‘By God, I’m going to join up!’ was the reaction to that: but you couldn’t – you had to wait your turn. Private war, that was what it was: run by the bosses, all making hundreds a week, and you couldn’t even get into it if you wanted to: you had to hang on in this flaming place, practising things that would probably never be needed in any case, and getting a lot of funny looks from the people next door when you came home in the morning. Some people left to get jobs outside, and they were the smart ones: there were good jobs if you only knew how to get them – six quid a week making tea in a shipyard, it was in the papers yesterday, it’s a fact … So, within the depot, the talk went on: making the boring job seem trivial and useless also, making the men who did it feel cheated of their share in the war. For whether they had joined the ARP to help things along, or whether they saw the war as a chance of bettering themselves, they were not doing either, and weren’t likely to if they stayed where they were.
Of course, it wasn’t always like that: there were times, now and then, when the thing still seemed to have some sense in it, and the old spirit of the first few days of the war was as strong as ever. The full-scale exercises, too, were still a tonic. But it was getting harder to feel eager about the job, when there was so little to show for their enthusiasm, and so much that beckoned them from outside.
Perhaps this discontent, also, was part of the spring. There it was, anyway – a sheer-legs, properly rigged and ready for use. The tripod stood steady and rigid, the block and tackle swung evenly from the centre, Godden was pleased: it had gone without a hitch.
It stood in the hot sunshine, with the ring of men round it, staring. Nothing wrong with it, as far as anyone could see. But what did it add up to now it was finished? It was just a sheer-legs, just another bit of practice, another hour gone.
Suddenly they were all bored with it. They left Godden’s squad to unrig it and stow away the gear, and drifted off in search of tea.
4: SUMMER
Denmark and Norway fell, almost over the weekend. It came as a jolt, and the more so after the official description of our forces there as the most formidably equipped expeditionary force ever to sail from these shores. It came as a jolt – but it was only the first one, not really hard enough to cure that ‘phoney war’ feeling or to make clear the impending hazard.
‘What did Chamberlain mean about Hitler missing the bus?’
‘Means he’s made a mistake. Started too late or something. You’ll see. We’ll probably attack in France while he’s mucking about up there. Finish off the whole lot of them.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Godden. ‘They may start something over here pretty soon. We’d better be ready.’
‘We’ve been ready for six months, and nothing’s happened. This place is a lot of eyewash.’
‘If there’s air raids,’ said Godden, ‘they’ll need us quick enough. We’ve got to be ready to help.’
‘Help who?’
‘Anyone that needs it.’
‘Don’t deserve it, most of them. They’re just laughing at us half the time. Chap next door said to me this morning, “They ought to call up more women, so that you fellows could go to Norway instead of hanging about.” I could have crowned him.’
‘Never mind what a chap like that says,’ answered Godden. ‘There’s plenty more who don’t say it and don’t think it either. It’s them we’ve got to look after.’
‘Let ’em look after themselves.’
‘They can’t all do that.’
‘You’re too soft. Love of mankind, that is. Love of boloney. Who’s for a cup of tea?’
Cups of tea. Practices. Waiting.
2
Chamberlain, faced by a revolt from the Left, and from a small proportion of Conservatives, resigned, and Churchill took over the Government.
‘Now we’ll see something,’ said the pacifist stretcher-bearer. ‘I’d rather fight for this chap than for the bunch of Tories who kept Chamberlain in power.’
‘Thought you wouldn’t fight at all?’
The pacifist shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It looks as though we might all have to.’
‘But it’s the same lot bossing us about, isn’t it? What’s the difference now?’
‘It won’t be the same lot. There’s a coalition of all the parties.’
‘What’s that mean, exactly?’
‘Conservative, Liberal and Labour all in one government.’
‘Proper mix-up, that’s going to be.’
‘We’d better try something new, or we’ll be missing the bus ourselves.’
‘Perhaps this is the real beginning of the war,’ said the pacifist. ‘We’ll know pretty soon, anyway.’
3
The Germans broke through into Holland by frontal assault, and overran it at spectacular speed with a new weapon – the Panzer formation of armour. Rotterdam was bombed, with the greatest slaughter of the air-war so far.
‘They are devils,’ said Wilensky sombrely. ‘How can they do these things to unarmed cities?’
‘Must have been like Warsaw, only worse.’
Wilensky did not answer.
‘What happens now, anyway? We’ll have to watch out, or we’ll be in a mess ourselves.’
‘Oh, we’ll be all right. Gort’ll see to that. He knows what he’s doing. Remember that bit in the paper, a while back? “It may be long, it may be short. It all depends on Viscount Gort.” He’s the boy, all right. You keep your eye on him, not on all these frogs.’
‘I’m not so sure. If things go on like this they’ll be all over us while we’re still quoting poetry.’
‘They are devils,’ said Wilensky. ‘Just devils.’
4
In the face of the continued and lightning German advance, King Leopold of the Belgians announced that his armies were incapable of further resistance and had laid down their arms.
‘Dirty bastard,’ said one of the Peters brothers. ‘Why didn’t he tell us first, instead of doing it on his own?’
‘Perhaps he didn’t have time. Those Jerries are moving, you know.’
‘All the same, he could have warned us. It’s put us in the cart properly.’
‘If they keep on like this, what’s going to stop them?’
‘There’s still the Maginot Line. Don’t forget that.’
‘Strikes me they’ve got round that, at the top, without having to attack it.’
‘But what’s happening? What are we going to do? Are we just going to sit there and let it happen to us?’
‘I know what I’m going to do – have a cup of tea.’
Cups of tea. Wondering. Waiting for it.
5
The French armies fell back from Sedan. The Maginot Line was turned, broken, and left far behind: the blitzkrieg stopped being a music-hall joke and became a tidal flood of steel and fire searing its way through France and Belgium. The British retreated, fighting their way through France and Belgium. The British retreated, fighting their way to the beaches. A new place came on to the map, and a new, proud idea into men’s minds and memories – Dunkirk.
‘Why didn’t they let us help at the time, instead of telling us all about it afterwards?’ said Horrocks. ‘God, I’d have gone over there in a rowing boat, if I’d known what was going on. And how long are we going to sit here doing nothing?’
‘We’ll be busy enough before long,’ said Godden.
‘Maybe … Just think of it, Bill: the whole British Army brought off in those little boats. It must have been hell on those beaches.’
‘Like Ypres – and a bit more.’
Horrocks shook his head. ‘I don’t know that you and me saw anything to touch this, rough times and all. Those poor bastards on the beaches, in all that dive-bombing … What happens next?’
‘Maybe the French will hold them, and we’ll go in again lower down the coast.’
‘Don’t suppose we’ve got the guns – or the tanks – or the aircraft, or any bloody thing. Christ, where’s all that money gon
e? I thought we’d been re-arming for three or four years! What did they spend it on?’
‘Wrong things, I suppose. Horses, most like.’
‘Somebody ought to do a bit of explaining.’
6
Hitler danced as Paris fell. Marshal Petain, talking of defeat and the need for regeneration through suffering almost before the reins were in his hands, refused to listen to Churchill’s plea for another effort before the towel was thrown in. France surrendered, and was overrun.
‘Those bloody Frogs!’ said the younger Peters brother, the one who had always quarrelled with Isaacs. ‘They could have crossed to Africa, and carried on from there. Their army can’t be finished already.’
‘They’ve taken the hell of a knock, these past weeks.’
‘No more than we have, and we’re not finished yet.’
‘We’ve got the Channel – and thank God for that! It’s just about saved us, this time.’
‘Think they’ll try an invasion?’
‘Bound to. Or else a lot of air raids, every day and every night till something happens. Whatever it is, we’ll have a job to do here, and about time, too.’
‘Strikes me there’ll be a job to do everywhere. We’re on our own now.’
‘Yes, we’re on our own.’
7
Two broadcasts stirring the nation – Churchill’s summons to fight ‘on the beaches, in the streets’, and Eden’s call for the volunteers needed for that fight, the LDV.
‘That’s the thing we ought to be joining, not just sitting here waiting for the invasion.’
‘We’ll be doing just as much good here,’ said Godden, ‘when the thing starts. It’s a different kind of fight, that’s all.’
‘You’re right there – fighting the Borough Council for a few extra bob a week, that’s all it is. I want to get into it properly.’
‘You wait,’ said Godden again, ‘you’ll be busy enough before long. They’ll be crying out for rescue squads and stretcher-bearers, before we’re very much older. Then you’ll see the sense in all this training and practising.’
‘Wish I thought it was worth it.’
‘The first chap we pick up after a raid will make you think it’s worth it.’
‘Where do you get all these funny ideas?’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Godden. He smiled. ‘Plenty of time for it, haven’t we?’
‘You’re right there … Who’s for a cup of tea?’
Exercises. Cups of tea. Waiting and seeing it coming.
8
Battle of Britain. Terror over the coast and the fair southern counties: glory also, and courage to meet it. A mounting score of the enemy brought down every day, a yet more ferocious effort to beat a way through, a lonely battle by a few brave and skilful men.
A people watching the sky.
‘London next,’ said Godden.
5: SEPTEMBER
The two stretcher-cars arrived first, racing up the street till they were waved to a standstill by a blue-overalled figure – the air-raid warden who had summoned them. They parked one behind the other at the kerb’s edge, just short of a great patch of broken glass: as the stretcher-bearers jumped out, grabbing their blankets and first aid kit, they looked round them quickly, like travellers set down on an untried, unknown shore. Then they filtered into the small crowd staring at the end house, and became part of the cruel etching of this street scene.
The end house had had it. All its windows were blown out, its front door sagged drunkenly from a single hinge, its shredded curtains flapped in a haze of dust and dirt which was still stirring. From it the desolation had spread along the row and across the street: the same shattered windows, splintered woodwork, and dusty, scarred fronts disfigured a dozen of the nearby houses, which stood like mute, lesser witnesses of the main violence. Structurally, the victim looked all right from the front: but through the gaping front door and upper windows it could be seen that the bomb had ripped off the whole back of the house, burying the slit of garden under a mass of rubble, leaving only the façade and the front slope of the roof untouched.
It had been a nice little house: somebody’s pride and joy. Now it was not much more than a fairly simple problem in demolition. But first the human oddments had to be tidied away.
Some of these were ready for the stretcher-bearers when they arrived: passers-by injured by blast or flying glass, a man who had been in the lower front room and had been thrown across it, breaking an arm and a leg, a child whimpering over a torn wrist. These were attended to and taken off. In the back garden of another house two people had been killed: the stretcher-bearers brought them out and laid them on stretchers in the roadway, where they waited for the mortuary ambulance. Meanwhile the warden and the war-reserve policeman on duty, talking to the wounded and the onlookers, were trying to find out if there was anyone else in the house when the bomb fell.
‘There’s an old couple living in the basement,’ he told the stretcher-party leader. ‘But they used to go out quite a bit.’ He raised his voice. ‘Anyone know anything about the Timsons?’
‘They were out shopping this morning,’ said a voice. ‘I saw them at the butchers’. Don’t know if they got back or not.’
‘Anyone see them come back?’ asked the policeman.
‘Yes,’ said another voice. ‘About an hour ago. They might have gone out again, though.’
Everyone looked at the heap of rubble and woodwork showing through the open door. If they hadn’t gone out again the Timsons were somewhere there.
For the second time the warden climbed down the area steps and walked through into the front basement room. It was in ruins, as if an enormous wind had seared through it, stripping and wrecking everything in its path; and the roof at the far end sagged to the floor, blocking the way to the bedroom and scullery at the back of the house. In the air the dust still hung, mingling with a faint smell of escaping gas to form a thick, disgusting blend … The Timsons might well have been in the bedroom or the kitchen, thought the warden: in which case they were still there. A search would have to be made in any case, as soon as the rescue squads arrived and could get to work.
When he reached the top of the steps again a woman came forward and said to him: ‘I think they were in, Mr Fenton. They had nothing to go out again for, not after that shopping.’
‘Looks like it,’ answered the warden.
‘What’s it like down there?’ asked the policeman.
‘A mess,’ said the warden briefly. ‘The back room’s blocked: looks as though the whole ceiling’s caved in. But we’ll have to get to it somehow.’
The policeman sucked his teeth. ‘There’s no way in from the back garden – I had a look just now. Too much stuff on top. The rescue chaps will have to tunnel through from this side. Did you put in a call for them?’
The warden nodded, and then pointed towards the end of the street. ‘There’s the lorry now.’
‘Stand back there,’ said the policeman. ‘Right back on the kerb.’ He waved the lorry up, and it came to a standstill alongside the stretcher-cars. Godden was the first to jump down from it.
Two minutes to get the hang of the situation, and the layout of the house: another five to assemble the gear in the basement room; and Number Three Squad went to work. Godden, going over his plan as he stripped off his coat, was satisfied with it. They would tunnel along the edge of the side wall, shoring up as they went, until they reached the division between the front and the back rooms: break a way through this if it was still standing; and go on tunnelling and shoring until they found something. It was possible that the ceiling of the back room, where the Timsons probably were, still held, in spite of the enormous weight of ruined brickwork on top of it; though if the front room was anything to go by, it wasn’t very likely. But even if the back room ceiling had collapsed, there was still a chance that the Timsons might survive – underneath one of the cross-beams, or in the angle between the wall and the floor. In any case, they had to find out .
..
Godden and Wilensky, working in turn with picks and with their bare hands, were the spearhead of the attack; the rest of the squad were strung out behind them, ready with shores, crowbars, and baskets for the rubble as it was passed back to them.
They worked silently in the dusty, twilight room, with its foolish and shattered oddments of furniture – broken chairs, a sofa scattering flock and horsehair all round it, an overturned table, and a ‘Present from Margate’ which still survived on the mantelpiece. Godden, plugging away methodically – hacking at the brickwork and plaster, picking up the bits and passing them back, chopping, wrenching, thrusting aside – felt full of confidence: at that moment it was the most important thing in the world to get through the mess and reach the Timsons, and he was sure they would do it. Indeed, it was more than confidence – it was sort of ecstasy of achievement: somewhere, not very far away, were people who needed his help, people to take risks for and fight to save, and he was going to save them. This, at last, was the job he had been waiting to do, through all the months of training; this, at last, was what he had been talking about when he told his squad: ‘There’ll be people needing our help before very long.’
At the end of his spell he straightened up and stepped back: with a grunt Wilensky reached for the pick and took his place at the wall tunnel. Good old Wilensky, thought Godden; he knows what he’s doing all right, and he’s not wasting any time either … With the back of his hand Godden wiped the sweat and dust off his face, and then walked from the basement into the area, passing close to Horrocks, who said: ‘Don’t kill yourself, Bill: take a bit of a rest.’ Out in the area, leaning against a wall and breathing deeply and thankfully in the fresh air, he stared up at the slit of sky overhead. It was clear blue and sunny; it seemed very peaceful and miles away from the stress and pain buried down here … There were three heads visible, outlined against the sky, leaning over the railings at the top: the warden, the policeman, and the pacifist stretcher-bearer, watching and waiting like the rest of them up on the street level.
HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) Page 21