Alfred Pullman
Alfred Outram Pullman
Early life
Pullman was the only son of Major Alfred Hopewell Pullman, of the
Pullman was born in May 1916 and baptized at St Paul's, Woking, on 10 June 1916.[citation needed] His father died in 1942.[2] The young Pullman was educated at Cheltenham College and then trained at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, for a career in the British Army, graduating on 30 January 1936, aged nineteen.[3] Two weeks before, on 16 January, his grandmother Emilie Marshall had died, leaving an estate valued at £9,207, equivalent to £665,539 in 2021, with probate being granted to his mother.[4]
Career
Immediately after Sandhurst, in January 1936, Pullman was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the
In 1952, Pullman was posted to
Private life
On 7 April 1945, at St Andrew's, Kirby Bedon, Norfolk, Pullman married Audrey Evelyn Merrifield, a WAAF Officer, the daughter of the Rev. Sidney Merrifield, Rector of the parish.[citation needed] Their son Philip was born in October 1946, and a second son, Francis, in 1949.[citation needed]
In October 1954, after her husband's death, Audrey Pullman married Henry J. Dodgson,[citation needed] known as Johnnie, another Royal Air Force pilot. After Audrey's death in 1989, papers came to light which suggested that at the time of Pullman's death in 1954 he and his wife had separated and were seeking a divorce.[11]
Later criticism
Pullman's son Philip became a fantasy novelist, and in 2008 he commented on his father "I have never fully understood why he got the medal. As far as I can make out, it was an accident. His plane crashed... Given what we now know about British behaviour during the insurgency, my father probably doesn't come out of this with very much credit, judged by the standards of modern liberal progressive thought."[14] He has also claimed that his father had gambling debts and might have killed himself, and also that he suspected the death had been faked and that his father was "alive somewhere in hiding with a different name".[11]
Notes
- ^ "MARRIAGES: Pullman—Marshall — On the 16th June, at St Paul’s, Woking" in The Standard (London), 19 June 1915, p. 1, col. 1
- ^ a b "Major A. H. Pullman D.S.O." (obituary) in The Queen’s Own Gazette, no. 824, May 1942, pp. 81, 86–87; "Pullman, Alfred Hopewell", at militaryarchive.co.uk, p. 431 Archived 5 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 2 May 2020
- ^ a b The London Gazette, Issue 34251, 31 January 1936, pp. 670, 671
- ^ MARSHALL Emilie Susannah Loder at probatesearch.service.gov.uk, accessed 2 May 2020; The London Gazette, Issue 34277, 24 April 1936, p. 2654
- ^ The London Gazette, Issue 35515, 7 April 1942, p. 1563
- ^ The London Gazette, Issue 38159 (Supplement), 26 December 1947, p. 6162
- ^ The London Gazette, Issue 39189 (Supplement), 3 April 1951, p. 1750
- ^ Claire Squires, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy: A Reader's Guide (Continuum, 2003), p. 10
- ^ The London Gazette, Issue 40074 (Third Supplement), 8 January 1954, p. 297
- ^ Flight, 9 July 1954, p. 64
- ^ a b c Laura La Bella, Philip Pullman (Rosen Publishing Group Inc, 2013), pp. 10–12
- ^ "PULLMAN, Alfred Outram Flt Lt DFC, Service Number 117412", service record card at ancestry.co.uk accessed 2 May 2020: "Cemetery Nyeri Cemetery Kenya Grave Number 50" (subscription required)
- ^ The London Gazette, Issue 40219, 29 June 1954, p. 3829
- ^ a b Cole Moreton, "Philip Pullman: His dark materials" in The Independent, 25 May 2008, accessed 2 May 2020