A series of short biographies of women and men who served as ambulance drivers and assistants in Chelsea, London, during the Second World War.
It was a chance meeting: 24-year-old volunteer ambulance driver Marcella Mendl, a Romanian Jewish refugee who left Vienna with her mother in 1938, and 67-year-old Ibrahim, Sultan of Johor, an international playboy and one of the richest men in the world.
On 28 October 1940, during an air raid, Marcella took shelter in the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in Mayfair. She had Red Cross flags to sell and Ibrahim, who lived at the Grosvenor, bought one. They started to chat and decided to continue over a cup of coffee when the raid was over. Later that day she introduced him to her mother; in the evening they all dined together. Eight days later they announced their intention to marry and the Daily Mirror featured them on the front page with the headline “Sultan, 67, to Wed Girl of 24”.
Marcella did not look unlike Ibrahim’s lost love Lydia Cecilia “Cissie” Hill, who had been killed only weeks earlier in an air raid on Canterbury. Cissie, 27, from Herne Bay, was a dancer in the cabaret at Grosvenor House and was rumoured to be secretly engaged to Ibrahim, but the relationship had put him under immense political pressure, from both the Malaysian and the British governments.
The marriage to Marcella (Ibrahim’s 6th) was, it seems, more acceptable and took place swiftly in November 1940. “I know he has had a very upsetting time of late and I am going to do all I can to make him happy now,” Marcella told the Mirror, who noted that she spoke 5 languages and had lately been driving ambulances in London.
Marcella Mendl was the daughter of Edgar Mendl, a dealer in airplanes and cars in Romania, and Valerie [last name unknown], a singer. She was also a cousin of British diplomat Sir Charles Mendl.
The 1939 Register lists her at 33 Hasker Street, near Brompton Road. She was probably attached to the King’s Road ambulance station.
Upon converting to Islam, Marcella took the name Fawzia binti ‘Abdu’llah and was known as Lady Marcella Ibrahim. Their daughter, Tunku Miriam, was born in 1950.
The Sultan, an Anglophile like his wife, died at the Grosvenor in 1959 having spent the last two years of his life living in a suite there. Marcella died in 1982.
Under Fire: The Blitz Diaries of a Volunteer Ambulance Driver
“A writer who does their research so thoroughly and then wears their learning so lightly”
“Fabulous blend of diary accounts and social history”
The Blitz in London through the diaries of a volunteer ambulance driver, from dancing at the Grosvenor to incendiary bombs in the roof
In the summer of 1940 June Spencer volunteers for the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service in Chelsea. Every night she writes up the day’s events in her diary, whether it’s driving in a hail of incendiaries, peeling potatoes for the crews, or loading broken and bleeding victims into her ambulance. She also records her hectic social life – dining at the Ritz, dancing at the Café …
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