Daisy's Wars

by Meg Henderson

  ‘Besides, Dotty was absolutely stuck on you and Dotty is a good friend and a good person, I didn’t want to do anything that would hurt her. I’m really surprised she’s not here.’

  Still no reaction, and Daisy lowered her head and wept.

  For a week Daisy sat there beside Frank every day, reading newspapers to him, reading books, telling him stories about her childhood, about Bernard the ‘Seaham Scab’, Granny Niamh and how she had been named by the old woman, and her mother’s wonderful voice that had been passed on to her sister, Kay. She even went to the local library and looked up the Darling Downs so that she could talk to him about his home. Then, with her leave up, she had to head back to Langar and decided to stop off at Rose Cottage, just for a couple of hours.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Mar screeched. ‘You look like hell!’

  ‘London,’ Daisy replied.

  ‘Well, you’ve obviously been partying hard by the look of you. Good for you, Daisy! And have you heard about that daughter of mine?’

  Daisy shook her head. That was really why she was there, to find out why Dotty wasn’t with Frank.

  ‘Her lot were sent to France to bring the injured back, and she married one of the doctors before she went!’ Mar giggled delightedly. ‘Have you ever heard the likes of it? I don’t even know the bounder’s name, all she said in her telegram was “Married a doctor, will introduce you when we get back.” What do you make of that?’ She threw her head back and filled the room with laughter.

  Well, that was Daisy’s question answered, not that it made much difference. Frank might have been free, but he was no better, he could still die. Mar was disappointed that she couldn’t stay and sent her back to Langar in the Rolls, thus preserving her reputation at the base, as did the fact that she had to be wakened when she got there. That Daisy, they’d say.

  The next weekend she hitched down to the hospital again and spent three days reading to Frank, but there was still no movement and no improvement either, the nurses told her. As she was leaving a doctor stopped her and took her to a side room. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in a month, and he probably hadn’t.

  ‘Look, love,’ he said wearily, ‘this chap you’ve been sitting with.’

  ‘Frank, yes,’ she replied.

  ‘Well, I have to tell you, he’s not going to make it.’

  She stifled a cry and he put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off; old habits died hard.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said kindly, ‘he’s pretty badly burned on the outside, as you can see, but what you can’t see is how badly he’s burned inside. He was breathing in the scorching fumes as the plane went down, you see, and then there are the shrapnel injuries.’

  She looked up at him. ‘So?’ she said defiantly.

  ‘Look, I’ll do a deal with you. If he’s still here in a fortnight, I’ll call you. You can’t go on doing whatever it is you do and hitching down here to sit beside him. You’ll exhaust yourself. Where are you based?’

  ‘Langar,’ she said. ‘I’m an RTO.’

  He looked confused.

  ‘A Radio Telephone Operator. I work in the tower, landing planes on their way back from missions,’ she explained.

  ‘Well, that’s pretty important work, and pretty exhausting, too, I should think. You’ll need your wits about you. Look, I’ll leave a message with the Admin people there if this chap improves, but I’ve seen it so many times over the last few years, and there’s no way he’ll make it. I’m sorry. You would be prosecuted for keeping an animal alive in these circumstances. Sorry,’ he said again quickly, ‘bad taste. I do apologise.’

  She nodded. ‘It’s probably true, though,’ she said sadly.

  The next two weeks passed slowly without any word, though she went to Admin every day to check there were no messages for her. Then another three days passed and she couldn’t stand it any longer, so she risked being charged by waiting till her officer went off to lunch then nipping in to use her phone. She got through to the hospital, then through to the ward he had been on.

  ‘It’s RAF Langar here,’ she said confidently. ‘We’re trying to trace a wounded Spitfire pilot, an Australian called Frank Moran.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the nurse, ‘we have no one here of that name.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Frank hadn’t made it. Frank was dead.

  Two days later a letter arrived from Frank. It had been written before his last mission and been delayed by events, as mail usually was. Daisy had been in the habit of returning his letters unopened for some time now, but this one came as a shock, his final letter, so she tore open the envelope and unfolded the pages.

  ‘Dear Daisy, I haven’t written for a while, but I have a mad feeling that I might not get another chance. Things are pretty hectic at the moment. I just wanted you to know I have never stopped caring about you, despite making an ass of myself the last time we met. We didn’t get to meet often, but I knew from that first time, and I think you did too, there’s something there, Daisy, though I can’t explain it. When this is over, if I make it, I want you to come back to Dalby with me, and I won’t give up. I think about you going home with me a lot, but then you know that, and I think about my family and everyone I took for granted while I was there. Had a letter from my Uncle Kevin the other day, my father’s brother, he’s always been there in the background, part of my life, but I don’t think I ever took much notice of him before. Just the usual family stuff, but the thought of him bothering to write to me really choked me up, he has his own sons fighting in faraway places yet he took the time. He’s the local ice man, delivers chunks of ice to houses for their ice chests, goes around in a cart with a canvas cover with a thing like scissors, only with clamps, that open wide enough to stretch across the big blocks of ice. People buy either a full or a half block and Uncle Kevin hits a line in the middle with the back of his scissors and splits the block perfectly. You won’t know about ice chests, they’re rectangular with legs that keep them off the floor, and there’s a lid on top that you lift to put the ice on a shelf. Below there’s a cabinet for food and a tray underneath catches the melted water. You don’t have anything like that here, your weather isn’t hot enough. Our ice chest at home is made of wood and Uncle Kevin brings us ice every second day for a few pennies. All the local children follow him around to get handfuls of the leftover ice chips. When I was a nipper it was my job to empty the water from the tray underneath our ice chest, but I always forgot, so we had the cleanest floor for miles around. Anyway, you’ll meet him yourself soon enough and have your own ice chest too, if I get through this.’

  She folded the letter, put it back in its envelope and sat for a moment on her bed. So that was that. She closed her eyes to stop the tears and ripped the letter to shreds. Just as well you heeded your own advice about not getting involved with Fly Boys then, Daisy, she thought, even if no one else had. Think of the state you’d be in if you hadn’t kept him at arm’s length. So, good for you. Frank’s dead. C’est la guerre, Daisy, c’est la rotten bloody guerre.

  19

  News that the end of the war was nigh had been heard so often that no one really believed it, but suddenly it was true. After D-Day the Allies fought on and by December 1944 France and Belgium had been liberated. With the end in sight, the ‘Big Three’, America, Britain and Russia, met at Yalta on the Crimea in February 1945 to carve up post-war Europe. Russia would carry off the trophies of Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Baltics; Greece, Yugoslavia and Austria would be shared between all three; and France, Luxembourg, Holland, Denmark and Norway would fall within the influence of America and Britain, without the people of any of those countries being given a say. Germany would be occupied by the ‘Big Three’, plus France, and the city of Berlin would be split into four districts, under the control and administration of the four countries.

  Meanwhile the fighting went on and hundreds of thousands more were still to die.

  On
24th April 1945, the last major German unit surrendered 200,000 men, though German soldiers were resisting elsewhere. Western POWs were, in the main, set free and made for Allied lines, but rather than let concentration-camp prisoners go free, the sick and starving were marched in front of the hard-driving Allied armies. Thousands more died as a result of the enforced marches and others were killed by their captors in an attempt to get rid of the evidence. Advancing Russian and American Forces liberated camps and found, to their horror, bodies piled high for urgent disposal as the killings were accelerated. General Eisenhower, touring Ohrdruf Camp, ordered local German citizens to be forced to see what had been going on, allegedly without being noticed, in their own backyard. The Russians, who had suffered a great deal in the war, were so feared by the Germans that many took their lives rather than fall into their hands, but even so, in another demonstration of male power, 100,000 German women were raped by the Red Army after the fall of Berlin, and Eastern Germany was sacked of anything of value.

  On 26th April, German units in Holland and Denmark surrendered, and four days later Hitler married his mistress then they both took cyanide. Hitler, for good measure, also shot himself, and as Goebbels arranged for the bodies of the bridal couple to be burned, his wife killed their children and prepared their own suicides.

  Meanwhile, all over Europe the Germans were laying down arms, and on 7th May 1945 Germany officially signed the instrument of surrender. The war was over. VE Day, Victory in Europe Day, was declared on 8th May 1945. On many RAF stations bonfires were lit to celebrate, and there was singing and dancing all night. At RAF Oakley, the New Zealand Squadron emerged in full Maori dress, descended on the WAAF billets and carried them out of their beds, while chanting, singing and banging dustbin lids. In other places WAAFs ‘relocated’ potatoes from cookhouses and roasted them over open fires, marvelling at a sight they hadn’t seen in six years – fully lit windows all around. Others did mile-long congas around their bases and beyond, got drunk and headed for the streets of London, against orders, to swell the numbers celebrating there.

  Dances and parties were held in bases all over the country, but the feelings of joy weren’t universal. To many the gaiety was forced. Some felt there was little to celebrate, among them Daisy, who grieved for those who weren’t there. She thought of Eileen in Glasgow with Calli’s daughter and knew how she would be feeling, of her own family and Joan, of Calli, Bruiser and all the other boys who had died for this moment, including the ones who died with her voice in their ears and whose voices she would carry for the rest of her life. There would be little celebration in so many families, she thought, just renewed sorrow for sons, husbands, fathers and brothers.

  And for Frank, of course. In a place called Dalby in the Darling Downs area of Queensland, the Moran family would be thinking of Frank, and they would never know she was sharing their grief. What was it Mrs Armstrong had said all those years ago? ‘Don’t let the love of your life get away from you, Daisy, no matter what anyone else thinks or says.’ But Daisy had, she now realised, and she couldn’t quite get her head round the concept of celebration.

  Not that the world was entirely free. The Japanese and Burma still had to be dealt with, and while that battle was still raging, Operation Exodus got underway. The Lancs, Flying Fortresses, Ansons, Dakotas and every other plane of the RAF and USAAF were no longer delivering bombs to Europe but delivering human beings from it, bringing liberated POWs home after years of incarceration, one base dealing with 5400 arrivals in one day. Twelve boilers kept going throughout the daylight hours provided hot water for endless cups of tea and for washing, and inside hangar areas were set aside for the returning prisoners to sit quietly, read newspapers and listen to music while the ever-necessary forms were completed. No one could be accepted as safely home, it seemed, unless a piece of paper said so, and WAAF typists worked till their hands ached and cramped to get the bewildered men home as fast as they could.

  When the men were fed the girls couldn’t help noticing them quietly stealing an extra bit of food and hiding it in their pockets, unable to believe that it would be free from now on, unable to believe that they were free. Most of all they wanted to talk to someone, to anyone, and the WAAFs listened patiently, with no one complaining about long hours or watching the clock. How could they, when their main preoccupation during the war had been getting enough leave and nylons and avoiding parades? They had done more than that, of course, but they were only human and found being faced with the results of inhumanity a humbling, almost overpowering experience.

  Most of the POWs had been reasonably treated, but not all, and the sight of some of the men would live with the WAAFs till the end of their days. They were like walking skeletons, their bones showing clearly through what was left of their grey skin, and their poor bodies, unwashed for years, created a smell few could forget, even years later. They were deloused, washed, given a medical and then taken by bus to secret locations to be given clothes and allowed to rest before being reunited with their relatives. Then, inevitably, there were so many little personal tragedies for men who had suffered more than enough. Those who returned clutching ‘Dear John’ letters at least knew what they would find, unlike others who only discovered when they arrived home that wives and sweethearts had gone off with someone else.

  After the atom bomb had been dropped on Japan, the final surrender of the Japanese was signed on 2nd September 1945, VJ-Day, Victory in Japan, and the war was finally and completely over. For WAAFs on operational bases, like Daisy, everything seemed to stop. There were no more planes flying missions, and before they knew it, RAF and WAAF demobilisation was taking place. By the end of December 125,000 men had been demobbed and 45,000 women, and the process went on into 1946, on a first-in, first-out basis.

  Married WAAFs were demobbed first, then the others waited for their turn to be bussed to Birmingham and turned into civilians again, leaving them with mixed feelings. Since operational flying had ended the military mind had reasserted itself with the urgent need for parades, route marches, PE sessions and the absolute necessity to have every item of kit as polished as possible and laid out for inspection whenever those above felt like seeing them.

  It wasn’t what the girls had joined up to do, it wasn’t what they excelled at, so on the whole they were keen to go back to civvy street. Many had married during the war years and were eager to start normal married life and raise children. It was a fresh start, but adjusting wasn’t always easy. Throughout the war they had taken on huge responsibilities and performed them well for years, and now they were expected to go back into the home to become housewives and mothers.

  The returning men would, naturally, want to take up employment again, it was only right, so the women who had trained as mechanics, engineers and had driven trucks and ambulances found that though they still had their skills they were no longer able to use them. They were once again ‘only’ women.

  When the time came for Daisy and Pearl to go to Birmingham to be demobbed they felt as bemused at the prospect as the others. They were taken to a large hall with tables around the walls that they had to work their way around, clockwise, being given fifty-six clothing coupons at one, a fourteen-day ration card at the next, then fourteen-days’ pay plus credits and gratuity, which for Daisy amounted to £42 – she was rich! Plus there were two further postal drafts for fourteen days each, leave passes and £12 10s for the purchase of a civilian outfit, though they were allowed to keep the uniform they stood in. Little did they know at the time that a female adviser at the Treasury had argued long and hard against giving them such an outrageous amount, saying that a very good civilian outfit could be had for £8 15s.

  They also went through medicals, and Sadie, one of the girls from Daisy’s hut, was in line in front of her. The examining doctor was Polish, a small man who spoke heavily accented English. ‘Show me your tiths,’ he instructed, whereupon Sadie undid her bra and obliged without a moment’s hesitation.

  ‘No, no! Tiths! Tith
s!’ screeched the little doctor, pointing distractedly at his teeth as the other girls giggled.

  ‘Now see what you’ve done, Sadie,’ Pearl joked. ‘You’ve caused a titter to run around the room!’

  ‘The oldies are the best, Pearl,’ Daisy commented.

  ‘Anyway, what’s he so annoyed about? He’s the only man I’ve come across in years who didn’t want to see them,’ Sadie shrugged, doing up her bra again.

  ‘I know some who would’ve paid,’ Daisy laughed.

  ‘I know some who did!’ Pearl giggled.

  ‘But never enough,’ Sadie muttered, ‘never bloody enough!’

  Next they were given unemployment and health-insurance cards, their Service and Release Book, and informed that they could purchase 320 cigarettes and seven ounces of chocolate at the nearby NAAFI.

  At the end of the bewildering process an officer waited to shake hands with each ex-WAAF and say ‘Thank you for coming,’ and that was that. Free at last, and, in Daisy’s case, with no home to return to. All around her were girls like her who had lost their youth for their country, some crying, some just dazed, all of them bemused and swearing to keep in touch forevermore. Some would, of course, their friendships based on so many shared experiences that, like a great many returning servicemen, left them slightly adrift from their families.

  Daisy had already been invited to stay at Rose Cottage for as long as she wanted, her people being ‘abroad’, and that was where she headed, clutching in her hand an invitation to a post-war cocktail party at the home of Lord Nuffield, the wonderful benefactor who had supplied sanitary towels, radios, sun lamps, wedding dresses and bicycles to the services throughout the war.

  Presumably each station had put forward names for the grand event, Daisy thought, though she wasn’t really sure why she had been chosen. As the queen of the Langar tower? The gorgeous, sexy creature all men lusted after? No matter, she had no intention of going.