The silent tap dancers
QUESTION Is the soft shoe shuffle a recognised dance? If so, what routine is involved? RATHER than having a particular routine, this is a style of dance that grew up in the 20th century, based on tap dancing.
Originating in vaudeville and music hall, it was performed by tap dancers, wearing soft shoes instead of tap shoes. The shoes were rubbed on the surface of the stage (sometimes covered with a layer of sand, to amplify the sound), producing a characteristic ‘swish’. Probably the most famous expression of this was Wilson and Keppel’s famous sand dance.
Because the soft shoe shuffle was much quieter than tap dancing, the accompanying music had many silent moments so the sound of the dancer could be heard.
Another great example of the dance is in Laurel and Hardy’s 1937 film Way Out West, when the boys do a masterful soft shoe shuffle outside a saloon as the Avalon Boys sing At The Ball, surely one of the funniest scenes made. Emmy Saunders, Whitby, N. Yorks.
QUESTION Three British generals who played significant roles in the D-Day landings were John Crocker (Gold beach), Gerard Bucknall (Sword beach) and D. A. H. Graham (Juno beach). What happened to them? FiRST, given the logistical complexity that was D-Day, the questioner has rather mixed up his beaches and generals.
in overall command of British, Canadian and Free French forces was General Bernard Law Montgomery. He was designated commander-inchief of the 21st Army Group, which consisted of the First Canadian and Second British Armies. Combat divisions of these two armies made up the units that assaulted Sword, Juno and Gold beaches, along with the Commando Special Service Brigades and two Royal Marine Commandos.
Lieutenant General John Tredinick Crocker, as commander of i Corps, was in charge of the attack on Juno and Sword beaches. The assault on Juno was carried out by the 3rd Canadian infantry Division under the command of Major General R. F. L. Keller, while Sword beach was attacked by the British 3rd infantry Division under the command of Major General Tom Rennie.
Crocker was born on January 2, 1896, to Mary Tredinick and isaac Crocker, and was educated at home because of ill-health. At the outbreak of World War i, he enlisted as a private, but was then commissioned before being posted to France, where he won the DSO and MC. Between the wars he trained as a solicitor before returning to soldiering with the Middlesex Regiment and later the Royal Tank Corps.
By the start of World War ii, he was a brigadier and continued to advance through the ranks while serving in France and later in Tunisia. in 1943, he was appointed to command i Corps in preparation for D-Day. Following D-Day and the failure to capture Caen on the first day, Crocker’s i Corps was placed under the command of General Harry Crerar of the First Canadian Army and conducted the unglamorous but essential work of mopping up enemy units along the French and Belgian coasts. Crocker continued his military career until he retired in 1953. He died on March 9, 1963.
The Gold Beach attack was commanded by Major General D. A. H. Graham of the 50th infantry Division, one element of XXX Corps, which was commanded by Lieutenant General Gerard Corfield Bucknall. Graham was already in the Army at the outbreak of World War i, serving with the Cameronian Rifles. His life might have ended in 1914 when he was wounded and had to be rescued under fire by Private Henry May, for which May won the VC.
Graham continued to serve in the Army between the wars in Africa and italy before progressing to major general and taking command of 50th Northumberland Division in January 1944. Following D-Day he was involved, as part of XXX Corps, in Operation Market- Garden, the failed assault on the Arnhem Bridge, before going to Norway to assist in its liberation.
He retired from the Army in February 1947 and became honorary colonel of the Regiment of Cameronians ( Scottish Rifles) and Lord Lieutenant of the County of Ross and Cromarty from 1956 until 1960. He died on September 28, 1971.
The rest of XXX Corps didn’t take part in the assault, going ashore only after the beach was secure, so its CO, Lieutenant General Bucknall, didn’t command the troops who landed first that day. He did assume command of the beach once the rest of the corps had landed.
Born in 1894, he was educated at West Downs School, commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment in 1914 and served with distinction throughout World War i.
Between the wars, he served with the Egyptian Army (not officially part of the British Army), before attending staff college. During World War ii, Bucknall rose steadily through the ranks until Montgomery appointed him to command XXX Corps in January 1944. it wasn’t a popular appointment — the general staff didn’t feel he was up to the task. They were right and he was replaced in August 1944 by Lieutenant General Horrocks.
Bucknall was posted to take command of the Northern ireland District, where he remained until his retirement in 1948. He was Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex from 1963 to 1965, when the post was abolished. He died in 1980.
Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.
QUESTION Who came up with the phrase mission creep? THE term mission creep is used to describe the tendency for a task, especially a military operation, to become unintentionally wider in scope than its initial objectives.
it was coined in 1993, during the UN peace-keeping mission that was part of the international response to the Somali civil war and has since been applied to action in Bosnia, Afghanistan, iraq and Libya.
The expression was first used by Pulitzer prize-winning Washington Post journalist Jim Hoagland in his article Prepared For Non-Combat on April 15, 1993.
The article discussed the court-martial of U.S. Marine Gunnery Sergeant Harry Conde, who shot and wounded a Somali teenager who grabbed his sunglasses. Conde, who represented himself, was demoted by one rank and fined.
Hoagland questioned why ‘an individual trained to be one of mankind’s most efficient killers’ was being used for peacekeeping work and blamed ‘mission creep’.
He issued a further warning in a followup article, Beware ‘ Mission Creep’ in Somalia, on July 20, 1993.
Jasper Clayton, Bracknell, Berks.