The Pirate Island by D E Heming, 1938.

A chance find in the local Oxfam Bookshop. I shall review it gradually, so this is a brief stub to get started. My copy has blue boards, no dust-jacket - if anyone can supply photo, please do via comments.Size 81/4 by 6 inches, 13/4 thick, 248 pages. There is an embossed four-armed propeller. The title page attributes authorship to D.E. Heming.  In saying "author of The Phantom Wing" by way of advertisement, D E Heming is identified with "Guy Dempster", the author's name given in that book in this series, a popular Heming 'brand' when writing gory war stories for boys. The name "Dempster Heming" was used for the popular Peter Clayton books. The name D E Heming was also used for The Girls Book of Heroines and The Boys Book of Heroes, two books best forgotten.

A further advertisement lists "other books in the Air Adventure Series - three by husband Jack (Heming) and three others by Eileen  as Dorothy Carter (Flying Dawn), James Cahill (Flying with the Mounties) and Guy Dempster (The Phantom Wing). The other books are by other writers John Grant (a story of India), M.E. Miles and Michael Cronin. The latter's son-in-law Peter Nethercot writes (for which I am very grateful):  Michael Brendon Leo Cronin 1907-1987 was my father in law. He also wrote under the names of David Miles and M.E. Miles (his wife's maiden name). He was educated at Queens College, Dublin and after graduating joined the Royal Air Force as a school teacher. On the outbreak of the second world war he transferred into the provost branch, and from there to special branch. Most of his writing took place after the war which is well documented.

E Malcolm Shard, alias Eileen (Marsh) Heming.

Just one book of Eileen Heming's (née Marsh) output (see elsewhere in this blog via labels) used the pseudonym E Malcolm Shard. This is Flying For Ethiopia,1936. My copy has green boards, 216 pages and four plates drawn by the ace aeroplane illustrator Howard Leigh (1910-1942) who also worked on Biggles books and the magazine Popular Flying. Its publisher imprint was The Popular Library, a book club, an original and not a reprint. Size 71/2 by 5 inches, thickness 13/4 inches owing to its thick card paper. Green boards were certainly a first impression (the book carries no dates but this is indicated by 1936 prize bookplates in one green copy for sale); there is also an impression with orange boards, maybe later or maybe contemporaneous.The title page says 'by the author of The Secret Aeroplane and The Rajah of Gungra, both by D E Marsh and also dating from 1936, published by Harrap, suggesting a Harrap involvement with this book club. "E M Shard" (without the Malcolm) is an anagram of D E Marsh. Eileen Marsh/Heming had no experience of flying herself, apart from a couple of lessons after this book was published. These were more than she could afford as each book paid her a pittance. She undoubtedly scoured publications like Popular Flying to get ideas, such as the planes in this book. Anyone with copies of this magazine please let me know! They are too expensive to buy.

An appraisal is offered by Eric Bates, Among Her Own People, pages 128f. Bates dates the book as 1937, but one for sale was awarded as a school prize in 1936. The (2nd) Italo-Ephiopian war, which saw Haile Selassie exiled to London, was from October 1935 to May 1936. The Claytons, heroes of the book, set off by amphibian to Addis Ababa via Malta around February, father and son Pip, to rescue Pip's uncle Bob.. The gung-ho tone of the book, which offers the Italians a very bloody nose and points out the dignity of the Ethiopian defence, was almost certainly written at that point, before the Italian 'victory'. The Claytons were well off and well connected, knowing Haile Selassie personally, one brother being Consul in Ethiopia, and having an airfield attached to their mansion home. On arrival in Ethiopia, Pip spots a 'Supermarine Fighter', a prototype, which he dubs The Fighting Ethiopian as he joins the Ethiopian air force in his father's absence. He joins a group of four aeroplanes who  massacre squadrons of Italian bombers, even stealing two during a daring rescue. I won't summarise the whole plot, just say that superboy Pip is not only a superb fighter pilot, but speaks both Amharic and two Ethiopian dialects, thanks to his uncles tuition, deaf and dumb sign language, and is a natural born killer.

On matters of detail, the Saro Cloud was a sizable amphibian/ seaplane with two engines on top of the wings, retractable wheels at the side for dry landings, and wing floats for sea landings. Introduced 1930, it was used for training purposes in RAF Calshot near Southampton. It is accurately described. It is an expensive plane to be in private ownership, although four were privately operated!

The 'Supermarine Fighter' is not the Spitfire and is depicted in a plate (left, initialled by Howard Leigh) as having cantilevered "gull" wings.It is the Supermarine Type 224, designed by R J Mitchell of Spitfire fame, with cantilevered wings (picture below), ceiling 38,800 feet, maximum speed 228 mph powered by a single RR Goshawk II liquid-cooled engine, and armed with 4 Vickers machine guns. Only one flew from 1934, and was found to be disappointing losing out in 1936 to the Gloster Gladiator for RAF orders. It  ended life in 1937 as a target on a firing range. However lessons learned from its design and performance led to the development of the Spitfire in the late 1930s. Another connection: Supermarine was established by Noel Pemberton Billing in 1913: one of the pilots in this book is called 'Billings'. 

The representation of Ethiopians is curious. The 'native' is described as feckless, unreliable and without work discipline. 'Native'women (who had actually done an outstanding job and showed great common sense and fortitude, are described as of slow intelligence. However the royal family, including a boy of Pip's age, Makonnen, is depicted with great respect. In one official, Rastofarind, we can see the name Rastafari being drawn on, i.e. a follower of Haile Selassie. For the Italians, no respect is shown whatever.

Heming and Marsh again

Chance finds, bought together today in Cirencester were Jack Heming's Blue Wings (1938) and DE Marsh's The Airmen of the Island (1945). Since the dealer had bought them as a pair, his source must have known the connection, that they were husband and wife. Dorothy Eileen Marsh was the birthname of Mrs (Jack) Heming who used many pen-names. It started as a means of surviving the depression, a visit to London, and perhaps to WE Johns, told them that the future was in aeroplane stories for children. Jack tended to be more action-oriented and Eileen more relationship focused - although Eileen was fully capably or writing blood and thunder action stories, particularly using the Guy Dempster alias, war stories for boys. See my other blogs on this family via the labels.

The Airmen of the Island  focuses on an Orkney teenager Rob Ker (age 17) who is master of a tiny island, Megg, who by saving a ditched Australian pilot early in the war found his way into flying with Coastal Command. The story featured Sunderland Flying Boats, introduced 1938. Germans take over Megg to fortify it and threaten Scapa Flow. Rob escapes to warn the RAF and a counter attack takes the island back, which then is fortified as an RAF base. But, the Germans take it over again... The first Nazis were callous and brutal; the second group were more polite (with "false politeness") - "you fought a good fight". The dead are accepted and not mourned. "Bill and Cleaver are gone" - "That's too bad"... "Let me gather our dead". The other planes at the base are Defiants, which are depicted as newer and deadlier than Spitfires. In fact they were not so. Built by Boulton and Paul, they had gun turrets rather than forward guns, so 109s soon realised that they could attack head-on with relative impunity. In the story, 3 Defiants were enough to knock out a flight of bombers and their attendant fighters. In real life, Defiants were put onto night-patrol duty, at which the excelled. The story also introduces an aircraft carrier and Navy forces, with Swordfish and Skua planes - the Fleet Air Arm, not so named in the book. This is a favorite topic in her Guy Dempster thrillers. One other detail, an occasional character is named Carter, probably Eileen's best known pen-name (Dorothy Carter).













Jack wrote less, and paused as he joined the forces in 1939. His Blue Wings is uncomfortable reading, as four WW1 flying aces and one youth, Ray, fly to Spain to support the "nationalists" (Franco's fascist insurgents) against the elected socialist  ("communist") government who are depicted as Russian inspired, with a People's Committee to punish failure or opposition. Jack  was anti-communist rather than pro-fascist - their side are termed 'nationalist' and the government are seen as Russian invaders. At the end of unlikely and intrepid adventures in that blood-thirsty civil war, they returned home alive and joined the RAF.  De Havilland Dragons (biplane, built 1932) and Mew Gulls (1936) are the planes mentioned. The Percival Mew Gull was a single engined racing plane and only 6 were built, top speed over 250 mph - hot news in air racing when the story was being written. The back blue plane on the cover is a rough approximation, and the illustration on page 85. Why was one of these highly expensive machines owned by a youngster and based in a temporary county council airfield?  And then for a second to arrive there...  The illustration on page 197 is perhaps a biplane Dragon. The twin engined blue monoplane on the dustjacket is a Monospar (ST10 perhaps, picture below).
The red biplanes (make unidentified) belong to the Spanish socialist government and carry the Spanish roundel. In the story most are flown by Russians.


 Jack's story does not in fact glorify war but gets young readers ready for a war that by 1937 was inevitable. WE Johns announced this constantly in Popular Flying, emphasising the need for the government to prepare. Ray entered the civil war for adventure, without any political ideals. He soon sees war as 'conscienceless'. Dogfights may be a game - a Russian ace comes down to give him some more petrol so they can carry on - but it is a deadly game, the objective to down planes and probably kill the pilot. The leaders of both sides drool with anger and solve problems by killing. War's horrors are hinted at, and war itself condemned subliminally but constantly. A boy needs skill and a level head to navitage through with higher ideals. They all end up joining the RAF preparing for the world war to counter aggression that is invariably coming. 

Eileen unfortunately died early, in 1948, having brought up four children as well as writing 120 books. Jack later wrote after Eileen's death under her pen-names for a few volumes between 1948 and 1960.

Eight Over Essen - Eileen Marsh, 1943

Eileen Marsh took her adult fiction very seriously. This book starts with a bomber returning from a trip to Essen, follows each of the crew home for a week's leave, and ends with the next bombing run a week later, on which the are hit, without spelling out what happened to the crew. Written in 1943, it was not written to console, nor to acclaim flying crew. The book is unsentimental, except for the fact that the reader has come to know the crew, and the likelihood that they fail to return is no longer a statistic.

The crew are a mix of backgrounds and classes. The toff, Bill ('Dogs'), is only a Sergeant (to some chagrin at home) but he is content to be led. The captain, Skip, a Flight Lieutenant, is a grammar school boy, son of a tobacconist.

The home lives of the crew are the mixture we might expect in real life. The navigator, Swing, was devoted to classical music. Swing is misunderstood for his artistic temperament and love of music. Dogs strings along a pretty land girl, Shirley with half promises, and also enjoyed a no questions asked date with Daphne in town. The wireless operator Peter (Curly) is not happy in his marriage, to Ann, a novelist who is pregnant, but loses her baby during the week. The forward gunner Horace, an ex-burgular, found his wife running a crooked junk shop full of looted goods, picked up by the children aged 7,6 and 5. Daisy, the 5 year old, is crushed almost to death in a roof fall during the week. The flight engineer Shorty found his mother iller than usual and she dies during the week, but leaves a letter which listed her husband's infidelities and indicated that he had poisoned her. He put the letter in an envelope, pretending not to have read it, and his father burnt it after reading it. Unluckily for him, an over-zealous doctor ordered a post-mortem and the cat was out of the bag. Gunner Eric's wife dispises him and is an expensive good-time girl. Her plan this leave was to get pregnant so that she didn't have to work in the factory. They row and Eric threatens divorce if she gets pregnant by someone else, fearful that any child would be neglected. Bomb aimer Edward is a farmer and farmer's son. This is the nicest section, with most people on the farm being pleasant characters, and clearly loving the land. Finally the skipper John from Penge has an awful time at home, getting to know an old flame Lena who had become a nurse. His parents complain constantly, and when he brings Lena home they treat her execrably. He realises that they want him never to marry but to look after them in old age. He returns knowing that Lena will have a career of her own, and that a future together will be fraught - but they exchange addresses anyway.

Air Adventure Series, A&C Black, 1935-8

This post comes from a chance find in a Southwold second-hand bookshop, The Pirate Island by D.E. Heming (1938). The page stating it as part of a series, and naming the other titles, makes this a most interesting story.
First there are three books by Jack Heming, a minor writer of boys' school stories. They are:The Desert Air Raider, The Air-Dope Hunters, The Air Spies. Sixth in the series is Flying Dawn by Dorothy Carter, which I happen to have. This was one of her first books, maybe the first - the first of 120 books or so to follow using 16 different names. She was Jack Hemings' wife and sometimes wrote under her real name D(orothy) E(ileen) Heming. "D E Heming"  used for The Pirate Island (the D was for Dempster) links her to Guy Dempster, also in this series. The title page identifies D E Heming as the author of this Guy Dempster title. The story goes (based on her fictionalised autobiography One Woman's Life) that when penniless, Jack spoke to someone in London who said 'Air adventures are where the new money is' - so he and his wife had a go, and took their manuscripts in to a publisher in London. He not only agreed to publish, but commissioned more.

Then came James Cahill, Flying with the Mounties, clearly set in Canada: this was also by Dorothy Heming, taking the name from distant family menbers. There were several Canadian adventures written by her in the 1930s, though she had never been to Canada. Many were about flying, and at this stage neither had she flown an airoplane, though her descriptions have fooled many. [There is a mysterious books Ted of the Mounties by Eileen Heming, and North for Treasure by Dorothy Carter set in Canada but published long after her (1948) death]. Then there is The Phantom Wing, by Guy Dempster, another Dorothy Heming name - a remarkably different book, as others using this pseudonym, set on active service with the Fleet Air Arm - including blood-curdling and blood-letting accounts of battle.

There are three other names, unrelated as far as I know to the Heming clan - John Grant, writing on India ("A thrilling adventure novel of a quest for gold in India that turns into a desperate attempt by Richard Challenger to free his father, Col. Challenger, retired, from the clutches of the infamous Emir Din and his impenetrable stronghold" (blurb). Then two by M.E.Miles (Airplane Base and Pirates of the Air) ; and Michael Cronin's The Flying Kidnappers - again no connection that I know of, and occasional copyright library ascriptions identify this Michael Cronin with the prolific post-war crime writer of that name, born 1907. His real name was Brendan Leo Cronin and since he also wrote under the name David Miles, I presume that he was M.E. Miles also (see comments below for confirmation).

So, A and C Black got together this small group of prolific young writers to quickly put together a contribution to air adventures that were otherwise dominated at that time by W.E. Johns' Biggles. Indeed the illustrator Alfred Sindall also illustrated Biggles' stories.

Dorothy Eileen Marsh Heming

Owen Dudley Edwards has failed to uncover the story of this strange writer who produced over 120 books in twelve years before dying young at 48 years old. He refers only to Marise Flies South (1944) although he does talk about the 'impressively professional series' [222]. The biography/bibliography is Among Her Own People: Lives and Literature of Eileen Marsh, Jack Heming and Bracebridge Heming by Eric Bates (Bulman Lee Publishing, Ashford [bulman_lee@beeb.net], ISBN 0-9551014-0-9. I have a collection of about 60 titles.

Eileen Marsh wrote under many names often combining her real names Dorothy Eileen Heming (nee Marsh) or using other family names. She published 7 titles in 1936, 4 as Eileen Marsh, and one each of Dorothy Carter, Martin Kent and D.E. Marsh. Of the twelve titles in 1937, 5 were by Eileen Marsh, 2 by D.E. Marsh, and one each by James Cahill, Guy Demster, Martin Kent, Elizabeth Rogers and E M Shard. 1938 added John Annerley, D.E. Heming, Dempster Heming to two Martin Kents, and one D.E Marsh, Eileen Marsh and Elizabeth Rogers. . Altogether there were 26 by Eileen Marsh, 14 by Dorothy Carter, 9 by Elizabeth Rogers, 8 by Guy Dempster (bloodthirsty boys' war stuff) , 6 by Martin Kent, 6 by D.E. Marsh, and smaller numbers for the rest. She also wrote adult novels, and Sunday School prizes for Lutterworth, using Eileen Heming, Dorothy Marsh, James Cahill, Rupert Jardine, Jane Rogers and Mary St. Helier. This was quite a varied output for girls, boys and adults. She specialised in writing about flying and war adventure, and set them in England, Canada, Africa, USA and even up the Himalayas. She herself could not fly (though she had flying contacts and had a few flying lessons after writing several books; and had never visited many of these places: she wrote at home bringing up five children. Her husband also wrote, but was interrupted by the war. He used her pseudonyms from time to time after her death.

Eileen Marsh wrote her life story as fiction, in A Woman's Life where she describes a woman and husband writers who were advised to write aeroplane stories as the modern thing. Her routine was three hours writings while the children were in school, or 5000 words per day. The first books, under the signature D.E. Marsh were for boys, her Eileen Marsh signature starting with her girl flier books, of which Jonquil is the easiest to find. She states her payment per book as £50. In all, she wrote 120 books between 1935 and 1948, under 16 names, for girls, boys and adults.

ODE notes (p.229 fn29) that Dorothy Carter had no books after 1948. In fact The Cruise of the Golden Dawn was published by Latimer House in 1949, just posthumously. North for Treasure came in 1961, published by Lutterworth about the Canadian gold rush. Five genuine Dorothy Carters had been with Lutterworth, the rest with Collins (the first, Flying Dawn, was with A&C Black in 1935. An open question is whether the 1961 title was wholly written by husband Jack, or is a reworking of an unfinished manuscript. A number of pre-war titles were set in Canada, but I have not found any trace in copyright libraries of an earlier version of North of Treasure. Also set in Canada, Ted of the Mounties used the name Eileen Heming (1955) - again was this Jack, or is it a reprint of and earlier genuine title? Eric Bates gives their authorship to Jack; I am open to the possibility that they were written in Canada in the 1930s - Elizabeth Rogers' On Wings and Skis, set  in Canada, was in 1939.