Bill Ash and his amazing life

Hi Val

Here’s the story.

My friend Bill Ash, who died last week, was a pretty amazing man. He was born in Texas, into genteel poverty. When he was 12, a family friend persuaded him to take the $200 he had saved up for a college education and invest it in stocks and shares. The 1929 stock market crash came a week later. It was that loss, Bill said, that put him on a collision course with capitalism. After taking a degree from the University of Texas, Austin, he took to the road. By now he’d already had a lot of experience, including seeing the bullet riddled bodies of Bonnie and Clyde, the notorious US outlaws.

He left the US and joined the Canadian air force, driven by a strong anti-fascism which he maintained throughout his life. He became a Spitfire pilot and was shot down over France. Imprisoned in an endless succession of the German prison camps, Bill spent most of his time trying to escape. He was a prodigious tunnel digger, although many of his efforts ended in the cooler after he was captured. Many escapes later, he found his way to freedom at the end of the war.

Bill joined the BBC where I knew him. We both worked in the radio drama department, making plays for Radio 3 and Radio 4. Like me, Bill was a script editor, in charge of various strands of the drama output. He was invariably helpful, full of good ideas and immensely encouraging to writers young and old. I remember his comments at script meetings where he would say a play was a useful little filler, not great, but people would listen to it.

Bill was a committed communist and felt that most of the communist regimes and parties of Europe had sold out, so he eventually founded his own party, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist). Bill was also a novelist, with a constant output of very readable work. He was a very modest guy and unless you asked, he would never tell you about his extraordinary life.

Best wishes

Chris

Val says  what an amazing life story and how proud you must have been Chris, to be his friend. Next time I pass the Monument aux Morts in Varen, I will  stop and say a few words for him myself.
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