April 1941 …….. the show of all the varieties ……….. RAF Cottesmore

I doubt we will ever get to know the identities of these young men and women who performed in a show at RAF Cottesmore in the April of 1941.

Those intervening eighty years will mean that few of them will still be alive, and I suspect any records of the event will be lost.

That said I will trawl the newspaper files for Rutland where the base was located, and just maybe there will be a route through to looking at any of the records of those years.

But for any one with parents or grandparents who served in the armed forces during the last world war, pictures like these will strike a chord, and maybe coax out memories of stories of such shows performed by willing and perhaps less willing members of military bases across Britain and beyond.

Both mother and my uncle served in the RAF, and mum certainly would have taken part, either “front stage” or more likely writing the script, assisting with the costumes, and back clothes.

Not that she ever talked about her war time service, but I know she was based on an RAF station in Lincolnshire, where she began writing and was always “up for a laugh”.

Oddly there is another connection with  RAF Cottesmore, and it is that both bases at one point flew the Handley Page Hampdens, and for as long as I can remember we had a brass replica of a Hampden which mother was given.

And that is pretty much is all we have of her time with Royal Air Force, other than a few photographs, and some of what she wrote in the long dull times, far from home.

Which brings me back to the pictures, which come from a unique wartime collection which belonged to Mary Emily Stevens, who served in the RAF from 1940 till 1944.

Most of the collection consists of a series of photographs taken I guess by Mary, and from these I have selected those from that April show.

I would like to know more, but there isn’t any more as yet to know.

But it is just possible that as the collection is shown on Facebook by David Harrop who now owns the collection someone may have something to add.

David has set up a special page dedicated to the young woman, and over the next few months he will be adding items in honour of this young women.

Location; RAF Cottesmore, April 1941

Pictures; the April show, 1941, courtesy of David Harrop.

* Mary Emily Stevens ....... and a unique collection of wartime pictures, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2021/03/mary-emily-stevens-and-unique.html

** *Mary Emily Stevens, https://www.facebook.com/105299108322389/posts/105321781653455/?sfnsn=scwspmo