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Details
WORLD WAR II -- The archive of PETER WHITE (1921-1985), comprising:
Autograph manuscript diary, in 5 volumes, 1 January 1938 - 10 August 1944, folio (325 x 205mm), upper cover of vol. I titled, 'Peter R. R. White Diary', including OVER 730 DRAWINGS in pen and ink, pencil or watercolour, a few loosely inserted, a few newspaper clippings and a photograph; together with a 6th volume containing entries from 1952-1966, with sketches in ink and watercolour. Unpublished.
Typed and autograph manuscript, With the Jocks. The Diary of an Infantry Platoon Commander 10 Platoon, B Company, 4th Battalion, The King's Own Scottish Borderers 155 Brigade, 52nd Lowland Division, covering the period from October 1944 to May 1945, including 71 pages of drawings in ink, pencil and watercolour, printed maps and photographs, 441 pages, folio (330 x 205mm) (occasional spots or browning), bound by White in paper and tape, the upper cover titled 'With the Jocks' in white with Scotland's heraldic shield below. Published (reproducing a selection of the drawings): Peter White, With the Jocks. A Soldier's Struggle for Europe 1944-45, Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2001, foreward by Sir John Keegan ('an unforgettable memoir').
Together with: White's regimental KOSB glengarry, 4 medals (the 1939-45 Star; the France and Germany Star; the Defence Medal; the War medal); related manuscript material, and a Kodak camera taken from a German Prisoner of War in Holland, together with photographs developed from the film. And: 12 sketchbooks, oblong octavo (125 x 160mm), containing pen and ink sketches and drawings in watercolour, with descriptive text, illustrating White's travels in France, Scotland, Ireland, Yorkshire, Newcastle and London, comprising topographical views, buildings, and highly detailed scenes of agriculture and industry (some images later published in My Foreign Correspondent in the British Isles); 2 sketchbooks containing watercolours; and further related material, including a collection of school reports and artwork, original illustrations, printed pamphlets containing White's work, a typed letter signed with watercolour sketches, and 2 Royal Academy of Art medallions.
A REMARKABLE AND MOVING WARTIME MEMOIR: the extraordinary diaries and drawings of an infantry lieutenant and artist on active service in the battlefields of north-west Europe. Peter White's comprehensive, highly-detailed and heavily-illustrated diaries, which form the body of this archive, describe a country preparing for war, his own intensive military training, and the harrowing experiences of White's regiment as the 52nd Lowland Division played its part in the Walcheren Invasion and made its way across Belgium and Holland in pursuit of retreating German forces. With its culmination in the assault on Bremen in April 1945, the immediacy of White's narrative and beautifully-drawn sketches make this an intensely moving and all the more vivid first-hand account.
'Hitler's behaviour has upset the work rather at school and it will mean a lot of extra work to catch up again' (5 October 1938): White's early diaries combine the usual preoccupations of a seventeen-year old school boy with keen observations of London preparing its defences ('while I write ... the wireless [is] blaring out Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! over and over again ... trenches are being dug night and day in the parks and open spaces including Regents, & Hyde Park, and Hampstead Heath, and Primrose Hill has anti aircraft guns stationed there ... the sky is ablaze with searchlights'). As the war unfolds, White leaves school, works in forestry and then begins his training as an artist at London's Central and Royal Academy; his text is interspersed with detailed illustrations ('my impression of balloon barrage. Poor old Hitler; he jeered at them -- then got some himself'), reportage of the current international situation '('PARIS IS NOW SAID TO BE IN GREAT DANGER') and of casualties, often represented in pictorial form on the page, 'heard tonight that nineteen planes not fifteen had been brought down within 48 hours by allied air forces, it seems a tremendous lot when set as above'. White's observations of endless air-raids ('heard today of some saucy work by the Germans ... they came over in daylight in a British plane ... captured or shot down, and swooped low over Gillham aerodrome ... then dropped two bombs') are accompanied by his own opinions on the shape of events ('America is giving signs of having been woken up for a change but as usual they will hesitate on the brink until a war has started'; 'personally I think Musso's game will be to try and conserve his naval forces'), and even his own ideas for inventing weapons, such as a sighted bomb. A moving testimony, he is deeply affected in July 1940 by a 'ghastly experience ... a Blenheim bomber crashed 150 yards from me ...'; White was the first to reach the scene, 'saw the pilot and another chap ... writhing in blood ... gently laid them both flat ... and eased the pilot from the petrol tank next to him'; in this volume White has inserted a small piece of metal from the wreckage. His early experiences of the war, however, are also humorous; an anecdote from his time in the Home Guard, which he joined in September 1941, is accompanied by an amusing image of a demonstration of unarmed combat: 'the drill hall was a seething mass of partners rolling and tumbling around the floor, including the officers and the C.O. it was good fun ... and may prove useful yet'.
'[M]y enlistment paper came this morning ... at last. It is very polite, more like an invitation to a garden party than a war'. White's own part in the war began on 15 May 1942, when he entered the Royal Artillery as a gunner ('Left home to join the Army 10.30 this morning'). He was commissioned as a lieutenant in May 1943 and in April 1944 was transferred to the Infantry. His last diaries before being posted overseas are highly detailed accounts of his defence and mountain training in the Cairngorms. With active service imminent, White's daily diary-keeping had to come to an end in case of capture, and to his great disappointment his diaries were sent home. However, the habit he had formed 'of absorbing the events of each day with a view to writing and illustrating them at nightfall had become too much a part of me to be easily put aside ... I was amassing this same information, but by other methods ... copious notes in order books, the orders themselves, sketches and odd details on scraps of paper which I stored with my kit'. The result is With the Jocks,'the story, mostly, of my platoon (10) in N.W. Europe, with 4th KOSB'. White's is a well-crafted and moving account of life in the battlefield, from the detail of daily military routine and weaponry to action in the field and the plight of his men. Landing in Ostend on 19 October 1944, the Jocks advanced through the Low Countries, reaching Bergen-op-Zoom at Christmas, Heinsberg in Germany by January 1945, crossing the Rhine at Xanten in March, and joining the attack on Bremen at the end of April. Of the 49 Jocks under White's command, 20 were killed and 22 wounded. One of the most harrowing passages include a 'friendly fire' incident and an attack on his men as they reached the banks of the River Aller. As White moved forward in a line with his men, 'some loud whiplash cracks of rifle bullets slashed the silence and the echo carried away into the surrounding woods. Parry fell like a log, shot through the head. Byles pitched forward grasping his stomach and lay perfectly still in a grotesque posture ...'. A quiet, thoughtful man, with a strong faith in God, White repeatedly laments the futility of war, often in beautifully-written and haunting images. When White and his men, for example, find two 'pale-faced, blue-lipped young gunners' lying dead in the snow, they retrieve them for burial, making 'a mournful return ... in this eerie snow-filmed half light... it was most depressing to reflect that of our six silent forms round the open grave, it seemed merely a matter of speculation as to how many might complete the ceremony in a different role. Life seemed to have so completely departed from familiar values ... as we shovelled back the earth with anaesthetised thought, I paused to wonder anew at the detailed functional beauty of form of a hand still showing; now so expressive in death of stilled perfection, wasted.'
White survived the war, posted to Egypt until 1946 and then graduating from the Royal Academy in 1951, setting up as a professional portrait and landscape painter in East Anglia from 1966. His own preface to his diaries show his intention to honour his fellow soldiers: 'No words, however set together, can convey even a minute concept of the searing mental and physical impact of the shambles of infantry action unless one has personally experienced it. Nevertheless, I have attempted to do this in its personal impact, day succeeding day, however inadequately; and also to sketch in the ordinary detail of our lives, hopes and fears, between our periods of passing through the furnace. If no words can convey the "action", it would be an even harder task to express my appreciation, admiration and high regard for the wonderful qualities of humour, compassion and "guts" displayed by those with whom I had the privilege to serve'.
Autograph manuscript diary, in 5 volumes, 1 January 1938 - 10 August 1944, folio (325 x 205mm), upper cover of vol. I titled, 'Peter R. R. White Diary', including OVER 730 DRAWINGS in pen and ink, pencil or watercolour, a few loosely inserted, a few newspaper clippings and a photograph; together with a 6th volume containing entries from 1952-1966, with sketches in ink and watercolour. Unpublished.
Typed and autograph manuscript, With the Jocks. The Diary of an Infantry Platoon Commander 10 Platoon, B Company, 4th Battalion, The King's Own Scottish Borderers 155 Brigade, 52nd Lowland Division, covering the period from October 1944 to May 1945, including 71 pages of drawings in ink, pencil and watercolour, printed maps and photographs, 441 pages, folio (330 x 205mm) (occasional spots or browning), bound by White in paper and tape, the upper cover titled 'With the Jocks' in white with Scotland's heraldic shield below. Published (reproducing a selection of the drawings): Peter White, With the Jocks. A Soldier's Struggle for Europe 1944-45, Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2001, foreward by Sir John Keegan ('an unforgettable memoir').
Together with: White's regimental KOSB glengarry, 4 medals (the 1939-45 Star; the France and Germany Star; the Defence Medal; the War medal); related manuscript material, and a Kodak camera taken from a German Prisoner of War in Holland, together with photographs developed from the film. And: 12 sketchbooks, oblong octavo (125 x 160mm), containing pen and ink sketches and drawings in watercolour, with descriptive text, illustrating White's travels in France, Scotland, Ireland, Yorkshire, Newcastle and London, comprising topographical views, buildings, and highly detailed scenes of agriculture and industry (some images later published in My Foreign Correspondent in the British Isles); 2 sketchbooks containing watercolours; and further related material, including a collection of school reports and artwork, original illustrations, printed pamphlets containing White's work, a typed letter signed with watercolour sketches, and 2 Royal Academy of Art medallions.
A REMARKABLE AND MOVING WARTIME MEMOIR: the extraordinary diaries and drawings of an infantry lieutenant and artist on active service in the battlefields of north-west Europe. Peter White's comprehensive, highly-detailed and heavily-illustrated diaries, which form the body of this archive, describe a country preparing for war, his own intensive military training, and the harrowing experiences of White's regiment as the 52nd Lowland Division played its part in the Walcheren Invasion and made its way across Belgium and Holland in pursuit of retreating German forces. With its culmination in the assault on Bremen in April 1945, the immediacy of White's narrative and beautifully-drawn sketches make this an intensely moving and all the more vivid first-hand account.
'Hitler's behaviour has upset the work rather at school and it will mean a lot of extra work to catch up again' (5 October 1938): White's early diaries combine the usual preoccupations of a seventeen-year old school boy with keen observations of London preparing its defences ('while I write ... the wireless [is] blaring out Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! over and over again ... trenches are being dug night and day in the parks and open spaces including Regents, & Hyde Park, and Hampstead Heath, and Primrose Hill has anti aircraft guns stationed there ... the sky is ablaze with searchlights'). As the war unfolds, White leaves school, works in forestry and then begins his training as an artist at London's Central and Royal Academy; his text is interspersed with detailed illustrations ('my impression of balloon barrage. Poor old Hitler; he jeered at them -- then got some himself'), reportage of the current international situation '('PARIS IS NOW SAID TO BE IN GREAT DANGER') and of casualties, often represented in pictorial form on the page, 'heard tonight that nineteen planes not fifteen had been brought down within 48 hours by allied air forces, it seems a tremendous lot when set as above'. White's observations of endless air-raids ('heard today of some saucy work by the Germans ... they came over in daylight in a British plane ... captured or shot down, and swooped low over Gillham aerodrome ... then dropped two bombs') are accompanied by his own opinions on the shape of events ('America is giving signs of having been woken up for a change but as usual they will hesitate on the brink until a war has started'; 'personally I think Musso's game will be to try and conserve his naval forces'), and even his own ideas for inventing weapons, such as a sighted bomb. A moving testimony, he is deeply affected in July 1940 by a 'ghastly experience ... a Blenheim bomber crashed 150 yards from me ...'; White was the first to reach the scene, 'saw the pilot and another chap ... writhing in blood ... gently laid them both flat ... and eased the pilot from the petrol tank next to him'; in this volume White has inserted a small piece of metal from the wreckage. His early experiences of the war, however, are also humorous; an anecdote from his time in the Home Guard, which he joined in September 1941, is accompanied by an amusing image of a demonstration of unarmed combat: 'the drill hall was a seething mass of partners rolling and tumbling around the floor, including the officers and the C.O. it was good fun ... and may prove useful yet'.
'[M]y enlistment paper came this morning ... at last. It is very polite, more like an invitation to a garden party than a war'. White's own part in the war began on 15 May 1942, when he entered the Royal Artillery as a gunner ('Left home to join the Army 10.30 this morning'). He was commissioned as a lieutenant in May 1943 and in April 1944 was transferred to the Infantry. His last diaries before being posted overseas are highly detailed accounts of his defence and mountain training in the Cairngorms. With active service imminent, White's daily diary-keeping had to come to an end in case of capture, and to his great disappointment his diaries were sent home. However, the habit he had formed 'of absorbing the events of each day with a view to writing and illustrating them at nightfall had become too much a part of me to be easily put aside ... I was amassing this same information, but by other methods ... copious notes in order books, the orders themselves, sketches and odd details on scraps of paper which I stored with my kit'. The result is With the Jocks,'the story, mostly, of my platoon (10) in N.W. Europe, with 4th KOSB'. White's is a well-crafted and moving account of life in the battlefield, from the detail of daily military routine and weaponry to action in the field and the plight of his men. Landing in Ostend on 19 October 1944, the Jocks advanced through the Low Countries, reaching Bergen-op-Zoom at Christmas, Heinsberg in Germany by January 1945, crossing the Rhine at Xanten in March, and joining the attack on Bremen at the end of April. Of the 49 Jocks under White's command, 20 were killed and 22 wounded. One of the most harrowing passages include a 'friendly fire' incident and an attack on his men as they reached the banks of the River Aller. As White moved forward in a line with his men, 'some loud whiplash cracks of rifle bullets slashed the silence and the echo carried away into the surrounding woods. Parry fell like a log, shot through the head. Byles pitched forward grasping his stomach and lay perfectly still in a grotesque posture ...'. A quiet, thoughtful man, with a strong faith in God, White repeatedly laments the futility of war, often in beautifully-written and haunting images. When White and his men, for example, find two 'pale-faced, blue-lipped young gunners' lying dead in the snow, they retrieve them for burial, making 'a mournful return ... in this eerie snow-filmed half light... it was most depressing to reflect that of our six silent forms round the open grave, it seemed merely a matter of speculation as to how many might complete the ceremony in a different role. Life seemed to have so completely departed from familiar values ... as we shovelled back the earth with anaesthetised thought, I paused to wonder anew at the detailed functional beauty of form of a hand still showing; now so expressive in death of stilled perfection, wasted.'
White survived the war, posted to Egypt until 1946 and then graduating from the Royal Academy in 1951, setting up as a professional portrait and landscape painter in East Anglia from 1966. His own preface to his diaries show his intention to honour his fellow soldiers: 'No words, however set together, can convey even a minute concept of the searing mental and physical impact of the shambles of infantry action unless one has personally experienced it. Nevertheless, I have attempted to do this in its personal impact, day succeeding day, however inadequately; and also to sketch in the ordinary detail of our lives, hopes and fears, between our periods of passing through the furnace. If no words can convey the "action", it would be an even harder task to express my appreciation, admiration and high regard for the wonderful qualities of humour, compassion and "guts" displayed by those with whom I had the privilege to serve'.
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