The German Vera Lynn
QUESTION Were there French, German and Italian wartime equivalents of Vera Lynn?
Germany’s answer to Vera Lynn was Lale andersen (elisabeth Carlotta Helen Berta Bunnenberg), born in 1905 in Bremerhaven. she was famous for her song Lili marlene, known as Lili marleen in english.
The lyrics of this love song, with the original title lied eines Jungen
Wachtpostens/ song Of a young sentry, were written in 1915 by Hans Leip, a teacher and conscript in the German Imperial army. The music, by norbert schultze, was added in 1938. Lale recorded the song in 1939 as Das
Madchen unter Der laterne (The Girl Under The Lantern). after it was broadcast by Belgrade soldiers radio in 1941, it became popular among German and allied troops. Lale’s english version in 1942 became the biggest international hit of the wartime years. The song was also recorded by marlene Dietrich in 1945 and by Vera Lynn, but not until 1962.
andersen died in 1972 and is buried on the east Frisian island of Langeoog where there is a memorial to her.
e. Felix schoendorfer, stoke Poges, Bucks. We mUsTn’T forget Britain’s other Forces sweethearts, who did so much to lift the nation’s morale during World War II: yorkshire’s finest Gracie Fields, famous for Wish me Luck as you Wave me Goodbye, and anne shelton, who sang I’ll Be seeing you. edith Piaf, with her iconic song Non, Je
Ne Regrette Rien, was immensely popular in France and beyond, but her wartime role was controversial: she entertained German troops in Paris nightclubs.
anna marly was a russian-born French singer and songwriter who composed more than 300 songs. she and her Dutch husband were members of the French resistance and her song le Chant Des
Partisans was an anthem for resistance in France and Britain.
rina Ketty, whose real name was Cesarina Picchetto, was an Italian-born singer who became a French cabaret singer in the Thirties. Her song J’attendrai was popular with allied soldiers and axis soldiers alike. In Italy, amidst all the martial music favoured by the Fascists, silvana Fioresi was a popular female folk singer.
But by far the country’s most popular singer of the time was Carlo Buti, known as The Golden Voice of Italy.
Jack Holman, Guildford, surrey. QUESTION My dad used to recite: ‘Underneath the mistletoe bough/ Sat a boy with a hacking cough,/ His mother gave him lumps of dough/ ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough.’ What are the origins of ‘ough’ words? enGLIsH is notorious for its use of ‘ough’ to represent at least ten different sounds: enough/tough, cough/trough, bough/ plough, dough/furlough, bought/sought, borough/thorough and slough, hiccough, hough (pronounced ‘hock’) and lough (the Irish version of loch).
With the invention of the printing press, printers outside the direct control of Church and government began to set the norms of writing and spelling.
The silent ‘e’ was removed from word endings and medieval pronunciations such as ‘yogh’, pronounced ‘ach’, were replaced with ‘ough’.
at the same time that english spelling was being standardised in the 16th century, pronunciation was undergoing a dramatic change in the form of the Great Vowel shift, whereby long vowels were pronounced differently by placing the tongue higher in the mouth.
K. e. Wilson, Bath, somerset.
QUESTION What type of device is a Bangalore torpedo?
THIs is a very large pipe bomb: a metal tube packed with explosives and detonated by a fuse.
In modern versions, the detonator is fired electrically, but the originals used a match fuse — the traditional fizzing piece of string seen in countless films.
a number of lengths of pipe can be joined together. each 5 ft pipe is threaded at both ends to allow tubes to be connected together.
a smooth nose cone can be attached to the first tube to prevent it snagging on the ground. non- explosive extender pipes can be attached to the end of the explosive pipes to increase the reach of the weapon without the soldier laying it having to expose himself to enemy fire.
Combat engineers use it to clear barbed wire on the battlefield. Inserting the tubes into the coils of wire means the barrier breaks apart under its own spring tension when the pipe explodes, creating gaps to let soldiers advance. Typically, a path 15 yards long and one yard wide can be created by a single explosion.
a Bangalore torpedo can also be used to clear paths through minefields. The explosions cause sympathetic detonations in mines close by, clearing a path the engineers then mark to prevent soldiers wandering off the safe route.
The device was named after the Indian city where it was invented. In 1912, Captain mcClintock of the British Indian army, serving with the madras sappers and miners, created it as a means of destroying booby traps left over from the Boer and russo-Japanese wars.
The Bangalore torpedo was used extensively in both World Wars and there is film of it being used to clear wire on the D-Day beaches in the U.s. sector.
By D- Day, the British army had replaced the Bangalore torpedo with the rocket-launched Conger missile. This was fired from an armoured engineer vehicle and was capable of damaging concrete bunkers.
a modern version of the Bangalore torpedo, manufactured by mondial Defence systems of Poole, Dorset, is used by the royal engineers.
Bob Cubitt, Northampton.
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