B.B.C. LONDON LETTER

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4724, 10 January 1946, Page 2

8.8.C. LONDON LETTER

A WEEKLY MISCELLANY Three Britons in Burma. “Burma Patrol” is one of many products of the three months Douglas Cleverdon spent in Burma. Two of the soldiers Cleverdon met during his stay in Burma were Sgt. Halwood and Cpl. Dillon. They told him about a fivcday patrol which the two of them and another man in their regiment had carried out in Japanese-held territory. From the time they crossed the river, until they returned five days later, their story was one long string of hair’s-breadth escapes, but the patrol carried on with the job of stopping enemy food supplies—and stopping them, sometimes, from too-close quarters, for on several occasions they lay hidden from Japs who were only a few feet away—and got safely back with vital information. A few days later, when their regiment formed the spearhead of the assault across the Irrawaddy, all three men were in the leading company. It is the work done by that heroic patrol which “Burma Patrol”—of which Cleverdon is author, producer and narrator—tells in dramatised form. The Little Shop that Makes the V.C. Every Victoria Cross that’s ever been awarded comes from a modest little Jeweller's shop in the West End of London. You’d hardly notice it in your ordinary goings and comings unless you called at the booksellers next door or walked out of the old pub just over the road. But Cyril Availing gave an intimate description of it in a current BBC overseas talk. To that little shop the postman every now and again takes a letter marked OHMS, a letter such as any of us might send to our tailor to say wo wanted another suit. And that has been happening ever since the Crimean" War and right up to the end of this war. For the making of the V.C.s has been in the hands of the same family first the founder of this jew-* eller’s shop, then his son, and now his grandson. At first sight the Victoria Cross looks as though it would be quite easy to make. Any good metal worker could, one might think, tackle the job. Just the bronze medal, the same colour as an ordinary penny, and the red riband. But a closer look shows it’s not so simple. Perfect craftmanship is necessary to achieve such

a dolicato design. The modal itself is in the shape of a Maltese cross and embossed in the centre is the Royal Crown. On the crown stands a lion. And, in ,\Vatling’s words “every detail, oven down to the lion’s nostrils, is absolutely flawless, every lino and every curve is perfection itself. Under the crown are the two words, ‘For Valour,' words that seem to glisten out at you and give you tire feeling that you’re in the presence of something mystical.’’ And then there’s the red riband. And all this is built by this jeweller family into an insignia only just over three inches long and an inch and a half wide. The V.C., the most cherished decoration there is, is yet the most democratic, for anybody in the Navy, Army or Air Force—a ship’s boy, a general, a- night pilot—in any British or Empire serving unit, can win it, and the award is made whether the "winner survive or not. The only condition attaching to the award is that the act of bravery must be carried out in the actual presence of the enemy. SHORTS FROM THE TALKS Extracts from talks and commentaries in the 8.8.G.’s overseas shortwave transmissions:— The Price of Things to Come. “....Furniture, motor cars, and beer are in the news tonight. A Capetown message says that ex-servicemen and ex-prisoners of war are astonished at how furniture prices have gone up. To furnish a house consisting of one bedroom, one lounge, a small dining room and a kitchen now costs at least four hundred pounds, and that’s doing it on a pretty austere basis. This figure of four hundred does not include things like carpets, curtains, cutlery and the stove and refrigerator.’’—Cyril Watling. A Lesson Well Learned. “We never doubted that'we and our Allies would win the war. So it was easy for me to say, week by week, how things were going, and to tell you in the Fiji Islands that we were not downhearted. I had only to tell the truth as X saw it all round me. But the way our people behaved made one proud to bo an Englishman, just as it ought to make you proud to bo citizens of the British Empire. Now it’s all over and we have to get back to the ways of peace. This may be harder than it was to keep cheerful during the war. It’s easy to be brave in time of danger. It isn’t easy to put up with discomfort when the danger is past. Still we shall do that, too Food may bo scarce, clothes may be shabby, taxes may take away half o! what we earn. We shall grumble while we set about making England, and the Commonwealth and Empire, better places to live in than they ever wore. But we have learned that we are all members of one great family who must go on helping one another. ’ ’ —Wickham Steed. The Good Old (Pre-Austerity) Days. ‘ ‘ And, gastronomically, what a grand time September used to be! Oysters, Partridges, grouse and jugged hare. Marvellous! I often wonder what’s happened to oysters. They lingered on until 1942 when they became 18/a dozen, and if they still exist they’re probably about 5/- each, but I haven’t seen an oyster for years. Oh, fertile days when you could walk up the Strand on a September evening and have as many oysters as you wanted for 5/- a dozen. ’ ’ —H. V. Morton. Virtue with Rebate. “It was a West Riding man who said to me: ‘The Yorkshireman prides himself on paying 20/- in the £ but he thinks the Almighty ought to give him a bonus of 2/6 for doing it.’ They say it takes a Bradford man two seconds longer to see a joke than anybody else. But that’s possibly because he wants to be sure it’s worth laughing at. ’ ’ —J. L. Hudson.