Magic at War

In Part Two of this blog about magician Danny Varney and the Hackney Empire, read about air-raids at the Empire and Varney’s encounters with Hitler’s V-weapons.  Danny Varney (Source: www.arthurlloyd.co.uk) Air-raids   Living in London, Danny Varney faced the dangers of German air-raids, even after the major period of bombings, known as the Blitz, ended. In 1943, he was watching a tightrope act on stage at the Hackney Empire. “The alert had sounded, but I didn't see anybody pay it any attention. Nobody left their seat. Ack Ack  [anti-aircraft]  guns were heard cracking away in the distance, but nobody bothered, we all took the chance somebody else would cop it. The performer was doing a difficult part of his routine and nearly fallen a couple of times - but always recovered - of course to build up tension. Then literally all hell broke loose! It seemed as if every gun in London had opened up on the Jerry  [German]  plane right overhead. It was a deafen...

By 1941, Captain Wilfred Ponsonby, professional army officer and amateur magician, had firmly established himself as an  ‘escaper’  among his fellow prisoners of war. Identified as a grand-blessé   (medically unfit prisoner of war) by the Germans, he very nearly got repatriated back to England in time for Christmas 1941/42. In the final part of a three-part blog, with hopes of repatriation dashed, he switches back to escaping... and gets home before the war is over. Poland for Christmas The  grand-blessés  were moved from Rouen, France to camps in Germany and Poland on 19 December 1941.  Wilfred Ponsonby was chosen to head out to Stalag XXI-D,  a POW cam p in Poznań (German: Posen), in Ge rman-occupied Poland. Allied prisoners were held in eighteenth century forts, 30 to 40 men per room in brick-built redoubts, or in houses nearby, in three-tier bunks.   “We arrived at Posen on Christmas Eve 1941 and, we had no Red Cross parcels or...

"I am informed by the Fuhrer that the big rocket bomb weighs 14 tons. This, of course, is a devastating murder weapon. I suspect that when the first projectiles plunge down into London, the English public will panic." - Josef Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister An hour before sunrise on 13 June 1944, two members of the Royal Observer Corps were on duty at their post on the top of a Martello tower on the seafront at Dymchurch in Kent, England. At that moment, they spotted the approach of a flying object spurting red flames from its rear  and with  the sound of a roaring engine. This was the  first V-1 (Fi 103) flying bomb to be released against Britain and it was rattling towards them. A week earlier, the D-Day and the Normandy landings, had signalled the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. Unkindly, just when the possibility of success and peace looked not too far away, Hitler's  Vergeltungswaffen 1 (German: Vengeance Weapon 1), known as the 'doodlebu...