In a previous post, I talked about how entertainment in the form of military “Stars In Battledress” units landed in Normandy on D+6. Captain George Black Jnr led the five or six concert parties made up of men who, for the most part, had been professional entertainers before they were conscripted or volunteered. They did sterling work keeping the troops entertained through June and into July 1944, and were joined by mobile cinemas from the Army Kinema Service.1 Now it was the turn of the civilian ENSA performers, who landed 82 years ago today – 24 July 1944.
A fortnight prior to this date, Basil Dean, Director of ENSA, sailed to France on a Landing Craft, Tank (LCT) at the invitation of 21 Army Group to assess conditions and find a suitable temporary HQ.2 Together with a NAAFI works officer, Dean selected a field just outside Bayeux for the first ENSA camp.3 It was a logical location, not only was Bayeux the capital of liberated France (until the liberation of Paris in August) and an important transit hub for the Allied troops, it was most of its infrastructure was still intact. Dean had been harassing the War Office to get his entertainers to France since D-Day. As if to add to the sense of urgency, during his visit, Major-General Naylor, the GOC of the Lines of Communication, asked Dean why ENSA hadn’t been performing in Normandy already!4 Hurrying back across the Channel to Hindhead, Dean organised passage for the first mobile column of 207 ENSA performers, drivers, and officers.
Image: ENSA mobile column in Normandy (Source: ‘IWM K Theatre Ephemera’, London, n.d., Imperial War Museum, London, LBY K.)
George Formby led the column, along with six concert parties, which made the crossing on HMS Ambitious to Normandy on 24 July.5 Whilst Formby gave out sticks of Blackpool rock to bemused troops, the rest of the ENSA performers were kept busy. ENSA promoted their involvement in the Second Front, by publishing the photos of men and women in the first column:
Image: From ENSA Picture News No.19 (Source: ‘IWM K Theatre Ephemera’, London, n.d., Imperial War Museum, London, LBY K.)
In an article published by The Times on 28 July 1944, Dean announced that ENSA was giving 12 performances a day to British, Canadian and American forces. Along with the variety artists, comedians, jugglers, singers, musicians, and dancers, the column included a ‘rediffusion van’; a vehicle fitted with a loudspeaker, a library of recorded music, and a record player, bringing popular tunes to the troops in rest camps and field hospitals.
The war journalist, Alan Moorehead, mentions the atmosphere in one of the rest areas he visited around this time:6
Some of the soldiers were lying on the grass near the recreation tent. They were talking and listening to a radio loudspeaker hanging from one of the trees. A disembodied dialogue was coming out of the marquee marked Camp Cinema, and occasionally there was a burst of laughter from the audience inside.
This is not the usual image of Normandy one thinks of during the summer of 1944 - just people grabbing an opportunity to relax. I’m not trying to trivialise the sacrifice made by so many, but its important to recognise that the campaign involved the entire spectrum of human emotions, which for me, makes it all the more relatable.
After a stormy start to the invasion, the troops away from the front lines basked in hot, dry weather in the Normandy countryside during August 1944. Virginia Vernon, ENSA’s Chief Welfare Officer, had sailed over with the first column and was not thrilled at the prospect of staying long-term in the ENSA “canvas village” at Bayeux. Her driver, Corporal Vidler, had seen to it that her tent was bug-proof and, in the event of rain, would also be dry. She described “a summer holiday feeling about the ENSA camp at Bayeux” in her diary:7
In the centre of the field was a long slit trench and Colonel Haygarth ordered everybody to jump into it when enemy aircraft flew over; aircraft flew over so often, and as often as not we did not know whether they were enemy aircraft or our own, so we did not often dive into the trench; only when Jerry dropped something nearby, and then we treated the performance like a joke.
As ever, there’s more than a touch of Carry On Camping or Dad’s Army in the scene. Free from the years of rationing in Britain, the ENSA artistes devoured the local produce available in Bayeux:8
We all messed in a large tent; there was a glut of Normandy dairy produce; we fell like gluttons on the butter and eggs and creme d’Isigny and camembert cheese; soon we could not bear the sight of it.
She soon went about organising more permanent hostels for artistes:9
Not only in Bayeaux was accommodation arranged, but along the coast, in the "sur-mer" holiday resorts, at Coursuelles and Creully, and at Saint Aubin-sur-Mer. Shows were given too at Langrune, a village by the sea, almost under the noses of the Germans.
Garrison theatres were also set up where buildings had at least three walls and a roof, although engineers were needed to check for booby traps left by the departing Germans.
The second column of ENSA performers, including Ivor Novello, Margaret Rutherford, and Diane Wynyard landed during August. The photo below of these three greats of stage and screen was used as a publicity shot for ENSA and taken on one of the ships:
Image: Ivor Novello, Margaret Rutherford, and Diane Wynyard (Source: IWM HU 90524)
Novello played the lead role in Agatha Christie’s Love from a Stranger at the open-air theatre that had been constructed at Bayeux. The thriller may have been a little heavy for some of the troops looking for some light relief after fighting at the front. Perhaps this was why Ivor Novello requested a piano be provided on stage so he could lead the audience in a sing-song at the end of the show.
Image: Ivor Novello performing in Love from a Stranger in Bayeux (Source: IWM HU 90759)
Dean seems to have enjoyed the weeks under canvas, bringing his work with him as can be seen in the following photo:
Image: Basil Dean’s office in Bayeux (Source: IWM HU 90849)
He must have felt like he was back in the military camps he served in during the First World War, just with less mud and more brie!
As the Allies began to break through and move further inland, ENSA followed them. Here the mobile columns came into their own, keeping pace with the troops and allowing the performers to be self-contained and not dependent on the units they visited. An article in The Daily Telegraph dramatically announced,10
ENSA artists in Normandy are following the advancing armies so closely that frequently their voices are drowned by the heavy gunfire.
They eat only army rations. The men sleep in tents and the women in vans.
With these forward parties as guest artists are many of the best known stage stars. 'George Formby and Alice Delysia crossed the Orne well in advance of the main body of troops. Mr Formby gave six shows in three and a half hours in dug-outs only 100 yards behind the front line.
And so, it would go on. Like the opening credits of Dad’s Army in reverse, little Union Jack arrows pushed into France, down to Paris and eventually ENSA made its way to Brussels, which would become its European HQ.11 Their morale-boosting shows would continue to play an important role in lifting the soldiers’ spirits as they faced some of the bitterest fighting of the war.
1 Daniel Todman, Britain’s War: A New World, 1942-1947 (Penguin Books, 2021), p. 580.
2 ‘Basil Dean Private Papers: DEA 5 - ENSA Papers’, Manchester, n.d., Rylands Research Institute, DEA 5; Basil Dean, The Theatre at War (George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, 1956), p. 398. 5/1/339.
3 Dean, The Theatre at War, p. 399.
4 Dean, The Theatre at War, p. 399.
5 Richard Fawkes, Fighting for a Laugh: Entertaining the British and American Armed Forces, 1939-1946 (Macdonald and Jane’s, 1978), p. 156; David Bret, The George Formby Story (Amazon, 2022), p. 213.
6 Alan Moorehead and Lucy Moorehead, Eclipse (Sphere, 1978), p. 88.
7 Virginia Vernon, ‘Virginia Vernon Private Papers’, Austin, Texas, n.d., Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin.
8 Vernon, ‘Virginia Vernon Private Papers’.
9 Vernon, ‘Virginia Vernon Private Papers’.
10 ‘Guns Drowned ENSA Concerts’, The Daily Telegraph, 22 August 1944, p. 3.
11 Fawkes, Fighting for a Laugh, p. 159.