Bournemouth: The 'Non-Stops' Concert Party

Bournemouth: The 'Non-Stops' Concert Party

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by Sally Bolton of Bournemouth Libraries on behalf of Mrs Betty Hockey and has been added to the site with her permission."

I was living in Bournemouth when war broke out and advertised in the Daily Echo for people to join a concert party with me. I received several responses and the party included 16 people with different talents. We were named the ‘Non-stops’, this is because our show never had any intervals otherwise the boys would go to the bar and never come back! We rehearsed in a local hall and went around all the local army camps asking if they would like a concert party. We started in 1940 and worked together until 1948 (by 1948 TV was making its mark and theatre was dying so we wanted to go out with a bang). All of those who were part of the concert party would have liked to join the forces but were unable to do so.

We had wartime jobs during the day (I worked in the War Office on Manor Road, Bournemouth) and were at the camps by 7.30pm to do our shows. I was the can-can dancer which was frowned upon in those days. I remember one occasion where the Entertainments Officer was told to apologise to me for saying that it wasn’t right for the troops to watch me can-can dance. We dressed in any clothes we could find and relied on goodwill to finance the shows. We were limited to the material we could use because of rationing. I used to do the seven veils and a fan dance but I losts the veils and feathers so could not longer do it. Day to day life during the war was that everyone pulled together. If there was a wedding in the street each person with give a spoonful of sugar.

Bournemouth got hit with some bombs and the local department store, Beales was badly bombed. Lots of the boys were lost at the Lansdowne and I remember helping dig out bodies as fast as I could and then ferrying the bodies to the mortuary in Castle Lane.

We did a concert in a sealed camp just before D-day for those boys who were waiting to go to France. Our party were not supposed to be in camp and in retrospect if we had realised the scale of the invasion and the damage we could have done by being in the sealed camp, then we wouldn’t have done so.

Blandford Camp was the main camp for American soldiers. There were 5 hospitals on site and it was mostly under canvas. We went out there the day after D-day and there were over a 100 stretchers in the camp with soldiers being cared for. The way they coped was incredible. Staff and patients created a beautiful memorial park in 1944 with whitewashed stones and it is still looked after by two soldiers to this day. We gave our hundredth show to the American soldiers at Hurn airport and it was also their hundredth mission and amazingly that night every plane came back unscathed (most planes were bridge busters sent off the Germany). The soldiers were so elated they let off lights which caused the farmers’ fields to set alight. Another show we did was for the forgotten army of Burma, the prisoners of war. Most of them were in stretches and we just held their hands.

The most poignant memory I have is on D-day eve when we were allowed to do a show in a marquee and there were tanks, trucks and aircrews coming and going all evening. We sang the national anthems at the beginning of the evening instead of the end. All the soldiers had tears falling down their faces and the air was electric. All the soldiers sang their hearts out. The next morning we heard about D-day on the radio and realised that many who saw our show were dead. We hoped that they went down singing.

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