ALL-TIME CLASSIC MOVIE FAVOURITES – THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (1961)

 

The Guns of Navarone, is a classic War movie based on the Alistair MacLean novel of the same name and directed by J. Lee Thompson.

A British led team of six Allied and Greek soldiers is sent to the Greek island of Navarone, occupied by German forces, to destroy the massive German gun emplacement that commands a key sea channel, which threatens the safe evacuation of British troops from a neighbouring island.

As if the mission is not perilous enough, with such a large German presence on the island, they also have a traitor in their midst.

The menacing naval guns are embedded in a cliff with a big rock overhang, so the RAF are unable to destroy them from air, which is why a commando team is put together under the command of Maj. Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), a renowned mountain climber, Capt. Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck) to get them up the formidable cliffs, a couple of native Greeks, Col. Andrea Stavros (Anthony Quinn) and Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren), explosives man, Cpl. John Anthony Miller (David Niven), and a tough anti-fascist veteran of the Spanish Civil War, CPO 'Butcher' Brown (Stanley Baker) and they are joined on the island by resistance fighters Maria Pappadimos (Irene Papas) and Anna (Gia Scala).

The film is full of tension as the group keep getting into and out of one situation after another and it crackles with excitement up to the dramatic conclusion, a film not be missed.

THE ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST’S

 

The mountainous lands of Armenia

Populated since prehistoric times

Was the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden

And the Armenian highlands surround Mount Ararat

Upon which Noah’s ark came to rest

They were appropriately the first nation in the world

To adopt Christianity in AD 301

As its official state religion

The Christian Armenians lived

Under the ottoman empire’ oppressive yoke

For almost four centuries

When in august 1896

A small band of Armenian freedom fighters

Seeking international recognition of their plight

Raided the headquarters of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul

They murdered the guards

And took more than 140 staff hostage

However, their plan backfired

When it brought down upon their heads

The wrath of their Turkish masters

And provoked the first Armenian holocaust

When Mobs of Muslim Turks

Massacred more than 50,000 Armenians

This was however spectacularly surpassed

Almost 20 years later

When in the spring of 1915

A concerted effort by the Kaisers allies in Istanbul

To systematically set about the removal

Of their Armenian problem

And the Muslim overloads ordered

The Butchery of one and a half million

Armenian Christian souls

And providing the Germans with a template for the future

THE VICKERS WELLESLEY

 

The Vickers Wellesley

Was a British light bomber

That was all but obsolete

By the time the war came

It was totally unsuited

To the European air war

Of the Second World War

But the Wellesley found a purpose

In the desert theatres

Of East Africa, Egypt

And the Middle East

 

Those Memories Made on Teardrop Lake – (16) The Fortunes of War

 

Henry Beaumont was the only son of the 10^th Earl of Dancingdean.  

Henry was a strong man, straight backed and powerful with a square jaw and chestnut brown hair, a gifted scholar, sportsman and a natural horseman.

 

It was early summer and Henry had just returned from Abbottsford University to Dancingdean Hall, the family home overlooking Teardrop Lake.

His lifelong friend, neighbour and fellow returnee Sebastian Blackburn lived next door at Bridge House.

The year was 1914 and they were on top of the world with a bright future ahead of them and only 21 years behind them.

Little did they know as they sailed on the picturesque waters of the lake that glorious June, that their futures would start to unravel with the death of an obscure minor royal of the Hapsburg dynasty on the 28^th of that very Month.     

 

Sebastian was destined for a career in his father’s bank and marriage to Lady Theresa Edgson in the following year.

While Henry was to be groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps, which would culminate in his wearing the ermine in the House of Lords as the 11^th Earl of Dancingdean.

 

All through the month of July they carried on with their lives, and the usual round of social engagement totally oblivious to the treat of impending war.   

Henry even found time to fall in love.

The object of his affections was Christine Turner a tall auburn haired girl with a smiling freckled face, a sweet nature and a kind heart.

She was three years older than him and she had been employed as his mother’s companion for a year and a half.

 

And he had been attracted to her for every single day of that year and a half but she had always resisted his advances.

And dismissed his feelings as mere infatuation but she filled his every waking thought on his last year at University and when he was home it was her he wanted to see first.

Christine though was resolute in her opposition, month after month, even though she shared his feelings.

But on the balmy evening of the 3^rd of July, when his father was staying at his club and his mother had taken to her bed with the vapours, he kissed her on the terrace and she reciprocated.

“We shouldn’t be doing this” she said

“I know” he whispered and kissed her again.

 

For the remainder of that month he fulfilled all the social engagements he was expected to attend so as not to arouse suspicion and then they would meet in secret and snatch intimate moments wherever and whenever they could.

But they told no one, because they could tell no one.

 

On the first of August, the day on which Germany declared war on Russia, was also the day that Henry made a declaration of his own.

It was Christine’s day off and they had arranged a secret rendezvous up at Lovers Leap, a rocky shelf that jutted out above the cliffs, which were an extension of those that formed part of the northern side of Teardrop Lake and formed the natural border between the Teardrop estate and the Dancingdean Forest proper.

Lovers Leap was so called because it was where desperate and broken hearted lovers would leap to their deaths although there was no evidence that anyone actually had.

It was just a promontory that offered a stunning view, but it was a very rainy day so they met at Dancingdean Folly instead.

 

The Folly was built by the 8^th Earl of Dancingdean who had it erected for himself, in the style of a Castle Keep.

He was always prone to delusions of Grandeur.

He had it erected on top of a hill and then had the surrounding Forest cleared so everyone for miles around could see his standard flying high from the turret.

 

The scene was very different almost a hundred years later as the forest had begun encroaching on the cleared land.  

Henry got there first and immediately took shelter and then waited anxiously in the doorway for Christine to arrive.

He had been up there for almost an hour and he was just beginning to think she wasn’t coming when she appeared, running through the trees and straight into his arms. 

“I thought you weren’t coming” he said

“Sorry darling, your mother was being difficult” Christine explained and then she kissed him.

She and Henry ate their picnic sat on a tartan rug in the old Folly looking out at the rain.

When they had finished Henry refilled their glasses with champagne and as he raised his glass in a toast he said   

“Christine Turner, will you marry me?”

Henry waited expectantly for her answer but she looked down at the ground and said nothing.

“I’m not joking” he said “I love you and I want to marry you”

“I love you too” she said “but I can’t marry you”

“Why not?” he asked

“Because you’re the next in line to the title and I’m a Lady’s companion” she explained

“But I don’t care about that” Henry said taking her hand

“But your father will, and your mother will, and so will all your friends” she said

“I don’t want the title” he said “I only want you”

“But what will we live on and where will we live?” Christine asked

“I have some money left to me by grandfather and a small house in Abbottsford”

He explained but she was still unmoved

“Its madness” she said “you will be throwing away your future”

“I have no future if it doesn’t include you” he said earnestly

She thought for a moment then held his hand to her lips and said “Yes”

 

They couldn’t tell anyone, Henry couldn’t even tell his best friend Sebastian, they just continued to meet in secret and bide their time.

But time was not a commodity they had in abundance.

A point that was heavily underlined when Germany invaded Belgium and Britain declared war.

 

Henry was not a soldier either by nature or profession, he was a pacifist by ideology and content to be so.

However he and Sebastian enlisted at the earliest opportunity and joined the Downshire Light Infantry.

They were both commissioned as Lieutenants and reported immediately to the camp at Nettlefield.

Henry and Christine saw little of each other over the coming weeks and had to conduct their love affair via the mail.

Their engagement remained a secret and she had to wear her engagement ring on a chain about her neck.

Which she would kiss each night before she slept.

 

The training at Nettlefield was intense and rigorous and was completed in under six weeks and when the boys returned home on their pre-embarkation leave they were resplendent in their uniforms.

When they presented themselves to their respective fiancée’s they were viewed with a mixture of pride and sadness.

Christine broke down and cried when he told her he only had 4 days leave before he left for France.

 

Henry’s father, George’s reaction was slightly different.

“For God’s sake boy you don’t have to go” he yelled “you are my heir”

“I have to go” Henry replied

“No you don not” his father argued

“I have to go” Henry repeated

“Then let me pull some strings and get you a staff post”

“No father I don’t want any special treatment” he said

In retrospect he should have said “ok pull your strings on condition that I can marry Christine Turner”

But he didn’t.

 

Sebastian Blackburn allowed his father to pull strings on his behalf however, but not to get out of the firing line, Seb wanted to marry Theresa before he left for France.

So a hastily arrange ceremony was performed at Olwen’s Chapel.

 

Olwen was an Anglo Saxon Lady who was one of the early converts to Christianity but her pagan husband’s tribe would not accept the new faith and she was forced to worship secretly in the forest.

Her chapel actually appeared to me little more than an assortment of stones on the forest floor arranged around a granite altar stone in a woodland clearing, the wooden structure long since rotted away.

It had been rediscovered early in Queen Victoria reign and had been lovingly maintained ever since by a local society.

 

So on September 13^th 1914, Sebastian Blackburn the tall, blonde, classically handsome lieutenant with the dazzling blue eyes, wed the petite, dark haired Theresa, she dressed in ivory silk, he in his dress uniform.

With best man Henry by his side.

After the reception Henry crept to Christine’s room and knocked lightly on her door.

She opened the door in her night things

“What are you doing here?” she whispered through the crack in the door

“I just wanted to say that on my next leave you will be the bride” he said and kissed her goodnight.

 

Three days later they checked into the Railway Hotel in Abbeyvale as Mr and Mrs Beauchamp on the eve of his regiment’s embarkation, when their love was made manifest.

 

On the platform of Abbeyvale station the next morning he saw her onto the Shallowfield train and as he held her hand through the open window he said

“I love you Christine and I promise we will be married when I return”

“Just come home safe darling” she said as train pulled slowly out of the station.

He stood on the platform looking on and waving until she was out of sight. 

 

They wrote to each other every few days over the weeks he was away, each letter more heavily laden with romantic sentiment than its predecessor.

Even when the First Battle of Ypres began on the 19^th of October his romantic fervour was not abated nor did it, by its end on the 22^nd of November and all through that winter it was his love for Christine that kept him warm.

 

In his letters to her he didn’t mention all the harshest realities of life in the trenches and in return Christine didn’t burden him with the knowledge that she was pregnant with his child.

 

As winter faded into spring the conditions in Belgium had not improved and the Second Battle of Ypres commenced in April and Christine was fast reaching the point that it was going to be difficult to conceal a pregnancy in her Edwardian outfits.

Then on the 2^nd of April her worst fears were realised when the telegraph boy arrived at Dancingdean Hall.

 

The telegram read

“We regret to inform you that on the 29^th of May Lt H G M Beaumont was killed while trying to rescue a mortally wounded comrade from no man’s land”

 

Christine hadn’t seen the boy arrive but was alerted to its contents when Lady Dancingdean went hysterical and started throwing things around her room.

The Earl was unable to calm her so he left her to Christine and dealt with the news of his only son’s death by going out to the woods to shoot things.

Christine wanted to scream out in grief at her loss but felt compelled to placate her mistress instead.

 

That afternoon however she was taken to the asylum in Pepperstock which she would never leave.   

George, 10^th Earl of Dancingdean never returned from the woods either because after he tired of shooting the wild life he turned the gun on himself.

 

That evening as darkness fell so did Christine Turner’s mood.

She sat in a leather chesterfield in George Beaumont’s study, a large glass of brandy in one hand and the telegram in the other and tears streaming down her cheeks.

Dancingdean Hall was not the only recipient of the Telegram boy’s grim correspondence.

The inhabitants of Bridge House were informed of Sebastian Blackburn’s death.

How typical of the man she loved to risk his live to save his wounded friend.

Christine fell into a black despair and could see no way out.

She would soon be unemployed and as soon as the baby showed she would be unemployable and she had lost the man she loved and the father of her child.

The burden was too great to bear and so she drained her glass.

Her heart was broken and there was no future for her and her lover’s child, weighed down by grief in her heart and rocks in her pockets Christine walked onto the terrace where she had first kissed Henry and then crossed the lawn from Dancingdean Hall and jumped off the east cliff into the black lake below.

THE AVRO ANSON

 

The Avro Anson

Was a British twin-engine

Multi-role aircraft

Used by the RAF

Before, during, and after

The Second World War

It was originally the Avro 652

And was designed as an airliner

But was quickly redeveloped.

For a marine reconnaissance role

Though was soon rendered obsolete

As an operational entity

It was saved from the scrap heap

And became a multi-engine

Air crew trainer

And remained in production

Until 1952

THE RUGGED ISLE

 

The channel glistened

With silver strands

Beneath the early summer sun

Its waves broke gently white

Below the green topped cliffs of chalk

The sky of azure blue

Was clear and appeared limitless

But on the distant horizon

Storm clouds gathered

Though these clouds bore no rain

And would not bring a summer squall

Storm and tempest were imminent

The sky became filled with sinister formations

Like foreboding flocks

Of migrating duck or geese

But these were not of natures sending

This malevolent swarm

Scarring the clear June sky

These were of mans conception

Heading for England’s shores

To cross its wondrous tapestry

Spread casually across the land

Like a vast quilted patchwork

And when upon this landscape

Easy on the eye

Did the bombs of evil fall

Shattering the peace

Of our rugged isle

Splitting the earth

And breaking bodies

Its spirit did not break

Its people stood firm

Defiant in Satan's face

Withstanding hells fire

And brimstone smoke

And spat in Hitler’s eye

Those Memories Made on Teardrop Lake – (08) The Fugitive Cavalier

Montague Beaumont was only 25 years old when he took up the royalist cause once again and followed Charles II in the third English Civil War.

Montague, Monty to his friends, was a strong man, straight backed and powerful with a square jaw and long chestnut brown hair and was a natural horseman.

He was not a soldier either by nature or profession, he was a farmer and content to be so.

But he had lost his father and brother fighting for Charles the first, so it was only a matter of time before he joined the fray which he did when he turned 20 and he was more soldier than farmer for the next five years.

And he was still committed to the cause when fortunes led to the opposing forces meeting at the Battle of Worcester on the 3^rd of September 1651.

However all did not go well and the Royalists were forced to retreat into Worcester.

Montague rode for the Earl of Cleveland’s horse regiment but the Royalists were heavily outnumbered and although every hedgerow and copse was contested by the stubborn Royalists, Fleetwood's forces could not be held at bay.

Once in the town, Charles II removed his armour and found a fresh mount and he attempted to rally his troops but it was to no avail.

And Cromwell's eventually repelled, the last desperate attempt of the Royalists forces to break out of the town.

Inside Worcester, Beaumont lost his mount in a desperate Royalist cavalry charge down Sidbury Street and High Street, led by the Earl of Cleveland and Major Careless amongst others, which allowed King Charles to escape the city by St. Martin's Gate.

After 3 long hours and all attempts to break out having been repelled and realising all was lost, Beaumont took the opportunity to make good his own escape, and he changed his clothes and headed on foot in the Kings wake.

As darkness came on and the defences of the city were stormed from three sides.

Victory went to the parliamentarians and most of the few thousand Royalists who escaped during the night were easily captured.

Only a handful evaded capture, Charles II escaped, after many adventures, including one famous incident where he hid from a Parliamentarian patrol in an oak tree in the grounds of Boscobel House but eventually he reached the safety of France.

With Charles out of reach of Cromwell’s clutches, and with Derby condemned to death, Beaumont became his highest priority.

Montague knew that if he was caught he would meet the same fate as the Earl of Derby who was executed after Worcester,

Best case he could expect was to be deported to New England, or the West Indies to work for landowners as indentured labour.

Neither option appealed to him.

On the 16^th of October, about the time Charles II was landing in Normandy, Montague arrived in Downshire on the back of a farm cart.

 

There were still Royalist sympathizers to be found, if you knew where to look and how to read the signs but there were also enemies everywhere.

So he worked his way across the county from village to village and farm to farm, on the lookout for friends and all the while being wary of spies.

It was his intention to work his way through the county to the coast at Sharpington or Pepperstock Bay and then take a boat across the channel to join his King in France.

 

But in early November he was discovered while staying in Childean with a Cavalier family and he had to fight his way out, his host Richard was killed in the skirmish while he killed two of the Roundheads and made his escape on one of their horses with the rest of the troop of roundheads in hot pursuit.

His only hope to evade capture was to reach the sanctuary of the Dancingdean Forest. 

 

His stolen mount carried him to the outskirts of Shallowfield before its legs collapsed beneath it and it threw him.

He lay winded in the grass and could so easily have stayed there but he was made of stronger stuff.

For two months following the Battle of Worcester he had been fleeing the parliamentarian forces and he was completely exhausted but he was not prepared for death or deportation so he picked himself up and ran flat out for the tree line and he hoped freedom.

Montague was not restricted by riding boots, helmets or breastplates so once he was in the forest he was hoping to give them the slip, as the leather jackets would not find it easygoing chasing him down.

He reached the trees but after ten minutes despite their handicap they were giving good chase as the effects of two months on the run had left him fatigued and they were closing in on him.

Montague could hear them behind him clearer and clearer, yard by yard, calling loudly to each other as they crashed through the forest and ahead of him there was the sound of rushing water.

It was a cold day but he was sweating profusely with the exertion as he reached the waterfall.

He moved upstream about 20 yards until he found an easier place to cross but he couldn’t dwell to long as the Leather Jackets were hot on his heels.

“This way” he heard one of his pursuers call when he was half way across and he lost his footing and ended up knee deep in freezing water.

Montague waded to the other side and clambered out, two steps later her was down again and this time as he got back to his feet he ripped the buckle off one of his shoes.

He didn’t notice nor hesitate though and set off at a run, a few minutes later he paused briefly by a great oak.

 

 

“Oiy” a voice called in a hoarse whisper

He looked around but could see nothing and so prepared to run again

“Up hear” the hoarse whispering voice said 

He looked up and could see nothing above him but the autumn canopy.

“Hear” the voice repeated

And then he saw her, a young woman about his age, give or take a year or two with a mass of unruly red hair and vivid green eyes looking down at him.

She threw down a rope of sorts, made from grass and ivy vines.

“Quick” she urged him.

So he quickly climbed up the rope the ten feet or so to where she was, and she quickly raised the makeshift rope again.

“Thank you” he said and settled down in the hollow crook between the oak boughs.

“Hush” she retorted and settled down beside him and they sat in silence as his Leather Jacket pursuers were crossing the falls and by the commotion and the cursing it was obvious than more than one of them fell into the water as he had done.

A lot of cursing followed along with pledges to make sure he paid in pain for their discomfiture.

“He came this way” one of them called “he lost a shoe buckle”

“Damn” Montague said as he looked at his boots

“Quiet” the wild looking young woman said and punched him

“Ouch” he muttered and rubbed his sore arm.

Looking at her he wouldn’t have expected her to hit so hard.

She was only a small thing and was all skin and bone but it turned out she was as strong as an ox.

The Roundheads blundered about for another hour or so searching for him, until darkness began to fall and they wandered off back towards Shallowfield.

They crossed the falls again on their return and there were more splashes and curses.

When he couldn’t hear them anymore Montague got up to leave.

“No not yet” she said “wait for your eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness”

He thought for a moment and realizing the logic of her words he sat down again.

“My name is Montague Beaumont” he said “My friends call me Monty”

“I’m Bessie” she said “Bessie Goodwin, they call me wild Bess”

Bess was a local woodsman’s daughter who all but lived alone in a shack in the woods and was thought by most people to have gone feral.

She wore breeches and boots and hunted the woods like it was her larder.

 

After about fifteen minutes Bess said they could safely climb down from the oak.

Despite the fact his eyes had grown accustomed  to the light Montague was completely disoriented and had it not been for Bess he would have wandered in the wrong direction and straight into the clutches of the parliamentarians.

“This way soldier boy” she said and headed off into the dark.

“Ok wait for me” he said and rushed after her.

Half an hour later they arrived at her ramshackle shack which though not stylish was warm, dry and well provisioned.

 

After a hot meal of a stew of unspecified meat beside a warm fire he was in no hurry to get on his way again, so he asked 

“Could I stay here for a day or two until I get my strength back?”

“Ok just for a day or two” she agreed

He stayed with her for 9 years until Charles II returned to England and Montague once more stood at his side and was with him when he was restored to the throne and as a reward for his loyalty he was granted the Earldom of Dancingdean and his wife became Lady Bess.