PRESENTING WW1 THROUGH THE EYES OF FAMILIES
It is my belief that there is a lot of merit in recasting History as family history. After all, History is most generally seen as the story of society, and if someone as eminent as Margaret Thatcher can aver that ‘there is no such thing as society’, for me at least, that leaves families and the individuals that comprise them. And giving history more personality opens greater possibilities for understanding and empathy.
The Guardian has embedded a link to debates of the last few weeks over how the first world war should be presented and this gives me an opportunity to make my case by matching British and German stories from the families of combatants. And in the case that I am taking up, this is a real tale of one-to-one daring do and dueling.
On March 11, 1917, Captain Eric Fox Pitt Lubbock of the Royal Flying Corp, in the cockpit of a Sopwith Camel 1½ Strutter, clashed with Lieutenant Paul Strähle of Jasta 18 of the German Airforce, flying an Albatross D.V. [replete with his trademark axe] over Zillebeke, Belgium [a village that has since been incorporated in the city of Ypres or Ieper].
Lubbock was killed and Strähle went on to survive the War and become a civilian aviation pioneer.
We know quite a lot about both men.
Eric was the uncle of Eric Lubbock, the current Lord Avebury and I’ll let him take up the story [see also: http://ericavebury.blogspot.com].
‘Uncle Eric was my grandmother’s favourite child, the one she loved with such intensity that she remained in deep mourning from the day he was shot down, for the remaining 30 years of her life. But he lit up the lives of everyone he knew, family, friends, his father’s scientific colleagues, and comrades in the armed forces.
‘My father, who Eric called ‘dear little Moke’, born seven years after Eric, idolised him, and so I bear his name. When my father was little he couldn’t pronounce the name ‘Eric’ and he called him ‘Yay’, a nickname that was transferred to me within the family when I was a child.
‘Eric hated war, and my grandmother wrote that if his life had been spared, he would have worked for real peace, as his father had done, though in vain. But he joined up from a sense of duty at the beginning of the war, and was in France with the British Expeditionary Force by the end of September 1914’.
Eric began a valedictory letter to his letter to his family, as follows:
‘My Darling Mum
‘One is here confronted almost daily with the possibility of Death, and when one looks forward to the next few months this possibility becomes a probability. I am therefore sitting down now to write to you briefly a few words which in the event of my death I hope may help to comfort and to cheer you – it is my last hope if I should be taken from you, that I may not cause you too great a grief.
‘The thoughts which I here intend to write are those which I have had on occasions when it seemed that my life was about to be cut short. Also, I know that if in my last hour I am conscious, my chief consolation will be to feel that these thoughts may reach you. I shall therefore simply write down my ideas about it all and hope thereby to enable you to feel that though I may be taken away yet that fact is not all grief.
‘Now one of the questions one asks oneself about it all is do you fear Death? And I have I think convinced myself that I do not.’
Eric was 24 when he died – almost exactly the same age as Paul Strähle.
Paul was born in Schorndorf, Kingdom of Württemberg and joined the army on 1 October 1913 as a 20 year old. Early in the war, he served in the infantry but transferred to the German Air Force in 1915. He was posted to FA(A) 213 on 15 July 1916 and trained on fighters in the fall before joining Jasta 18 on 27 October 1916. He scored seven victories in 1917 and on 1 January 1918, he assumed command of Jasta 57. Before he was wounded in action on 27 September 1918, he scored eight more victories. At one point he walked away almost unscathed from a crash-landing among the shell craters and debris of the Front.
AS WE WHO GROW OLD
Paul Strähle ran an aerial photography business venture from 1919 onwards, leaving a 40,000 photo archive. By 14 July 1921, he was running a pioneering air mail service between Stuttgart and Constance, using three of the Halberstadts, one of which could also carry passengers, under the name Luftverkehr Strähle. Subsequently, he became an automobile manufacturer and returned to service as a Major der Reserve during World War II.
In the next generation, son Paul Ernst Strahle [born 1927] became one of Germany’s most successful racing drivers during the 1950s and 1960s. After the end of the Second World War [war serviced unspecified – typical of the reticence of German commentators], he successfully completed a mechanical and commercial apprenticeship in his parents‘ car and motorcycle business which he then built up into a successful Volkswagen and Porsche dealership in the following years.
From 1951 onwards, Paul Ernst became one of the most successful sports car racing drivers in Europe in the Porsche 356. His long list of victories included countless class wins in major races such as the “Mille Miglia“ in Italy, the 1000 Kilometre Race on the Nürburgring or the “Targa Florio” in Sicily. Among his most important rally successes were overall victories in the Adria Rally (1953, 1956), the Tour of Belgium (1957), the Liège-Rome-Liège Rally (1959) and the Tour of Corsica (1960).
According to Wolfgang Dürheimer, Executive Vice President for Research and Development at Porsche, “Paul Ernst Strahle was one of the most important and most versatile motorsport pioneers in post-war Germany. Through his success in numerous international races, he became a leading ambassador for German autosport”.
Eric Lubbock, the nephew of Eric F.P. Lubbock, was born in 1928. He read Engineering Science at Balliol College, Oxford and served as a Lieutenant in the Welsh Guards in WW2. He joined Rolls-Royce in 1951, where he was employed as a production manager (1951–1956) and as a production engineer (1956–1960).
Having joined the Liberal Party in 1960 and become a councillor the following year, Eric won a sensational by-election victory at Orpington on 15 March 1962, with a majority of 7,855. This was a swing of nearly 22% from the Conservatives and brought the number of Liberal MPs to seven. Following his victory, he was dubbed "Orpington Man".
In the Commons, Eric was on the Speaker's Commission on Electoral Law in 1964–1966, and proposed STV in multi-member constituencies, only to be voted down by 18–1. He also proposed reducing the voting age to 18, on which two Labour Members supported him.
In 1970, Orpington reverted to being a Conservative seat. On losing the seat Eric was widely quoted for observing: "In 1962 the wise, far-seeing people of Orpington elected me as their Member; in 1970 the fools threw me out".
Now Lord Avebury, Eric is a Buddhist, an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. He frequently raises matters related to civil rights, freedom of conscience, the rule of law and the pursuit of peace and reconciliation in the British Parliament. Among the many causes that he has taken up are citizenship rights for the solely British ethnic minorities in Hong Kong, human rights issues in Peru, the protection of the native people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, and the treatment and rehabilitation of prisoners in both the UK and abroad.
POSTSCRIPT
When Eric F.P Lubbock died, his heart-broken mother Alice Avebury arranged for a one third scale model of his beloved Sopwith Camel to be carved in stone and erected as a memorial in the family graveyard at High Elms, Bromley, SE. London. In 1981, when the house was demolished, an attempt was made to transfer the monument to the graveyard of St Giles Church, Farnborough but the rector there refused because Eric had been buried in Belgium. The memorial subsequently went missing.
In 2010, a family member identified the memorial at a stone mason’s yard in Great Bedwyn, Marlborough, Wiltshire and Eric was able ultimately to purchase if for £8,000. The stone has now been returned to close to its original site in what is now High Elms Country Park, run by the London Borough of Bromley.
At the rededication service, Eric's great-nephew, Lyulph Lubbock, 55 noted in his speech that:
"It is really gratifying to see the memorial returned, cleaned up and presented nicely. This has long been a mission of the Lubbock family.
"This has been top of the family agenda for many years and so it is good that it has finally been reinstated at High Elms.
‘My father, Lord Avebury, gave his financial backing for the whole enterprise which has resulted in the memorial's return, he doggedly pursued all avenues to ensure its return. Friends and family have helped to maintain momentum on what has been a long drawn out saga.
‘My great uncle Eric was a brave patriotic pilot who had a very brief career before meeting his end after so short a time in the Royal Flying Corps. The average lifespan for a pilot at that point was about 22 days, a fact of which he was only to aware."
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