‘Salute to an Adventurer’:  Sydney Henry Holland (17.03.1883-12.12.1936)

Sydney Henry Holland was born in Petworth, West Sussex on 17th March 1883, where his grandfather was rector. A later address was Imperial House, Grovesnor Road, Victoria, London.

At the outbreak of World War One Sydney volunteered to join the army and served with the Royal West Surreys. In 1917 he got married and joined the Royal Flying Corps as an observer and after training was posted in September to No.9 Squadron, attending No.1 Flying School in 1918. He flew patrols over north east Italy with No.139 Squadron and was promoted to Lieutenant.

Demobbed in March 1919 and tiring of war-weary Britain, he travelled to South America where he flew commercial aircraft in Argentina and Brazil, and produced an airmap of the city of Buenos Aires. He later flew aircraft across the Andes for the Paulista revolutionaries. When government forces defeated the Paulistas, Brazil was no longer a safe place for Sydney, who took ship to England ‘leaving his devoted wife to realise his assets in Rio and get most of the money out by sheer diplomacy.’ *

His friend Charles Gray, editor of ‘The Aeroplane’ magazine, would later say that “Holland was one of those steady-going pilots who could get an aeroplane out of anything if it could be got out”.*

Back in Britain Sydney set up house with his wife and young family in Crawley, obtaining his private pilot’s licence at Surrey Aero Club in 1933, followed by his commercial pilot’s licence. He got a job with Wrightways Limited of Croydon and flew on the regular newspaper services from Croydon Airport to Paris.

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Sydney showed an interest in ferrying war materiel to Spain but on August 19th 1936 the British Government imposed an embargo on this and threatened to suspend the licences of any pilots who tried to break it. ‘In early November both Sydney and Walter were suddenly dismissed by Wrightways for failing to observe air navigation regulations. For Sydney especially this was a serious blow, with a wife and two children to support…’*

Then Sydney and his friend and fellow pilot, Walter Scott Coates, heard that the Spanish government was looking for pilots to fly and fight in Spain. ‘The two mens’ love of adventure overcame the prudence of middle-age’ * and Sydney and Walter applied to fly under contract for the Spanish Republican Air Force. The pair flew via Paris to Barcelona on an Imperial Airways flight with Vincent Doherty, a recruiting agent for the Spanish Air Force.  ‘The Foreign Office had been made aware of their impending journey to Spain by the police, but noted that they “had no power to refuse them passports but they are committing an offence under the Foreign Enlistment Act”’

In Barcelona Sydney and Walter joined five American pilots. The group received an enthusiastic reception and were then taken to Los Alcázares for flight tests before signing contracts.

The contracts provided a salary of £220 a month, to be paid into a bank in England appointed by the Spanish Embassy in London, living and hotel allowance of £24 a month, first-class return fare home, a premium of £300 for each enemy aircraft brought down; £1,000 in event of total incapacity from wounds; £1,500 to be paid to their nearest relative in case of death. The contracts were renewable on a monthly basis. Given that signing up for fighter/bomber duties in a war was an extremely hazardous occupation, and Sydney was to pay the price with his life, the pilots’ salaries would have represented a small fortune to the average worker in the UK, whose ANNUAL wage in 1936 was £153. The Republican Air Force, desperate for flyers, was willing to pay such princely sums.

Hilaire du Berrier, who checked out the flyers’ ability, said: “I liked Holland at once. He was a small man with greyish hair, a quiet cold way about him, and turned out to be an inveterate gambler. Holland had brought his mandolin with him, and when not playing dominoes for a peseta a point he was playing it.” *

On 12^th December 1936 Sydney piloted a Monospar ST-25 from its Sondica base on a mission with two other makeshift planes to bomb Lacua airfield at Vitoria. The bombers were escorted by a few Polikarpov I-15 Chato fighters, but they were spread across a distance of ten miles, making the job of escorting them extremely difficult. A flight of  Condor Legion Heinkel He 51B fighters took off and one caught up with Sydney Holland just after he had dropped his bombs. The Monospar was shot down and almost completely destroyed in the crash that killed Sydney and the other two crew.

Pauline Fraser

Sources: IBMT Volunteer Database, Surrey Comet 2nd January 1937 p16; “The Flyers”, by Brian Bridgeman 1989 Ch.5 p87-97* Nottingham Evening Post – 15 December 1936 p1 West Sussex County Times – 18 December 1936 p7

Thomas Frederick Killick (1917-1937) – Sussex Brigader

Thomas Frederick Killick, ‘Freddie’, was born in January 1917 at East Preston, West Sussex. In 1921 the family were living in Heathside, Ewhurst, Surrey, but moved to Electric Parade, Woodford, Surrey in 1930. Some time before Freddie went to Spain, his widowed mother and siblings had moved north, to Norwood Avenue, Southport. Brigader Maurice Levine, in his book ‘Cheetham to Cordova’, writes that Freddie Killick, who came from Southport, was living in Manchester. This suggests that Freddie had taken a job as a clerk away from the family home.

When Freddie arrived in Spain, on 30^th November 1936, he was enrolled in No 1 Company, but was not issued with a Brigade Number. On 12 February 1937 , the first day that the newly-formed British Battalion took part in the Battle of Jarama, Freddie was killed. He would have recently turned 20 and had been in Spain for less than three months.

Freddie Killick is mentioned with affection by George Brown in a letter from Spain where he itemises the recent casualties incurred at Jarama by Brigaders from the Manchester area. Freddie is commemorated on a plaque donated by Merseyside County Council ‘To the Merseyside men of the International Brigades who fell in the struggle for democracy in Spain’.

Freddie Killick on the Merseyside memorial plaque

Pauline Fraser

Sybil Maud Clarke was born on 26^th July 1906 in Woolwich, London. Later the family moved to 6 Queen’s Road, Worthing, a three-storey town-centre family home just off the seafront. Her mother died in 1926, but Sybil’s father was still living at the Queen’s Road address when the 1939 census was taken.

6 Queen’s Road, Worthing

We know nothing of Sybil’s early life, but on 25^th March 1937 she arrived in Spain as the secretary/housekeeper in charge of the British Medical Unit flats at 167 Balmes, Barcelona. However, on 2^nd June 1938 she was repatriated. According to Nurse Penny Phelps, ‘two English nurses were looking after Sybil Clarke who was ill from food poisoning’,+ at the English Villa in Valencia. ‘The port area of Valencia had now become the target for bombing causing havoc all round us. The British consul decided the villa should be evacuated. Sybil, accompanied by a nurse, was the first to go, being taken aboard a British merchant ship’ to Marseilles. She was then repatriated by air, presumably to Croydon Airport, as that was where Penny arrived, a few days later, on 6th June. Penny had suffered ‘fractured ribs, abdominal wounds, an injured arm and numerous cuts and bruises’ when her medical unit was bombed. Sybil was met off the plane by the Organising Secretary of the British Medical Aid Committee and was taken to Hammersmith Hospital for treatment.[SMAC Minutes 15.06.1938 + Extracts from ‘English Penny’, the 1992 account of Penny Phelps’ war in Spain, published under her married name of Penny Fyvel, ISBN 0 7223 2648-3]

However, Sybil’s commitment to Republican Spain did not end there. In 1939 it is likely that Sybil was helping run a hostel for Spanish refugees in Reading. This followed an appeal in the local paper ‘for France to be relieved of as many of the Spanish refugees as possible to take them out of the terrible conditions under which they are suffering.

‘The Spanish Refugee Committee (Reading) has room at their hostel at 25, Craven Road, for more if funds are available.’ [Reading Standard 26.05.1939]

The refugees referred to in the appeal would have been some of the 150,000 who fled across the Pyrenees to France after the defeat of the Republic. The abysmal conditions many of the refugees had to endure in camps such as Argeles-sur-mer are well documented. Interviewed in 1986 when the Reading Memorial Committee asked the public for their recollections of solidarity with Spain, a Mr. Wise ‘remembered plans for some refugees to be housed in Craven Road.’ [Reading Evening Post 18.07.1986] 

We must conclude that the good people of Reading stumped up the funds, as Sybil was still living at the Craven Road address when the 1939 census was taken. Against her name is the letter ‘C’ in red, for Communist, indicating MI5 or MI6 surveillance.

Two Basque children’s colonies, which accommodated one hundred children, had previously been opened in the Reading area, first at Baydon Hole Farm, near Lambourn, and later, transferring to Bray Court, Maidenhead. The children arrived in early June from Stoneham, Southampton, the camp that received the nearly 4,000 child refugees after they disembarked from the SS Habana on 23rd May 1937 following a rough two-day journey from Bilbao. Maria Dolores Gomez Sobrino, one of the Basque children who stayed at both colonies with her mother and younger sister, remembers moving to Bray Court, ‘a massive mansion….. where I remember a huge Christmas tree……Previously a hotel, it had closed down because of some scandal or other.”[from ‘Recuerdos: Basque children refugees in Great Britain’ Ed. Natalia Benjamin 2007]

At the time the Basque children took up residence at Baydon Hole Farm and Bray Court, Sybil was in Spain. We don’t know how long she stayed in Hammersmith Hospital after being invalided home, but it is unlikely that she was a volunteer at Bray Court. She is not mentioned by Marguerite Scott, a volunteer there, who later married International Brigader Ronald Bates.* By July 1939 there were only 30 children left at Bray Court so the decision was made to close the home. Most of the other colonies around Britain were closed by this time, although there were still around 400 refugees in Britain at the start of WWII. Some of these could not go home as their parents were either dead or imprisoned, whilst some chose to stay, as those over the age of 16 were given the choice. https://www.berkshirerecordoffice.org.uk

‘Bray Court’s association with refugees did not end with the leaving of the Basque children in July 1939. By October 1939, Czech refugees were housed there as part of a programme organised by the Czech Refugee Trust.’ https://www.berkshirerecordoffice.org.uk

It is likely that Sybil Clarke knew about the Czech refugees at Bray Court, as she was still living in the area – by 1945 at Brook House, Honey Lane, Abingdon, Berks. It is possible that Sybil’s future husband, Czech journalist Leonhardt Richter, was one of the refugees at Bray Court. The couple married in 1946.

In 1947 the couple advertised for investors in their newly-formed engineering company, listing Leonhardt Richter and Mrs. S.M.Richter as the company directors and their residence and the company’s registered office as 6 Queen’s Road, the Clarke family home. [‘Worthing Herald’ 8^th August 1947]

Sybil Maud Clarke died on 22^nd September 1992 at Knightsbridge House, Marine Parade, Worthing.

Knightsbridge House

Pauline Fraser

Duende Flamenco – Performances  

AUTUMN 2024 TOUR DATES JUST RELEASED

Picasso, his life and loves

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Picasso: Saturday 14th September 2024
Hailsham Festival Hailsham
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Picasso: Saturday 5th October 2024
All Saints Centre Lewes

Picasso: Sunday 20th October 2024
The Stag Sevenoaks

Picasso: Saturday 9th November 2024
Grove Theatre Eastbourne

Alfred John Smith/Patrick John Lynch: One man, two volunteers

Some people are described as ‘larger than life’. That description might be applied to Alfred John Smith, also known as Patrick John Lynch, and possibly A J Long, although there is no listing on the IBMT database for anyone of that name. A man with so many names warrants at least two entries in the IBMT volunteer database and so he has, with separate but identical cross-referenced entries for Alfred John Smith and Patrick John Lynch.

There is even uncertainty about when and where he was born. His year of birth may have been 1907 or 1914.  As Alfred James Smith, he gave an address with a Mrs Folkard, of Shelland Green, North Woolpit, and as Alfred John Smith, lived in Oxford and worked for Morris Motors. He joined the Labour Party in 1926 and was a member of the AWU.

He enlisted twice, firstly under his (probable) real name of Alfred John Smith on 2 August 1937, Brigade number 1226.  Only a month later, on 17 September 1937, he was listed by Special Branch as having returned from Spain.

On his return he was charged with breaking and entry and theft from an office in Portslade and bound over for 12 months by a court in Lewes. His wife’s address was given as 64 Cowper Road, Hove, which is where the Sussex connection comes in. A press report said: ‘He denied that he deserted from the International Brigade. He said he was sentenced to death, but escaped from the Spanish side.’ In fact, he was repatriated the first time as being ‘useless’. It added that he had applied for an assisted passage to Australia to join his father there.

It is thought that he used the alias of Patrick John Lynch, an asphalt layer, to return to Spain on 5 January 1938, and enlisted with the Mac-Paps, Brigade number 1551. He deserted in Aragon on 3 April 1938 and was arrested on the frontier. He was sent to jail either in Castelldefells, south of Barcelona, or in Figueras, on the border with France. When he was repatriated on 2 July 1938 he went under the name of Alfred John Smith. On this second occasion he was again arrested for ‘office breaking’. He was described in International Brigade records as being an: ‘Unpolitical rotter in the fullest sense’.

There the trail ends and we have no more idea when or where he died than on his entry into the world.

For further information on sources, see the entries on the IBMT volunteer database.

Alfred Thomas Henry Selmes (1911-1969) – Sussex Brigader

Alfred Thomas Henry Selmes was born in Brighton on 24th August 1911 and worked respectively as a labourer and as a waiter. He joined the Communist Party and gave two addresses in London, one of which may be where he was living when he volunteered for service with the International Brigades. His date of arrival in Spain is given as 7th January 1937. He deserted at Jarama and was arrested and jailed. Back in the British Battalion, he was badly wounded at Brunete in October 1937 and was repatriated on 5th November 1937. In December 1938 he received fourteen days hard labour following a demonstration against unemployment. In 1939 he was living in Holmby Street, Camberwell, London and in WW2 served in the Royal Artillery. He moved back to Brighton at some point as he was living at 77 Craven Road when he died on 18th August 1969.

Sydney Henry Holland was born in Petworth, West Sussex on 17th March 1883, where his grandfather was rector. Some time later his address was given as Imperial House, Grovesnor Road, Victoria, London.

At the outbreak of World War One he volunteered to join the army and served with the Royal West Surreys. In 1917 he got married and joined the Royal Flying Corps as an observer and after training was posted in September to No.9 Squadron, attending No.1 Flying School in 1918. He flew patrols over north east Italy with No.139 Squadron and was promoted to Lieutenant.

Demobbed in March 1919 and tiring of war-weary Britain, he travelled to South America where he flew commercial aircraft in Argentina and Brazil, and produced an airmap of the city of Buenos Aires. He later flew aircraft across the Andes for the Paulista revolutionaries. When government forces defeated the Paulistas, Brazil was no longer a safe place for Sydney, who took ship to England ‘leaving his devoted wife to realise his assets in Rio and get most of the money out by sheer diplomacy.’ *

Back in Britain Sydney set up house with his wife and young family in Crawley, obtaining his private pilot’s licence at Surrey Aero Club in 1933, followed by his commercial pilot’s licence.

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Sydney showed an interest in ferrying war materiel to Spain but on August 19th 1936 the British Government imposed an embargo on this and threatened to suspend the licences of any pilots who tried to break it. Then Sydney and his friend and fellow pilot, Walter Scott Coates, heard that the Spanish government was looking for pilots to fly and fight in Spain. ‘The two mens’ love of adventure overcame the prudence of middle-age’ * and Sydney and Walter applied to fly under contract for the Spanish Republican Air Force. The pair flew via Paris to Barcelona
on an Imperial Airways flight with Vincent Doherty, a recruiting agent for the Spanish Air Force. ‘The Foreign Office had been made aware of their impending journey to Spain by the police, but noted that they “had no power to refuse them passports but they are committing an offence under the Foreign Enlistment Act”’

In Barcelona the foreign pilots received an enthusiastic reception and were then taken to Los Alcázares for flight tests before signing contracts. Hilaire du Berrier, who checked out the flyers’ ability, said: “I liked Holland at once. He was a small man with greyish hair, a quiet cold way about him, and turned out to be an inveterate gambler. Holland had brought his mandolin with him, and when not playing dominoes for a peseta a point he was playing it.” *

On 12th December 1936 Sydney piloted a Monospar ST-25 from its Sondica base on a mission with two other makeshift planes to bomb Lacua airfield at Vitoria. The bombers were escorted by a few Polikarpov I-15 Chato fighters, but they were spread across a distance of ten miles, making the job of escorting them extremely difficult. A flight of Condor Legion Heinkel He 51B fighters took off and one caught up with Sydney Holland just after he had dropped his bombs. The Monospar was shot down and almost completely destroyed in the crash that killed Sydney and the other two crew.

Pauline Fraser

Source: IBMT Volunteer Database, Surrey Comet 2nd January 1937 p16 “The Flyers”, by Brian Bridgeman. 1989 p87-97* Nottingham Evening Post – 15 December 1936 p1 West Sussex County Times – 18 December 1936 p7

See also this report of the event by Jim Jump of the IBMT

War on the Streets of Brighton 1937 – Brighton & Hove Museums (brightonmuseums.org.uk)

Sussex People’s Scrapbook, 1938 Ernie Trory collection 

[Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton]