help the home that Tommy’s left behind him!

Duke’s job—cook’s job—gardener, baronet, groom.

Mews or palace or paper-shop, there’s someone gone away!

Each of ’em doing his country’s work

(and who’s to look after the room?)

Pass the hat for your credit’s sake,

and pay—pay—pay!

Let us manage so as, later, we can look him in the face,

And tell him—what he’d very much prefer

That, while he saved the Empire, his employer saved his place,

And his mates (that’s you and me) looked out for her.

He’s an absent-minded beggar and he may forget it all,

But we do not want his kiddies to remind him

That we sent ’em to the workhouse while their daddy hammered Paul,

So we’ll help the homes that Tommy left behind him!

Cook’s home—Duke’s home—home of a millionaire,

(Fifty thousand horse and foot going to Table Bay!)

Each of ’em doing his country’s work

(and what have you got to spare?)

Pass the hat for your credit’s sake,

and pay—pay—pay!

Rudyard Kipling, 1899.

Click here to read more about the story behind 'The Absent-minded Beggar'.

Launch of the Army Children Graves Register

2011-05-23T12:11:00.000+01:00

Shorncliffe Military Cemetery, Kent
(© Peter Malan).

There was a time when their wives and children accompanied British soldiers on active service, and it is well documented that many died on the march (for example, during the Peninsular War’s retreat to Corunna, in Spain, from 1808 to 1809). Britain also once had an extensive empire that required defending, which is why the last resting places of numerous army children can be found in such far-flung countries as Malta, Hong Kong, Ireland and India, where they had often died of indigenous diseases. And in recent times, it has been (West) Germany – ‘home’ for many army children over the past century – that has primarily provided the foreign fields where British soldiers’ children who died prematurely now lie.

Just as The Army Children Archive (TACA) is unique in its focus on the lives and times of British army children from the seventeenth century to date, so the Army Children Graves Register (http://www.archhistory.co.uk/taca/gravesregister.html) is the only record dedicated to tracking the graves and memorials of the children of British soldiers, wherever in the world they may have died. Set up on 23 May 2011, partly in response to requests for help from relatives searching for army children’s graves, and partly as an aid to researchers, the aim of placing on record the names of this category of youngsters commemorated on gravestones and memorials (which are always at risk of weathering and destruction) is to ensure that they will not vanish into obscurity. And although it already contains hundreds of names from military cemeteries at home and abroad, thousands more remain unlisted, and TACA welcomes additions.

Making its debut alongside the Army Children Graves Register is the ‘Army children’s graves’ page (http://www.archhistory.co.uk/taca/graves.html), which includes advice from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) on to how go about locating an individual army child’s grave, along with images of army children’s graves in the UK and abroad, personal stories, and some useful links.

‘The entries so far are delightful and heartbreaking’

2011-05-08T15:57:00.000+01:00

There are only a few weeks to go before the deadline for the Service Children Support Network’s art competition. The theme is ‘Through the eyes of a service child’, there are four age categories, and the competition is open to past and present, regular and reservist or bereaved service children. As Joy O’Neill, the founder of the Service Children Support Network (SCSN), says, ‘this is a chance for service children to express their views on what life is like as a service child’, adding, ‘The entries so far are delightful and heartbreaking’.

The closing date for entries is 1 June 2011, after which submissions will be judged by representatives from Combat Stress, the RAF Families Federation and the Child Bereavement Charity. Prizes will be awarded to those who come first, second and third, and so far include:

a family ticket (for four) for the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) 2011;
a family ticket (for four) to the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Conservation Park;
a family ticket (for four) to the Woburn Safari Park;
a ‘Treasure Trail’ goody bag;
a voucher from Marks & Spencer;
a ticket (one adult, one child) for the Cotswold Wildlife Park and Gardens;
a ticket (for two) to Flambards, Cornwall;
a selection of sweets from Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe;
a selection of books from Wendover Bookshop;
two tickets for Plymouth Aquarium.

The RAF Families Federation and Army Families Federation Journals have agreed to print the winners’ artworks. In addition, the artworks created by the twelve winners and runners-up will form the basis of the SCSN’s 2012 calendar, which will be sold in aid of 'Ten For Ten' (a nationwide ten-day appeal that aims to raise £1 million in ten days, devised with the support of both Help for Heroes and ABF The Soldiers’ Charity, that will run from 1 to 10 October 2011 to mark the ten years during which the British forces have been deployed in Afghanistan).

Full details of the competition are available on the SCSN website. And if you are a teacher, parent, friend or relation of a child who qualifies for entry, please do encourage him or her to send in an artwork before 1 June.

The Service Children Support Network’s (SCSN’s) children’s art competition, 2011

2011-03-28T12:27:00.000+01:00

The Service Children Support Network (SCSN) is holding an art competition for children whose parents are currently serving in the forces. The theme is ‘Through the eyes of a service child’, and children up to the age of 18 are invited to submit a painting or drawing that reflects this theme.

Entries should be created on A4-sized paper, and the artist’s name, age, address and school or college should be written on the back. There are four age categories (5 and under; 6 to 9 years; 10 to 13 years; and 14 to 18 years), and prizes will be awarded to those who come first, second and third in each category.

The closing date is 1 June 2011, and entries should be sent c/o Joy O’Neill, SCSN, 24 High Moors, Halton, Aylesbury, Bucks HP22 5NY. Entries will be judged by representatives of Combat Stress, the RAF Families Federation and the Child Bereavement Charity.

For further information, e-mail: contact@servicechildrensupportnetwork.com.

The Service Children Support Network (SCSN)

Reading Force, 2011: A new initiative for forces families

2011-02-20T14:54:00.012Z

Reading Force, an imaginative new initiative designed to bring forces families and friends closer together, will be launched on 25 March 2011. As the organisers explain: ‘Forces families are regularly separated by training, by overseas postings, and experience frequent stresses and changes – and it’s often hard to feel part of a stable community. Reading Force will help keep everyone in touch. Reading, and talking about reading, brings families and communities closer together and improves confident communication for all ages.’

How Reading Force will work

Under the umbrella of the Reading Force project, forces families and friends from the local community will be encouraged to form reading groups consisting of between three and eight people of any age. Having decided on a book to read, once they’ve done so, the group members will each record their opinions of it on paper so that their thoughts can be pasted into a scrapbook, which can then be kept as a permanent record of their shared experience. More crucially, however, it will prompt them to start a conversation about what they’ve been reading, thus encouraging communication, which can easily be disrupted when a family member is serving overseas or is otherwise absent for prolonged periods.

Which books they decide to read is up to the reading groups, but the Reading Force organisers have suggested a number of titles that younger readers may enjoy as much as older ones. They include:

How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff;
Wreck of the Zanzibar, Michael Morpurgo;
Angel, Lee Weatherly;
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon;
Voices in the Park, Anthony Browne;
Steven Gerrard: My Story, Steven Gerrard;
The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson;
Ferno the Fire Dragon, Adam Blade;
Young Bond: Silverfin: A James Bond Adventure, Charlie Higson;
Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger, Nigel Slater;
The Dark Beneath, Alan Gibbons;
The Highwayman’s Footsteps, Nicola Morgan;
Quick, Let’s Get Out of Here, Michael Rosen and Quentin Blake;
Lord of the Flies, William Golding; and
Noughts & Crosses, Malorie Blackman.

Benedicte Page’s article about Reading Force in the Guardian (‘Plan to bridge separation of service families with joint reading scheme’, 18 January 2011) explains why Alison Baverstock (who is a lecturer in publishing at Kingston University, the wife of a soldier and the project's mastermind) believes that Reading Force will help forces families:

Baverstock was inspired to create the scheme following her own experience of having her husband away on a tour of duty. The family, she found, struggled to relate to one another during phone calls because of the difference in their daily experiences. "When your husband rings up from Afghanistan or Iraq, you have a very limited time to talk, but sometimes you just don't know what to talk about," she said. "Your existence can seem quite humdrum in comparison to theirs – and you can't ask them what they are doing [because military details are secret]. Being able to talk about a book we're both reading is great because it gives us some common ground."

Preparations and prizes

The Reading Force organisers will be holding a project day on Saturday 5 March 2011 at the Connaught Community Centre, North Camp, Aldershot, to which anyone who would like to be involved is invited.

Pre-printed Reading Force scrapbooks will be handed out at schools to children from service families, and will also be available from HIVE information centres and local libraries.

There will be a Reading Force competition, too: completed scrapbooks can handed in (by 15 July 2011) to be judged by creative-writing and publishing staff at Kingston University, with prizes being awarded on 10 September 2011 by the children’s writer Alan Gibbons.

For more information, visit Kingston University’s website, and bookmark the Reading Force website – http://www.readingforce.org – which will be providing further details and advice about the project in due course.

'My life as an army child': telling an important story

2011-01-27T11:20:00.001Z

Not that it was needed, but proof of the historical importance of army children’s stories arrived in The Army Children Archive’s inbox this week in the form of e-mails from Chinese and Scottish historical organisations. They were particularly interested in Mairi Paterson’s story, which, as regular visitors will know, has been posted in instalments on the TACA website since last summer.

The daughter of a soldier in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Mairi, who was born in 1921, begins her account of her memories of life as an army child in 1928, when she travelled with her family from Liverpool to Jamaica (Personal story: 'It was a magical place, with palm trees and coffee plantations', Jamaica, 1928–30). Their two-year posting to Jamaica was followed by a memorable journey in a troopship through the Panama Canal across the Pacific via Hawaii to Wei-Hai-Wei, in north-eastern China (Personal story: Crossing the Pacific, 1930). Mairi then describes the two years that she and her family spent in Wei-Hai-Wei (now Weihai) in fascinating detail: Personal story: 'I am glad that I can remember Weihai as it was eighty years ago'.

The family’s next posting was to Hong Kong (Personal story: Going to school by rickshaw and keeping a low profile in Hong Kong, 1932–34), at a time when, as Mairi illustrates, tension between China and Japan was rising. Finally, Mairi and her family returned to Scotland, the land of her birth, their sea voyage taking them through the Suez Canal (Personal story: Sailing from Hong Kong home to Scotland, 1934). Mairi’s last home as an army child was in Stirling, and what a home it was! In Personal story: 'Now I was living in a castle: Stirling Castle', 1934, Mairi vividly describes her first-hand experience of the Scottish royal castle that was serving as the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders’ regimental depot when she lived there.

Not only does Mairi’s story make absorbing reading, but it is also of historical significance. She participated in a number of ‘firsts’: the packed troopship in which she travelled to Wei-Hai-Wei in 1930 was the first British troopship to go through the Panama Canal and to stop in Honolulu, for example. And as Mairi explains about her years in Wei-Hei-Wei (whose district commissioner at the time, Reginald Fleming Johnston, was played by Peter O’Toole in the film The Last Emperor), ‘I feel I may be one of the last [British] people who can remember life there and its return to the Chinese in 1932 as my brother and myself were the only British children there'.

Wei-Hai-Wei in winter.

If you haven’t read Mairi’s story, please do – you won’t be disappointed. And if you were once an army child and have your own story to tell, do consider preserving it through TACA. After all, what may be merely childhood memories to some may be historical witness statements to others.

Emotional lifelines: channels of communication for military families

2011-01-05T15:24:00.003Z

The military lifestyle is not usually compatible with a settled family life. Not only are they often on the move as family units, but forces families are frequently divided. This may happen during times of conflict, when military personnel are sent on active service to combat zones, leaving civilian family members behind, and during peacetime, when they go on exercise, for example, sometimes for prolonged periods. And many children of mobile military families must regularly exchange their homes for boarding schools during term time. During such periods of separation, it is vital for families to keep the channels of communication open, with the ways in which they have historically done so* reflecting changing technology.

Until relatively recently, the most common way for separated forces families to communicate with one another was by post, usually through the British Forces Post Office (BFPO); more information about the BFPO, as well as about BAOR postcodes and BFPO numbers, is given on TACA’s ‘Memories & miscellanea’ page. (And an item added to TACA in December 2010, ‘BACKGROUND INFORMATION: A SINGULAR AND MOST UNUSUAL SUB-POST OFFICE', looks at the sub-post office that once existed at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School in Dover, Kent.) Regular telephone contact has also become increasingly possible following the advent of mobile phones, but maintaining this is more difficult when a family member is on active service – often for security reasons – which is when free ‘blueys’ (aerogrammes) and e-blueys (electronic blueys) may come into their own (for further details, see the BFPO website: http://www.bfpo.mod.uk).

When it comes to modern media, today’s generation of forces families is increasingly turning to the internet with which to keep in touch using e-mail, instant-messaging and social-networking services (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Twitter, for instance), as well as e-blueys. Envisaged as functioning along similar lines as other social-networking websites, but created with the families of the British armed forces specifically in mind, those behind the HomeFront Forces website hope, funds permitting, to provide an age-appropriate – that is, for younger children – and secure link between separated forces families (visit the website to read more about its aims: http://www.homefrontforces.org).

Chronicling as it does the history of British army children – and increasingly also of navy and RAF children – TACA tracks developments and initiatives that affect and support forces children. The rapid rise of the internet, mobile phones and social-networking sites clearly transformed the way in which military children communicated with their absent parents during the first decade of the twenty-first century. But will these communications media soon become outdated in their turn? And, if so, what will replace them?

*As well as being a fascinating read, Judith Millidge’s book, Letters from the Front (Brassey’s (UK) Ltd, London, 2002), provides a comprehensive historical overview of the logistics of communication between the battle front and the home front.

Educating the children of military personnel killed in action

2010-12-31T13:59:00.001Z

On 29 December 2010, the British government announced that from 2011, the children of parents killed while on active service with the armed forces since 1990 will be eligible for university scholarships worth £8,200 a year, of which £5,000 will go towards living expenses and £3,200 towards tuition fees. In its reporting of the news (‘University scholarships for children of Armed Forces personnel killed on active duty’) on 30 December 2010, the Daily Telegraph quoted universities and science minister David Willetts as saying:

It is surely right that we go out of our way to support the families of those brave servicemen and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep the nation safe. The scholarships scheme will ensure that children who have lost a parent on active duty are not disadvantaged if they decide to study at university.

For his part, as well as referring to the ‘moral responsibility’ that Britain has to provide for forces children, Andrew Robathan, minister for defence personnel and veterans, stated: 'Nothing can compensate for the loss of a parent but I hope that through this scheme we can ensure that families have the enduring gratitude of the nation for the sacrifices they have made'.

Reading these words, I was reminded of TACA contributor Dan Kirwan (‘PERSONAL STORY: BARRACK RATS OF THE PAST’). Born in 1913, Dan was the youngest of the six children of a regular soldier who was killed in 1915 at the second battle of Ypres. In his story, Dan makes it clear what a financially devastating blow his father’s death was to his family, and how insulted they were by the offer of help made by the 'authorities':

To show how the authorities appreciated my father's sacrifice in dying for King and Country, they offered to send my three sisters to a school in the south to teach them to be servants; hard to believe, but true. I have the letter to prove it.

In ‘PERSONAL STORY, KILLED IN ACTION’, also on TACA’s ‘LIVES & TIMES’ page, writer and historian Art Cockerill takes up the tale in expanding on Dan’s account of his father’s death and the assistance subsequently offered to his family. His contribution makes illuminating reading, and if you are interested in the human cost of World War I, I urge you to read it.

I also recommend a visit to Art’s website (http://www.achart.ca), which is a mine of information about military history and more, and particularly about the Duke of York’s School and the Royal Hibernian School. Here, it is reported that Dan Kirwan died, aged 96, on 19 May 2010: http://achart.ca/blog/archives/151.

'A Soldier's Funeral', 1884.

Season's greetings from TACA

2010-12-17T18:14:00.000Z

For more information about this vintage NAAFI poster, as well as links to video newsreels from 1929 and 1953, see TACA latest, 'Christmas in BAOR': http://www.archhistory.co.uk/taca/latest.html

Windows on Rinteln and Münster

2010-12-09T16:10:00.001Z

Many army children who were born at BMH Rinteln, in Germany, are today curious about what their birthplace looks like. For an aerial photograph of the hospital, and to read more about it, see the item headed ‘BACKGROUND INFORMATION: BMH RINTELN, (WEST) GERMANY’ on TACA’s ‘Healthcare & hospitals’ page. And to see Rinteln’s marketplace as it is today (currently decorated in traditional style for Advent, as shown below), click here to access the town of Rinteln’s website, and then click on the image on the right, labelled ‘WebCam Marktplatz’.

Those who were born, or who lived, in Münster, can similarly view the scenes broadcast by webcams in the Prinzipalmarkt (see, for example, below) and the Aasee. Click here to access the webcams.

The USA and UK’s contrasting attitudes to military children’s education

2010-11-02T09:51:00.001Z

The following presidential proclamation declaring November 2010 to be 'Military Family Month' in the USA was posted on the White House’s website on 29 October 2010.

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release October 29, 2010

Presidential Proclamation--Military Family Month

______
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION

We owe each day of security and freedom that we enjoy to the members of our Armed Forces and their families. Behind our brave service men and women, there are family members and loved ones who share in their sacrifice and provide unending support. During Military Family Month, we celebrate the exceptional contributions of our military families, and we reaffirm our commitments to these selfless individuals who exemplify the highest principles of our Nation.

Across America, military families inspire us all with their courage, strength, and deep devotion to our country. They endure the challenges of multiple deployments and moves; spend holidays and life milestones apart; juggle everyday tasks while a spouse, parent, son, or daughter is in harm's way; and honor the service of their loved ones and the memory of those lost.

Just as we hold a sacred trust to the extraordinary Americans willing to lay down their lives to protect us all, we also have a national commitment to support and engage our military families. They are proud to serve our country; yet, they face unique challenges because of that service. My Administration has taken important steps to help them shoulder their sacrifice, and we are working to ensure they have the resources to care for themselves and the tools to reach their dreams. We are working to improve family resilience, enhance the educational experience of military children, and ensure military spouses have employment and advancement opportunities, despite the relocations and deployment cycles of military life. Our historic investment to build a 21st-century Department of Veterans Affairs is helping to provide our veterans with the benefits and care they have earned. We are also standing with our service members and their families as they transition back into civilian life, providing counseling as well as job training and placement. And, through the Post-9/11 GI Bill, our veterans and their families can pursue the dream of higher education.

However, Government can only do so much. While only a fraction of Americans are in military families, all of us share in the responsibility of caring for our military families and veterans, and all sectors of our society are better off when we reach out and work together to support these patriots. By offering job opportunities and workplace flexibility, businesses and companies can benefit from the unparalleled dedication and skills of a service member or military spouse. Through coordination with local community groups, individuals and organizations can ensure our military families have the help they need and deserve when a loved one is deployed. Even the smallest actions by neighbors and friends send a large message of profound gratitude to the families who risk everything to see us safe and free.

As America asks ever more of military families, they have a right to expect more of us -- it is our national challenge and moral obligation to uphold that promise. If we hold ourselves to the same high standard of excellence our military families live by every day, we will realize the vision of an America that supports and engages these heroes now and for decades to come.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim November 2010 as Military Family Month. I call on all Americans to honor military families through private actions and public service for the tremendous contributions they make in support of our service members and our Nation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fifth.

BARACK OBAMA

At the same time as President Obama was stating that his administration is working to ‘enhance the educational experience of military children’, some British newspapers continued to promote a more hostile view of the complex issues surrounding military children's education (for an overview of these, see ‘In the news: service children’s education’, 15 September 2010).

The continuity of education allowance (CEA) in particular was highlighted by the Mail on Sunday's Brendan Carlin under the heading ‘Top brass fight off plan to axe private school perk’ (31 October 2010), and by the Sunday Telegraph’s Christopher Hope, with ‘Spending Review 2010: Military chiefs fight cut backs to private education for children’ (31 October 2010). According to the Sunday Telegraph, it’s not all bad news for service children, though:

“… The MoD added that in the past 12 months the MoD had announced new scholarships for children of Service personnel who have died in the service of their country to undertake further or higher education courses."

In the news: service children’s education

2010-09-15T10:41:00.000+01:00

British service children’s education has been in the news recently. On 14 August 2010, the Times published a piece by Tom Baldwin (‘Call to cut £155m school fees bill run up by service families’) that focused on the continuity of education allowance (CEA). Once known as the boarding school allowance, the CEA is available to entitled service personnel of all ranks (not just officers) to help towards the cost of educating their children at UK boarding schools should forces families opt for this. In the article, Gloria de Piero, MP for Ashfield, was quoted, on the one hand, as saying, ‘I find it astonishing that the MoD is still spending more than £150 million to subsidise Britain’s private schools’, with the MoD countering, on the other, that the CEA is ‘a means to ensure Service children are not disadvantaged’. (Click here to read more about the CEA and the ‘boarding option’.)

A month later, on 14 September 2010, the Guardian carried a story by Jeevan Vasagar reporting on a new Ofstead review of special educational needs (SEN) provision (‘Half of special needs children misdiagnosed’) that again mentioned service children:

In one primary school visited by inspectors, where a large number of service families had children, Ofsted said pupils were "inappropriately" identified as having special needs because their fathers had been deployed to Afghanistan.

The report said: "This group was … vulnerable to underachievement because their fathers were all serving in Afghanistan. However, although these pupils had additional needs for a period of time, this should not have required special educational needs to have been identified."

A quick, highly unscientific survey carried out by TACA on Twitter in response to the questions ‘Do you agree that service children with fathers in Afghanistan do not have special educational needs?’ and ‘Do service children have special educational needs, regardless of whether a parent has been deployed on active service?’ produced a mixed bag of answers, both positive and negative.

How best to educate service children whose parents are frequently posted to a new location, often abroad, every two years or so has always been a complex question, to which there have never been any easy answers. And as Phil Chamberlain notes in his article on the subject for the autumn 2010 issue of the Army Families Federation’s Journal (‘Learning the lessons’), the picture is further muddied by the lack of reliable data relating to service children. It is apparently even unclear exactly how many service children there are within the education system, with Ofsted reckoning 90,000, the Children’s Education Advisory Service (CEAS) putting the figure at 186,000, and the Department of Education estimating 37,000 (in England, at least).

Tracking recent research
It is against this background that TACA has been tracking research into the current state and effectiveness of service children’s education. A study carried out by Dr Grace Clifton between 2002 and 2008 into the experience of army children attending secondary schools in the UK (‘The experience of education of the army child’), for example, found that army families’ mobile lifestyle has a negative effect on army children’s educational experiences, and that funding issues mean that secondary schools in the UK do not support mobile army children effectively. (For more on Dr Clifton’s research, findings and recommendations, click here: http://www.archhistory.co.uk/taca/C21schexp.html.)

A later report, ‘The overlooked casualties of conflict’ (2009), published by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Children’s Fund, additionally outlined the numerous, and serious, emotional, social and educational problems experienced by the ‘mobile’ children of service personnel. Some of those listed by the Army Families Federation (AFF) include gaps in children’s learning leading to special educational needs (it is suggested that service children have typically attended at least five schools by the age of sixteen, with each move of school putting a child back by six months).

In its report ‘Educating service children’ (2006), the House of Commons Defence Committee concluded:

139. We consider it self-evident that the children of Service personnel should receive at least the same quality of schooling and educational opportunity as any child being educated in the UK. We demand much of our Service personnel, not least that they adopt a life style that is often turbulent and sometimes dangerous. In turn, Service personnel deserve assurance that their children’s education will not suffer because of their parent’s employment.

140. We are not convinced that the DfES and the MoD currently take the interests of Service children sufficiently into account.

Looking at the past, as well as the present, it certainly not all doom and gloom in relation to service children’s education, though. Indeed, as many former service children can confirm, the military lifestyle can be an extraordinary education in itself. But with spending cuts looming, it is difficult to feel optimistic that school-age service children will receive the support that many will need in the future.

For more on army/service children’s education through the centuries, visit TACA’s ‘Schooling’ page: http://www.archhistory.co.uk/taca/schooling.html.

Killed by enemy action, aged 9, on the eve of the Blitz

2010-09-07T11:11:00.001+01:00

Today, 7 September 2010, is the seventieth anniversary of the start of the bombing Blitz on Britain by Nazi Germany. The Blitz lasted from 7 September 1940 until 11 May 1941, killing just over 20,000 civilians in London alone. The German bombers' main target on 7 September 1940 was the Port of London, and although London was to bear the brunt of the Blitz, approximately 43,000 people were killed in Britain as a whole, of which around 5,000 were children.*

Although it is uncertain whether she was counted among these statistics, nine-year-old Sheila Esther White was ‘killed by enemy action’ on 6 September 1940 – the eve of the Blitz's beginning – and is buried at Shorncliffe Military Cemetery. Shorncliffe lies near Folkestone and Dover, areas of Kent that were under constant attack during 1940, including from heavy-artillery guns positioned across the Channel in the Calais area of France, which means that Sheila must have died as a result of enemy bombardment of some kind.

Below: The grave of Sheila Esther White.

Shorncliffe itself has been a British Army camp since around 1800, when Napoleon, rather than the Nazis, threatened Britain. A number of army children are buried alongside Sheila at Shorncliffe Military Cemetery, some of whom would have lived in the camp’s married quarters (click here, and scroll two-thirds of the way down the page, to see a terrace of such army-provided accommodation at Shorncliffe as it looked a century ago).

Below: A sketch of the camp grounds at Shorncliffe dated 1801.

*For more on the Blitz, see Juliet Gardiner’s article in the Daily Telegraph, ‘Anniversary of the Blitz: “I thought, I cannot be alive”’.

Posted to South Africa

2010-08-25T16:56:00.000+01:00

Just added to ‘TACA latest’: a black-and-white photographic postcard (pictured below), dating from around a century ago, showing the British military hospital at Roberts Heights, Pretoria, South Africa.

The September issue of Family Tree Magazine features an article that arose from my curiosity about a trio of postcards posted to Bramcote Hall, Nottingham, from Mhow, India, and Dublin, Ireland, in 1913 and 1914. ‘A poignant story from postcards’ explains how I was able to discover more about the members of an army family (the Bartrams) whose lives turned out to have been beset by misfortune.

The 1911 census for England and Wales is a real boon for those researching British Army families because it is the first census to include soldiers and their dependants posted overseas. And on searching it, I discovered the Bartrams living at Roberts Heights, the father of the family, who was serving with the 100th Battery, Royal Field Artillery, being recorded separately in the ‘Return of all Commissioned Officers, Warrant Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers, Trumpeters, Drummers and Rank and File’, and his wife and daughters being listed under the category ‘Return of Wives and Children of Officers and Soldiers, who passed the night of Sunday, April 2nd, 1911, in these Barracks or Quarters’.

South Africa in 1911, India in 1913 and Ireland in 1914 – there is more to the Bartrams’ story, of course, but even taken in isolation, these countries and dates provide an insight into the distances that British Army soldiers and their families were required to cover at a time when travel was far less quick, easy and comfortable than it is today.

Travel broadens the mind

2010-07-28T15:14:00.008+01:00

An item that was recently added to The Army Children Archive (TACA) focuses on an interview with the artist Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930–93), which is part of the National Life Story Collection: Artists’ Lives on the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings website. In it, Dame Elisabeth touches on the unsettled nature of her childhood, which, as she says, was due to her cavalry-officer father’s army career.

Dame Elisabeth notes that she didn’t travel abroad with her family until World War II had ended, but it seems that the peripatetic military lifestyle was then responsible for a significant experience at a crucial stage in her life, ‘at the beginning of my art studies’. This was when, on visiting Venice, she saw ‘the Doge’s Palace, St Mark’s Square, wonderful sculpture, men on horses. The horses of St Mark’s’.

Above: The Horses of St Mark, photographed by Carlo Naya (1816–82).

When young Elisabeth visited Venice, the Frink family was based in Trieste, on the northern Adriatic coast. Trieste had just been established as the Free Territory of Trieste when Elisabeth’s father, Brigadier Ralph Frink,* was posted there, as, in 1947, was also the father of TACA contributor Maggie Johns (née Sorrell), whose absorbing story you can read on TACA’s ‘Lives & times’ page (scroll down to ‘Personal story: a childhood spent in India, England and Italy’).

Testimonies like Elisabeth and Maggie’s show that exposure to different countries and cultures at an impressionable age can be enlightening and inspiring, as well as one of the lasting benefits for youngsters of the highly mobile service life. And in the case of artists like Elisabeth Frink, you could say that this ultimately benefits the rest of us, too.

*For more on the Frink family, see the Little Thurlow 2000 Project website: http://www.littlethurlow.org/dameelisabeth/1.htm

Drummer boys

2010-07-15T11:11:00.000+01:00

It seems shocking now, but not only did their wives and children once accompany British Army soldiers abroad on active service, but very young boys might themselves be enlisted in the army if their fathers were killed. Two such boys are mentioned by correspondents on TACA’s ‘History matters’ page as having done just that during the eighteenth century, John Murray being only five when he enlisted in the 50th Foot, and James Wade being seven when he joined the 9th Foot. Both boys began military careers in this way as drummers.

Fictional they may be, but perhaps the most famous drummer boys of the British Army are the young heroes of Rudyard Kipling’s short story, ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft’ (1888). Jakin and Lew are introduced by Kipling as:

… a brace of the most finished little fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a British Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew—Piggy Lew—and they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft.

Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and Lew was about the same age. When not looked after, they smoked and drank. They swore habitually after the manner of the Barrack-room, which is cold-swearing and comes from between clinched teeth; and they fought religiously once a week. Jakin had sprung from some London gutter, and may or may not have passed through Dr. Barnardo's hands ere he arrived at the dignity of drummer-boy. Lew could remember nothing except the Regiment and the delight of listening to the Band from his earliest years.

Both of Kipling's drummer boys are orphans. Jakin tells the India-based regiment’s colonel that he has ‘worn the Queen’s uniform for two years’, which means that he enlisted aged twelve, the age that Lew says he also was when he joined the army, which, as Kipling notes, was ‘two years before the regulation boy's age—fourteen’. From Kipling’s description, it is likely that Lew is the son of a deceased soldier, and a ‘line boy’ through and through, another army child in the story being his thirteen-year-old girlfriend, Cris Delighan, the black-haired daughter of the Colour-Sergeant, who lives with her parents in married quarters, and who is pictured in the nineteenth-century illustration at right with Lew.

When the regiment is ordered on active service, to fight in ‘The War of the Lost Tribes’ against the Afghans on the North-West Frontier, Kipling relates how Jakin and Lew persuade the colonel to let them accompany the regiment to the front. If you’re not familiar with the story and want to know what happened there, how about reading ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft’? You can do so online: The Project Gutenberg EBook of Soldier Stories, by Rudyard Kipling, for example, includes ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft’ (and is the source of the illustrations reproduced here).

If you’re interested in discovering more about the historical background to ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft’, the Kipling Society’s website, http://www.kipling.org.uk/, is well worth a visit, and includes an interesting page: ‘Kipling for men and women on active service’.

Forces in Mind

2010-07-12T11:06:00.001+01:00

The UK’s Big Lottery Fund (BIG) recently announced that it would be setting up the Forces in Mind trust, whose purpose will be ‘to provide long-term support and advocacy for former forces personnel to make a successful transition to civilian life, including those who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf War’. In outlining the need for the new trust, Sir Clive Booth, the chair of BIG, stated:

Nearly 20,000 people leave the armed forces each year. In spite of help available from the Armed Services, Ministry of Defence, NHS and a wide range of charities, there are still gaps in the support available for our veterans. Some struggle with the transition to civilian life. Problems can emerge, sometimes many years into the future, leading to mental health, family breakdown and alcohol related difficulties, among others.

Regardless of whether diagnosed or undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) plays a part, former British forces personnel have historically found adjusting from the military to the civilian way of life (‘civvy street’) a tough challenge (and in some cases, even an impossible one), often resulting in the types of problems specified by BIG. Indeed, the statistics listed by BIG make sobering reading: almost one in ten of the prison population are veterans, for example; there are an estimated 1,100 homeless veterans in London on any one night; and ‘32% of [forces’] families reported their loved one’s behaviour had changed as a result of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan; two thirds said that the change was negative or very negative’. The figures given for alcohol abuse, mental-health conditions and PTSD among serving and former servicemen are also worrying.

Forces in Mind, which will receive funding of £35 million, will be fully independent, with a twenty-year operational span. According to a press release issued by BIG:

BIG wants the Trust to focus on addressing a range of problems that some veterans and their families can experience back in civilian life, which can include poor mental health, social exclusion, family breakdown and alcohol problems.

The Trust’s advocacy work will include research to improve knowledge of the issues affecting veterans and their families as well as awareness raising campaigns, including peer advice, and advocacy and support to other veterans who might be at risk.

BIG envisages the Forces in Mind trust as being formed, shaped and run by representatives from forces charities and other charities with knowledge and experience of the problems that can arise when members of the armed forces and their families stop following the drum and enter civvy street. And while many forces-focused charities have considerable expertise in providing practical and psychological support where it is needed, BIG recognises that more research into the issues affecting veterans and their families is necessary.

It is right that the main recipients of the trust’s support will be the veterans themselves, but it is nevertheless vital that their families, and especially any dependant children, are not treated as afterthoughts. They may already be civilians, but the typically rootless military lifestyle is all that many forces children know, making the transition to civvy street just as challenging for them as for their parents, as a number of contributors to The Army Children Archive (TACA) have described. Add to this sudden, fundamental change in a young person’s circumstances a family situation that may be rapidly deteriorating through a toxic combination of stress, joblessness, mental-health issues, alcohol abuse and so on, and there is a danger that, without the appropriate support, the negative consequences will be long-lasting, and perhaps irreversible.

Click here for further information about Forces in Mind.