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‘A Jolly Romp We Were Always Destined to Win’: The BBC's ’Allo ’Allo! and British Memories of Downed Aircrew in Occupied France during the Second World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

VALERIE DEACON
VALERIE DEACON*
Affiliation:
New York University, Department of History, 53 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012; valerie.deacon@nyu.edu
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Abstract

The long-running BBC sitcom, ’Allo ’Allo!, has been thoroughly criticised for its use of various racial, gendered and sexualised tropes, not to mention its cynical view of the French experience of the Second World War. This article, however, reassesses the programme in light of what it highlights about the lived experience of Anglo-American airmen who were forced to bale from their planes over Occupied France. It uses the comedic aspects of the programme to investigate escape and evasion training, the use of language, ‘fitting in’ and the prominence of peasants in the wartime lives of Anglo-American aircrews in France. The programme, rather than being just another example of Gaullophobia, accurately represents some elements of the Second World War in France. In addition, changes in the plot over its nine seasons suggest that the sitcom reflects broader British concerns, as well as the Anglo-French relationship.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 139 - 159
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 Imperial War Museum interview, Thomas Henry Harvell, catalogue number 11766, 10 Jan. 1991.

2 Webster, Wendy, ‘“Rose-tinted Blighty”: Gender and Genre in Land Girls ’, in Paris, Michael, ed., Repicturing the Second World War: Representations in Film and Television (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 14 Google Scholar.

3 Two outspoken critics suggested that the programme had no saving grace and they generally found the programme ‘wearisome’. Crowther, Bruce and Pinfold, Mike, as cited in Simon Morgan Russell, Jimmy Perry and David Croft (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, 49.

4 John Corry, ‘Britain's “'Allo, 'Allo,” A New Comedy Series.’, New York Times, 10 Apr. 1987.

5 Kamm, Jürgen, ‘World War II in British TV Comedy’, in Wolfgang, Görtschacher and Holger, Klein, eds., Modern War on Stage and Screen (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997)Google Scholar, 277.

6 http://www.barb.co.uk/resources/tv-facts/since-1981/1988/top10 (last visited 2 Feb. 2016).

7 See the BAFTA awards website for the history of the nominees and winners. http://awards.bafta.org/explore (last visited 2 Feb. 2016).

8 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sitcom/top11to100.shtml (website no longer active).

9 Recamier's name could be a reference to the sofa (Récamier), which is much like a chaise longue, but with two raised ends.

10 Vincendeau, Ginette, ‘The French Resistance Through British Eyes: From ‘Allo ’Allo! To Charlotte Gray’, in Mazdon, Lucy and Wheatley, Catherine, eds., Je T'aime . . . Moi Non Plus: Franco-British Cinematic Relations, (New York: Berghahn, 2012)Google Scholar, 240.

11 The programme only portrayed British aircrews, but their experiences were remarkably similar to those of American crews. Additionally, the two organisations that helped aircrew evade capture – MI9 and MIS-X – had goals and methods that were indistinguishable from one another, which is why I have chosen to include some American archival material.

12 ‘Watch the Birdie’, ’Allo ’Allo!, series 5, episode 36, 28 Aug. 1987.

13 The Communist resistance in the sitcom is the ‘bad’ resistance. They are portrayed as violent and unwilling to cooperate with other resistance groups.

14 Vincendeau, ‘The French Resistance’, 248–9. It is tempting to think about this issue of gender through the prism of Louise Roberts, Mary’s new book, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but I am not sure the similarities are strong enough to warrant it. While she argues that American soldiers were sold on participating in the war thanks to an image of a hyper-sexualised France, one that portrayed French women as open to any and all sexual advances on the part of GIs and French men as lacking any influence, thanks to their emasculation after the defeat of 1940, I hesitate to make the same arguments about British perceptions of France for a few reasons. The war didn't require the same ‘selling’ in Britain, as it was clear that the fate of the continent – not to mention the colonies – had a direct impact on Britain. Additionally, American GIs were seen by Britons as being oversexed and this was not a positive character trait, which might suggest that British men positioned their own masculinity differently. Finally, the role played by the US Army was, I would argue, fundamentally different than that played by the British one, which had contact with its French counterpart at many more points during the war than just at the Normandy landings, which are the focus of Roberts's book. This is not to say that Britons were any less guilty of imagining French men to be emasculated (even the Vichy government was worried about the masculinity of Frenchmen), but I don't think this is what is at play in ’Allo ’Allo!.

15 Robert, Frank, ‘The Second World War through French and British Eyes’, in Robert, Tombs and Chabal, Emile, eds., Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth, and Memory, (London: Bloomsbury, 2013)Google Scholar, 180.

16 See Summerfield, Penny and Peniston-Bird, Corinna, Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007)Google Scholar, 194. See also Peniston-Bird, Corinna, ‘“I wondered who'd be the first to spot that”: Dad's Army at War, in the Media and in Memory’, Media History, 13, 2–3 (2007), 183–202 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for another discussion of the relationship between private memories of the Home Guard and the dominant cultural constructions of particular representations.

17 Richards, Jeffrey, Films and British National Identity: From Dickens to Dad's Army (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, 352.

18 Bell, P. M. H., France and Britain, 1940–1994: The Long Separation (London: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar, 237.

19 See, for example, Campbell, John, ‘From Heath to Thatcher, 1970–90’ in Capet, Antoine, ed., Britain, France and the Entente Cordiale since 1904 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 184–198 Google Scholar; Wright, Joanne, ‘The Cold War, European Community and Anglo-French Relations, 1958–1998’, in Sharp, Alan and Stone, Glyn, eds., Anglo-French Relations in the Twentieth Century: Rivalry and Cooperation (London: Routledge, 2000), 324–45Google Scholar.

20 Wright, ‘The Cold War’, 324.

21 Klaus W. Larres, ‘A Complex Alliance: The Explosive Chemistry of Franco-British Relations in the Post-Cold War World’, in Capet, Britain, France and the Entente Cordiale since 1904, 200.

22 Campbell, ‘From Heath to Thatcher’, 181.

23 Social and Community Planning Research, British Social Attitudes – Cumulative Sourcebook, the First Six Surveys (Surrey: Gower Publishing, 1992), D-1. Support rose from 52.7 per cent in 1983 to 67.9 per cent in 1989.

24 Ibid. D-2.

25 Ipsos-Mori poll, ‘Foreign Countries and World Leaders’, June 1984. http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2959/Foreign-countries-and-world-leaders.aspx (last visited 2 Feb. 2016).

26 ‘Damn Foreigners!: What the Brits really think of Europe’, Observer Magazine, 28 Oct. 1990, 16.

27 Ibid. 20.

28 Ibid. 21.

29 Caitlin Moran, ‘'Allo and goodbye’, The Times, 28 Apr. 2007.

30 ‘The Return of ’Allo ’Allo!’, 28 Apr. 2007.

31 In Secret Army, the regular forces are members of the Luftwaffe, while in ’Allo ’Allo! the regular forces are members of the Wehrmacht.

32 One major difference between the programmes, however, is that Secret Army dealt with very serious aspects of evasion during the war. For example, Jewish deportations were addressed in Secret Army and not in ’Allo ’Allo!. Many RAF men were actually caught and/or killed in Secret Army and, because of this brutality, the escape line killed to protect itself. Episode 6 of series 1 saw the organisation killing a civilian woman before she could betray a recently saved RAF officer. Issues of collaboration and betrayal were dealt with on a regular basis, which was impossible in ’Allo ’Allo!, given its narrative of absurdity.

33 With the publication of Robert, Paxton's ground-breaking book, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001 [1979])Google Scholar.

34 Thanks to the film The Sorrow and the Pity [Le chagrin et la pitié] (1969).

35 Thanks to Kedward, Rod’s early work, Resistance in Vichy France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

36 For a good introduction to Anglo-American scholarship on the resistance and how it has progressed over the past four decades, see Sweets, John, ‘Les historiens anglo-américains et la Résistance française’, in Douzou, Laurent, ed., Faire l'histoire de la Résistance (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 217–39Google Scholar.

37 Margaret Collins, Weitz, Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to Free France (New York: J. Wiley, 1995)Google Scholar; Schwartz, Paula, ‘Partisanes and Gender Politics in Vichy France’, French Historical Studies, 16, 1 (1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diamond, Hanna, Women and the Second World War in France, 1939–1948: Choices and Constraints (London: Longman, 1998)Google Scholar; Allison, Maggie, ‘From the Violence of War to the War against Intolerance: Representing the Resistant Woman, Lucie Aubrac’, South Central Review, 19 (2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrieu, Claire, ‘Les résistantes, perspectives de recherche’, Le Mouvement social, 180 (1997)Google Scholar; Deacon, Valerie, ‘Fitting in to the French Resistance: Marie-Madeleine Fourcade and Georges Loustaunau-Lacau at the Intersection of Politics and Gender’, Journal of Contemporary History, 50, 2 (April 2015)Google Scholar.

38 Kedward, Rod, In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

39 For example, Foot, M. R. D. and Langley, J. M., MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979)Google Scholar; Darling, Donald, Secret Sunday (London: William Kimber, 1975)Google Scholar. Darling was a Secret Intelligence Service agent working in Gibraltar to help shepherd aircrews back to the UK. See also the biography of Pat O'Leary (creator of the O'Leary escape line), Brome, Vincent, The Way Back (New York: Norton, 1958)Google Scholar; the memoirs of Donald Caskie (who worked alongside Pat O'Leary), Caskie, Donald, The Tartan Pimpernel (Edinbugh: Berlinn, 1957)Google Scholar; Neave, Airey, Saturday at MI9 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1969)Google Scholar. Neave, a prominent MI9 agent, published at least two other books about the war before 1970.

40 Vincendeau, ‘The French Resistance’, 246.

41 Douzou, Laurent, ‘La Résistance et Le Monde Rural: Entre Histoire et Mémoire’, Ruralia. Sciences Sociales et Mondes Ruraux Contemporains, 4 (1999)Google Scholar, available at http://ruralia.revues.org/88 (last visited 2 Feb. 2016).

42 Kedward, Rod, In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Bertram Gordon, in fact, has made a persuasive case that Vichy officials and other collaborationists so poorly understood the situation in rural France that they failed to rally peasants in any meaningful way. See Gordon, , ‘The Countryside and the City’, in Fishman, Sarah, Downs, Laura Lee, Sinanoglu, Iaonnis, Leonard, Smith and Zaretsky, Robert, eds., France at War: Vichy and the Historians (New York: Bloomsbury, 2000), 145 Google Scholar–61.

43 The relève was a scheme announced by Pierre Laval (then Prime Minister) in 1942, whereby 250,000 French workers were asked to ‘volunteer’ to go and work in Germany in exchange for the release of French prisoners of war who were still detained by the Germans. The scheme was a failure and workers were later forced to go.

44 Rod Kedward, ‘Rural France and Resistance’, in Fishman et al., France at War, 127. I don't want to overstate these silences, as there are also examples of families who informed on people hiding in their midst.

45 Sainclivier, Jacqueline, ‘Les Paysans Ou Les “Mal Connus” de La Résistance?’, in La Résistance et Les Européens Du Nord (Brussels: Centre de recherches et d'études historiques de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, 1994), 340 Google Scholar–50.

46 Laborie, Pierre, ‘L'idée de Résistance, entre définition et sens: retour sur un questionnement’, in ‘La Résistance et les Français, Nouvelles Approches’ Cahiers de L'IHTP, 37 (Dec. 1997), 26 Google Scholar.

47 The authoritative book about MI9 remains Foot and Langley, MI9: Escape and Evasion. The authors do an excellent job of digging into the rationale for MI9’s creation as well as detailing its successes and failures.

48 Pattinson, Juliette, ‘France’, in Cooke, Philip and Shepherd, Ben, eds., European Resistance in the Second World War (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2013), 83 Google Scholar.

49 Greene Ottis, Sherri, Silent Heroes: Downed Airmen and the French Underground. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 11 Google Scholar.

50 With the notable exception of men who returned to freedom under the suspicion of having been turned by the Germans.

51 ‘The Execution’, ’Allo ’Allo!, series 1, episode 5 ‘The Execution’, 5 Oct. 1984.

52 Although a thorough study of rural resistance takes into account the plurality of experiences and the varieties of rural existence, I use terms like ‘peasant’, ‘rural inhabitant’ and so on, interchangeably, as no distinction was made in British escape and evasion instructions between, say, the French who lived in small villages and farmers who made their living from the land.

53 Andy Medhurst has noted that ‘every comedy belongs simultaneously to both its own moment and its wider cultural antecedents’. Medhurst, Andy, A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identities (London: Routledge, 2007), 12 Google Scholar.

54 Eley, Geoff, ‘Finding the People's War: Film, British Collective Memory, and World War II’, The American Historical Review, 106, 3 (2001), 818 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This theme has also been taken up in further detail in the Noakes, Lucy and Pattinson, Juliette, eds., British Cultural Memory and the Second World War (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)Google Scholar.

55 Noakes and Pattinson, ‘Introduction: “Keep Calm and Carry On”’, in British Cultural Memory, 5.

56 Sorlin, Pierre, European Cinemas, European Societies, 1939–1990 (London: Routledge, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 8.

57 See Murphy, Robert, British Cinema and the Second World War (London: Continuum, 2000)Google Scholar, 1. Sorlin, European Cinemas, 20.

58 See the appendix of Foot and Langley's book, which contains a table showing the numbers of escapees and evaders by region and by military branch. Foot and Langley, MI9: Escape and Evasion, 313–15. Evasion was strikingly more common than escape for members of the air force in western Europe.

59 Milasius, Peter P. (S/SGT) ARC Identifier 5554713 / Local Identifier E & E 73 / MLR Number UD 133, UD 134, File Unit from Record Group 498: Records of Headquarters, European Theater of Operations, United States Army (World War II), 1942–1947, National Archives and Records Administration [electronic record].

60 Minutes of a meeting between S.I.O.'s of Bomber, Fighter, and Coastal Commands and MI9 held at Beaconsfield, 26 Aug. 1941, Air 14 355, National Archives (Kew).

61 Most Secret letter from A.I.1 (a), Air Ministry, Whitehall to Intelligence Section, HQ Bomber Command, 18 August, 1941, AIR 14 355, National Archives (Kew). See also, National Archives (Kew), Air 14 463. A letter from MI9 to all Commands reinforces this advice.

62 Report on assistance received from the French, n.d., WO 208 3298, National Archives (Kew).

63 Imperial War Museum interview with Duncan Alexander Taylor, catalogue number 12421, 5 Feb. 1992.

64 Most Secret Memo from HQ Bomber Command to HQ Nos. 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7 Groups, 7 July 1941, AIR 14 462, National Archives (Kew).

65 Although she is discussing SOE agents, these difficulties are explored in detail in Pattinson, Juliette, Behind Enemy Lines: Gender, Passing and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

66 Notes on avoiding capture and escaping from France, May 3, 1941, AIR 14 462, National Archives (Kew).

67 Ibid.

68 Letter to M.A.A.F. Intelligence, Attn: S/Ldr. Barrington, 10 August 1944, from P.V. Holder, Ref. 8917/15, AIR 51 260, National Archives (Kew).

69 Paxton, Robert has written of the conservative image of an upstanding peasantry, that ‘fecund, practical, rooted in a traditional social hierarchy, the peasant family was the antidote to the decadent, abstract, rootless culture of city masses’, in Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001 Google Scholar [1979]), 201.

70 Jackson, Julian, France: The Dark Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 489 Google Scholar.

71 A point made clear in Shannon, Fogg, The Politics of Everyday Life in Occupied France: Foreigners, Undesirables, and Strangers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

72 Bertram, ‘The Countryside and the City’, 156.

73 Air 14 463, Language Aid to Victory, n.d., AIR 14 463, National Archives (Kew).

74 Crabtree was, apparently, modelled after Edward Heath, the former British Prime Minister, who was fluent but could not grasp the necessary accent. “The Return of ’Allo ’Allo!”, 28 Apr., 2007.

75 All the characters in the programme spoke English, but with different accents to suggest the language they are meant to be representing. A fascinating article about the linguistic parameters of the programme and how they changed when it was translated into other languages has been written by Delabastita, Dirk, ‘Language, Comedy and Translation in the BBC Sitcom ’Allo ’Allo! ’, in Chiaro, Delia, ed., Translation, Humour and the Media (London: Continuum, 2010), 193–222 Google Scholar.

76 ‘A Marriage of Inconvenience’, ’Allo ’Allo!, series 5, episode 33, 7 Aug. 1987.

77 ‘A Duck for Launch’, ’Allo ’Allo!, series 5, episode 42, 9 Oct. 1987.

78 Smith, Robert E. (2nd Lt), ARC Identifier 5554649 / Local Identifier E & E 7 / MLR Number UD 133, UD 134 File Unit from Record Group 498: Records of Headquarters, European Theater of Operations, United States Army (World War II), 1942–1947, National Archives and Records Administration [electronic record].

79 Imperial War Museum interview with Don A. Farrington, catalogue number 32394, n.d.; Imperial War Museum interview with Robert Wesley Hart, catalogue number 10557, 18 Dec. 1988; Imperial War Museum interview with Leonard Henry Williams, catalogue number 10184, 24 Apr. 1988.

80 ‘The British are Coming’, ’Allo ’Allo!, pilot episode 25 Dec. 1982.

81 Imperial War Museum interview with Herbert John Spiller, catalogue number 7477, 4 Apr. 1984,. Reel 4.

82 Mayo, Thomas Palmer (1st Lt), ARC Identifier 5554665 / Local Identifier E & E 23 / MLR Number UD 133, UD 134 File Unit from Record Group 498: Records of Headquarters, European Theater of Operations, United States Army (World War II), 1942–1947, National Archives and Records Administration [electronic record].

83 Air 14 463, Language Aid to Victory, n.d., AIR 14 463, National Archives (Kew).

84 Air 14 462. Notes on avoiding capture and escaping from France, May 3, 1941, AIR 14 462, National Archives (Kew).

85 Food and the culture of food featured prominently in the sitcom, even if not in relation to the airmen. The painting that all parties are hoping to sell at the end of the war – (known affectionately as the fallen Madonna with the big boobies) – is hidden in knockwurst. Explosives that have been removed from landmines are disguised as Christmas puddings. Helium that is destined to inflate an air balloon in one of the schemes to send the airmen back to England is disguised as prize winning vegetable marrows, sold by Monsieur Leclerc, disguised as an Algerian farmer.

86 Given that Colonel von Strohm, Lt. Gruber and their commanding officer, General von Klinkerhoffen (who participates in a plot to kill Hitler late in the series), come across as relatively benign, I wondered if they might fit into the larger cultural rehabilitation of the Werhmacht in the post-war period. Patrick Major has discussed this process via films, but focused on an earlier period (the 1950s, mostly). ’Allo ’Allo! could be a later example of this, perhaps. See Patrick, Major, ‘“Our Friend Rommel”: The Wehrmacht as “Worthy Enemy” in British, Postwar Culture, Popular’, German History, 26, 4 (2008), 520 Google Scholar–35.