My mother, the Military Wife who soldiered on
When Kristin Scott Thomas’s pilot father died in training, her mum buried her emotions to survive. Now the star has drawn on that stoicism to portray an officer’s wife...
Mother said in one breath, ‘Daddy has had an accident and I’m going to have a baby’
THE emotional toll of being married to someone in the Forces is laid bare in the new film, Military Wives. And its star, Dame Kristin Scott Thomas, may not have been one herself, but she knows first hand how devastating being in an armed services family can be.
And if there are echoes in her character, Kate, of her own mother, it is hardly surprising given that she had a secret family trauma to draw upon – a double tragedy which robbed her not only of her father but later her stepfather, too.
Kristin remembers her mum Deborah struggling to raise her and her siblings alone after their father Simon Scott Thomas was killed in a mystery jet crash during training when she was five years old.
When her mother found love again – with another RAF fighter pilot – a horrible twist of fate saw him also die in a plane crash six years after they married.
Deborah coped by burying her emotions, just as Kristin’s character does in the new fictional tale which was inspired by Gareth Malone’s 2011 choir documentary.
Officer’s wife Kate –whose son has died in battle while her husband continues to fight – contains her sorrow beneath a cheery, “the show must go on” exterior which masks the fact that she is struggling to cope.
Recalling the moment her mum broke the news of her father’s death, 59-year-old Kristin said: “Mummy was pregnant at the time and I can remember when she told us. In one breath it was: ‘Daddy has had an accident and won’t be coming home and I’m going to have a baby’. So it sort of took the sting out of it.”
Kristin’s mum was left to bring up five children alone. As the eldest, she was encouraged not to cry in case it upset the younger children.
Hiding behind a stoic stiff upper lip that made her appear aloof, coupled with a cut-glass accent from boarding school, Kristin became the butt of jokes among fellow students on a drama teaching course in London.
She admitted: “I got needled a lot for being middle-class. They thought they were so right-on and took the p**s out of me. I thought, ‘You don’t know anything about me’.
“Just because I’d been to a convent school and spoke a certain way, did not mean I was loaded. It was a struggle growing up.
“You can’t bring up five kids on a naval pension and have it be easy and comfortable. My mother had to fight tooth and nail to give us the education she gave us, ringing on doorbells, telling people, ‘I went to this school – my children need to go there’.
“I’m fantastically in awe of her courage. It made me so angry when people assumed I had this easy life.” For almost 50 years, the circumstances behind the death of Kristin’s father were kept secret. But in 2015, the year she received her Damehood from the Queen to reward a lifetime of achievement, the air investigation report was declassified. It revealed how, on March 17, 1966, Fleet Air Arm Lieutenant Commander Simon Scott Thomas was killed during a dangerous night-time training mission in a Sea Vixen plane.
The new high-speed jets could achieve near-supersonic speed and were designed to attack Soviet ships in the event of a war.
But of the 145 Sea Vixens built, 54 were lost in accidents and 55 crew members killed during the 13 years of frontline service from 1959 to 1972. It was a worse rate than the notorious US F-104 Starfighter, which became known as the “Widowmaker” in Cold War West Germany.
Simon’s mission was to lead three other planes to fly above a target, light it with flares, then roll into a dive before firing rockets in an attack on a dummy ship. It has since been described as “perhaps the most stupid and potentially suicidal attack ever invented”. The mission, off the Dorset coast, was dogged by bad conditions and worse luck. After the first attempt failed, Lieut-Cmdr Scott Thomas began a second attack. A pilot from one of the other planes recalled seeing a flash, and 10 seconds later an explosion as his aircraft hit the water. He was
killed instantly. His co-pilot, Lieutenant John Harvey, was listed as missing.
Kristin said of her dad’s death: “We went down to school and everybody had to be nice to us and we didn’t really understand why. Kids are so resilient.
“It’s only later that you realise what a terrible shock it was. I can still remember him. It’s like having a little film playing in your head. I can still remember his smell, it’s really weird. The thing that breaks my heart is the smell of engine oil.”
Deborah went on to find love again with pilot Simon Idiens, also a Lieutenant Commander in the Fleet Air Arm. In a cruel coincidence, he died in 1972 when his Phantom jet crashed into the sea off Trevose Head in Cornwall.
Bafta-Winning Kristin – who has lived in France since she was 19 and raised three children with her former husband, Francois Olivennes, a gynaecologist – called on her two stepbrothers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan to help with her new film.
“I would ring them up and go, ‘Does it happen like this, or like that?’ They were very helpful.”
Growing up, Kristin’s grandfather, who lived in Flintshire, Wales, was a strong presence in her life. And although she wasn’t aware of it at the time, he was also a hero.
Lieutenant Commander William Scott Thomas joined the Navy aged 13, and by the Second World War was commander of the destroyer HMS Impulsive. At Dunkirk, his ship evacuated 2,900 men as bombs dropped around him.
FOLLOWING Dunkirk, Impulsive was converted into a minelayer and sent on covert night operations into Nazioccupied waters.
Then as captain of HMS Verulam, William Scott Thomas helped provide naval firepower off Sword Beach for Allied soldiers during the Normandy landings in June 1944.
He was awarded the distinguished service cross.
But Kristin’s grandfather always made it clear that talking of his war service was off limits.And although the death of his son was heartbreaking for him, he saw it as “military duty” and it was rarely discussed. Kristin said: “It really makes sense now thinking about my grandparents – how quiet he was and how non-stop talking my grandmother was. It must have been so difficult with your family, your children or your wife.
“And how on earth can they ever begin to understand what you’ve been through? Nowadays we are far more open to talking about the damage that violence and trauma have done.”
Kristin’s grandfather died in 1983 before the films that made her a star, including The English Patient, Gosford Park and Four Weddings And A Funeral.
But he was at the forefront of her mind while she worked alongside co-star Sharon Horgan on MilitaryWives.
“When you’re the captain of a ship, everybody looks to you; and if you show fear or anxiety that will immediately cascade through the ship. You have to be really, really strong.
“That’s what Kate’s trying to do. Keeping everybody together – which is her way of keeping herself together.”
MilitaryWives is out in UK cinemas on March 6