Recently, the internationally-renowned museum, The D-Day Story, published on their website a podcast recorded in 2021 by three second year History students, Joshua Bown, Angus Grieve and Shannen Smylie. The students worked with the museum’s archives as part of their assessment for the ‘Working with the Past’ module, coordinated by Mike Esbester. The second-year module encourages students to work with our local community partners where possible and produce work that has a benefit to them and the organisation they are working with. To hear the podcast, go to the D-Day Story website here.
Tag: personal sources
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Fear of the Unknown: An investigation into individual experiences of the D-Day campaign
Cameron Meeten, third year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on the research he and his fellow students undertook as part of a final year group research project. Along with fellow final year students Ian Atkins, Dom Coombs, Patrick Kelliher and Chris Kyprianou, Cameron looked at the ‘fear of the unknown’ felt by D-Day combatants in June 1944. As well as presenting their findings as part of the unit’s assessment, the students also gave a public presentation at the D-Day Story, Southsea. The final year group research unit is co-ordinated by Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Social History at Portsmouth.
For our Archival Research Project in the final year of our History degree we worked alongside the D-Day Story to research the personal experiences of those involved in D-Day in 1944. The aim of our research was to uncover and analyse the notions of fear experienced and expressed by the allied personnel who were directly involved in the campaign. The D-Day Story has a vast array of personal sources, such as letters, diaries and interviews, that provided us with a wealth of material to facilitate our research. The lack of research into the individual emotions and experiences of Allied personnel participating in D-Day ensured that this project was a unique experience, deviating from the typical historiographical perspective that often just provides a narrative of the military aspects of the campaign. Following the completion of our research, we were given the opportunity to present our findings to the public at the D-Day Story in Portsmouth. This allowed us to provide a fresh perspective on the personal experiences of D-Day combatants to the people who attended.
A key theme we came across in the archives was the notion of British stoicism. We found that combatants rarely wrote about their feelings, instead favouring narratives of events which avoided the subject of individual emotion. For example, stoicism is demonstrated in the account of Elliot Dalton when he stated that he was wary of the spread of fear, so didn’t share his thoughts with his fellow combatants. However, he admitted that he confessed such feelings to his younger brother. [1] The negative stigma surrounding the expression of fear ensured that it was mentioned infrequently, and was downplayed in letters. This is demonstrated in Radio Mechanic Ainslie Hickman’s letter to his parents which likened the journey across the English Channel to a ‘pleasure cruise’. [2]
From our research we found that fear was – perhaps predictably – more significant prior to the invasion of Normandy. On 5 June, just a day before the invasion, Gunner E. Brewer not only stated that he and his fellow combatants ‘had well and truly had it’, but he also admitted to not being confident that he would see home again. [3] This contrasts significantly with the archival material which was written following the landings. Diaries and letters written after the landings were generally far more optimistic and portrayed experiences of excitement and adventure. For example, Lieutenant George Wildman expressed the excitement and adventure in his discovery of a bottle of brandy and a stash of Franks. [4] This suggests that fear was tied to personal success, as demonstrated through the interview of Ted Hunt who commanded 15 Rhino tanks on D-Day. Hunt stated that while he was obviously scared from time to time, the campaign was not as terrifying as Norway which he described as ‘terrible with no success’. [5]
Our research into the archives also gave us a unique opportunity to see what coping mechanisms were utilised by soldiers. Two of the most interesting of these that we discovered were smoking and drawing. Drawing as a coping mechanism is evidenced in Sergeant John Jenkins’ rough sketches. [6] Interestingly, the drawings we found in the archives do not portray any conflict, but menial daily tasks – such as washing – which acted as a distraction from the war. Smoking was almost a universal coping mechanism for Allied soldiers following the Normandy landings. Private William Oatman noted that his backpack contained more packs of cigarettes than food, and he said that he went through all of them in the first two nights of the campaign. [7] From this we can see that drawing and smoking were utilised by soldiers to keep busy as a distraction from the war.
The contrast of the fear expressed between ‘bloodied’ and ‘unbloodied’ soldiers – those who had experienced combat and those who had not – was a key discovery of our research. Bloodied soldiers such as Ted Hunt were far less jubilant regarding the prospect of invasion due to their previous experiences in the war; this contrasted with the positive outlook of unbloodied soldiers such as Roy Clarke, who claimed that the ‘excitement was beyond anything he had experienced in his life’. [8] This demonstrates that previous experience ensured that bloodied soldiers knew what horrors to expect, making them less optimistic than their inexperienced counterparts. Therefore, for the more battle-worn soldiers, previous combat experience served as a significant cause for the fear surrounding D-Day.
Our experience working alongside the D-Day Story has been very enjoyable. Gaining access to their archives provided us with a rich variety of sources which aided our pursuit of finding a new perspective on the soldiers’ experiences of D-Day. This project allowed us to research the combatants’ unique personal experiences, and we uncovered stories and experiences about the campaign which may have otherwise gone unheard. Presenting our research publicly at the D-Day Story was a memorable experience and allowed us to share our findings with visitors to the museum, providing them with a new perspective from which to think about the experiences of the many people who took part in the D-Day campaign.
NOTES
[1] 2003/2245/1, Diary of Elliot Dalton, dated October 1944. D-Day Story Archive, D-Day Story, Southsea.
[2] 2014/403, Letter by Ainslie Hickman, dated 12/06/1944. D-Day Story Archive, D-Day Story, Southsea.
[3] DD 1990/536/12, Letter by Gunner Brewer E., dated 28/05/1944. D-Day Story Archive, D-Day Story, Southsea.
[4] DD 1990/544/2, Letter by Sub-Lieutenant George Wildman, dated October 1944. D-Day Story Archive, D-Day Story, Southsea.
[5] ‘Ted Hunt-Fear’, Legasse: The Veterans Video Archive, https://www.legasee.org.uk/operation-overlord/the-archive/ted-hunt/, last accessed 25 March 2019.
[6] DD 2015/53/6, Drawing by Sergeant John Jenkins sent to his daughter, dated 1944. D-Day Story Archive, D-Day Story, Southsea.
[7] 2014/252/31, Diary of William Oatman, dated June 1944. D-Day Story Archive, D-Day Story, Southsea.
[8] Lance Goddard, D-Day: Juno Beach, Canada’s 24 hours of destiny, (London: Dundurn, 2004); p. 44.
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Using Personal Sources: Charlotte Brontë’s letters
Rachel Savage, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on letters sent between author Charlotte Brontë and her friend Ellen Nussey, for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Rachel reveals how personal sources like this can be used to gain insight into the emotions of women living in the 19th century Britain. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth.
Charlotte Brontё was born in 1816 and grew up in a society which compelled her to conceal her gender with the pseudonym Currer Bell in order to initiate her successful writing career. [1] The suppressive lives women experienced in the Victorian period led Charlotte to form a close relationship with Ellen Nussey. [2] It is the closeness of this relationship that will be explored in this blog, as some historians, such as Rebecca Jennings, believe their relationship to have been a romantic one. [3] The primary sources used to debate this question are two letters that Charlotte wrote to Ellen in 1836 and 1837. [4] The analysis of these letters is crucial to this question and the extent to which these letters are useful as a piece of historical research will also be discussed.
It is evident from these letters that Charlotte cared greatly for Ellen as there is an abundance of emotive language which expresses Charlotte’s honest feelings, for example, “what shall I do without you?”, and “I long to be with you.” [5] Rachel Fuchs and Victoria Thompson argue that these expressions are not evidence of a romantic relationship, as in this time period women would form very close bonds and their letters would contain the topics of “their joys, their loves and their bodies.” [6] Therefore, the intimate nature of these letters may be evidence of how two friends felt they could truly be honest with each other rather than being evidence of a romantic relationship. However, it is interesting to consider that Charlotte herself was concerned that her letters to Ellen were too passionate and might be condemned. [7] This suggests that their relationship was a romantic one. Arguably one of the most passionate sentences in the 1837 letter – “we are in danger of loving each other too well” – could suggest that Charlotte and Ellen were on the brink of a romantic relationship and were in fear of that relationship developing. Because Victorian women were expected to have no sexual desires, the idea that two women could be having a romantic relationship was completely unacceptable to society. [8] Thus, Charlotte and Ellen may have feared the consequences of a romantic relationship developing.
These letters further highlight the context of Victorian society in which men were perceived to be superior. This limited the possibility of Ellen and Charlotte ever living together, most clearly captured in the lines, “Ellen I wish I could live with you always”, and “we might live and love on till Death without being dependent on any third person for happiness.” [9] Here Charlotte refers to a third person being a man, as in Victorian society women were completely dependent on men economically as they were the sole earners and therefore for women in a same-sex romantic relationship they faced economic barriers when it came to establishing a home together. [10] Consequently, for “novelist Charlotte Brontё and her lifelong romantic friend, Ellen Nussey, a joint home remained an unattainable dream.” [11] The fact that Charlotte and Ellen desired to live with one another suggests a romantic nature to their relationship. This is further emphasised when Ellen’s brother Henry proposed to Charlotte in 1839; Charlotte considered accepting in order to live with Ellen, but ultimately she could not accept the proposal. [12] The mere fact that Charlotte considered the proposal suggests her immense desire to live with Ellen, although as she writes in her 1836 letter that she wanted to live with Ellen without the dependence of a third person. Subsequently, this may have led her to decline the proposal. [13] As well as this, Jennings suggests women feared “that marriage would limit their independence further and restrict their access to their female friends.” [14] This was certainly the case for Charlotte when she married Arthur Bell Nicholls in 1854, as he prevented Charlotte and Ellen meeting on occasions and he read all of Charlotte’s letters before she sent them to Ellen. [15] Furthermore, the significance of Charlotte rejecting Henry’s proposal in 1839 suggests that the desire to live with Ellen in 1836 was still a dream to which Charlotte clung.
It is also important to illuminate the positives and limitations of using these letters to gain a true historical representation of Charlotte Brontё. The use of letters for historical research is helpful because, as Miriam Dobson suggests, they offer a true representation of the authors feelings. [16] It is unlikely that Charlotte would have been dishonest with Ellen especially as they had such a close relationship, whether it be romantic or not. However, Alistair Thomson argues that “every source is constructed and [a] selective representation of experience.” [17] Subsequently, although Charlotte is likely to be honest within this source she would also have been selective in what she wrote. This is especially significant to these letters. If Charlotte did have a romantic relationship with Ellen, she had to be careful how explicitly she expressed her love for her, for if someone other than Ellen had read these letters they could both face social exclusion from society. It is this selectivity that causes historians such as Jennings, Fuchs and Thompson to debate whether Charlotte and Ellen actually had a romantic relationship. Although, these letters offer a clear insight into the personal life of Charlotte Brontё and her thoughts and feelings, it is also important to remember that letters are a response to a previous interaction. [18] Consequently, these letters cannot be considered in isolation, as Ellen’s responses are also important to the creation of Charlotte’s image and presentation of herself.
In summary, by considering these letters historians can gain a deeper insight into the personal relations that Charlotte had and how she constructed her self-image to Ellen with the influence and constraints placed on her in society in which she could not openly express her love for Ellen. It is certainly clear that Charlotte would be honest and express her deepest thoughts and desires with Ellen. The question of Charlotte’s lesbianism is in no way conclusive, as more letters would need to be analysed especially those by Ellen. However, it is likely they may have desired a lesbian relationship, but the social constraints were too restricting to do so.
Notes
[1] Dinah Birch, “Charlotte Brontë”, in The Brontёs in Context ed. Marianne Thormählen. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 65.
[2] Eugene Charlton Black, “Sexual Roles: Victorian Progress?”, in Victorian Culture and Society ed. Eugene Charlton Black. (London: Macmillan, 1973), 385.
[3] Rebecca Jennings, A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex between Women Since 1500 (Oxford: Greenwood World, 2007), 51.
[4] Charlotte Brontё, “C.Brontё letters to Ellen Nussey, 1836”Alison Oram and Annmarie Turnbull, The Lesbian History Sourcebook: Love and Sex Between Women in Britain from 1780-1970 (New York: Routledge, 2001), 60-61.
[5] Brontë, “C. Brontë”, 61.
[6] Rachel G. Fuchs and Victoria E. Thompson, Women in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 38.
[7] Jennings, Lesbian, 53.
[8] Fuchs and Thompson, Women, 40-41.
[9] Brontë, “C. Brontë”, 61.
[10] Jennings, Lesbian, 51.
[11] Jennings, Lesbian, 51-52.
[12] Jennings, Lesbian, 53.
[13] Brontë, “C. Brontë”, 61.
[14] Jennings, Lesbian, 53.
[15] Jennings, Lesbian, 53-54.
[16] Miriam Dobson, “Letters”, in Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century History ed. Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 60.
[17] Alistair Thomson, “Life Stories and Historical Analysis”, in Research Methods for History ed. Lucy Faire and Simon Gunn. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 102.
[18] Dobson, “Letters”, 69