The day a French part of Yorkshire welcomed a star
Celebrating the 75th anniversary of a visit by singer Josephine Baker to an RAF base run by the French
NO-ONE KNOWS how she arrived or why she was there, but in a little corner of North Yorkshire that was French, those who saw her never forgot it.
It was exactly 75 years ago that Josephine Baker, one of the world’s most glamorous and shocking stars of her day, dropped into the only RAF station in Britain to be operated by another country.
But for the chance discovery of an airman’s diary, her visit might have been lost to the ages.
The RAF station was only just outside York, but the people, the language and even the food was French, and Miss Baker was a national heroine.
Barbara George, director of the Yorkshire Air Museum, into which RAF Elvington has evolved, said: “It must have been amazing. She was such an inspiring woman. In France she is loved to this day.”
Few in York remember that Elvington was once a French base, Ms George said, and fewer still would have known of its surprise visitor on May 16, 1945.
Only a single photograph signed by Miss Baker is known to
remain and there do not seem to have been any newsreel cameras present.
But her presence, a few days after VE Day, and with France newly liberated, must have seemed a vindication of all they had fought for, Ms George said.
Miss Baker was an American singer who settled before the war in Paris, where audiences were bewitched by her exotic dancing and indifferent to her skin colour.
When France fell, she worked for the Resistance, smuggling messages in her sheet music and in her underwear.
After the liberation, General Charles de Gaulle awarded her the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’honneur.
It was Ms George, herself French, who discovered the diary of airman Pierre-Celestin Delrieu.
Its translation reads: “Josephine Baker, yes, Josephine Baker came to surprise us one day, in all her charm. Proudly wearing the cap and uniform of the French Air Force, with two gold stripes, we saw Lt Baker climb on an improvised stage inside the largest of the hangars.
“All the Frenchmen of Elvington wanted to see and hear her. It was a spectacular triumph. The climactic point was when she sang Two Loves: My
Country and Paris. There were cheers, encores and tears on people’s faces.”
At the museum, which will mark the anniversary of the visit on social media, Ms George said it remained unclear how or why Miss Baker had got to Elvington.
“It was purely French at the time. There was only one English person there – an intelligence officer called Mrs Plunkett who was also the only woman, because the French forces were not mixed.”
Some 2,500 men from two squadrons were based in York and their French cook did his best to create meals out of whatever was there, she said – somehow also managing to observe the custom of having a glass of red wine each day – a privilege not afforded to the RAF.