Weddings Parties Anything, “A Tale They Won’t Believe”:

I have previously explained the relationship of this song to aviation history (well, it’s pretty slender, to be honest), here.

Though the Weddoes split up a decade back, they’re embarking on a reunion tour around Australia, which is very exciting news — particularly since I’ll be seeing them at the good old Corner Hotel in April! They’re also playing, oddly enough, one show in London, on 25 April. They’re sensational live, so why not mark Anzac Day in true Aussie style (i.e., rocking your socks off and, optionally, getting simultaneously smashed)? All the details are here.

Chonk on!

Long-time reader, second-time commenter Ian Evans was in the Royal Observer Corps in York at the end of the 1950s. Here he describes how the ROC, in addition to retaining something like its planespotting functions during the Second World War, took on the job of measuring the Third:

When I joined the ROC (1958) it was still pretty much an RAF auxiliary, officers with handlebar moustaches and all. We spotted, reported and plotted aircraft in a very similar manner to our WW2 predecessors, though things had been simplified and speeded up, with special procedures for fast low flying aircraft (Rats). The nuclear reporting role was just being introduced, the observer posts were given “bunkers”, a small underground room with bunks and stores, airlock and reinforced tunnel to the surface, a nuclear burst recorder (a souped-up pinhole camera), a pressure recorder to measure the blast strength, a Geiger counter to measure the fallout, and individual dosimeters (we were rather cynical about these).

The operating theory was that there would be sufficient political warning for the observers to man their posts, they would wait for the noise to stop, surface, extract the recording paper from their recorders, read off the bearing and altitude of the burst and the peak overpressure. This would then be phoned in to Group HQ where we would plot the (hopefully several) bearings, and get the position of the detonation. Then, using the reported overpressures, plus sets of tables and nomograms we woud evaluate the bomb power and report back to…..anyone still alive. After that the posts would report radiation levels at regular intervals until…

Which is quite a terrifying job description (luckily they didn’t have to do risk assessments in those days!)

But, of course, there was plenty of terror to go around. Long-time reader and commenter CK pointed out a 1982 BBC documentary called “Nuclear War: A Guide to Armageddon” (written and produced by Mick Jackson, director of Threads) about the effects of a nuclear war and how civilians should prepare for it.

(Parts two and three: `Are you prepared to use force to keep others out’ of your shelter?) One of the sources cited at the start is Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan’s classic The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Department of Defense and Energy Research and Development Administration, 1977), which is now available online.

The title of this post, of course, comes from Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s 1984 classic “Two Tribes”:¹

Aside from the general Cold War theme, the link with the rest of this post is the voice at the start of the video which says, ‘… the air attack warning sounds like. This is the sound’, followed by a siren. The voice belongs to actor Patrick Allen, who had previously said similar things as the narrator of the British government’s series of civil defence films, Protect and Survive, successors of the ARP pamphlets of the 1930s. Inevitably, the films are also all available on YouTube.

Thank you to CK and especially Ian for their comments.

1. I didn’t realise that the title comes from the opening narration in Australia’s own great contribution to the end of the world, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior: ‘For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all.’

Songs of Australia: the landscape, the country and the city.

Icehouse, “Great Southern Land”.

Standing at the limit of an endless ocean
Stranded like a runaway, lost at sea
City on a rainy day down in the harbour
Watching as the grey clouds shadow the bay

Cold Chisel, “Flame Trees”.

Oh the flame trees will blind the weary driver
And there’s nothing else could set fire to this town
There’s no change, there’s no pace
Everything within its place
Just makes it harder to believe that she won’t be around

Paul Kelly, “From St Kilda to Kings Cross” (that’s the one in Sydney, not London).

I want to see the sun go down from St Kilda Esplanade
Where the beach needs reconstruction, where the palm trees have it hard
I’d give you all of Sydney harbour (all that land and all that water)
For that one sweet promenade

I’d give you all of Sydney harbour (all that land and all that water)
For that one sweet promenade

It’s good to be home.

WE ARE ALWAYS pleased to learn of a new post on Professor Palmer’s most interesting blog, the Avia-Corner. It is the first place one would turn in order to learn about the often murky world of Soviet aviation. However, his latest rant — there is unfortunately no other word for it — caught us by surprise, for it is aimed squarely at Airminded itself. It seems that the good professor has taken exception to our previous post, which happened to refer to one of his in what was by no means an unfriendly spirit. As the reaction is out of all proportion to the supposed offence, the suspicion occurs that it is officially inspired. The possible motivations for this scarcely need explaining, but a reply must here be given.

We frankly deplore Professor Palmer’s threats of annihilation. What would conflict between our blogs achieve? After all, when two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score.

Can we appeal to our common humanity? Certainly we share the same biology, regardless of ideology.

Are we fools to dream of a brotherhood of man? Imagine all the people, sharing all the world!

There is nothing to be gained by war, and so much to be lost. We therefore earnestly appeal to Professor Palmer to cease hostilities immediately. Otherwise the consequences, for all concerned, are too awful to contemplate.

It’s always interesting to see echoes of the golden age of aviation in today’s pop culture. At the Avia-Corner, Scott Palmer ends an update on the search for Amelia Earhart with a related music video: Amelia Earhart versus the Dancing Bear, by The Handsome Family. Well, I’ll see his ‘aviatrix lost at sea, never to be found’ and raise him the ‘mother proud of [a] little boy’.

This aviatrix is Amy Johnson; I’ve written about her in relation to this song — The Golden Age of Aviation by the Lucksmiths — before. But I like it so much, it deserves a second airing.

The proud mother is Enola Gay, the little boy is, well, Little Boy. Enola Gay is probably the single most influential single aeroplane in history; one of its fateful consequences was this classic piece of 80s synthpop by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.

And a bonus! Last night I saw the ethereal (and unfortunately elusive) Lisa Gerrard, formerly of Dead Can Dance, live in concert. So here’s DCD’s The Host of Seraphim, probably my favourite piece of music ever.

Hmm … an aviation connection … well, seraphim are angels … and only angels have wings!

[Update: due to my misunderstanding of a key word, this post is fundamentally misconceived. Exercise due caution!]

Hello everybody, I seem to have got here at last, it’s been a long long time but here I am and jolly glad I am to be here at last. I bring [inaudible] from the people of England to the people of Australia and I shall be very, very happy if this flight of mine can bring together people so far apart, but so near together in — in good feeling, fellowship and friendship, and everything except violence mileage! If you could get aeroplanes to bring you together that would be so much better.

I’m fairly certain the above words were spoken by aviatrix Amy Johnson, on the occasion of her pioneering solo flight from Britain to Australia in May 1930 — the first by a woman and the first of several record-breaking flights by her. I’ve transcribed them from a sample at the start of a song called The Golden Age of Aviation, by The Lucksmiths, one of my favourite bands. (For any Londoners reading, their next gig is very nearby, so go see them if you get the chance — particularly if you like very witty and somewhat wistful indie pop.) The words would seem to fit the context of a speech to a throng of gawking Australians, and the voice sounds very much like Johnson’s in the clips on this BBC Humber Culture site about her.

If it is Amy Johnson, then she is espousing a liberal, internationalist view of aviation — that by allowing easy travel around the world, it can help people from different countries to know and understand each other. By 1934, her views had become rather darker:

The science of aviation has progressed so extensively in recent years that even in thick cloud and fog pilots can fly blind to their objective, drop their bombs, and return unseen. How are we to stop them? We cannot.
Our Government tells us that we have a certain measure of home defence. We have aircraft guns [sic]; searchlights which work on the ‘grid’ pattern, i.e. in squares, in order to give the least possible chance of escape to any enemy aircraft; fast interceptor fighters. What use are all these if the enemy is invisible, as he would be in the kind of weather which usually prevails in this country? …
We have only one way of defence — reprisals in kind. In the new techniques required in aerial tactics the best way to defend is to attack. We must be equipped with numerous squadrons of large, high-speed, long-range bombing machines. These might be flown by pilots experienced in long-distance, all-weather flying, as they may have to fly ‘blind’ to their objective and back.¹

She was born in Hull, where her father was a fish merchant — I wonder if she experienced any of that city’s Zeppelin raids?

Johnson died in the line of duty — she was a ferry pilot for the Air Transport Auxiliary and baled out over the Thames Estuary on 4 January 1941 and apparently drowned: ‘an aviatrix lost at sea, never to be found’.

The novelty wore off
When the pilots still wore goggles
But your eyes look skywards
And your mind still boggles
Through frequent flyers’ disappointments and disasters
The golden age of aviation never lost its lustre

1. Daily Mail, 5 April 1934; quoted in Philip Noel Baker, “A national air force no defence”, in Challenge to Death (London: Constable & Co., 1934), 198.

[I posted this last Wednesday, but somehow, it was marked as "private" rather than "published", so nobody saw it but me! So I'm fixing that and bumping it to the top.]

The talk went off pretty well, I think — at least I didn’t hear any snoring and got some good questions at the end. The best part, though, was that “Four” Meaher (whose own paper on the political uses of the myth of the “great betrayal” — ie of Australia, by Britain, in 1941-2 — was one of the highlights of the day for me) put me on to this most amusing song called “The Deepest Shelter in Town”, the lyrics of which are below. Googling, it turns out that it was sung by an English comedienne, Florence Desmond (whose first husband, incidentally, was one of the winners of the 1934 London to Melbourne Centenary Air Race, Tom Campbell Black). The reference to Herbert Morrison dates it to his early days at the Home Office (where he was responsible for air raid precautions), ie from October 1940, when he took over from John Anderson — the height of the Blitz, which fits (though otherwise, the late 1930s might be an even better fit, when the left were attacking the government over the lack of deep air raid shelters).

Don’t run away, mister,
Oh stay and play, mister.
Don’t worry if you hear the siren go.
Though I’m not a lady of the highest virtue,
I wouldn’t dream of letting anything hurt you.
And so before you go,
I think you ought to know
I got a cozy flat,
There’s a place for your hat.
I’ll wear a pink chiffon negligee gown.
And do I know my stuff?
But if that’s not enough,
I’ve got the deepest shelter in town.
I’ve got a room for two,
A radio that’s new,
An alarm clock that won’t let you down.
And I’ve got central heat,
But to make it complete,
I’ve got the deepest shelter in town.
Ev’ry modern comfort
I can just guarantee.
If you hear the siren call,
Then it’s probably me.
And sweetie, to revert,
I’ll keep you on the alert.
I won’t even be wearing a frown.
So you can hang around here
Until the “all clear,”
In the deepest shelter in town.
Now, honey, I don’t sing
Of an Anderson thing,
Climbing in one, you look like a clown.
But if you came here to see
Why Sir John would agree
I’ve got the deepest shelter in town.
Now Mr. Morrison
Says he’s getting things done,
And he’s a man of the greatest renown.
But before it gets wrecked,
I hope he’ll come and inspect
The deepest shelter in town.
Now, I was one of the first
To clear my attic of junk.
But when it comes to shelters,
Now-a-days, it’s all bunk.
So, honey, don’t get scared,
It’s there to be shared!
And you’ll feel like a king with a crown.
So please don’t be mean,
Better men than you have been
In the deepest shelter in town.

Now, what she meant by ‘I’ve got the deepest shelter in town’ I’m sure I don’t know, but I imagine she looked something like this when she was singing it!

Image source: Virtual History Film.

Another bit from the Earl of Halsbury’s 1944 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1926), this time from p. 217. It’s a couple of weeks after a massive Russo-German air strike on London, Paris, and in fact most of the bigger cities of western Europe. Two members of a group making its way to the southern coast of Cornwall wonder just how much further British society has to sink after the enormous dislocation caused by the knock-out blow:

“How long will it be before brutes, like our late lamented friend whom the Russian killed behind there, begin to talk of killing some that the rest may survive? It is a euphemism for plain cannibalism invented by Pierce, the Tasmanian bushranger.”

“You don’t think that would ever happen in England? I doubt it myself.”

“I am sure it will. Did you ever read the life of Pierce? He took to it in four days. Four were killed to keep the other two alive. Probably Pierce killed the fifth, for he was never seen again. I’m afraid that you’ll always get a breaking point, and when you do anything may happen. Human nature has not changed much.”

This is a well-known story in Australian history (popularised by Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore), though his name is usually spelled Pearce nowadays. I first encountered it not in a book or a class but in a song, in a mosh pit, probably at the Punter’s Club or the Evelyn Hotel on Brunswick Street. The song: “A Tale They Won’t Believe” (from the 1989 album The Big Don’t Argue). The band: the late, lamented Weddings Parties Anything — one of the greatest Aussie pub bands of the 1990s.

We left Macquarie Harbour, it was in the pouring rain
None of us quite sure if we would see England again
And some fool muttered ‘death or liberty!’
There was six of us together, a jolly hungry crew
And as the days went by, you know, our hunger quickly grew
And some fool muttered ‘death or liberty!’

So that night we made fires out of twigs and out of bark
And our stomachs they were rumbling all through the night so dark
We were only trying to keep ourselves alive
But when the sun came up next morning? Well the six had turned to five!

And I said, right there’s another one, don’t you frown,
Chew the meat and hold it down
It’s a tale they won’t believe,
When I get down to Hobart town

All five of us were nervous and I’ll tell you that’s a fact
But you should have seen the bastard who was carrying the axe
He was a sick man he had murder in his heart
And then we reached the Franklin River, it took two days to cross
We were wet and almost starving and for food were at a loss
We were hungry men with murder on our minds.

So that night we made a fire out of twigs and out of bark
And our stomachs they were rumbling all through the night so dark,
They were making noises the dead could not ignore
And when the sun came up next morning, well the five had turned to four!

And I said, right there’s another one, don’t you frown,
Chew the meat and hold it down
It’s a tale they won’t believe,
When I get down to Hobart town

Well the four of us kept marching to a place called Western Tiers
A country full of tasty game but for us it held no cheer
We had no guns, we were traveling without hope.
But the axe it loomed so ominous and God’s hand was at play
A sick man is a type of game which can not run away
So stay easy, my poor man, your time’s at hand.

So that night we made fires out of twigs and out of bark
and our stomachs they were grumbling all through the night so dark
I can’t say I feel guilty, after all it wasn’t me
but when the sun came up next morning the four had turned to three!

And I said, right there’s another one, don’t you frown,
Chew the meat and hold it down
It’s a tale they won’t believe,
When I get down to Hobart town

Well the three of us kept moving but one was fading fast
He had been bitten by a snake and you could see he would not last
Stay easy, my good man, your time’s at hand
And when he could last no longer his days were fading fast
We were far too weak to carry him, subsistence it comes first
Stay easy, my good man, your time is at hand.

So that night we made fires out of twigs and out of bark
and our stomachs they were grumbling all through the night so dark
It was a messy job but it was one we had to do
but when the sun came up next morning the three had turned to two!

And I said, right there’s another one, don’t you frown,
Chew the meat and hold it down
It’s a tale they won’t believe,
When I get down to Hobart town

Now he had been looking at me funny, sort of eyeing me for days,
And you would not need to be too bright to know that bastard’s ways:
He was a sick man, he had murder in his heart.
But even bastards have to rest, and even bastards have to sleep,
And when he was in the land of Nod straight over to him I creep,
And the axe that he had wielded now was mine!

So that night, I made the fire, out of twigs and out of bark,
and my stomach it kept rumbling all through the night so dark.
I can’t say that I enjoyed it, and it wasn’t exactly fun,
but when the sun came up next morning, the two had turned to one!

And I said, right there’s another one, don’t you frown,
Chew the meat and hold it down
It’s a tale they won’t believe,
When I get down to Hobart town

Well now history is a pack of lies, as any fool can tell
And when I got down to Hobart Town I told my story well,
But do you think they would believe one word I said?
For they thought that I was covering for my mates still at large,
Said they’d be roaming in the bush so wild and free
And back to old Macquarie Harbour they sent me.

But I remember the fires made out of twigs and made of bark
and my stomach it was grumbling all through the night so dark
And this young fool, he just said to me ‘It’s liberty or death!’
And he looked a rather tasty one, I just could not help it –

Singing, right there’s another one, don’t you frown,
Chew the meat and hold it down
It’s a tale they won’t believe
When I get down
When I get down
When I get down to Hobart town

This song totally goes off, especially in a crowded pub on a hot summer night. (Lyrics mostly from here, which also relates the song to the history.)

In Halsbury’s book, cannibalism represents the absolute nadir of human depravity. Unsurprisingly, not long after discussing cannibalism in darkest Tasmania, the protagonists encounter it themselves in the wilds of Dartmoor. It’s only a fortnight after the first aerial bombardments, and the thin veneer of civilisation is being stripped away at the heart of the British Empire (well, the edges of the heart, anyway …) and probably throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and North America too, as the war is world-wide. 1944 is the most extreme knock-out blow scenario I’ve read so far (even if the ending is a bit of a cop-out), and it’s a clear precursor of Cold War post-apocalypse novels, 1980s survivalist fiction, and even horror films like the The Hills Have Eyes. It’s also one of the better-written and imagined future-war novels, maybe not quite up there with Childers, but far better than the likes of Le Queux.

Twenty years ago this week, Sting’s song “Russians” entered the US top 40:

In Europe and America, there’s a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Krushchev said we will bury you
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too
How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy
There is no monopoly of common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
There is no historical precedent
To put the words in the mouth of the President
There’s no such thing as a winnable war
It’s a lie that we don’t believe anymore
Mr. Reagan says we will protect you
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us me and you
Is that the Russians love their children too

Although I didn’t really encounter it until a year or two later, this song expressed a lot of my fears (and hopes) about nuclear war and the end of the world (which as you may have noticed, hasn’t happened. Yet.) Despite the peacenik overtones, though, it’s essentially an affirmation of mutually-assured destruction: our being able to kill their children is the best way to make sure they don’t kill us.

Did anyone ever write a “Germans”? Was light entertainment used to comment on the shadow of the bomber in the same way that Sting, and many others, later used it to comment on the shadow of the Bomb? Did popular music express popular fears? I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find topical references to gas masks and searchlights in songs of the later 1930s, for example, but I don’t know that popular singers and songwriters took themselves seriously enough, back then, to try to comment meaningfully on such weighty topics as the next war and what it’s going to do everyone listening to their songs. But then, I don’t know much about popular music in my period — something else to add to the list of things to read up on!