2nd Lt Anthony Fielding Clarke 100 sqn RFC

[hmsk212]

A Letter from December 1917 from Anthony to Oliver.

Second part of letter 

[cartoonist]

12 hours ago, RFC/QWR grand-daughter said:

I am always hugely grateful for any information.

I knew Oliver, my great-uncle, quite well, but not my grandfather. At the end of WWII he was in Berlin and he divorced my grandmother and married a Trümmerfrau. All I really know about her is that her initials were EB because I have a cigarette case he gave her. Naturally she was just known in the family as Eva Braun! As soon as she was in the UK she bolted, which my grandmother had predicted would happen. The starvation & desperation in cities such as Berlin was so bad that in the same position I might well have taken advantage of a British soldier to just get out of there. When my grandmother went to Berlin at the end of the war in an attempt to dissuade him, hollow-faced women with skeletal babies were begging for bread. She said it was a sight that would haunt her for the rest of her life. She was able to travel pretty freely in comparison to many because she had been translating (fluent French and reasonable German) & had been helping the late Marshal Foch's sisters. I have no idea how that happened other than her (English) father was very well-known in France (he was awarded the Legion d'Honneur for his services to Music) and she was half-French. Also my great-grandmother (who lived until I was in my mid-teens) headed straight to Brittany when Hitler invaded to look after her ageing mother but ended up being put under house arrest by the Germans with Michael Bentine's first wife, Adrienne, in Paris because she got grassed up to the Germans as having a (long-dead) British husband and might be signalling to the British Navy from the coast. 

I believe my grandfather spoke quite good German which is why he was working on de-Nazification. 

I know my great-uncle wrote & translated books from French & Russian (he was also a C of E vicar) but in later life changed his name to Bernard (after St. Bernard). He was married to the daughter of an emigré from Crimea who left during Stalin's time. 

It's always hard finding information about the Fielding Clarkes, mainly because it's a double barrelled name, strictly speaking with no hyphen so although looking through lots of Fieldings it's all the Clarkes that take up the time!  To add to the confusion there was a fairly famous Judge in Hong Kong called Fielding Clarke who isn't a relative at all as far as I can tell. 

 

[cartoonist]

Fascinating to actually see the airman who once owned it. I wonder how it ended up in Essex?!

2 hours ago, RFC/QWR grand-daughter said:

Wow! That's a fantastic find. I think after the 1st World War he went to India (after he was ordained). It was the poverty & colonialist mindset of the British that he saw that made him a Marxist, I think, and then he worked in the East End (I know that for sure). He died in Derbyshire. He'd been vicar at Wirksworth for a number of years. 

Fascinating to actually see the airman who once owned it. I wonder how it ended up in Essex?!

[RFC/QWR grand-daughter]

I have no idea! For a time after the Second World War he was in Kent I think. There was a bit of a hoo-ha because he wasn't happy about money going for reconstruction of Germany (not the food airlifts, but infrastructure money) and he wrote to his MP protesting. The letter was quite sarcastic & said something like we may as well have statues of Goering in every town square but the MP wasn't the brightest chap and took it as a call for statues of Nazis and he passed the letter to the Bishop of Rochester (basically his employer) and there were questions in the House of Commons about whether that was a breach of parliamentary privilege. I'll see if I can find it in Hansard.

[cartoonist]

4 minutes ago, RFC/QWR grand-daughter said:

I have no idea! For a time after the Second World War he was in Kent I think. There was a bit of a hoo-ha because he wasn't happy about money going for reconstruction of Germany (not the food airlifts, but infrastructure money) and he wrote to his MP protesting. The letter was quite sarcastic & said something like we may as well have statues of Goering in every town square but the MP wasn't the brightest chap and took it as a call for statues of Nazis and he passed the letter to the Bishop of Rochester (basically his employer) and there were questions in the House of Commons about whether that was a breach of parliamentary privilege. I'll see if I can find it in Hansard.

Interesting. I found the Hansard details last night

....Even Winston Churchill was involved in that discussion 

 

 

[RFC/QWR grand-daughter]

It's in Hansard.  Search for "Complaint of Privilege" with the date 21st March 1951

I remember my dad calling it a 'ten day wonder' and it was in the papers. 

Our posts crossed!

[cartoonist]

On 02/08/2022 at 13:32, RFC/QWR grand-daughter said:

It's in Hansard.  Search for "Complaint of Privilege" with the date 21st March 1951

I remember my dad calling it a 'ten day wonder' and it was in the papers. 

Our posts crossed!

Hi

If anyone in your family would like to have this case.... (no charge!) I’d be happy to pass it on to them

[RFC/QWR grand-daughter]

That is so very kind and thoughtful of you. Thank you.

Alas, I am the last to remember him and I am in the midst of downsizing. I will save the picture you took & tuck it into the family photograph album. I do have some small things he gave me which I treasure but they will survive the downsize as they fit into a pocket. One is a tiny ceramic Mishka the Bear because he was in Moscow for the 1980 Olympics. I also have a sweet little Matryoshka doll he & his wife Xenia gave me when I was a little girl. I live in a very small terraced rented house and my husband & I are now the oldest relatives on both branches of our families and over the last 20 years as family members have died we have accumulated their books, furniture and so on. I need to make some space before we become a story in the local paper!

Thank you again for your very kind offer.