The challenges of trying to piece history together are well illustrated by researching the story of Vivien Hole (stage name, Vivienne Fayre), who at 19 years of age, was the only ENSA member to have been killed through enemy action in the Second World War. Whilst there are some irrefutable facts about Vivien, there are grey areas about the circumstances of her death where conjecture or anecdotal evidence diverge from a neat timeline. What is important however, is that her story highlights the sacrifice made by these brave civilian performers who volunteered to entertain the troops at the front. Sir Dirk Bogarde said of ENSA:
“They gave us back our youth which we were in severe danger of losing.” He felt that their laughter, their songs and their vitality brought those dispirited soldiers back towards a belief that maybe, just maybe, they could make it to the end, that they might just survive after all.”[1]
Vivien Inez Hole was born in Plymouth in 1925. She was a talented tap and acrobatics dancer, and after studying at the Plymouth School of Dancing in Exeter, she attended the London Stage Dancing Academy. Vivien took up professional dancing at the age of 17. During the war, she volunteered with the American Red Cross as well as the Women’s Voluntary Service. So it was unsurprising when she joined ENSA as a chorus dancer. Before going overseas, she toured Eastern and Southern Commands in Scotland, where her concert troupe entertained the Army, RAF, Fleet Air Arm, military hospitals, and American troops. According to contemporary newspaper reports, she was part of an 18-member variety concert party called, “The Happy Hikers.” A review in the Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald on 16 September 1944 describes the show as follows:
“There is riotous laughter all the way to the Theatre this week, where ENSA present “Happy Hikers” a kind of musical variety show. Jimmy Lee a rare comedian steals all the honours and on Monday night he had the big audience fairly rocking with laughter in his typical sketch about a peppery Colonel and also a hillbilly burlesque that is about the funniest thing you could wish to see… The whole show is bright and tuneful – something to take your mind off wartime worries.”[2]
They were obviously a talented group and very used to performing to the troops by the time they left England for a tour of France, Belgium, and Holland on December 21, 1944.
ENSA’s headquarters in North West Europe was Brussels and concert parties may have been sent there first before routing to other areas.[3] Christmas 1944 was a dangerous time for entertainers even when working in rear areas. Basil Dean in his memoir describes how a V2 rocket fell on the Rex cinema next to the ENSA Theatre in Brussels on Dec 16, 1944.[4] ENSA parties were organised into mobile columns that would follow military units as they advanced across North West Europe. For Vivien’s troupe, the mobile column was made up of two closed vans and led by an open truck which contained a miniature stage, props and scenery (and likely a piano). The Happy Hikers had just finished a performance in France on 23 January 1945 and the convoy was travelling to their next venue near Eindhoven. Vivien was travelling in the front truck with the RASC driver Corporal Taylor (a fellow West Country resident from Totnes). One source said that the girls were taking it in turns to sit up front with the driver, whilst Merriman reports an anecdote that Vivien had a cold and was keeping away from the other performers in the hope that they would not catch it.[5] Sadly, somewhere along the route the scenery truck hit a mine and Vivien was fatally injured. The Daily Express report of the incident a week later describes how the dancer was blown 20 feet clear of the truck and how the driver tried to help her:
“Taylor picked her up and began to carry her on his back. But he could not go far and had to lay her down in the snow. Vivienne was conscious, calm, and smiled at him. He covered her with his greatcoat, put his gloves on her hands, lit her a cigarette and asked her if she minded lying alone while he went for help.
She smiled at him. “I shall be all right” she said.
Taylor staggered back to the fork for help. A lorry soon came by, but when help got to Vivienne she was dead.”[6]
This account shows remarkable restraint and composure by this 19 year old and contrasts with the more recent description on The Friends of Highland Road Cemetery website:
“The driver, taking a wrong turn, entered a minefield, hit a mine, and both he and Vivienne were killed instantly. Initially Vivienne, whose body was discovered by French locals, was buried in Normandy in a symbolic white coffin. After the war, her body was disinterred and buried with full military honours at the Sittard War Cemetery in Limburg, in the south of The Netherlands.”[7]
Although there are records of a Corporal Taylor of the Royal Army Service Corps (a driver with HQ EFI) having died on 3rd July 1945, he obviously did not die of his wounds immediately. The story of the French locals using a white coffin to bury her in Normandy does not tally with the report in The Daily Express of 3rd February 1945, which stated how Vivien was buried with full military honours shortly after her death:
“By order of the commander of one of the most famous divisions in the British Army, the dancing daughter of a Tiverton (Devon) draper has been buried in the divisional cemetery near the German frontier.”
On the CWCG website, the white coffin is mentioned but she’s buried in a small village cemetery near Sittard then, “in 1961 her body was exhumed and buried with full military honours in CWGC Sittard War Cemetery plot K.11.” Given the provenance of the CWCG, it’s difficult to refute this, however, there’s a copy of a Graves Registration Report Form dating back to 11 June 1954 (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/18393989/vivien_inez-hole#view-photo=306461317). Other sources record a field hospital near Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands as the place of her death. This confusion is somewhat understandable as locations were not publicly shared by newspapers when reporting about movements of troops near enemy territory. The detail regarding the white coffin is difficult to verify either way.
Vivien Hole’s final resting place is the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemetery in Sittard, the Netherlands topped with the ENSA badge. This red-headed dancer is buried along with 238 of the troops she entertained as a performer. Graves of Cameronians, Highland Light Infantry, Irish Guards, Kings Own Scottish Borders, and Royal Armoured Corps servicemen keep her company.
On news of her tragic death, ENSA HQ at Drury Lane made the following statement:
“We at ENSA Headquarters were all very shocked to hear of her death, and I do hope that you will feel some small consolation in the fact that she had been doing such a magnificent job for the troops here, and that she was loved by all who came into contact with her.”[8]
I can’t help but think this sounds a little stiff to our 21st century ears. Given Vivien Hole was the only ENSA member to have been killed up to that point and indeed at any time during the war, I would have expected more. But this was wartime.
As with so many things, the show must go on and within 3 weeks of The Happy Hikers mobile column hitting a landmine, there are reports of a reduced troupe playing to audiences somewhere in Belgium. The Hull Daily Mail of 17 February 1945 reports:
“with half their number in hospital the company carried on with their work of entertaining the troops” and “at the present time they are working with an 11-piece band in a huge opera house somewhere in Belgium.”[9]
So were 6 other cast members injured in the incident along with Vivien (there were originally 18 performers)? Or were some too distraught to perform? By 15 May 1945, Jimmy Lee and the rest of the company of The Happy Hiker had reformed as “High Heels and Hicks”, which included 17 performers and opened in Orkney.[10]
The story of Vivien Hole raises more questions than it answers as so often in history. I find it moving to think of this young dancer in her prime, at 19 the same age as my son, sacrificing her life far from home to help the troops forget the war for a while. Given that ENSA completed 54,000 performances to 27,000,000 men during the war, I find it remarkable that so many of these ENSA performers came home safe after their tour of duty overseas.
[1] Eric Taylor, Showbiz Goes to War (Hale, 1992), p. 155.
[2] ‘Happy Hikers’, Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 16 September 1944.
[3] Richard Fawkes, Fighting for a Laugh: Entertaining the British and American Armed Forces, 1939-1946 (Macdonald and Jane’s, 1978), p. 159.
[4] Basil Dean, The Theatre at War (George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, 1956), p. 416.
[5] Andrew Merriman, Greasepaint and Cordite: The Story of ENSA and Concert Party Entertainment during the Second World War (Aurum, 2012), p. 217.
[6] The Daily Express, 2 February 1945. p. 2.
[7] https://www.friendsofhighlandroadcemetery.org.uk/others/hole.htm, Accessed 10/11/2024.
[8] Crediton Gazette, 8 February 1945.
[9] Hull Daily Mail, 17 February 1945, p. 3.
[10] Orkney Herald, and Weekly Advertiser and Gazette for the Orkney & Zetland Islands, 17 April 1945.