 here because many of the individuals involved in the early history of British cultural property protection unit. The antecedent units that Tim was talking about to the modern unit were fellows of the Society of Antiquaries. Right. So British military cultural property protection really originated and developed in 1943 to 1944. Most of the key figures involved were fellows of the Society of Antiquaries and the most prominent of them was Mortimer Wheeler. Lydia Carr, the biography of Tessa Burney Wheeler, Wheeler's first wife, describes how Wheeler's dominating and larger than life personality means that he tends to elbow himself centre stage even into stories that aren't actually his own. Wheeler is undoubtedly an important character in this story, but given the extent to which it's told through his eyes and his words, it's legitimate to wonder if his role is perhaps a little overstated. However, he was present at all its stages, and so if nothing else he provides a useful organising principle. Likewise, Wheeler's 13th of January 1944 paper, Archaeology in the War Zone, Facts and Needs delivered to fellows and visitors here at the Society of Antiquaries in London represents an important symbolic moment at least in the development of British cultural property, British military cultural property protection. I suspect Wheeler would have approved of the organising part of him being used as an organising principle, but not of being reduced to being a mere organising principle. So British armed forces entered the Second World War with a legal commitment to prevent, or at least limit, damage to historical buildings and cultural institutions under the terms of the 1907 paid convention, and that was quoted and cited extensively in the 1939 edition of the Manual of Military Law. However, there were no specific mechanisms or personnel in place at the beginning of the war to ensure British military compliance with this body of international law, and it was not a high priority. This eventually caused problems. The first significant British military occupation of enemy territory came in February and March 1941 of the Italian colonial territory of Cyrenau, with its important archaeological sites and collections at Cyrenau, Apollonia, Tormeta and Tokra. However, a joint German-Italian counterattack drove the British out and re-occupied the area in April 1941. Subsequently, the Italians published a book What the English Did in Cyrenau Cup, and this is the cover of it as you can see, depicting a quintessentially English soldier from the perspective of 1941 Italy. Among other things, this book included photographs that ported to depict damage inflicted on the museum at Cyrenau, over on the other side there, by British and Australian troops. Later investigation and scholarships suggests that this was somewhat exaggerated and much of it was wrongly attributed, but there was some truth to it. The kangaroo graffiti was something of a dead giveaway. The next British occupation of Italian colonial territory came after the Second Battle of El Alame in Egypt in October 1942, when the Eighth Army drove back Axis forces into Libya and eventually Tunisia, re-occupying Cyrenau Cup there, but then also Tripollitania in January 1943, with its important Roman sites of Lexus Magna and Sepratha. Lieutenant Colonel Mortimer Wheeler was in North Africa in 1943, commanding 42nd Light Anti-Aircraft Frenchman Royal Artillery. Wheeler had served in the Royal Artillery during the First World War before beginning his archaeological career, which is well known to many of you, which included serving as director of the National Museum of Wales from 1924, and with Tessa directing the excavation of important Roman sites such as the Legionary Fortress at Caleil. He was keeper of the London Museum from 1926, and again with Tessa established the University of London Institute of Archaeology in 1937. Subsequently, the Wheeler's excavated at sites like Verolewium and Maiden Castle. In 1943 he was also a council member, director of the Society of Antiquaries, that's the director's chair over there, moved out of the way. So, Wheeler's account of what happened in Tripollitania, here's a quotation from it. On my entry into Tripoli, I found that no steps whatever had been envisaged for the protection of the libraries, buildings and sites of historical value in Tripollitania. In Africa, in spite of spurious reassurances from on high, no official steps whatever were taken to preserve any part of our cultural heritage. The hour there is interesting. Wheeler's own accounts describe how he became aware of the problem of cultural property protections, now at least, in January 1943 on the advance into Tripollitania, and during a lull in his military duties he took an initiative to visit some key sites in the province with his friend, archaeological colleague, and subordinate officer in the regiment, Major John Ward Perkins. Ward Perkins had been an assistant at the London Museum under Wheeler in 1936 and had been appointed chair of archaeology at the Royal University of Malta in 1939. Ward Perkins returned to England to enlist in Wheeler's regiment in which he served until 1943, so he was in North Africa with Wheeler. He was also a fellow of the Society of Antiquities, and of course later had a very distinguished career as a Roman archaeologist including serving as director of the British School at Rome. According to Wheeler, there followed what he described as a characteristic exemplification of British improvisation. A lepsis magna, for example, the small site museum had been ransacked whether by troops or whether by local civilians, it's unclear. The Royal Air Force was in the process of establishing a radar installation on the site, and graffiti and general wear and tear was being caused to the site by both what Wheeler describes as the momentarily idle troops of a famous division, which is actually the 7th Armored Division, and the local civilian population. The archaeologist's response was to post out-of-bounds notices around the site and to direct what Wheeler describes as the vague attention of the military police to them, to give impromptu lectures to the troops there, to persuade the RAF to move the radar installation, and to arrange with the local town major, the British military officer responsible for portring troops and similar matters, to post a military sentry outside the museum. Subsequently, Wheeler writes, he and Ward Perkins engaged with and took measures to re-establish the Italian archaeological service, most of whom in the Italian colonial archaeological service, most of whose personnel they encountered at Sabrata. Wheeler then left to resume his primary military duties in the Royal Artillery. However, Ward Perkins remained seconded to the British military administration on monuments duties for about four months, ultimately until August 1943. In that time, he effectively reconstituted the Italian antiquities organisation in Libya, with its Italian and Arab staff, to the point where it could significantly contribute to the protection and conservation of the major sites, primarily but not exclusively Roman sites, and Roman urban sites. Ward Perkins also produced an impressive series of reports that not only dealt with the pressing and practical issues of site protection, but also considered the possible futures of archaeological research in both Tripolitania and Cyrenauca. Wheeler presents all this as a very personal enterprise, and to some extent this may have been true. Some of Wheeler's personality traits, his total self-assurance and tendency to take charge, unattractive in many other contexts, may have served him very well in this context. I have some quotations again from Lydia Kahn, but also from his biographer Jaketa Hawks, who knew him very well. A man of overwhelming personality in his military role is described by many as a martinet. Hawks describes his demonic and extraordinary energy, and Hawks goes on to describe this cultural property protection activity as exactly the kind of undertaking Wheeler relished, with its combination of archaeology and soldering, the chance to exert authority, impose order to get something done all under intense pressure. However, Wheeler does present a narrative in which no one else was doing anything, and according to him, efforts elapsed when he, or at least Ward Perkins, his subordinate, took their feet off the accelerator, so to speak, and he significantly underestimates what other people were doing in parallel. For example, the apparent damage in Cyrenia and its exploitation for propaganda purposes raised concern in the War Office in London. That led to Sir Lenin Woolley, another fellow of the society, being consulted for the first time on archaeological matters. Woolley, of course, was a well-known and important pre-war archaeologist, best known for his excavations at the site of Ur in Iraq, which was an important factory in his night of it in 1935. Woolley was employed initially in a non-archaeological role in the War Office in 1941, with the rank of major and then lieutenant colonel. However, consultation on archaeological issues became more official and more frequent, leading to his appointment as full-time archaeological adviser to the director of civil affairs at the War Office as lieutenant colonel on 1 November 1943. The War Office and British military authorities had certainly drawn up procedures and taken some steps to protect sites in Tripolitania along the lines of those we were claimed to have initiated, although they may have been relatively ineffective. Likewise, we were claimed that again since his foot was off the gas. No one did anything serious to plan for the protection of cultural heritage during the invasion of Sicily. That took place in July to August 1943. Wheeler's account of this is rather casual and dismissive. He says, two Americans whose names meant nothing to us were, somewhat vaguely as it seemed, going to keep an eye upon the churches, temples and collections of Sicily. We glance skeptically at one another, admitting, however, that the Americans were at least half a move ahead of us. This is demonstrably untrue, as the Allied Occupation Plan for Sicily included extensive provisions for closing cultural sites and institutions, guarding them, posting out-of-bounds notices and cooperating with Italian authorities in reconstruction. Many of these provisions were not as effective as they may have been, but that wasn't primarily or purely because Mortimer Wheeler was absent, as he rather implies. Both British and US military authorities had, by June 1943, proposed the development of specialist monuments and fine arts section with officers at the first Allied CPP unit, at least. Officers with appropriate civilian backgrounds. The first officer deployed to Sicily in late July 1943 was Mason Hammond, who Tim has showed you here. Hammond was a Harvard Roman historian, an officer in the Captain in the US Army Air Force. He was joined in September by Major Paul Bailey Reynolds, over on the other side there, who was British and a fellow, again, at the Society of Antiquaries, a Roman historian, a Roman archaeologist and ministry of works inspector of ancient monuments. The kinds of people who served as monument officers in the Second World War were typically what Anthony Pohl describes as over-aged subalterns, basically relatively junior-ranking officers who had specialist skills that they could apply from the civilian world in archaeology, for example, but individuals who were typically too old, considered too old to actually command in combat. Also, in parallel with the military steps to appoint officers and create the first unit, in particular in the US, academics and civilians contributed to the provision of documentation on cultural sites. These are two of the individuals concerned. William Bell Dinsmore, senior, who was a Greek archaeologist, is actually working there on some of the maps that we used by monument officers in the Second World War, and because this is such a relentlessly male presentation, I'm afraid. This is Marion Blake, who was a Roman archaeologist. This is a portrait of her when she was in Rome at the American Academy in Rome. She contributed very frankly to the lists of cultural sites in Italy that we used by military personnel. Some examples, that's the so-called Frick map of Potswoli in Italy with the Roman amphitheater, for example, Mark Hoyd, the oval thing there. Lists of protected monuments, this is the small booklet for central Italy there. So there were things going on, even that Wheeler was unaware of, even when Wheeler claimed that things weren't happening. Wheeler, meanwhile, coming back to our organising principle, commanded 12 anti-aircraft regate in the 10th British Corps, which was part of the US Fifth Army, which was actually a US and British army for the Salerno landings in September 1943, and followed the campaign through to Naples, the Liberation Naples in October 1943. Wheeler left Italy on the 8th of November 1943, and then spent four months in London before setting out to become director general of the archaeological survey of India. So when Wheeler came back to London, he later claimed that on his return here, it was my intention to go straight to the Prime Minister and lay the matter of damage to cultural property before him. Unfortunately, Mr Churchill had chosen the moment to discuss less important matters with Mr Roosevelt and Mr Stalin in other parts of the world, such as the Terran Conference, depicted here. I have therefore to content myself with going to the War Office and discussing the matter with permanent undersecretary of the State and the Director of Civil Affairs. While there was clearly humorous intent in Wheeler's reference to Churchill's absence at the Terran Conference, Wheeler's self-confidence was such that he might actually have considered taking his views directly to the Prime Minister. At any rate, he did present his views on these matters to an all-party amenities group of Members of Parliament in December 1943 at the invitation of Conservative MP Eric Keeling, himself and RAF Volunteer Reserve Officer, with interests in heritage. Wheeler also discussed the issues with the Principal Private Secretary of Foreign Principal Private Secretary of Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. The lobbying that Wheeler engaged in provoked a flurry of correspondence between interested parties, including Keeling, the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee, J.G. Mann, James Mann of the Wallace Collection, who was also a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and Sir John Forstike, Director of the British Museum, also a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. That's a selection of some of those individuals, all looking very male and very Edwardian here. They circulated amongst themselves copies of a report that Wheeler had written in November presenting his views on the preservation of historic buildings and collections in the war zone. Many of these men, politicians and curators alike, had already expressed concern about damage to cultural sites in Italy particularly, and particularly things that have been caused by bombing. Then, contributing to all this discussion and lobbying, on the 13th January 1944, Wheeler gave his paper here at the Society of Antiquaries, entitled Archaeology in the War Zone, Facts and Needs. This is the visitor's book for that, which thanks to Magda, who used to work in the library here, this photograph. This is one page, there's another page as well. Interesting to see who's represented here. So, J.G. Mann, Sir O'Fox, the previous president of the, I think you've just become president of the Society there, Sir Frederick Kenyon and T.D. Kendrick of the British Museum, Sir Eric McClaggan, who you saw just there at the Victorian Albert Museum, Conservative MP Hugh Molson. All of these were people who were already involved in discussion of monuments protection activities. There were also people who would go on and undertake monuments protection activities in the services later. So, there was Woolly, who was already involved in it. He signed there. Professor Geoffrey Webb, who's just up there as Professor Webb in the second column, who was the slave professor of fine arts at Cambridge, who later oversaw the monuments fine arts section in Normandy, RAF officer Christopher Norris, and also important civilian archaeologists at the time, like Jocelyn Toynbee, Tennyson Joseph and Ian Richmond, and also, interestingly, and something which confused me a bit when we did it up there, it signed Brian Ward Perkins, and I was a bit confused for that because John Ward Perkins' full name is John Brian Ward Perkins, but I knew that John Ward Perkins wasn't around in London at that point and so I sent this picture to Brian Ward Perkins, John's son who's a late antique historian, and he recognised it as a signature of his grandfather Brian Ward Perkins, who was John Ward Perkins' father, so he was coming along to find out about these activities that his son was involved in in the Mediterranean. Wheeler's paper reflects a mix of his own experiences in North Africa, his first hand, although not always entirely correct, knowledge of what had happened in Italy, and probably what he'd heard from others on the ground. For not only had Wheeler already written a report and a letter on these themes, but others like Woolly, who'd been to Naples in the meantime, Ward Perkins, Hammond and Bailey Reynolds, based on their experience in the field in Sicily and in southern Italy, had done so as well. There are a number of reports and things circulating at this time. Even if Wheeler hadn't actually read all these materials himself, clearly he'd heard these ideas from other people as well as thought about them for himself. The key themes of Wheeler's paper is that we don't have a text of Wheeler's paper in the archive here in the Society of Articories. I knew he'd given this paper, and I spent years actually looking for text of it, and then I accidentally found it in a file of other documents in the National Archives when I was looking for something completely different, so I've got a text of it there, which is very exciting. The first theme in this is Wheeler calls for essentially a cultural property protection unit, an organisation of archaeologically qualified, what he describes as district officers, perhaps about 20 in number with the rank of left-handed colonel or major serving under a War Office Archaeological Advisor of what he describes as sufficient rank and authority, i.e. a brigadier, to make personal contact with senior commanders in the field. Each officer he envisaged would be assigned to a particular geographic district. He gives Tripolitania and Cyrenauica together as one such area, Sicily and Calabria as one such area, and Central Italy as another such area. In fact, of course, as we've seen by January 1944, this organisation had already been created in the form of the Allied Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives sub-commission at the NFAA Monuments Men, with both British and American officers, about 12 of them in Topol, not just in Sicily, but now in South Italy, including Ward Perkins who'd come back to Monuments Protection duties, and they were serving within the Allied Military Government structures. The rigid distribution of officers to geographical regions or districts was, in fact, initially practised by the NFAA in Italy, and this became a problem when the urgent needs for personnel were actually focused in just one or two areas, like Naples on its liberation in October 1943. Subsequently, this structure, the one that Wielu was advocating and the one that they used anyway in parallel, was changed for a more flexible task-organised structure. The size of the area Wielu had suggested a single officer might supervise was also, was probably unrealistic and derived from the relatively benign situation he'd encountered in North Africa. However, Wielu did recognise the need for authority within the military hierarchy in Naples, for example, Monuments officers with the rank of captain and major had come into dispute with senior officers, brigadiers, and above, for example, and even Woolly, the British head of the organisation, was just to left him and Curl instead of a brigadier as Wiela advocates, actually having some more senior ranks in there would have helped. He also argued that district officers should be chosen not just on the basis of technical knowledge, i.e. coming from archaeological or architectural or archival backgrounds, but also on, quote, their energy underlined and power of dealing with men, which is a very Wiela-rich phrase. The second theme in this, Wiela argued that the district officer should enter with the foremost troops as a forward element of military government with a small staff, typically one or two clerks, a car, and actually transport was a recurring problem for Monuments officers in Italy. They typically had to hitch lifts or borrow civilian vehicles. And also these individuals should be able to draw on half a dozen or so military police, which he describes as essential for guarding cultural sites. The district officer would institute measures on entering a recently occupied area, according to a prepared scheme, to protect against willful, unnecessary and unintelligent damage, as Wiela calls it, by occupying troops and also looting civilians. And the officers would reconstitute and reorganise the relevant local heritage authorities and supervise initial repairs to damaged structures. This all very much reflects Allied experience at the Liberation of Naples in October 1943 and also proposals made by Woolly, Hammond and other Monuments officers based on their experience. Monuments protection at this time was conceived of by Allied military authorities as something to be done in securely occupied territory well behind the front line, in conjunction for example the re-establishment of the Italian educational ministry. Experience show that much of the damage and looting actually occurred just as combat had passed when a security vacuum enabled civilians to loot and a second echelon trinks moved up and occupied and even looted cultural institutions because of insufficient control. This had happened in Naples where the assigned monuments officer, American major and museum curator, Paul Gardner, depicted over here, initially had been diverted to general civil affairs duties on the island Viscia and he didn't actually arrive in Naples until nearly three weeks after the Liberation. So here you've got a characteristically dyspepsic wheeler quotation about this. Inquiry discovered on the staff of Allied military government at Naples, a major with one sergeant as his total staff appointed to look after education and the fine arts. Education included re-establishment of the entire Italian school system and it will be appreciated that fine arts scarcely entered the picture. In which time considerable damage would be done for example by American troops in the University of Naples scientific departments. There are stories of American troops driving around Naples in jeeps with stuffed birds from the specimens from the scientific department of the University of Naples mounted on jeeps and British troops had occupied the Royal Palace of Naples depicted down there and caused some admittedly relatively minor damage. Wheelers argument, one that other people had advocated as well, of pushing monuments officers forward with advanced military government parties so they entered occupied territory immediately after combat had passed on had the potential to obviate much of this damage by posting historic science buildings and cultural institutions out of bounds liaising with commanders over possible controlled occupation of such buildings if necessary and making sure they were guarded either by civilian custodians or military personnel if necessary. The third theme was the role of cultural monument officers in liaison with air forces and the role of cultural property protection operational planning and this also reflects allied experience in Italy and represents a development in wheelers thoughts because he hadn't raised it in many of his earlier things but he did raise it in January 1944. Cultural property protection was conceived of by military authorities as relating to occupation but much of the damage was actually being done by bombing and even at the end of 1943 the monuments finance and archive section had no liaison with allied air forces or input into operational planning of any kind. This meant that CPP issues weren't discussed before targets and heritage sites in Sicily and southern Italy were attacked so Palermo Pompeii depicted here this actually the main supply route to Salerno those are the targets that are being aimed at this intersection down here that's the forum of the ancient city of Pompeii there that's the house of the forum there. Benevento Cathedral and the Church of Santa Chiara in Naples as well all of these things concerned monuments officers civilian politicians museum create purators in Rome and so on wheelers wheeler with his military experience was probably more realistic about this kind of thing than some of the civilians admitted that military necessity was actually more of a factor than some of them would admit. So did wheelers views have any impact well yes probably directly on some men like man and McGlagon who later served on the Macmillan community but more generally in contributing to the concerns and calls for change in monuments finance and archives section structures and policies that were being circulated at the same time amongst monuments officers and other military personnel in the field museum professionals and heritage professionals as well and academics in civilian life and some politicians there were never as many monuments officers as wheeler in visage nor were they ever at the kind of rank that he envisaged but they did enter with the foremost truth so for example the liberation of Rome went much better than the liberation of Naples from a heritage perspective monuments officers were assigned to army headquarters and more importantly were involved in air force targeting this is Peter Shilly who was then a RF intelligence officer in the Mediterranean another fellow of the Society of Antiquaries after the war in that case another archaeologist he was responsible for producing documentation like this marking heritage sites on aerial photographs those helped in some respects and they were very famous missions against railway targets in Florence and and against shipping targets in Venice harbour that were designed with monuments finance and archives input to minimize damage to cultural sites but of course the nature of the inaccuracy of second world war bombing meant that any bombing at all stood a high chance of damaging or destroying cultural property even in allied countries such as France has occurred in the summer of 1942 44 other in Normandy here and in the case of Germany there was never any serious attempt to restrict bombing on cultural property protection grounds we were finished his paper with a characteristically dramatic flourish he says my last words to the fellowship to which my own loyalties are focused are these yours is the responsibility of leadership in our science you have no rival or substitute in this matter what have you done about all this up to date i do not know but i do know this your voice did not penetrate to Africa your voice was not heard in Italy have you thought of what is about to occur in France in the lands of Greece in that holy land of central and northern Italy believe me my friends unless we wake up and march ahead unless we anticipate of as we have in the past i am afraid fail adequately to anticipate needs and demands such as those which now encompass us we will cease to honor our fellowship and our fellowship will cease to honor us