by Anne Bennett
‘I always feel better when I talk to you,’ Carol said. ‘You’re so sure of yourself.’
‘Sure of myself?’ Lizzie repeated, surprised. ‘I was never sure of myself when I was younger. I was always being pushed about by other people: my cousin, my family, particularly my elder sister.’
‘I bet you wouldn’t let that happen now, though.’
‘Probably not,’ Lizzie agreed. ‘But you are much braver than me, Carol. I could never go up in one of those planes. Aren’t you ever scared?’
‘Ah, no, never,’ Carol said. ‘It’s wonderful, exhilarating, and the view is tremendous. What isn’t so nice is seeing the destruction at the airfields as we fly over them; dirty great craters in the runways and sometimes the planes still smouldering or reduced to mangled heaps of metal. It’s heartbreaking, for every plane is needed so badly, but some of the airfields are under almost constant bombardment. But don’t tell mom that, will you.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Lizzie said. ‘She has enough to worry about without me adding to it.’
They all had. The coastal towns—Portsmouth, Southampton, Ramsgate, Dover and Plymouth—were being bombed indiscriminately, and so were the ships bringing valuable supplies into Britain.
The day that the Luftwaffe sank seven ships on their way to Weymouth was the day before the first bomb fell in Birmingham on 9th August. It took everyone unawares and no sirens sounded. Many thought the lone bomber was looking for Fort Dunlop or Castle Bromwich aerodrome, but instead he dropped three bombs on houses in Lydford Grove, Montague Road and Erdington Hall Road, killing one boy on leave from the army and injuring countless others.
On 13th August, Castle Bromwich and the aerodrome were heavily bombed, as well as areas near the centre of the city. It happened again the next night, and the next. Many of these were too far away for Lizzie to take shelter, although she did go to the shelter in Bristol Street on the 23rd August and stayed there till the ‘All Clear’ sounded some seven and a half hours later, when she struggled home with two overtired, hungry and fractious children to snatch a few hours’ sleep.
Two days later, Violet and Lizzie were back in the shelter while the city centre was pounded. Barry wasn’t with them as he was fire-watching and people around were grumbling about the sirens not sounding soon enough. They had a point, Lizzie thought. You often heard the crump and crash of explosions before the sirens warned you, and a policeman on a bicycle, blowing a whistle and shouting for people to ‘Take Cover’, didn’t have the same sense of urgency.
But, just then, Violet said to Lizzie, ‘I’m taking a job, starting Monday.’
‘A job?’ Lizzie repeated, aware suddenly that she would miss popping in for a cup of tea and a chat whenever the notion took her, and how good Violet was at minding the children a time or two.
However, the light of determination was in Violet’s eyes. ‘I’m making shell cases,’ she said. ‘It’s at Arkwright’s up Deritend way. Her on the corner gave me the wink there was some jobs going, like. I mean, I’ve been thinking everyone must do what they can to win this damned war, or my Colin and thousands like him have died in vain. I mean, yeah, it was great so many men were rescued from Dunkirk, and yeah, it were a miracle, like, but what about the equipment left? They can’t fight the whole of the German army with pop guns, and if there ain’t the men to make them then the women must.’
Violet was right of course, and though women had worked in war-related fields since the start, now there was a drive to get more of them involved. Lizzie knew she’d consider it herself if she hadn’t the children to see to—and Steve, of course, for he was coming home for a period of convalescence and some physiotherapy on his arm and leg, and she looked no further forward than that at the moment.
The last raid had torn through the city centre and ripped the roof from the Market Hall in the Bull Ring and done extensive damage elsewhere. The following night set the Snow Hill area alight as far as the Jewellery Quarter, liquid fire running along the streets, licking at the warehouses that were mainly made of wood and destroying factories. Lizzie wondered if the Grand Hotel still stood.
Steve returned home the next day to a world of blackouts and shortages, and a wife wearied by lack of sleep and hardly able to cope with a traumatised man who was often in pain and snappy because of it.
He seemed totally different to the man who’d walked away that day in October. He had a shorter fuse and often shouted at her, and his violent outbursts would cause Niamh to put her hands over her eyes and Tom’s bottom lip to tremble.
But Lizzie forgave him, for as well as the pain he was so obviously in, she’d seen his haunted eyes and heard the screams he gave sometimes in the night. But she did miss having Violet next door, whom she could have a good old moan to and know it would go no further. She lived in hope that when Steve had had some rest away from it all, he would improve. It was hard, though, to get away from it, for the raids were almost a nightly occurrence. At these times Steve would seldom seek shelter and would instead go to The Bell. Stuart Fellows’s family had moved while he was in France, for when their house, much further down Bell Barn Road, was caught in a blast and declared unsafe, they were offered a home with an elderly uncle who lived near the back of the airfield at Castle Bromwich. If Steve took himself off to see Stuart he’d often not come home all night, and he was so wearing and unpredictable when he was there that Lizzie was often glad of it when he stayed away.
Steve knew he was being unfair yelling at Lizzie. He was really yelling at the unfairness of life and the things he’d been subjected to and the suffering witnessed at Dunkirk, which was so brutal and terrible he couldn’t talk about it, but which he knew would stay with him as long as he lived.
Those last few days in action never left Steve. While retreating, most of The Royal Warwickshires were set to guard the right flank just outside a small town called Wormhout. They’d gone on hour after hour. They hadn’t hoped to win this battle, outnumbered as they were, but every minute, every hour, meant more of their comrades might make it to relative safety back home in England.
Steve had felt as if he was in the pit of Hell, with whistling shells erupting around him and whining machine-gun bullets getting their target more than enough times. Before he went to war, he’d have said he was afraid of nothing. He was six foot in his stocking feet, broad-shouldered, well-muscled and as strong as an ox, a man to be reckoned with. But in the fields of France and Belgium he’d tasted fear. It was in his mouth, his nostrils, flowing through every fibre of his being.
Suddenly, a shell, closer than any other, had burst amongst them, taking out both the machine gun and those that manned it. There was another shell and another, and Mike and Stuart and Steve were thrown to the ground with the force of the blast.
When the smoke cleared and they were able to see, they realised they were alive and uninjured. Without a word they began slithering away from their dead and dying companions, wriggling on their bellies through the long grass till they reached the shelter of trees at the edge of a little copse.
It was suddenly remarkably still.
‘What’s happening?’ Mike asked.
Steve, spread out on the ground, risked a peep. ‘They’ve surrendered,’ he said. ‘There’s Officer Crabtree, look, with his hanky on a bit of a stick, and the rest behind him with their hands up.’
‘Be a prisoner-of-war camp for them then,’ Stuart said, but the words hadn’t left his lips when the German machine gun spat out once more and first the officer, and then the men behind him sank to the ground in rows. ‘Dear God,’ Steve said in an awed whisper. ‘They’ve shot them.’
‘And we’ll be next if we bloody hang about,’ Mike hissed. ‘Come on.’
And, tired though they were, they began to run though the trees to the road. Dunkirk was miles away, but better to take a chance on making it than wait to be shot to pieces or impaled on a German bayonet.
They walked all night, and it was about mid-morning of the next day when they c
ame upon a party of refugees on the road in front of them, the flotsam of bombed villages. These were the old and infirm, and mothers with babies and children. Some carried the contents of their homes on their backs, others had a pram piled high or a cart pushed by them or pulled by a donkey or small pony. Steve saw one child cradling a kitten and noted the pet dogs running alongside.
They turned at the soldiers’ approach, their eyes full of despair and fear but with a little glimmer of hope when they saw the men were British. However, when Steve, Mike and Stuart opened their hands helplessly, the refugees gave a shrug and parted to let them pass. The little caravan of people turned into a field, obviously to rest. It was ringed with trees and had trenches dug all around it. Mothers settled thankfully against the trunks of the trees and some put their hungry babies to the breast, while the other children cavorted and played together, the dogs running between them, and the ponies and donkeys were released from the shafts to graze on the grass.
Minutes later, the planes were overhead. Steve scanned the road. There was no cover anyway. They moved to the side where the ditch was and knew the Germans would pick them off one by one.
But the planes didn’t go as far as the men, though they couldn’t really miss them. Instead, they circled the field where the frightened people were. Steve raised his head from the ditch and saw the bombs hurtling downwards and the blast on impact. He saw pet dogs, ponies and donkeys mangled to a million pieces, babies torn from their mothers’ arms and blown into bits that littered the lush grass, the bodies of the children and the elderly blasted into the air. And following after the Heinkels came the Stukas, flying in low, machinegunning any the bombs had missed, until nothing even twitched in the field of death, whether human or animal.
‘Christ Almighty,’ breathed Steve, as Mike vomited beside him into the grass. Steve and Stuart knew just how he felt.
Mike wiped his mouth and said, ‘Shall we go back?’
‘What the hell for?’ Stuart demanded. ‘Even if we found one person alive on that bloody field, what could we do, eh? Best thing is to get the bleeding hell out of here, and quick before Jerry comes back to finish us off an’ all.’
It was the only thing to do and they started out again, fear lending speed to their pace. But Steve knew he’d never blot those images out of his mind. It was so senseless, so barbaric. Those people had been defenceless and vuinerable and he knew with absolute clarity that if the Germans were to win this bloody war, a similar fate might await his family, and he was determined to make it at least to the beach, and from there home, if at all possible.
* * *
They heard the non-stop clamour from the beaches long before they reached them, and smelt the smoke. the acrid tang of it mixed with the stink of cordite, and over it all the salty sea breeze.
And then it was before them, and Steve saw the pier that looked as if it were comprised of army trucks. There was a little regatta of boats queuing up there and, despite the constant bombardment, the boats’ crews continued to lift soldiers over the sides and take them out to the Royal Navy Destroyer HMS Havant, which was waiting at anchor in the deeper water.
The sands were already littered with bodies and parts of bodies and discarded equipment. The noise all around them was ear-splitting and relentless, the crashes and boom of the bombs, the shrieking Stukas diving, low guns blazing, the ack-ack guns hastily set up on the beach blasting into the air. All mixed with the shouts, cries and screams of the men.
Nothing in Steve’s training or experience so far had prepared him for this, and he stood and watched in horror. ‘What d’you think of our chances, mate?’ asked a voice behind him.
The soldier was just past boyhood—eighteen or nineteen, no more. ‘Bugger all,’ was on Steve’s lips, but he didn’t say it. Instead, he said encouragingly, ‘You’ll get through, lad. You’re young and fit and England will need you again before long.’
‘Ain’t got much choice, anyroad, have we?’ the boy said. ‘Germans up our arses and the sea before us. Mind you, rather than fall into German hands I’d take the sea and swim to old Blighty.’
‘That’s the spirit, lad.’
Steve saw the boy once more after that. It was impossible to hurry in the soft sand clawing at your boots, but he tried, and he and Stuart and Mike were together. They passed the dead and dying, some dismembered, some in bits, some still twitching, others screaming or crying in agony, and on they went. The boy that had claimed he’d rather swim to England was in a pit, both his legs blasted away and his life blood seeping into the sands, and Steve had to turn away from the look in his eyes.
Time and again they had to fling themselves to the ground and try and bury themselves into the sand to avoid the Stukas, but at last, when dusk descended rapidly, they’d almost reached the pier head when Stuart gave a cry and went down, and Steve saw a Stuka had got him and ripped into his leg.
‘Leave me,’ Stuart said.
‘Bugger that for a lark,’ Mike had replied. ‘We’re nearly there, man.’
An officer was at the pier head, keeping order and directing the men, and Steve and Mike, dragging Stuart between them, took their places in the queue.
Stuart was being lowered gently into a motor launch when someone gave a shout. Five Messerschmitts came from behind the clouds and began releasing their filthy harbingers of death at HMS Havant. Despite the ship’s spirited response, it was over in minutes and nothing remained but floating cargo and wreckage and many, many dead bodies.
It sobered everyone. All those men rescued, at great human cost, and for what?
And then another destroyer moved into place and the rescue went on. There was no time to spare, no time to grieve and mourn, to reflect on what was happening. Stukas came at them then, and the suddenness of the attack caused Steve to slip into the water, where he was peppered with shrapnel from a bomb exploding nearby and had his leg crushed by two army trucks. He’d been unconscious when Mike pulled him from the sea and onto the next boat home.
Had he been able to tell Lizzie this, she would have understood his fears and maybe helped him overcome them, but he saw admitting to fear as a sign of weakness. In fact, he wanted to bury those experiences in the darkest recess of his mind, and because of this he was happier in Stuart’s company than anyone’s.
Stuart left hospital at almost the same time as Steve and was welcomed home as a conquering hero. When he explained what a good mate Steve had been after he’d been injured at Dunkirk, Stuart’s family couldn’t do enough for him either.
Steve felt the need to prove he was alive, the same strong, virile man he’d once been, able to drink men twice his age under the table and with the ability to pull the women. There were many hanging around the pubs ringing the airfield, and when there were no pilots to give them a good time, a Dunkirk survivor did just as well. Many didn’t mind him being a bit rough, which was just as well because all softness and gentleness had been stripped from him, left behind on the journey to Dunkirk.
He was unfeeling with Lizzie too and she was worn out trying to please him. She knew in her heart of hearts it wasn’t all his fault. He’d been damaged by what he’d witnessed, but she longed for him to be declared fit and healthy and able to rejoin his unit, although she felt guilty about thinking that way and knew she would worry about him every minute he was gone.
CHAPTER TEN
Steve went back to his unit on the 26th September and Lizzie tried to keep the relief out of her face and voice as she bid him goodbye.
The next day, the Germans launched the first of their daylight raids and Fort Dunlop was hit, but though there was damage there was no one injured. Not content with this, though, the tram stop by Dunlop’s was full of people when they were strafed with machine-gun fire.
This was the first of many reports of such indiscriminate shooting. Bus stops and tram stops and vehicles themselves were attacked, as well as people in streets and parks. There was one incident of a lady with a baby in her arms and another older child ha
nging on to her skirt who ran to the park, the nearest open space, after her house had been bombed, and all three were killed by machine-gun fire.
It could so easily have been Lizzie that she felt shocked to the core and wondered for the first time if she’d been wise to keep her children at home with her. Tom passed his fourth birthday in early October and she talked it over with Violet.
She hadn’t come to any decision by the time Clementine Churchill visited Birmingham on 14th October. She visited two factories and one neighbourhood that had been extensively damaged by the bombing. The Mail had a picture of one of the people, whose home had gone, who’d defiantly placed a Union Jack on top of the rubble and told the lady, ‘Our house is down, but our spirits is still up.’
Clementine Churchill was impressed by this demonstration of unflinching courage in this typical workingclass district and said that she found the same everywhere she went.
This Brummie courage was needed in the nightly raids that followed Clementine Churchill’s visit. Lizzie got used to getting a meal together quickly and maybe letting the children have a few hours’ sleep before needing to rouse them again. She was grateful for the siren suits that she’d bought for each of them, which could go over other clothes to keep them warm as the cold autumn nights began.
On Thursday, 24th October, there was another massive raid, the way lit for bombers by sticks of incendiaries dropped first. A shelter in Cox Street was blitzed and the Carlton Cinema and the Empire Theatre, and Tony’s Ballroom next door burned out completely. Lizzie remembered that she and Steve had always intended to visit the Empire Theatre, but they never had made it. She’d been to Tony’s Ballroom lots of times with Tressa in the early days and later with Steve, and she was saddened it was there no longer.
New Street had received many attacks, including one on Marshall and Snelgrove where it was reduced to twisted black girders sticking up through the rubble and assorted debris. Lizzie remembered windowshopping there, which was all she could ever afford to do.