Читать книгу How the Girl Guides Won the War - Janie Hampton - Страница 7

On a hot evening in mid-August 1939, silver trumpets sounded from the battlements of an old castle in a forest in Hungary to mark the end of an extraordinary meeting. The blue and gold Guides’ World Trefoil flag which had flown from the main tower for just over two weeks was hauled down for the last time. The first world gathering of 5,800 Girl Guides from thirty-two countries, as far apart as India, Holland and Estonia, had set up camp on the royal hunting estate of Gödöllőo. In typical international style, Lord Baden-Powell had put together Latin and Norse words to name the occasion ‘Pax Ting’, or Peace Parliament.

Gödöllőo was twenty-two miles from Budapest, and was described by the Guides of Hungary as ‘in a very healthy wooded part, surrounded by vineyards on the plain of the river Rakos. Its principal curiosity is the famous royal castle, now residence of the Regent of Hungary, a one-floor building built in French rococo style, with more than a hundred chambers. 3/5 of which estate being wood and excellent hunting ground, and the station for potato researches.’

The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), founded in 1928, was already the largest organisation of its kind anywhere on earth, with a mission ‘to enable girls and young women to develop their fullest potential as responsible citizens of the world’. When WAGGGS decided to gather in Hungary, the association had ignored the signs of impending war.

There were 246,202 Guides in Great Britain, but only two hundred were invited to go on this epic trip. The lucky few who were chosen had to be physically fit for the long journey by train and the dry heat of Hungary in August, as well as keen campers and efficient Guides who would both give a good impression of British Guiding and have the wits to bring back useful observations of the gathering.

Leading the British contingent was twenty-four-year-old Alison Duke, who had recently graduated from Cambridge with a first-class degree in Classics. She was known as ‘Chick’ and had joined the 1st Cambridge Guide Company as a girl; now she was the company’s Captain. With the Nazis already in control of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Alison’s fluent German had helped to secure her selection as leader, and it was her task to escort the British Guides across Europe. As their train passed through Germany, at each station they were greeted by members of the Girls’ Hitler Youth Movement, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM). A group of BDM girls were at Aachen station at 3 a.m. to present the British Guides with fruit and flowers. Their leader travelled to Cologne with the party to ensure that more BDM girls further down the track provided breakfast. ‘Nothing could have been more friendly or helpful,’ said the Guides later.

For two whole years, the 7,500 Guides of Hungary had been preparing for Pax Ting. They had learned new languages and garnered badges such as Health, Fire, Gymnast and Police; older Guides and Rangers (aged sixteen to twenty-one) had learned about the local history so they could lead expeditions to places of interest. ‘No time and no trouble had been spared to ensure the great gathering being well organised and the guests well cared for,’ said the official programme. However, in the summer of 1939 most adults in Europe knew that war might break out at any moment. It took much courage on the part of Guide leaders to allow the camp to go ahead. If war had begun while 5,000 girls were hundreds of miles away from their homes, what would have happened to them all? The Polish contingent understood better than anyone the threat of war, and at the last moment they altered their plans. The night before they left for Hungary, the younger Guides were replaced with First Class Rangers experienced in mountain expeditions. They were issued with special maps which they sewed into their uniforms, so that even if they lost their haversacks they could find their way home. If, as was thought likely, the German army invaded Poland during Pax Ting, these Guides were to return home on foot over the Carpathian mountains that separated Hungary and Poland, in small groups or alone. ‘Be prepared’ had always been the Guides’ motto; now these girls might have to put it to the ultimate test. Only weeks later, many of them would travel in the opposite direction, out of Poland, on even more dangerous adventures.

At Pax Ting, Guides from each country pitched their ridge tents in circles or rows in the pine woods, each encampment marked with a gateway featuring their national emblem or a peace symbol. The British camp’s gate was flanked by a lion and a unicorn made from painted cardboard; the Danes had constructed a pair of giant doves. The Hungarian Guides had never camped under canvas before, and their tents were quite a spectacle: ‘They varied enormously, from holding 16 children to two,’ wrote Christie Miller, a Guide from Oxfordshire. ‘They nearly all had their beds raised off the ground, and were covered in the most beautifully embroidered counterpanes. The tent pole was decorated with coloured ornaments. All tents were trenched but judging by the effects of the first thunderstorm, not very effectively.’

The Finnish Guides brought tepees, like those still used by the Suomi people in Lapland, and invited everyone to autograph them. These tepees fascinated the British Guides: they had their ground-sheets sewn to the tops, and were held up by bent bamboo poles threaded into the canvas — a foretaste of twenty-first-century tents.

The Guides from Poland were the ‘real heavyweight campers’, wrote Christie Miller. ‘All the beds were made of wooden planks raised off the ground on logs. They made shelves for shoes, rucksacks etc. Each Guide carved an emblem at the doorway of her tent. In their grey uniforms they were one of the smartest contingents. In the evening they all wore long cloaks.’

At all camps, including Pax Ting, the Guides wore their camp uniform. For the British this was a blue cotton tunic with a leather belt, a triangular cotton scarf and a floppy cotton hat. At a time when most girls had few clothes, wearing a uniform gave them both a smart outfit and a sense of belonging. The early uniform reflected the relaxed post-Edwardian approach to women’s wear: an A-line skirt above the ankle and a practical, comfortable shirt — often a cricket shirt borrowed from a brother and dyed blue.

Lord Baden-Powell had also designed the Guides’ equipment to be practical: the long wooden staffs they carried were marked in feet and inches so they could measure objects and the depth of streams. They could be used for rescuing struggling swimmers, scything a path through nettles or brambles, or vaulting streams. Two staffs with a coat fastened around them could form a stretcher, and several strung together made a tent frame. The scarf was used as a handkerchief, bandage, sling, pressure pad to prevent bleeding, or to tie on a splint. The whistle could be used to send Morse messages or to summon help. The hats not only kept off the sun and rain, but could also be used for carrying water or fruit, or fanning a reluctant fire.

Once the Pax Ting camp was set up, all the Guides were led by a Hungarian army band on a parade through the local town. They then spent the fortnight occupied by the usual camping activities such as constructing drying-up stands with sticks and fancy knots, collecting firewood, cooking dampers (a kind of doughy bread made from flour and water) and singing around the campfire before going to bed. The Hungarian Guides had laid on a programme which included ‘Move in open air; an excursion by steamer to Esztergom; and Funny Evening in the English Garden (not obligatory)’.

The theme of Pax Ting, suggested before the camp started by the British Guides, was ‘How can Guides help towards world peace?’, and it was decided that English should be adopted as their ‘agreed international language’. The host was Prince Horthy Miklos, Regent of Hungary, who rode to the camp on his horse. The aristocracy of Hungary were out in force: the Patroness of the Hungarian Girl Guides was the Archduchess Anna, daughter-in-law of the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor. Antonia Lindenmyer, President of the Hungarian Girl Guides and Chief of Pax Ting, was accompanied by the formidable Zimmermann Rozsi, Chief Secretary of the Hungarian Guides. Count Paul Telki, Prime Minister of Hungary and Chief Scout of Hungary, also came to sing round the campfire. Her Royal Highness Princess Sybilla of Sweden, great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, was there too, eating roast cobs and slices of watermelon. Princess Ileana, daughter of the King of Romania, whose full title was ‘Her Imperial and Royal Highness, The Illustrious Ileana, Archduchess of Austria, Princess Imperial of Austria’, had been Chief of the Romanian Guides. After marrying the Archduke of Austria she became President of the Austrian Girl Guides, which had recently been banned by the Nazis, but she had come anyway. Lord Baden-Powell, now aged eighty-two, sent greetings from his home in Kenya. The Royal Hungarian Post designed ‘a fine collection of stempis’ to commemorate the occasion.

At the end of the camp, every Guide received a certificate signed by Lindenmyer, saying, ‘We believe that the Spirit of Guiding so splendidly manifested during the Pax Ting will bear its fruits for the common good of the world in time to come.’

A growl of thunder sounded menacingly as the trumpets called out on the last evening. As the Guides all said goodbye to each other on the following wet, stormy morning at the end of August, they must have wondered how long it would be before they would meet again. What might happen to the tall, fair-haired Guides in grey uniforms, strapping sixty-pound packs on their backs as if they were light haversacks? What would happen to the little round-faced Dutch Guide who came squelching through the rain to exchange an address with a Scottish Patrol Leader? ‘Surely,’ wrote Catherine Christian, editor of The Guide, ‘grown-ups were not going to be so crazy as to start a war, when people all over the world were so willing to be friendly, to discuss things, to be interested in each other?’

The British Guides sped home through Germany, waving to the uniformed BDM girls on railway station platforms. After three days of hot and sticky travelling, they walked into their headquarters in Buckingham Palace Road on a hot August evening. ‘They had sampled a lot of other nations’ queer cooking,’ wrote Christian, ‘and emphatically preferred their own. They all had noticed how the stormy gleam of sunset had struck across the World Flag that last night and how the trumpets had sounded. They couldn’t explain it; but they had noticed.’

In 1934, Guiders, leaders of Guide companies in Wetherby, Yorkshire, had written to Lady Baden-Powell asking her what they and their Guides should do if war broke out again. She replied:

Dear Guiders,

It is practically impossible for anyone to decide now ‘What we would do if England went to war’. Our whole thought and work should be directed into the prevention of such a thing, and I feel too much of this discussion of war and its horrors leads people to THINK about it too much, and thus to become what has been called ‘war minded’.

Should it ever come about that England does go to war again it would be none of OUR MAKING. This is far more difficult for MEN to consider. But for women there are always the all important matters and ways in which they can serve humanity — in peace and war — i.e. nursing, caring for children, alleviating suffering of all kinds, food production, and so on.

I also hope, MOST devoutly, that there will never come a time when you will have to face the question in earnest!. Good wishes to you, and your Brownies,

Olave Baden-Powell

On 3 September, a perfect Sunday morning, Guides all over Britain listened with their families to the wireless as the tired voice of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke to the nation: ‘This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note…’