Past Lives: Bally good fun at Colditz and Catterick

An odd word to use, perhaps, about what was by all accounts a rip-roaring four hours - yes, the show overran shamelessly - of music and laughter. What he meant, of course, was that the sheer breadth and depth of talent available in such a small place reflected upon any pretensions he might have had as an entertainer: he was once able to play the gramophone, albeit unreliably.

I told him I often get the same feeling when enjoying my latest hobby, the avid reading of obituaries, not necessarily of the great and the good, but of people I had often never heard of who have lived their lives to the brimming-over full in whatever field.

Coincidentally, one such whose humbling achievements have just filled half a page in my favourite daily broadsheet is a man who would have revelled in the extravaganza at Hurworth; indeed, given half a chance he would have organised it, written music for it and even made it fit the regulation three hours.

Lt Col Jimmy Yule has died at 84. Jimmy who? He was the man who, after as courageous and defiant a war as has ever been fought by a man who was locked up by the enemy for all but a few months of it, became a show-business legend ... at Catterick Camp.

He wrote pantomimes and revues for the Cary theatre. It is a venue fondly remembered by thousands of ex-servicemen and women who had not expected, when first told of their posting to the Catterick of bleak and soulless legend, that they would survive days of ordeal-by-soldiering to revel in nights of hilarity, song and dance, as well as serious theatre, and seemingly endless curtain calls.

It's partnerships that make the world of entertainment go round. There's been Astaire and Rodgers, Powell and Pressburger, Lloyd-Webber and Rice ... and Yule and Cary. The latter was R T O Cary, a pioneer of an amateur dramatic society at Catterick as a young officer before the war who returned afterwards to turn an old gym into the modern and fully equipped garrison theatre, which, four years and about 100 productions later, was named after him and his equally enthusiastic wife.

Gen Cary was leading man in many of the plays and he also appeared in pantomimes and musicals in which Lt Col Yule became the senior half of the partnership. The splendid facilities, and a much bigger pool in which to trawl for talent, were a far cry from Yule's most recent experience of musical theatre - productions at the notorious Colditz Castle prison for officers.

He had always been fascinated by music and the theatre; he was born in 1916 in North-West Frontier province, the only son of a lieutenant-colonel, and amateur dramatics was a staple of off-duty life for Indian Army officers and their wives.

At Colditz, he quickly became involved in the shows always being staged as part of the effort to stave off boredom.

A revue called Ballet Nonsense (a pun, of course, on one of the innocent expletives of that era) is among the best-remembered among Colditz veterans. He also arranged music for the PoWs' band, whose instruments were acquired in one way or another from the German guards. The noise of band performances or revues, especially the applause, often served to drown the sound of preparation for escape bids or distract the guards while an attempt was made.

One successful tunnelling to the outside world began from underneath the theatre stage. Yule himself had a considerable reputation as an escaper, as we shall see, but another of his roles in the prison eventually convinced him he should stay put: he was an operator of a secret radio, thus providing a flow of news to his comrades. Besides, his musical expertise was just as important a morale-booster for them.

In 1990, his musical London, Paris, New York was professionally staged at the Imperial War Museum, raising money for the British Red Cross. The core of the show was music he wrote during his four years at Colditz.

One of his jobs after leaving the Army in 1961 was as a teacher at an Essex high school where he organised many musical productions.

AS well as writing the music and lyrics for Catterick pantomimes for several years from 1945, James de Deane Yule, then a major whose unexplained nickname was Logger, would conduct the Cary theatre orchestra on those occasions. He probably carried the memory of one particular first night to his grave.

Robin Hood and the Babes in the Wood was the show. With the curtain scheduled to rise in minutes, Yule was fretting in the pit, aware that all his hard work might have been wasted. What had happened, I learn from Mr Basil Matthews, a member of an Army family now living in retirement in West Sussex, was that one of the principals - his sister, June - had fallen out with Gen Cary's wife and was refusing to go on stage.

Mr Matthews was also in the show, as were his other two sisters, and his mother was wardrobe mistress. He recalls the drama which followed 19-year-old June's determination to wear false eyelashes and Mrs Cary's insistence that she should not.

"This was an hour or so before the opening curtain. June, stubborn and ever ready to stand up for herself, had sworn at the general's wife - a former dancer herself, I believe - and received a slap across the face for her 'squaddies's' language. Raging, June ran to Mum who, incensed at the treatment her daughter had received, dragged her four kids back home, declaring they would not return until Mrs Cary apologised.

"My father, an RSM, expecting the general's wrath and a posting to the back of beyond, insisted they return. But Mum was immoveable. Even when Maj Yule left his orchestra and came to beg us to return, she refused.

"It was the arrival of the General Officer Commanding, Gen Cary himself, with an apology, that ensured our return and the show starting only five or so minutes late."

Mr Matthews, a ex-RAF man who worked as a groundsman at the garrison sports fields, has some happier memories of that panto. Gen Cary would wangle Catterick postings for conscripts who were showbiz professionals so the cast included the son of music hall star Randolph Sutton and a relative of Harry "Any Old Iron" Champion.

But mainly he recalls "the wonderful music written by Maj Yule, which I can still whistle. He was a superb MD and he'd built up a first-class orchestra from instrumentalists he discovered among the troops."

Older Catterick hands may remember the Matthews clan of Suvla lines. The wilful June, no mean performer on the stage for many years, worked front of house at the Gaiety, an Ensa theatre converted from the Le Cateau lines gym, where big names like Vera Lynn and Anne Ziegler appeared.

Her sisters, Yvonne and Nikki, became professional dancers. And RSM Basil William Matthews, Army shot putt champion, later managed the England amateur boxing team.

THE quotation for the day offered by my wife's rather twee diary couldn't be more apt for a piece about Lt Col Yule: "There is a history in all men's lives" (Henry IV, Part II).

He first fought in France and was taken prisoner during the ill-fated expedition to Norway in May 1940 after the Luftwaffe bombed a train carrying his unit. He was trapped in the wreckage with an injured spine but recovered and was constantly on the alert for chances to escape, doing so at Munich a year later when he jumped from a train - to be recaptured after ten days when he and a comrade entered a guarded factory in search of food.

Colditz was his punishment for nearly two years until he was moved to Spangenberg Castle, east of Kassel, where he and the now Lord Campbell of Alloway QC sought freedom by crawling along a drain beneath the drawbridge which crossed a moat. They had chosen a windy night to cover any noise but a sudden calm meant that a sentry heard a dislodged stone.

They were sent back to Colditz in the summer of 1943 where French prisoners were being moved elsewhere, leaving behind a radio hidden in a tiny space in the roof; its electricity was pinched from the castle supply and there were maps that helped make news of the progress of the war more easily understood.

Yule's Royal Signals training made him a good choice as operator in one of two teams of three, which each included a listener/writer and a "putter-inner" who remained just outside to conceal the entrance.

Hey ho, and what's been the highlight of your exciting day? The decision to have an extra piece of toast at breakfast? But despair not, you may have greater things within you. For, that irritating diary adds, "Courage mounteth with occasion" (King John).