Domestic Soldiers

by Jennifer Purcell

  Natalie’s reaction to Mary and her mother can only be described as an amusing case of the pot calling the kettle black, for Natalie’s own situation was hardly different from Mrs Williamson’s. At forty-four, Tanner was fit enough herself to be ‘roped into’ war work. Since her son was under fourteen, however, she was exempted from official conscription. Still, as her son was away at school near Manchester, he was rarely at home, and one would think Tanner capable of volunteering, as she thought the Williamsons should have done.

  Natalie may have thought that the difference lay in the Williamsons’ close proximity to the large city of Newcastle. Tanner kept up with the events of the war and wrote about them for M-O, but there was little else she could do but take care of her home, her husband and her son, she explained to M-O, because she lived too far outside a major town. And yet, Natalie regularly found her way to nearby Leeds or Bradford for shopping, lunch and/or dinner, and usually a play or film. In fact, Natalie’s war was rarely spent at home, but rather more often in these two towns or in London.

  At least twice a week, and always on Fridays, Natalie – sometimes accompanied by her mother, who lived up the hill from their cottage – hitched a ride with Hugh into the nearest village. Here, Natalie ordered coal and her groceries for the week, and exchanged library books. On occasion, she ate at the local British Restaurant – non-profit, self-service cafeterias originally named Communal Feeding Centres, where one could get a cheap and generally filling meal.

  There was little else to do in the village beyond the usual weekly errands and so, once these were done, Tanner usually caught a bus into Leeds or Bradford. In Leeds, she spent her mornings in the cafes at either Lewis’ department store or the Great Northern Hotel. Here, Natalie sipped coffee and wrote letters or read until noon, when she moved on to the Gambit cafe for lunch and conversation with other regulars. Some of the Gambit grazers were politically conservative and Tanner, a communist and staunch supporter of the USSR, took great joy in crossing ideological sabres with them. Others were socialites, conscientious objectors and actors. After lunch, Natalie frequented a bookstore where she debated political issues with the bookseller, a member of the Communist Party, and picked up her regular Daily Worker, except from January 1941 to September 1942, when the communist paper was suppressed by the government.

  Next, Tanner usually stopped at the cinema for a movie or two. Because of fears of mass casualties, cinemas and football stadiums had been closed during the first weeks of war, but, after raids failed to materialize in that time, and once people began to complain, cinemas and sporting events soon reopened. George Bernard Shaw called the closures ‘a masterstroke of unimaginative stupidity’ that could only be disastrous to morale, leaving people to ‘cower in darkness and terror’.5 From then on, movies were a popular wartime diversion. Despite the fact that an entertainment tax was levied on seat prices, attendance grew from 1939, when about nineteen million people a week went to the cinema, to 1945, when thirty million allowed themselves a few hours of weekly escape.

  When M-O asked its writers to list their top six movies of 1943, Tanner duly responded with seven. The number-one spot on her list was a tie between two American films: Orson Welles’ follow-up to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Mission to Moscow, a movie that was part of President Roosevelt’s strategy to garner more popular American support for Russia. Tanner saw Mission twice and liked it because, ‘I am always glad when the case for Russia is put by the Capitalist.’ Further, she thought the movie ‘authentic’ and ‘beautifully acted’. Though she felt the story was ‘rather trite’, The Ambersons offered a nice break from war-related films and was well-directed, produced and acted. Casablanca also made her top seven, as did the Russian film, Alexander Nevsky. The M-O directive must have been difficult to answer for Natalie the film buff, who intimated that, ‘Actually I could make the list much longer,’ and proceeded to add another ‘memorable’ seven to her response, such as the British war films Went the Day Well, We Dive at Dawn and Noël Coward’s In Which We Serve. Tanner’s movie-going went far beyond most during the war. About a third of the population said they went to cinema at least once a week, but she easily saw at least two films a week during the war, if not more.

  Although she had seen several films in 1943, and said she enjoyed going to the movies, Nella Last could barely conjure more than three specific film titles for her M-O list: Penn of Pennsylvania (‘I like “pioneer people” … and my forbears [sic] up to my Gran’s time were Quakers’), Yankee Doodle Dandy, and her favourite actress, Greer Garson (of Mrs. Miniver fame) in Random Harvest. Stuck at home, suffering from arthritis, Irene Grant did not see any films in 1943. Edie Rutherford went to the movies very little, but said she enjoyed Bambi because ‘It was good propaganda for animals and against man with his blasted gun.’ She also saw Two Yanks in Trinidad, which ‘infuriated’ her because it underlined the ignorance and indifference of the Americans, who ‘didn’t think there was a war before Pearl Harbour’. Alice Bridges did not go in for movies, but enjoyed dancing and socializing instead. Unsurprisingly, the lonely and isolated Helen Mitchell had ‘not seen a film for three years’.

  Natalie Tanner, the upper middle-class Cambridge-educated housewife, hardly fitted the profile of an avid film-goer during the war, who tended to be younger, urban and working class. She was, in fact, a film connoisseur – a woman who might have had her own film critic’s column in a newspaper, women’s magazine or high-brow film journal. Instead, she reserved her criticism to her social circle and M-O. Like a film critic, she enjoyed, or endured, almost every production that hit the silver screen during the war.

  On one of her usual Friday excursions to Leeds in 1944, she caught the American film, The Hour Before Dawn, an adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel in which a Nazi spy marries an English pacifist to help Hitler plan his invasion of England. Despite the fact that she ‘knew it would be bad’, she went to see it nevertheless. ‘The whole thing was bogus and preposterous,’ she wrote, and the lead actor ‘definitely miscast’. As might be deduced from this commentary, her criticism often went beyond storyline to casting and frequently to direction, lighting and camera angles. For instance, she thought the French film, Le Jour se lève (The Day Rises), ‘well done’, and her analysis of it led her to remark that some British films were equally impressive, if at times they looked ‘poverty stricken’. The problem with British films, she mused, was, ‘They never seem to realize that there is any other position for the camera except bang in front.’

  It is unsurprising that Tanner’s film criticism extended into the art of casting and production, since she and her husband were also intimately involved in the dramatic club at the Civic in Bradford. Her trips into Leeds often included a jaunt into Bradford, where she sometimes took in a rehearsal, a play reading or production at the Civic and then topped the night off with a few beers across the street at the Junction with the theatre set. When Hugh’s busy schedule allowed time, and when the petrol ration allowed for daily drives into Bradford for rehearsals, he sometimes acted in Civic productions. Natalie dabbled in acting herself, taking lessons in December 1939, but it seems that she enjoyed being entertained rather than entertaining.

  In order to have time to shop, discuss politics, graze and drink at local establishments and criticize movies and plays, Natalie was generally unfettered by the obligations of domesticity. In her diary, days spent at home were given short shrift. Diary entries on these days usually mentioned the book she was reading, made reference to the weather and finished with a curt, ‘Cooked. Cleaned.’ On the other hand, when she ventured away from the cottage, Natalie’s writing was much more detailed. Clearly, these excursions were more interesting and important to her. She enjoyed connecting with others, shopping and engaging her mind through film, theatre and the mountain of books she borrowed from the libraries in the nearby village and Leeds.

  Though she could, and on occasion did, cook, Tanner ate many of her meals out. This is especially
true during the times when her son was away at boarding school. When he was home, a flurry of domesticity – cooking, ironing and constantly tidying in James’ wake – took over her routine. Still, his presence did not interfere with Natalie’s trips into town. She simply brought him along, treating him to ice cream at Lewis’, lunch at the Gambit and a movie (or two) of his choice. On occasion, he attended plays at the Civic with his parents and acquired the family penchant for dramatic commentary. When the weather allowed, the family walked the four miles over verdant rolling hills to the village pub for lunch and sometimes stayed for dinner and drinks. The beer flowed easily and locals’ tales of the harvest and town history made for interesting amusement, as, for example, on the night when a good-natured argument broke out over which village installed the first electric light.

  For those with money, eating out was a way to stretch rationing. Individuals were not required to give up rationing coupons when they ate at restaurants, and though the government tried to limit abuses by placing a maximum of five shillings for all meals (except in classy establishments, where such a low-cost meal would never cover their costs), there were ways around this restriction. In theory, restaurants, tea shops, cafes and pubs were given the same level of rations as the ordinary housewife received. In reality, the shortages felt keenly at the local grocer’s or butcher’s were rarely perceived in eating establishments. Indeed, although Natalie sometimes complained about rationing, her family never wanted for much during the war because they frequently ate out. While other people were counting their coupons for a can of salmon in the stores, Natalie could find a delicious Dee salmon off-ration in a restaurant.

  Those with less money who ventured out to restaurants might also find good deals on such delicacies, as Alice Bridges learned bargain hunting after Christmas during the Blitz. Taking a rest at a soda fountain, Alice savoured a 5d Horlicks, which was so rich it ‘tasted like a milk shake’, and indulged in a fresh salmon sandwich for only 2d. It was a rare delight for someone who made do to feed herself and her family on the rationing scheme.

  Many others resented people such as Tanner, who enjoyed themselves regularly at restaurants and cafes. When Nella Last went for a short holiday to the seaside town of Morecambe in 1943, she was shocked to find diners wasting the lavish plates of food served to them. Mentally she reckoned the wastage left by the couple next to them in a restaurant:

  There was a full week’s ration for one – I could not have bought them in fact for 1/- at my butchers. I thought of what could have been done with them – the fat cut off and chopped for a ‘suet’ pudding and the chops braised with vegetables and made into a good lunch for the two of us.

  Edie Rutherford believed that a scheme that allowed such wastage to occur without rationing was patently unfair. Restaurants, she argued, bought up most of the food, leaving the ordinary housewife to feed her family on what was left over. Furthermore, since rationing only guaranteed that certain necessities were available and one still needed to purchase rations, the poor were at a distinct disadvantage. While the rich feasted on game and salmon off-ration, Edie’s sister struggled simply to purchase the rations allotted to her family. Indeed, though the government spent millions yearly in subsidies to keep food prices low, the cost of living had risen by 35 per cent by the end of the war. The rise left Rutherford with little expendable income beyond what went into her larder. The problem was acute for city dwellers, like Edie, who lived in flats without allotments. Unlike Last and Grant, who also felt the pinch of increasing costs, Rutherford could not supplement her diet with home-grown vegetables. Grant had a small back garden that produced some greens for salads, while Last grew various vegetables and kept chickens to ensure a steady supply of eggs.

  Natalie Tanner rarely felt squeezed by rationing. She tended a garden that produced an abundant supply of vegetables and fruit, and nearby farmers provided the Tanners with plenty of eggs and the occasional holiday goose. The only economizing she had to endure was as a result of shortages in the supply chain. Since her husband made out very well from government orders during the war, she had plenty to buy whatever was available, which, she complained, was not much. Therefore, she could afford to spend more on restaurant dining, movies, books, stockings, suits for James, or whatever she found in the stores.

  On the second day of the invasion, 7 June, Edie Rutherford noted that things continued to go well. She went to hospital and found a queue waiting to give blood. The wait was long, but, ‘It is little we do compared to the men who fight.’ On the way home, she stopped in her favourite shoe shop and enquired about lined boots for the winter. They had two pairs of Glastonburys left for £4.8s. She balked at the price, which reflected the 100 per cent purchase tax tacked onto luxuries. ‘I never heard such rubbish,’ she exclaimed. ‘A lined boot is a wise purchase in this foul climate.’ At the greengrocer’s, Edie complained of the exorbitant prices and left the broad beans and new potatoes ‘till they get within reason’.

  Later that week, the military operation across the Channel continued to go well, ‘If one can forget all the men who die and fall hurt.’ As Edie waited for her tram home, a convoy of tanks passed, and tears welled in her eyes as she watched the ‘lads’. By 10 June, over 300,000 troops were on French soil, all beaches had been linked and the first Mulberry harbour installed offshore at Arromanches. The Allies now commanded fifty miles of French coastline. Slowly, inexorably the Allies fought their way inland.

  In Natalie Tanner’s circle, conversation revolved around the ongoing action in Normandy. The bookstore owner in Leeds, who had already lost one son two years before when his transport sank, had one son ‘in it’ and another awaiting deployment in England. An acquaintance at the Gambit was waiting for his papers, and another woman spent all night driving casualties from Dover to Huddersfield. Only the young, it seemed to Natalie, could enjoy the excitement of the invasion. James wrote from boarding school saying, ‘It is very good about the second front. It is the eighth wonder of the world.’ ‘It must be nice to be 11½ years old,’ Natalie remarked.

  After D-Day, news of Allied successes came fast and furious. Edie Rutherford complained that all the information was enough to give one ‘mental indigestion’. On 20 July, an assassination attempt nearly took Hitler’s life. ‘What a pity that bomb didn’t get Hitler,’ Rutherford lamented in her diary. The bomb had been placed in the presence of Hitler and other high-ranking officers at their headquarters, Wolfsschanze (the Wolf’s Lair), deep in the East Prussian woods at Rastenburg by the leader of the German opposition, known as the Schwarze Kapelle (Black Orchestra), Colonel Count von Stauffenberg.

  The roots of the assassination attempt against Hitler went deep. As early as 1938, when Hitler announced his intention to go to war for territorial expansion, those in the army who did not agree with Hitler’s policies were prepared to remove the Führer from power. As for young, thirty-three-year-old Count von Stauffenberg, his dislike of the Nazi leader reached even further back, to the Night of Long Knives in 1934, when Hitler orchestrated the deaths of the leadership of the SA (Stormtroopers), including Ernst Rohm. His hate deepened with Kristallnacht in 1938, when a concerted attack on Jews erupted across Germany. Stauffenberg expressed his assessment of Hitler on the eve of the Führer’s triumphal entry into a prostrate Paris in June 1940, when he told fellow conspirators that Hitler was neither a great war leader nor a great law maker. Instead, the Count asserted, the man only desired destructive and all-consuming power. Hitler’s lust for power could only destroy Germany, the conspirators reasoned.

  After several failed plans to assassinate Hitler in the past, the recent success of the Allies in Normandy convinced the Schwarze Kapelle that the time had come to try once again. Operations in the east also signalled the right moment, too: Russians were quickly moving towards Berlin, and the conspirators wanted most of all to stave off utter defeat at the hands of the Soviets. So, Stauffenberg, summoned to headquarters to give a report to German High Command, armed the Britishmad
e bomb and placed it in the conference room. After the meeting started, the Count excused himself. Outside, Stauffenberg waited for the fireworks to start. Not long afterwards, a massive explosion ripped through the building. Convinced that Hitler had been killed, the Count quickly left the base to avoid detection and made his way to Berlin, where the Schwarze Kapelle were to complete their coup d’etat by blaming the murder on the SS and taking over the reins of government.

  Although the explosion brought down the roof of the building, destroyed the hulking conference table and blew out windows, and though several highranking officers were killed, Stauffenberg’s belief that he’d killed Hitler was incorrect. Fire from the blast singed Hitler’s hair, his right arm was temporarily paralysed, a huge gash cut across his face and he suffered severe shrapnel wounds to his back, buttocks and legs; even the force from the explosion ripped off one of the Führer’s trouser legs, but he escaped with his life.

  Reading the news a few days later, Edie Rutherford thought it rather comical that Hitler had had his ‘pants blown off him’. The Germans had no sense of humour, ‘not as we understand it anyway’, she told M-O. No self-respecting Briton would ever admit to having their pants blown off, Edie reasoned, ‘as he would be ragged for the rest of his life’.

  Hitler certainly did not take the attempt as a joke. He expected retribution. Despite their failure to kill the German leader, in the hours after the blast, the Schwarze Kapelle still had a good chance of successfully completing their coup. By midnight, however, the game was up; the leaders of the movement, including Stauffenberg, had been apprehended, shot and dumped in an unmarked grave. Over the coming weeks, hundreds, if not thousands, fell under the veil of suspicion and were summarily dealt with.

  Despite, or perhaps because of, Hitler’s raving retribution after the attempt, some people were convinced that the plot, successful or not, signalled the beginning of the end for Germany. At a RAF base in Normandy on 23 July, Churchill declared that recent events were ‘grave signs of weakness in Germany. They are in a great turmoil inside. Opposite you is an enemy whose central power is crumbling.’6 Many perceived in the assassination attempt an end to Nazi domination over the German people and the end of the war. Irene Grant was one of the optimistic. Germany was in chaos, the Russians were advancing in the east and the troops in France were pushing on. ‘War! Soon be over!’ Irene exclaimed.