by Shirley Mann
But as Lily arrived in Preston on that cold November day, she shivered with excitement as it suddenly occurred to her that war could offer her the challenge of a lifetime and open up opportunities that she could never have envisaged.
The panel of RAF interviewers had been impressed with the fact Lily had taken her Highers and she watched with excitement as the admin officer stamped her application with the word ‘Approved.’ She could not believe it, she was going to be a WAAF, a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Airforce, Aircraftwoman Mullins, ACW Mullins for short. Once she got home, she carefully laid out her uniform on her bed, proudly showing her mother the neat piles of shirts, ties, tunics, skirts and thick, grey, ugly Lisle stockings. Ginny perched on the bed, fingering the blue-grey woollen cloth of the straight skirt.
While Lily paraded up and down in her navy blue bloomers, Ginny Mullins tried to look enthusiastic, until she got up to look out of the window to disguise brushing a tear from her cheek. Lily was too busy fiddling with the buttons on the wrong side to notice.
‘They’ve put them on this side so I’ve got space for all my medals,’ she explained proudly.
Ginny looked down and busied herself with the duffel canvas bag that was to hold her daughter’s worldly goods.
‘No, Mum, they all have to be put in in a certain order. There’s a list somewhere.’ Lily started to ferret underneath the neat pile, upsetting things she had taken off onto the floor. Ginny tutted and leaned down to pick up her daughter’s discarded civvy clothes.
‘They’ll have to be put away until the end of the war,’ Lily told her. ‘We wear uniform all the time now.’
Ginny gathered up the familiar skirt and pretty top and stroked them. She had a sudden premonition that these would be the last memories of her little girl, and she looked sadly around the room. It was going to be horribly tidy.
The uniform was quite scratchy material, Lily discovered, and the shoes were certainly going to hurt. She spent hours in front of the mirror, pretending to salute, giggling to herself as she peered up from the cap peak in what she hoped was a superior manner. Patch, the Jack Russell, sat to attention at the bottom of the bed and looked suitably impressed.
*
Lily had been told to report to her first training post at Innsworth in Gloucestershire, and the last few hours before she left were surreal. She raced around at home, bumping into her mother, who was constantly behind her, trying to sneak a hot water bottle or a writing pad into Lily’s bag. Then the whole family rushed for the bus to London Road. Her dad ceremoniously handed over some plasters for marching practice but then made sure the farewells were brief and perfunctory, which Lily appreciated. She looked back over her shoulder as she moved along the crowded platform. Looking smaller by the minute, her mum was clutching her dad’s arm and her brother was trying to grin. Lily had an urge to turn around and run home. But all around her, other young people were leaving to go to their posts. She was just one more.
In a gesture of defiance that she was sure would frighten the Germans, she had purposefully put on the tiny residue of bright red lipstick she had pinched from her mother’s drawer, working on the principle that her mother was already married and did not need any help. All around her there were people with kit bags, greatcoats and pieces of paper clutched in their hands. The scene was grey. The skies, the uniforms and the hastily gathered bags – even people’s faces.
The red lipstick had been a good decision.
As usual, Lily looked for something to take her mind off the current situation. There were four young soldiers with kit bags standing to one side as she swept in an unconvincing swagger towards carriage C of the Birmingham train on the first stage of her journey. One caught her eye, making her pull up the collar of her new unwieldy greatcoat. He called out, ‘Pucker up love, gi’ us a kiss to send us off.’
She hurriedly turned towards the train door and stepped up onto the train, but her bag got stuck in the doorway, leaving her tugging and pulling while the boys laughed.
Finally, one of them stepped forward and said, ‘’Ere, let me ‘elp. It’s all them nylons you got in there, in’t it?’
Lily was torn between gratitude and rebuke, but he was good-looking and she ended up giving him a lop-sided grimace.
She swung gracelessly into the carriage, narrowly missing a woman with a cat in a basket. The cat hissed at her and Lily snarled back, baring her teeth. She caught sight of the rest of the group of squaddies on the platform grinning at her.
‘If that’s the best we’ve got to lead this country to victory, we’re in serious trouble,’ Lily thought, aware they were probably thinking the same thing.
Lily put her bag on the rack above and fell back onto a torn, upholstered seat, squashing in between a snoring soldier and an elderly man in a faded tweed jacket.
She looked round at the crowded carriage. Everywhere there were sleeping servicemen – in corridors, on seats, on floors. There was a mêlée of kitbags and the air hung heavy with the persistent fog of cigarettes. Lily was lucky to get a seat. She adjusted her collar and sat up a bit straighter. She caught sight of one soldier with a bandage over his eye and another with a sling. For the first time, Lily felt a moment of panic. What had she done? She could be going into work with her tin of sandwiches instead of heading off to fight a war. But then she shook herself and inwardly repeated the same speech she had given her mother – that Manchester had been hell during the Blitz and it was not over yet; that she would be more worried about her family than herself and also that she would be safer on a camouflaged airfield with planes that could fight back, than she would be at home.
Lily suddenly felt very important and got out her Hemingway novel bought from the station newsagent. Her English teacher had always mithered her to read it and the man in a pin-striped suit next to her had looked impressed when she picked it up so she had bought it. Its title, For Whom the Bell Tolls, suddenly seemed a harbinger of doom.
‘I wish I’d got a mag instead,’ she thought ruefully, but she lifted her head back, looked down her nose at the dull cover and opened the first page.
When the train started to slow down for Birmingham, Lily opened her eyes. She peered out of the window with interest. The city was very different from Manchester or even Chester, which she had passed through on her way to North Wales for childhood holidays. Lily wondered how the girls who were being sent abroad were coping. She picked up her book from where it had fallen onto the carriage floor and stood up to get off to make her connection to Gloucester. In the WVS canteen, she pushed her way past all the other service people who were looking for their metal mugs. Lily rooted her mug from the top of her bag. In a moment of shamefaced admission, she said a quiet ‘thank you’ to Mrs Cook. The Mullins’s neighbour had been relentless in regaling them with advice from her superior position as the mother of an established WAAF, but it did mean Lily was prepared and she took her mug to the front of the queue for a lukewarm tea. There was only just enough time to drink it though before her train to Gloucester pulled into the platform. The guard checked her rail warrant and she was on her way again. She looked round, trying to see whether anyone else looked like a new WAAF, but there were not many women, except for factory workers in boiler suits with turbaned scarves over their hair. Two of them smiled at the young recruit and leaned across the carriage to offer her a sugar sandwich. She munched on it gratefully, realising she had forgotten to have breakfast. The countryside blurred past her, places she had never been. Her heart suddenly fluttered at the enormity of the adventure before her. This train, too, was packed and a crowd of experienced troops were chattering in easy camaraderie. Lily felt self-conscious and very much the new girl.
She had to concentrate from Birmingham to count the now-unsigned stations, aimed at confusing any invading enemy, and smiled to see other passengers doing the same. A navy lad, who had been sitting on the floor near Lily, suddenly jumped up as the train slowed once more. He asked the elderly man opposite where they were an
d swore loudly when he was told ‘Gloucester’, prompting a sharp look from the man who glanced meaningfully at the women in the carriage. The naval cadet muttered an apology, grabbed his kit bag and climbed over the sleeping service people who were crammed in every corner of the compartment. Lily stood up, flustered.
‘Want me to get your bag down, Miss?’ her elderly fellow passenger asked.
‘Oh yes please,’ said Lily, glancing in the mirror to see her hair was messed up and there was no sign of the rebellious lipstick.
While he wrestled with her bag, Lily straightened her hair and quickly put on another layer of Rosy Red.
‘This could be my first offence,’ she suddenly thought, pursing her lips. ‘I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to look like a human being or not, but hell’s bells, I need this.’
This was it. She had arrived at Gloucester. It was November 1942, and, as far as Lily Mullins was concerned, the war was waiting to be won by a young woman from the north of England.
Chapter 4
Danny leaned back against the huge tyre of his transporter, then quickly sat forward again. The metal and rubber were too hot, and burned through his uniform.
‘Damn, one day I’ll remember I’m in the desert and that it’s nearly 100 degrees,’ he said out loud, to no one in particular.
Danny sighed, leaned back slowly this time and drew a long breath on the strong African cigarette he had bartered for in the small village they had just passed through. It had cost him two garibaldi biscuits, but it was worth it. He took a sip from his tin mug of the liquid they jokingly called tea and put the cooler metal against his brow, rolling it from side to side. He swilled the liquid round his mouth to eradicate the taste of sand. Like a man dying of thirst who tortures himself with an image of a glass of water, Danny closed his eyes to recall a cold winter’s day in Manchester. The painful jolt in his stomach was worth it if it took him back for just one second to Lyons Corner House where he had tasted a better tea . . . when he had had the nerve to imagine a future for himself and the beautiful girl with the deep golden hair opposite him. She had no idea she was so funny, sat there, so prim and proper in her new red velour hat. He had to be disciplined with these thoughts; they were like barbed wire. It was strange, he only allowed himself to think of home . . . and Lily . . . when he needed a moment’s escape.
The week had been a bad one. They had lost two tanks and a transporter just like his in air strikes, and several men had been killed or injured. He had watched the medics running down the convoy, stretchers folded and knew that, once again, he had been lucky and that the planes had attacked the start of the convoy not the middle.
At the beginning of 8th Army’s trek through the desert, he had scrabbled for cover in the sand whenever the air strikes began, but then one day, as he looked up at the swarm of enemy aircraft, he decided that if one of the bullets had his name on it, then there was little he could do and he may as well go quietly. Once he had decided that his fate was not in his own hands, it had all become remarkably easy.
Danny looked up at the pure blue sky and scanned it for aircraft. Nothing. He could enjoy his smoke in peace. They had been told they had an hour to rest before having to move on but being stationary in the open desert was always a risk, so he reasoned there must be a problem up ahead with some of the machinery. The sand was proving to be a dangerous enemy with grains constantly clogging up working parts of engines, even in the new American Grant tanks.
None of them had any idea where they were any more and the endless dunes gave them no clues. Danny felt he was a pawn in a big game of chess that someone else was controlling. While thousands of men fought fiercely just hours in front of him, Danny’s convoy followed behind, with the tracks of the huge tanks rattling backwards and forwards, never allowing him to forget there were tons of metal just inches from the back of his neck. He carefully shifted through the twenty-one gears of the monster he was driving and thundered through the desert, moving when the truck in front moved and eating and sleeping when they were allowed. He had been called up two years earlier and had enjoyed the early part when he was training, taking advantage of the opportunities to learn new skills and become a competent mechanic. He had even learned to cook. But since he had been shipped out to Africa, the fighting had been intense, the progress slow and communications chaotic, and the enormous beasts of tank transporters were easy targets. Since the dreadful defeat at Tobruk, morale had been low and Danny had almost lost faith in the commanders. But as a lowly Tommy he had learned to keep his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself.
The hot sun and a fly gently buzzing around his head lulled Danny into a doze. This would never do, he needed to be alert, ready to move, but when he peered round the front of his vehicle he saw a long line of trucks standing still and shimmering in the sunlight. Time for a letter to Lily, he decided, and pulled out his pencil and thin writing paper.
28th November 1942
Dear Lily,
I thought I would write to you while I have a quiet moment. I suspect you’re shivering in the cold but believe me, a bit of cold during the day would go down very well with me. The days are so hot and then the temperatures at night really plummet and it’s hard to keep a cool head when you’re sweating like a pig, but the lads are all trying to make the best of it and as the sergeant keeps telling us there’s no point moaning and as long as you still have a ciggie and match, life can’t be that bad.
Thanks for your letter. I’m really pleased you’ve joined the WAAFs, although as a Tommy, obviously I feel hurt for the army that they won’t benefit from your varied talents! Remembering our trip out to Alderley Edge when you swore it was a right turn back into town when actually that path led over the Edge, I am sure the RAF will value your ability to read maps. Please don’t tell the pilots whether to turn left or right! They could end up in Scandinavia.
Time’s flown for me, it’s been so busy, and I tend to think of you still sat at your desk in Liners. Manchester seems a million miles away. I’d tell you how many miles, but they would blank it out . . . I always smile when I think of your arched eyebrows and disdainful looks when I tried to perch on your desk. I tell myself you were really pleased to see me; please don’t tell me if you weren’t. It would ruin my day.
I don’t suppose you know where you’re going and you wouldn’t be able to tell me anyway, but you’ll have to train first and that involves a ridiculous amount of marching up and down. Don’t forget the plasters! I hope you meet some nice girls. The lads here are a good bunch, although the sarge can be a bit of a pain in the neck. He worries about stupid little details like smart uniforms and shiny boots, when we’re covered in sand, sweat and sand-flies. Actually, perhaps I’d better not say too much about that, he’s probably the one who reads these letters before we send them. (Sorry, Sarge, only joking about the uniform. I will obviously get the butler to launder and press it before tomorrow, I promise!)
We’ve just eaten. At least I think it was a meal. They can be pretty sparse at times but there are a lot of us to feed and the field kitchens aren’t exactly state of the art. We all fill up on potatoes as much as we can and Mum occasionally gets a parcel of goodies over to me, which is so welcome, I can’t tell you. She sent corned beef the other day and I broke the stupid little key that opens it. I was so mad, I had to use a screwdriver to break it open. It was quite an operation, but worth it. I never knew I would feel so strongly about corned beef. But you know the tins are the German’s secret weapons, don’t you? So many Tommies bleed to death from trying to open the damned tin, it saves them a fortune in bombs!
There has been one bit of good cheer though. We got some beer! It was flown over to us to boost morale. Someone said it had been flown strapped to the wings of fighters. No wonder it spurted out of the bottles! It tasted great, even though it was a bit warm. We were given it by some ENSA glamour girls. They even gave us some cigs. I’m not sure which was more popular, the beer and cigs or the sight of some very pretty
girls in floral dresses and straw hats!
I get letters from the girls – both Pam and Maureen are fine. They’re in the navy, as you know, but seem to be home port based at the moment, so that’s good. I think Mum and Dad are fed up with rattling round that drafty house, but at least they’ve got Mutt for company. His constant demand for titbits keeps them occupied.
Anyway, I’d better go, it’s an early start and a long day tomorrow. I think of you often. Your smiling face keeps me going when I get fed up.
I know you think you’re sophisticated and a woman of the world, but it’s a dangerous war out there, so do keep your head down.