Angela Brazil – Rhymes With Dazzle – at Dunkirk

When intelligence officer Arthur Marshall was on the beach at Dunkirk in 1940 he turned to the work of Angela Brazil for psychological support. Wounded in the ankle, he encouraged his men to face enemy fire and so reach the awaiting ships with: “Come on, girls, who’s on for the Botany Walk?”

In his autobiography he explained how he managed to get through the evacuation:

Because of my admiration for Angela Brazil, I chose to imagine that we were all in a vast girls’ school: Headmistress, Miss Gladys Gort; School colours, khaki and black; School motto, Don’t Look Back Or You Might See Something Nasty. All the junior girls were dead nuts on that new and dashing hockey mistress, Miss Brenda Montgomery” .

“Gladys” Gort was of course Field Marshal John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort, VC, GCB, CBE, DSO& Two Bars, MVO, MC  commander of  the British Expeditionary Force sent to France in 1939.

And Brenda the “dashing hockey mistress” was Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB,DSO, PC, DL

As leader of a Field Security Section, Marshall had several meetings with Miss Montgomery.

He was kind enough to appear interested in our activities and while he asked me various questions I became fascinated, inconsequentially, by the elegance and length of his nose. Could all of it possibly be real? Dare one give it an investigative tweak? Better not, perhaps.

With the German army closing in Marshall set off on a mission with his driver. Both were unarmed. What if you meet some Germans he was asked, “I shall give them a very dirty look’, he replied. 

Reflecting on Dunkirk in his autobiography he wrote:

Absence of food, coupled with exhaustion, made the nights seem unusually cold and there is little of comfort, save protection of a sort, to be found in a sand dune. One’s childhood love of sand and beaches disappeared in a trice.

Camp or not, Marshall ended the war with an MBE and the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Entertaining his companions he called himself Second Lieutenant Marigold Marshall, and addressed them in the manner of a school story headmistress. He told his fellow officers that the initial ‘C’ in his own name stood for Cynthia. ‘Damn silly name for a man,’ said a gloomy major, but called Marshall Cynthia every evening in the mess.

Marshall had been ardent reader of Brazil’s school stories as well as an early parodist.  He made a name for himself before and after the war performing skits based on the school stories starring himself as headmistress. He was also a teacher and then housemaster at Oundle – a school he had attended before Cambridge where he had studied modern languages.  He went on to become a well known raconteur and BBC radio regular. 

There’s a great story behind this magnificent eyewitness painting of Dunkirk by John Spencer-Churchill. He made sketches while he was on the beach that he turned into this painting. He gave it to his uncle – Winston Churchill – after the war. 

As a wall sign on the left of the painting he dedicates it “To all who took part in the great evacuation from Dunkirk.

You can read the story behind the painting here