OFF AIR... EXTRA

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2:51Welcome to your Friday Off-Air Bonus. This is Jane and we thought this week, bearing in mind it was Armistice Day on Wednesday, November the 11th, of course, that we would bring you one of the highlights from our Times radio programme this week. And this is a conversation that really sprang from a WhatsApp message we got into the studio last week, actually, from a man who wanted to tell us about his father, Leslie McDermott Brown, who was one of the youngest British prisoners of war in World War II. And he came into the studio with some fantastic artefacts, actually, including a scrapbook that his grandfather had compiled with the help of his fellow POWs when they were held for so many years.

3:35In fact, what's so notable about this story and really makes you tear up when you think about it is that the man in question, Leslie McDermott Brown. He came home, I think, before he was 20. All that had gone on in his very, very young life. And he was still in his teens. It's an incredible story. And we were also joined by the Times history correspondent, Jack Blackburn. Now, today is Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, as the nation pauses to honour the service of our armed forces and as generations who live through the world wars slowly pass away we've got to say it's actually becoming more and more significant it would seem i'm going to talk to jack blackburn diary editor and history correspondent for the times and i'm delighted to say we've also got our listener mark with us hello mark how are you i'm very well thank you mark was someone who contacted us was it earlier this week about yes yeah okay about your dad's world war ii experience That's right.

4:34You mentioned Lord Haw Haw. That's right, we did, yeah. In another context. And it was he who announced over the airwaves that my father had been captured. Right. And how my grandmother learned of that. Learned of it, yes. Well, we'll talk to you in a moment, if that's all right. But that's such an interesting story, just one of so many nuggets, slices of life from the World Wars. Jack, I don't remember Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, being marked in the way it is now, earlier in my life. It does seem to be getting bigger, which is odd in some ways. That is comforting to hear because certainly a few years ago there was a bit of concern that it was beginning to fade away from particularly sort of younger generations that didn't seem to be that engaged with it.

5:21I do think that the recent years of 80th anniversaries that we had has drawn attention to it anew. it also meant that as the number of veterans of the second world war reduced uh you actually began to get individuals emerging as characters because as there were fewer people to go out and do media duties the burden was placed increasingly on a number of them and sadly we've lost a large number this year uh there were only 12 world war ii veterans at the cenotaph on sunday um and we We are treasuring them as much as we can. But the fact that they are there still, I think, is very important. I think 20 odd years ago, when we were going through a similar period with the last veterans of the First World War, there was a similar feeling that as a generation passes, as history, living history slips through your fingers, you want to try and grip onto it as tightly as you can.

6:19Absolutely. I've got a message here from Ian who says, Hi Jane, I just wanted to say how special it was to attend the remembrance ceremony at the Cenotaph today. I was a member of the public. I just thought I'd turn up. I felt so close to those who'd given their lives for us. The two minute silence was so peaceful and quiet. It was a reminder about what really matters in life. Well, Ian, thank you for telling me about it. Because of all the concentration on Sunday, we do sometimes forget there is another service, isn't there, on the 11th? There is. There was also a service in Parliament today in central lobby because of the rain.

6:54There's not quite the same sense on Armistice Day of the world standing still. Indeed, I was in the courtyard of Parliament, a new palace yard beneath Big Ben, observing the two-minute silence. This was sadly not observed by a lorry driver who was very angry for some reason or other, which slightly cut across the moment. but still it just you just get that sense but remember it's Sunday I have been to the cenotaph once and it is total silence and the only thing I could notice was the sound of the flags flapping on the top of the foreign office and that is an extraordinary thing to experience I do encourage people to go but nevertheless just wherever you do it taking the decision to go and stop and I think that making an active decision five minutes four hundred to go and stand somewhere anywhere really and just stop is something which is very powerful for anyone to do.

7:47Well, I must admit we did. We had the two-minute silence on Times Radio with Hugo this morning and in the office we also observed it. And again, I just don't think that was done in my workplace over the period of my lifetime until relatively recently. And I do think it's good. I'm really conscious, as you say, that we're losing veterans and we will lose, unfortunately, all veterans of the Second World War. but it won't be long before we've lost people. I mean, my own parents have died in the last year. Now, they were children in World War II, had cracking stories about the air raids in Liverpool in the 1940s, but now they're gone.

8:22So it's the memories, isn't it, of all the civilian experience too? It is all just steadily slipping away. And I'm having also lost a parent in recent years who mostly was born in November of 1945, so just after the conclusion of the war. But he didn't meet his father, who was serving in Burma, I think until 1946. And when he did die, we found a photograph. We think pretty much of them meeting because they must have hired a photographer. It was 1946. He didn't have a camera lying around. So it was clearly a major moment. And you do need to go and sort of look through your family archives. You do need to sit down with your relations.

9:01You know, we've all got microphones on our phones now. And one of my biggest regrets is not sitting down and talking about family history. But to talk about these experiences and get these stories actually recorded is a little thing that everybody can do, particularly in a period where archiving is actually getting smaller and smaller because so much is happening digitally and in an encrypted fashion. We have less and less stuff. So do try and record history where you can and preserve it in some way, shape or form. I think it's such a good idea. Look, Christmas isn't that far away. If you're having a big family occasion, I mean, just take half an hour.

9:35Bottle of wine. Yeah. Ask some questions. and maybe record it, which is where you come in, Mark, if you don't mind. And Mark's our listener who contacted us the other day. So tell us about your dad and what his World War II experience was. Sure. Dad's full name was Leslie McDermott Brown, double-barrelled name, which is a story which I won't go into here. But he was born in 1925 and he was raised in Glasgow. and by the time he left for the war, his mother was a single mother. He had an elder brother by five years, Harley, who had already joined up in the RAF and Leslie very much looked up to him, I think, in the absence of a father.

10:22But Dad joined as a Merchant Marine cadet in 1940 and he probably shouldn't have. He was only 15. I'm sure that wasn't allowed. No, he should have been 16. But he managed to somehow, through persistence, he was very persistent, get on board the SS Chemendine, sail down the Clyde, bound for Rangoon, only to be attacked and sunk in the Indian Ocean in July of 1940. So he was three months past 15. And then he was very lucky. He was lucky to survive. His elder brother didn't. Was he on board as well? No, no, no. Harley, his elder brother, was a flight sergeant and he was shot down in 1942 over the North Sea.

11:17And he's buried in a Commonwealth grave in Norfolk. So your poor grandmother. Well, absolutely. She had Leslie missing for a good long while. and also I think for my father it must have been traumatic because he would have been 17, two years into the war camp when he learned that his only brother had been killed because they had letters home, Red Cross letters. But he was lucky to survive because not only was his ship sunk, he was then picked up and transported to two different vessels, the second of which, the Tirana, was torpedoed by an English submarine because they thought it was... So he was then transported to...

12:07And he survived that too, obviously. He survived that. And the pervasive image I have that he had and remembers from that time was that he swam through a sea of thousands of Havelock tobacco cans that floated on the surface as he tried to get away from the sinking ship. But he spent the next five years in four different war camps until he was released in 1945 from a camp near Bremen in Germany called San Bostel. Right. Can you just bring to life some of the writing? Because I think it's... Jack was talking about archives and keeping things. What is it you've got there? Well, he wrote some retrospectively in the form of a diary, which is called, as I look back, Prisoner of War No.

13:02105.8. But some of it also is written contemporaneously dated. So you have a section that starts general and tells the story of his sinking. And then you have entries later on that are from the time of just before he was liberated. The thing they were very afraid of as they came to the point of liberation, they could hear the guns coming. They were also very afraid that actually, again, friendly fire, bombing from above, might actually end them all in the camps. So that's relevant in the post-war. We lived in Plymouth as kids. We grew up there. And, of course, every year you had Navy days. in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

13:48You could not get my father to go to Navy days, mainly because he did not like the flypasts, which I think evoked the potential of being bombed during the war. But yes, he writes, interestingly, there's a section here about his sinking. I don't know if you'd like me to read it. I'd like to hear some of it, if that's OK. Yeah, I'll try and make it fairly succinct. He says, I cannot describe the noise made by the English submarine's torpedo when she struck. The whole ship shook. Her bowels growled and I was thrown on the deck. When I picked myself up, I heard my Jerry friend say, come on, and he was gone.

14:32There was an old K-pop life jacket that we had kicked around the deck as a football handy, so I picked it up and put it on. Another torpedo struck and I was thrown against the gun platform. There was debris flying always and then another torpedo struck. I picked myself up and dived over the side. The ship was listed terribly with people going down her sides and diving from the bridge. The sea was covered with debris. I swam through thousands of airtight tins of Havelock tobacco that were floating on the surface of the water. I have often thought since then of this sight when without smokes It must be so frustrating and just before you go there's a poem I think that was written by one was it written by your dad or was it written by a fellow prisoner of war?

15:29Well they used to have these scrapbooks that they used to write in for each other and it would include drawings, it would include cartoons, it would include poems. There's a very funny cartoon, if I might just add, before I get to the poem, which I particularly like, which is a picture of people trying to tunnel out and putting a finger up underneath the feet of the Germans on the outside of the wire. So things like this, and these are unique, I think, pieces of social history, I think. But the poem you mentioned is signed by Dai, D-A-I, so presumably a Welsh colleague here. And it's called Nach dem Krieg, which I believe means after the war.

16:26And I'd be pleased to read that to you if you'd like to hear it. Let's hear it, yeah. Yeah. After the war, won't it be funny to hear the chink of silver money, to sit on a chair that isn't hard, to go for a walk without a guard, to eat of a plate that isn't iron, to have a comfortable bed to lie on, to go to a show, to ride a bike, to speak to people you really like, to wear clean clothes, to speak by phone. To have a room of your very own. To send a letter away by post. To have a reply in a week at most. Won't it be funny? Won't it be bliss? To get back home again after this. I think it's so simple, but it's so effective.

17:20Mark, thank you so much. And I'm so glad that you kept this stuff. And that's what's so important, isn't it, Jack? Absolutely vital. And thank you so much for sharing that. It is those, because it's not just a historical record. It's an insight into somebody's memories and psychology from these experiences. It's a record of a human being who in turn will stand for dozens, hundreds more who are going through similar experiences. So it is a very powerful thing. Thank you very much. And of course, it's worth saying that even when he came home, he would still, how old would he have been when he came home?

17:51Well, he was 20. So all that before he was 20? Absolutely, during his adolescence and early adulthood. He left with a full head of hair and came back without it. And also a nose that was actually flattened in boxing in the camp. Lots of experiences. Well, we could talk forever, but just very briefly, was the rest of his life all right? Yes, yes, it was. He was, again, lucky. he visited an aunt in Torquay who said go and see the manager of this hotel there's a training scheme he got on it spent five years in luxury by comparison training in a five star hotel so he'd gone from a war camp to a five star hotel no coincidence I think and then he spent 35 years in the hotel industry and raised three sons of which I'm the middle one Right.

18:51Well, lovely to meet you. Fantastic to hear about your dad's story. And also just to make reminders all that your grandmother will have been through such a tough time as well. I mean, just absolutely awful. Mark, thank you so much. Thank you. It's so worth hearing about these very human stories on this important day, November the 11th.

19:13Our thanks to Mark McDermott and to the Times History correspondent Jack Blackburn. and yes it's really important that we keep on remembering and as Jack was saying there keep talking keep talking to our relatives Christmas does offer an opportunity we've all got those recording stuff on our phones if you've got an elderly relative with a tale to tell now might be the right time to get it hear it and hopefully never forget it thank you very much for listening jane and fee at times.radio is the email and we're back on Monday

20:02Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.

20:46this episode of Off Air is brought to you by NatWest Premier now what comes to mind when you say Premier maybe Premier League movie Premier things that are really top level stuff and why Why not apply that thinking to your money management? NatWest Premier is more than just a bank account. It's an exclusive service. So what could NatWest Premier do for you? Well, you get access to qualified financial planners alongside tailored investment advice. And it doesn't stop there. You get one-to-one support at any time you wish with the Premier 24 team and personalised guidance from a Premier banking manager.

21:22And NatWest Premier knows how to help you manage your hard-earned money. Their financial planning specialists bring a wealth of knowledge, know-how and expertise to help support your long-term wealth needs and goals. So it's just like the Premier League, sort of. Find out what NatWest Premier could do for you. Criteria apply and fees may apply.

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