Copyright

Justin Smith

Published On

2024-12-19

Page Range

pp. 93–128

Language

  • English

Print Length

36 pages

Media

Illustrations15

3. Liberation

(Granville, September 1944)

Chapter of: The Birds That Wouldn’t Sing: Remembering the D-Day Wrens(pp. 93–128)
Wrens were not compelled to serve overseas, and some declined the opportunity. Among the loyal band of Ramsay’s Wrens the majority was only too keen, though not all were chosen. Indeed, as the testimony assembled in this chapter shows, the Wrens of ANCXF manifested an almost carnal desire to follow in the footsteps of the men whose fate they had helped to design, not just to put themselves in their shoes, but to embody them. Some, like Joan Prior had never been abroad. For Wrens from more privileged backgrounds who had holidayed in Europe before the war, like Second Officer Elspeth Shuter, the privations of travel courtesy of the Royal Navy and the devastation and hardship they encountered on the far shore, provided a stark contrast with their peacetime experiences. For Joan, and many others, there was nothing with which to compare what awaited them. Yet their reflections and observations cannot entirely disavow a touristic gaze upon the dishevelled seaside town of Granville in Normandy, where Admiral Ramsay established his headquarters in September 1944. Nor can they quell the spirit of liberation that was in the air.

Contributors

Justin Smith

(author)
Professor of Cinema and Television History at De Montfort University
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4141-9150

Justin Smith is Professor of Cinema and Television History at De Montfort University Leicester, where he is Director of the Research and Innovation Institute in Arts, Design and Performance. Since 2010 he has been Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded projects Channel 4 and British Film Culture (2010-14), Fifty Years of British Music Video (2015-2018), Transforming Middlemarch (2022-3) and Adapting Jane Austen for Educational and Public Engagement (2024-5). He is the author of Withnail and Us: Cult Film and Film Cults in British Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2010), and co-author (with Sue Harper) of British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (EUP, 2012). With Karen Savage, he is the co-author of ‘Deference, Deferred: Rejourn as Practice in Familial War Commemoration’, in Pinchbeck, M. and Westerside, A. (eds) (2018), Staging Loss. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97970-0_3 . Smith’s interest in digital innovations in the archive is illustrated by https://middlemarch.dmu.ac.uk/ (2023) which is considered to be the first digital genetic edition of a screen adaptation of 19th Century literature. Smith is an archival historian with special interests in post-war British cinema, television and popular music, exploring issues of cultural identity, popular memory and family history. https://www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/academic-staff/technology/justin-smith/justin-timothy-smith.aspx