Postcards from the Edge
In Saint-omer, the French still gratefully celebrate the support British airmen gave them in two world wars, says Mary Kenny
In these Brexity days, we hear much talk of scratchy relations between Britain and her EU neighbours. So it was pleasing to find, during one of our Anglo-french ‘twinning’ arrangements with France, that there is still a palpable sense of warmth and gratitude to Britain for the role played by the Royal Air Force and its predecessors in both world wars.
The Pas de Calais region in northern France has a map studded with sites associated with the RAF – charts of ‘ L’aviation britannique dans le ciel du Nord de la France 1914-1945’ – and, all through this summer, there are exhibitions to pay tribute to the British (and Canadian) pilots who engaged in combat over French territory. On 20th September, there will be a special celebration in honour of the RAF at La Coupole planetarium near Saint-omer – a major site for ‘ l’aviation britannique’ since the inception of the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War.
Deal is twinned with Saint-omer and, during the Deal community’s summer twinning trip, that sense of gratitude to the pilots, engineers and gunners who flew over France during the war was repeatedly warmly expressed. At the splendid (now secularised) Chapelle des Jésuites in Saint-omer, there’s another impressive exhibition on display, complete with old aircraft models and all the gear, with stories of the flying ‘aces’ and their daring sky duels in defence of France, as well as Britain.
The legendary Douglas Bader – who flew so many combat missions over France even after his legs were amputated – has a special connection with Saint-omer. His father died there after the First World War and he was shot down nearby and brought to a SaintOmer hospital by his German captors. There is now a Douglas Bader Tour of Saint-omer, sponsored by the municipality, where visitors are taken to see the locations associated with the legless British ace (immortalised by Kenneth More in Reach for the Sky.)
The number of planes lost over the Pas de Calais in 1939-45 was 884; many of the airmen’s graves are at the Saint-omer Longuenesse Souvenir Cemetery. What strikes the visitor is the youth of these dead airmen: nineteen, twenty... It’s uplifting to think that the honoured wartime memory of the RAF is an enduring bond which vexations over Brexit will not dent.
We live in a gentler world these days: time was when combat pilots would notch up their total of ‘kills’. This has now been softened to ‘victories’.
In Rupert Everett’s new movie about Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince, Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar’s boyfriend – known as Bosie and played by Colin Morgan – again emerges as an unpleasant little rat; in effect, the baddie of the story. Oscar himself thought that Lord Alfred’s entire family were abominable – ‘a mad, bad line’. This seems a bit unfair on some of Douglas’s very nice collateral descendants.
Deal’s ‘ café des intellectuals’, The Black Douglas, is owned by Lord Alfred’s great-great-niece, Dalziel, and she may be tempted to hold a ‘Bosie soirée’ for her controversial kinsman. Her father, Lord Gawain Douglas, has been known to defend his great-uncle’s character, or at least to mention his redeeming qualities – and even to make a CD of Bosie’s poetry.
‘In some ways, he was rather a vicious person,’ Gawain says. ‘He should never have taken up a pen, as he wrote dreadful letters. He was a fool with money, and an obsessive litigant. But he was loyal and he was capable of writing Petrarchan sonnets of adamantine purity.’
Did Bosie destroy Oscar Wilde, as some claim? ‘I think they destroyed each other.’
It was that kind of relationship. Bosie married the bisexual Olive Custance, but his conversion to Roman Catholicism broke up the marriage. They had a son, tragically afflicted with schizophrenia. Bosie died in poverty in Sussex in 1945.
Gawain – whose brother is the present Marquess of Queensberry – and his wife, Nicolette, hold recitals of accomplished poetry and music on certain Sunday mornings. They and their enterprising six children couldn’t be further from Oscar’s disparagement of the ‘mad, bad’ Douglas clan.
At Tralee railway station in Co Kerry, there is an adorable black cat, holding the title of ‘The Station Cat’. He was a stray who adopted the station, and now meets every train that arrives at Tralee’s platform. Whether the feline is expecting someone he knows to alight from a train, or whether he just likes the job of meeting and greeting, no one knows, but it’s a delightful way of getting a Kerry welcome.
The moggie has been named Costa, but there’s a suggestion that he should be renamed Charlie, in recognition of the Prince of Wales’s successful June visit to the home of Daniel O’connell in the ancient Kingdom of Kerry.