Alan Whicker’s wartime memoir mentions a family from racing’s past 

Over Christmas I re-read TV journalist Alan Whicker’s wartime biography, Whicker’s War, covering his service with the Army Film & Photographic Unit (AFPU). This involved him in no fewer than three major assault landings, on Sicily, followed by Salerno then Anzio, both on the Italian mainland.

At one point he mentions a name which for me twanged vague memory, Sir Gerald Boles. Recognising the surname led me to establishing that his successor to the relevant family baronetcy was his son who – upon his father’s demise – became Sir Jeremy. Why familiar? Because Sir Jeremy Boles became a prominent customer of Leslie and later first British World Champion driver Mike Hawthorn’s TT Garage in my hometown of Farnham here. There they prepared a 2-litre Formula 2 Connaught A-Type which was driven under Boles’s entry in 1955 by Mike’s schooldays friend, Don Beauman.

There were several reasons why Sir Gerald had left a wartime impression upon Whicker, as he described: “A popular silver haired public relations officer [who took around] our brother war correspondents in Humber Pullmans”. Sir Gerald was distinctive, however, in that “…not to put too fine a point on it, he was allergic to lead. In a charming and patrician manner he would shy away from the most distant explosions… he refused to go anywhere near the fighting… ‘Might get the Humber damaged’, he would explain, ‘War Department property you understand…’ ”.

Evidently such caution did not fit comfortably with the more gung-ho war correspondents. They complained. His superiors considered him too endearing
a gentleman to be ignominiously sacked, so they sent him instead way back south behind the lines, to the port of Bari on the Adriatic coast, where he was set up with a fine hotel room overlooking the harbour.

However, on December 2, 1943, a German air raid upon Bari harbour succeeded in detonating two ammunition ships, the vast explosion and subsequent fires sinking some 28 more vessels… and not least triggering a leak of poisonous WWI-style mustard gas. The many fatal casualties included the popular but unfortunate Sir Gerald Boles –foiling his caution and leaving the baronetcy to his son Jeremy.

“Colin Chapman rammed the Jaguar and left it hors de combat”

This unexpected piece of the historical jigsaw slotted into the often sad story of Mike Hawthorn’s transition from happy-go-lucky carefree carouser into a darker, rather haunted, survivor. He had already lost boyhood friends to racing when his father Leslie died in an apparently alcohol-related road crash returning from Goodwood on Whit-Monday, 1954. That year saw Don Beauman drive a Sir Jeremy Boles-owned Aston Martin DB3. Showing impulsive promise combined with Mike Hawthorn’s backing persuaded ‘Lofty’ England to engage him for the 1955 Jaguar Le Mans team. Having been entered to co-drive with Desmond Titterington – who hurt himself in the preceding Nürburgring 1000Kms – he ended up sharing with factory tester Norman Dewis. But during the race – which witnessed the catastrophic ‘Levegh’ Mercedes accident opposite the pits (with controversial Hawthorn involvement) –Beauman tried too hard and was forced to abandon his works D-type which he had buried in the scenery at Arnage Corner. After Beauman had spent the better part of an hour attempting to dig the car free of the sand trap into which it had careered, Colin Chapman lost control of his works Lotus, rammed the Jaguar and left it firmly hors de combat.

The following month, back in Boles’s ageing but immaculately-prepared Connaught, Beauman contested the year’s Leinster Trophy race on the eight-mile country-road circuit at Rathnew, Wicklow in Eire. He led and set fastest lap before – with typical impulsiveness – attempting to lap a backmarker in a narrow track section. The Connaught snagged the verge and hedgerow, Beauman lost control and was killed as the car somersaulted. Incidentally, the race was won by none other than David Piper, at the outset of his tremendous privateering career, in his Lotus Mark VI.

The stricken Connaught was returned to the TT Garage in Farnham, where a showroom extension was under construction. When mechanic Brit Pearce told Mike that the wreck had been stripped and was beyond salvage, the future World Champion told him simply to dump it in the excavation then about be in-filled with concrete. Decades later this would become the basis of a subsequent car-dealing incumbent’s belief that he could recover “the wreck of Mike Hawthorn’s World Championship-winning Ferrari from the foundations here…” Hmm.

A sad story – but another cautionary tale from dangerous times. On the plus side I recall Phil Hill telling me how during his second season with Ferrari in Italy he was despatched to Bari for the Lungomare road race. Team directors Tavoni and Amorotti drove him south from Modena, and once they got into the 1943-44 battlefields south of Rome – ‘Whicker country’ – they began pointing out sites of interest. “There’s the American cemetery”.

A mile on: “The British cemetery”. Then “The German cemetery”. After miles of silence, Phil asked “Where were the Italians?”. Tavoni turned round to him, smiled and replied “In casa” – “at home”. How eminently sensible.