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Civilian Vivienne Hole, ENSA - Entertainment’s National Service Association ('Every Night Something Awful')
16/01/2024
Second World War Civilian War Dead 1939-1945 United Kingdom Women at war
By Sally McGlone

United Kingdom

Civilian Vivienne Hole
2055301

Vivienne Hole was born in 1925 in Plymouth, Devon, the daughter of William Ewart Gladstone Hole a draper by profession and Gertrude Vida Hole (née Hadley).

Vivienne loved to dance and was trained at the Plymouth School of Dancing, later in Exeter and then the Stafe Dancing Academy in London. She was a talented dancer and holder of seven silver and bronze medals as well as many distinctions and honours diplomas.

By 1939 the family were living at 28, Gold Street, Tiverton, Devon where Vivienne was an early member of the Tiverton Women's Voluntary Service and a worker at the American Red Cross Club canteen.

She decided to become a professional dancer when she was seventeen years old, becoming a chorus dancer specialising in tap and acrobatic dancing. Under the stage name of Vivienne Fayre she formed a dance act with her friend Audrey Mayne. Calling themselves "The Two Maxettes" touring music halls and theatres doing chorus dancing.

At the end of 1944, while at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane both Vivienne and Audrey enrolled in ENSA. The mission of ENSA was to provide entertainment for British Armed Forces personnel serving in WWII.

Once their training was complete Vivienne and Audrey were seconded to different entertainment troupes.

On the 21st December 1944 Vivienne left England with an ENSA company and landed in France. On 23 January 1945 after a performance, she was a passenger in a truck containing stage scenery en-route to her next concert when her driver took a wrong turn and entered a minefield. The truck hit a mine and in the resulting explosion both were badly injured.

Vivienne and her driver were taken to a First Aid Post where the medical officer instructed they be taken by ambulance to a field hospital at Kaiserslauten. Sadly, Vivienne did not survive the journey and died in the ambulance. She was 19 years old. Her body was brought back to a village near Sittard, where the rest of her troupe was based.

The next morning, Vivienne was buried in the small village cemetery near Sittard in a white coffin bought by the villagers. In 1961 her body was exhumed and buried with full military honours in CWGC Sittard War Cemetery plot K.11. Vivienne is also commemorated on a War Memorial in Tiverton, Devon.

Vivienne is the only ENSA member to be killed during the course of WWII.

Vivienne Hole , age 19, died 23 January 1945, when the vehicle she was traveling in hit a mine. (copyright unknown)
Original ENSA Members lapel pin badge (coloured). Original ENSA cap badge (Silver). (copyright unknown)
Headstone with ENSA cap badge engraved, Stittard War Cemetery , Netherlands, Serial K11. (copyright unknown)