There are only two K tiles in a Scrabble set so, besides being a name, it would not be possible unless in conjunction with a Blank. Cast your mind back to circa 600 BC and you will find the prophet Habakkuk railing against God’s injustice.
“O Lord, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!” ( Book of Habakkuk)
Although Bertie Wooster must have been familiar with him – he has a Scripture prize under his belt (an item of attire of which Jeeves might have disapproved) – he escaped my attention until now. It would be probable that he’d crop up at the Ancient World Breakfast Club but actually he made a surprise appearance in Alan Brooke’s diary.
In WW II scientists, mathematicians, inventors, engineers and people with imagination worked to develop things that might win the war. It’s natural to remember the inventions that worked: Barnes Wallis’s skipping bombs (The Dam Busters), Mulberry harbours (D Day), Colossus (Bletchley Park) and the atom bomb. Germany already had a powerful fleet of U-boats and, fortunately only towards the end of the war, invented V-2 rockets.
Attacks on Allied shipping by U-boats were devastating. Convoys taking supplies to Russia or from America to Britain were sunk. RAF ‘planes did not have the range to protect shipping in mid-Atlantic. A polymath, Geoffrey Pyke, had an idea; build a big (600 metres long) floating aircraft carrier where ‘planes can be resupplied. Not a conventional vessel, one made of water, frozen water. This became project Habakkuk.
Imaginative concepts are usually side-lined by unimaginative folk but Pyke (as far as I’m aware he’s only remembered in Dad’s Army) found an ally in Dickie Mountbatten. In August 1943 there was a meeting of the American and British Chiefs of Staff attended by Roosevelt, Churchill and King (Prime Minister of Canada) at the Frontenac Hotel in Quebec. It was stressful for Alan Brooke to try and bring these parties round to his way of thinking and he snapped when Mountbatten wanted to bag time to talk about his latest project: “ to hell with Habbakuk (sic), we are about to have the most difficult time with our American friends and shall not have time for your ice carriers”.
Dickie Mountbatten had one of the qualities of a beagle – he often got his way. Alan Brooke continues:
“Dickie now having been let loose gave a signal, whereupon a string of attendants brought in large cubes of ice which were established at the end of the room. Dickie then proceeded to explain that the cube on the left was ordinary pure ice, whereas that on the right contained many ingredients which made it far more resilient, less liable to splinter, and consequently a far more suitable material for the construction of aircraft carriers. He then informed us that in order to prove his statements he had brought a revolver with him and intended to fire shots at the cubes to prove their properties! As he now pulled a revolver out of his pocket we all rose and discreetly moved behind him. He then warned us that he would fire at the ordinary block of ice to show how it splintered and warned us to watch the splinters. He proceeded to fire and we were subjected to a hail of ice splinters! ‘There,’ said Dickie, ‘that is just what I told you; now I shall fire at the block on the right to show you the difference.’ He fired, and there certainly was a difference; the bullet rebounded out of the block and buzzed around our legs like an angry bee!”
It is abundantly clear from the diaries that Dickie was often off Alan Brooke’s leash but nowhere more so than in the drawing room of the Frontenac Hotel. His pet project never happened because ‘planes got bigger fuel tanks, the Allies were able to use the Azores and other things, like money.
Habakkuk was a prophet in 600 BC. Geoffrey Pyke was a 20th century prophet. He committed suicide in 1948. His obituary in The Times begins:
”The death of Geoffrey Pyke removes one of the most original if unrecognised figures of the present century.“