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'Warriors' take their place in history

Published Saturday 9th July 2005

Veteran Eddie Baron stands in front of a painting, Premonition by Walter Nessler. Eddie was a volunteer fire fighter and then part of the Home Guard guarding Post Office Telephone exchanges before joining up and being posted to the Far East. [Phot: Sergeant Graham Spark MBE]

Charlotte Henwood, Registrar of the central Ministry of Defence Art Collection looks at one of 68 paintings of the Warriors for the Working Day, currently at the Banqueting House in Whitehall. [Phot: Sergeant Graham Spark MBE]

A new exhibition of little known paintings has opened in London. Opened as part of the programme of World War II 60th Anniversary commemorative events the exhibition, in the cellar of The Banqueting House, Whitehall, is entitled 'Warriors for the Working Day'.

The exhibition has 68 paintings depicting everyday 'warriors'; fire fighters, factory workers, Home Guard, ARP Wardens and women from the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) all coping with the war.

Curator of the exhibition is Charlotte Henwood, also Registrar of the Central Ministry of Defence Art Collection:

"When we were asked to curate this exhibition as part of the VE/VJ Day celebrations towards the end of last year we leapt at the opportunity," Charlotte explained.

"But we faced a great problem. What could we do that was different from everything that had been done by the TATE and the Imperial War Museum?"

The inspiration eventually came from Shakespeare's Henry V:

"Let me speak proudly: tell the constable
We are but warriors for the working-day;
Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd
With rainy marching in the painful field;"
(Henry V, Act IV Scene 3)

Charlotte says:

"We wanted to get a single sentence that covered the whole war. We wanted something to get across the lesser known heroes and we wanted to show the effect of the war on the environment".

"We also took the idea of the city of London as a warrior itself, a city defiant in the face of attack," - a timely and sombre reminder of recent events in London.

The Banqueting House is a listed building which means there can be no banging nails into walls. To get around this, elegant cladding was used to hang the pictures.

One of the pictures on display is 'Premonition' by Walter Nessler. This haunting, anxious image suggests a vague feeling of disquiet and impending disaster. Painted four years before the blitz the painting takes the format of a montage of familiar London landmarks whose relationship with their surroundings was about to change. What we see is the redevelopment of a city landscape devastated by war and moving on in the face of adversity.

"The bulk of the items come from the Central Ministry of Defence Art Collection which is publicly owned," said Charlotte. "We also have a very generous loan from the Royal Air Force Museum and also from some regimental collections, from the British Postal Museum Service and from the Institute of Engineering and indeed from the FANY."

Veteran Eddie Baron attended the opening of the exhibition. Eddie, who joined the Auxiliary Fire Service as a boy in the early part of 1939, explained what life was like for him back then.

"Before the war there were fire service posts on the streets which you broke the glass to call the fire brigade," explains Eddie. "At the start of the war they were manned by an auxiliary fireman plus a boy who had a bicycle and you had to ride back to the station and report a fire or bombing so the fire brigade could come out. There were no mobile phones then so we had to ride to the fire station to report the fires.

"In 1940 I joined the Home Guard in the Post Office Telephones guarding the telephone exchanges doing night shifts. The armament was a pike, a shotgun and a Belgian Mauser rifle. That was the local defence volunteers until the Home Guard was organised."

Called up in 1943 Eddie was sent out to the Far East with his regiment the Royal Corps of Signals.

"I went out to India and Burma and came home in 1946 and went back to work for the Post Office Telephones."

The Warriors for the Working Day exhibition runs from 8 July - 4 August 2005 and is free to the public.

Related articles:

Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War Two

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