Skip to main content
Open Book Publishers

2. Coming of Age: (Southwick Park, Summer 1944)

Chapter of: The Birds That Wouldn’t Sing: Remembering the D-Day Wrens(pp. 55–90)

Export Metadata

  • ONIX 3.1
  • ONIX 3.0
    • Thoth
    • Project MUSE
      Cannot generate record: No BIC or BISAC subject code
    • OAPEN
    • JSTOR
      Cannot generate record: No BISAC subject code
    • Google Books
      Cannot generate record: No BIC, BISAC or LCC subject code
    • OverDrive
      Cannot generate record: No priced EPUB or PDF URL
  • ONIX 2.1
  • CSV
  • JSON
  • OCLC KBART
  • BibTeX
  • CrossRef DOI deposit
    Cannot generate record: This work does not have any ISBNs
  • MARC 21 Record
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 Markup
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 XML
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
Metadata
Title2. Coming of Age
Subtitle(Southwick Park, Summer 1944)
ContributorJustin Smith(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0430.02
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0430/chapters/10.11647/obp.0430.02
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightJustin Smith
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-12-19
Long abstractIn April 1944, as D-Day approached, ANCXF left London for Southwick Park near Portsmouth, while the vast invasion force amassed along the south coast and craft of all descriptions filled the waterways of the Solent. Ramsay’s headquarters were close to those of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), while General Bernard Montgomery’s 21st Army Group was encamped in the woods around the park. At nearby Fort Southwick, in a bunker deep underground, Combined Operations had its communications headquarters. All leave was cancelled and unofficial communication with the world outside forbidden. Wren Writers worked around the clock in producing and revising the complex operational orders, and the teleprinter operators and signallers maintained the nerve centre of secret communications. Joan Prior’s 21st birthday celebrations and a Whitsun heatwave, were soon overshadowed by a gloomy storm forecast for 5th June and a nail-biting 24-hour postponement. The nervous tension radiating from Ramsay’s Ops Room was relieved on the morning of 6th by early reports of the invasion’s remarkable success.
Page rangepp. 55–90
Print length36 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Media7 illustrations
Contributors

Justin Smith

(author)
Professor of Cinema and Television History at De Montfort University
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4141-9150

Justin Smith is Professor of Cinema and Television History at De Montfort University Leicester, where he is Director of the Research and Innovation Institute in Arts, Design and Performance. Since 2010 he has been Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded projects Channel 4 and British Film Culture (2010-14), Fifty Years of British Music Video (2015-2018), Transforming Middlemarch (2022-3) and Adapting Jane Austen for Educational and Public Engagement (2024-5). He is the author of Withnail and Us: Cult Film and Film Cults in British Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2010), and co-author (with Sue Harper) of British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (EUP, 2012). With Karen Savage, he is the co-author of ‘Deference, Deferred: Rejourn as Practice in Familial War Commemoration’, in Pinchbeck, M. and Westerside, A. (eds) (2018), Staging Loss. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97970-0_3 . Smith’s interest in digital innovations in the archive is illustrated by https://middlemarch.dmu.ac.uk/ (2023) which is considered to be the first digital genetic edition of a screen adaptation of 19th Century literature. Smith is an archival historian with special interests in post-war British cinema, television and popular music, exploring issues of cultural identity, popular memory and family history. https://www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/academic-staff/technology/justin-smith/justin-timothy-smith.aspx