by Julia Kelly
“Then, ladies, I suggest you look around,” Melchen barked. “These are the women who you’ll be living with and training with. There are some people who think women will faint away the moment the first gun is shot. I would advise you to do your very best to prove them wrong. Corporal Clovis, I’ll leave them in your hands.”
The corporal nodded and the brigadier marched back out, the metallic clang of the door echoing around the nearly empty hall.
“Fall in line here,” Corporal Clovis ordered, pointing to a spot in front of the stage.
Louise and the rest of the women lined up shoulder to shoulder.
“At ease, gunners,” the corporal said, joining them on the floor and propping the clipboard against her hip. “I’m going to speak to you frankly now. As some of you know, I was in the service for many years, and I volunteered again when war was declared. I can tell you from personal experience that I’ve met some of the bravest people I know in the ATS—all women. German bullets don’t care about your sex, and bombs don’t know the difference either.
“Anti-aircraft is a dangerous assignment, but it’s also a desperately needed one. If it wasn’t, the Royal Artillery wouldn’t be opening up these batteries. There are men who will do everything they can to see you fail, and I want you to remember that when your training feels impossible, because it will. But the RA doesn’t just need your service. It needs your intelligence. You’ve all scored in the top of your aptitude tests. You’re smarter than most of the men you’ll meet in life, and I suspect you’re tougher too.”
The corporal looked at each of them and nodded. “Don’t let me or your fellow soldiers down. Now, I suggest you say your goodbyes. You leave at seventeen hundred hours for Oswestry. Dismissed.”
The collective group let out a sigh of relief, hurrying for the doors out to the drill yard.
“Well, that was something else. I’m Charlie,” said the redheaded woman who had introduced herself as Gunner Charlotte Wilkes, sticking her hand out to Louise.
“We should all introduce ourselves, I suppose,” said Vera in a clipped, proper tone.
“I’m Nigella Onslow,” said a pretty, petite blonde who looked like she might be blown over at the first strong gust.
“Mary Rogers,” said a girl to Louise’s right who had light brown hair and lips that turned down in what seemed like a perpetual frown.
“Lizzie Masterson,” said the canteen singer with a little wave.
“Louise Keene,” Louise said.
“Are you Kate Keene’s sister?” Nigella asked in a breathy voice.
“Cousin,” she said.
“We were in H barracks together. She’s ever so nice and glamorous, like a movie star.”
“That’s Kate for you,” Louise said.
“Well, I suppose we’d better get on with packing,” said Charlie. “Plenty of time to get to know each other better on the train.”
They all split off to go to their respective barracks and collect their things. Louise hardly had anything to pack. They’d shipped her satchel back to her parents’ home when she’d arrived in Leicester, explaining that she had no need for civilian clothes in the ATS. She was a soldier now. All she had left that was her own was a bundle of letters from Paul and one from her father, her diary, and her postcard of sunny California that she’d displayed on the shelf above her bed.
Finding the barracks empty, she shoved her things into her kit bag and pulled out her writing paper and pen.
She would write to her parents first. Her mother hadn’t sent any word since Louise had left home, instead conveying any news she wished Louise to know in the final paragraph of her father’s dutiful weekly letter. Paul had been too great a betrayal, and leaving the familiarity of Haybourne to join the service—and not even the navy’s prestigious women’s branch, the Women’s Royal Naval Service, nicknamed the WRNS, with their fashionable tailored uniforms and their ranks full of debs—ensured that Rose Keene would never forgive her daughter. And now Louise would be serving with men and shooting planes down from the sky? It would be too much.
Dear Mum and Da,
I don’t know how much I can say, but I’m writing to let you know that I’ve received a special assignment to work on the anti-aircraft guns. I don’t yet know what that means, but it’s exciting nonetheless. Several other girls who are here with me have been selected as well, and we’ll go on to a base near the Welsh border for further training. When I find out what I can tell you and what I can’t, I’ll write more, but know that I’m doing everything I can to stay safe.
Kate has been made a telephonist, which means she could stay here in England or be sent anywhere the army has need of her. I’m sure Uncle Jack and Aunt Claire will receive their own letter, but I thought you would want to know.
All of my love,
Louise
Folding her letter into an envelope and marking the address, she pulled another sheet of paper free.
Dearest Paul,
After all of the examinations and waiting, I have finally received an assignment. I have no doubt there will be a great controversy over it, because you’ll never believe what it is. I’ll be working on the anti-aircraft guns! I can’t tell you how excited I am. It’ll be something real and concrete that I know will help win this war.
I miss you dearly, and I hate not knowing where you are or what it is you’re doing. I suppose, however, that you must be feeling a bit like that right now too, because soon I’ll be on a train to my new camp for more training. Just know that your girl is going to do everything she can to make you proud.
Yours always,
Louise
10
LOUISE
Almost four months later, Louise had to admit that Brigadier Melchen had been right. Life at Oswestry was hard.
After tumbling off the train at Oswestry at nearly four o’clock in the morning, the women had been given one day to settle in before their training started. Since then, they’d woken up at seven to drill and then spent hours attending classes, learning to identify every known German aircraft. Although it was important that all of them had a basic working knowledge of the Luftwaffe’s craft, this would be the responsibility of the spotter, a woman assigned to peer through the powerful binoculars and call out approaching aircraft. Two more women would operate the height and range finder by pinpointing the aircraft through their eyepieces. Finally, the two predictors would turn the dials to calculate with exacting precision how far the gun would have to fire, and the woman on the Sperry would set the fuse so the shell would explode at the precise moment to enact maximum damage. Then the Sperry operator would yell when there was a read, and the information would be relayed automatically from the predictor to the guns, and the gunner—always a man—would fire.
The entire operation was supposed to take a matter of seconds. The first time Louise and the women of B Section, 488 Battery, had tried to put all of the theory and learning they’d absorbed into practice, it had taken them two minutes and thirty-eight seconds.
“Congratulations, ladies. The Luftwaffe just dropped a high-explosive bomb on an East London tube station entrance and killed the forty-one people sheltering there because you didn’t stop them,” Bombardier Barker, a hard woman who lived up to her name, shouted at them. Louise had seen Charlie pinch Nigella to keep her from crying. The gunner, a hangdog-faced man named Cartruse, had lit up a cigarette and watched with a shake of his head while the two men who loaded the gun, Williams and Hatfield, snickered.
But under the unrelenting drilling of Bombardier Barker and her male counterparts, the women of B Section had grown faster and more certain in their actions. It quickly became clear that Mary had something of a photographic memory for German planes and proved herself to be an excellent spotter. Nigella and Charlie worked quickly on the height and range finder, and Louise, who could sometimes calculate sums faster than she could turn the dials, worked the predictor with Vera as Lizzie used the Sperry to set the shell’s fuse. Slowly but surely, Cart
ruse had stopped sighing and asking, “You sure?” every time Lizzie called, “Fuse!”
Over their four months together, the six women had grown close, thanks to a mix of genuine affection and long shifts into the night that were part of their training in preparation for air raids. They would be alert and working when the rest of Britain tried to sleep in their beds and bomb shelters. Louise, Vera, Charlie, Lizzie, Mary, and Nigella lived together, ate in the canteen together, and moved around the base in a pack. They were the Ack-Ack girls, the gunner girls, and, still a novelty among the RA, they were watched wherever they went. All of the stares might have bothered her once, but as part of this tight-knit troop of women, Louise hardly noticed.
One Thursday afternoon in late July, after a training session that had seen B Section hit eight out of their ten targets, all of them except Lizzie sat in the canteen, sipping cups of strong tea. Nigella had a bit of knitting on her lap and was clicking away with her needles, while Mary read out tidbits from a film magazine someone had left lying around on one of the tables. Charlie was sketching Vera’s patrician profile with quick, efficient strokes of a stub of pencil in a plain paper notebook she kept in one of her uniform pockets. Louise, however, was absorbed in her own world, a letter from Paul dated five days earlier. Although she wrote to him every day, he wrote less frequently because he was in active combat. When his letters came, however, she always treasured the tenderness in them.
You must understand why I worry. Being part of an anti-aircraft battery means being closer to the action than any man would wish for the woman who holds his heart. I wish you would consider a transfer, for my sake as much as your own.
She chewed her bottom lip, stuck somewhere in the difficult space between happiness and disappointment. They’d had this argument too many times. Ever since she’d told him she’d been assigned to Ack-Ack Command, he’d started to fret. The work was too dangerous. She would be shot at. She didn’t really know what she was getting herself into.
Each time she’d written him back. Yes, her work was dangerous, but so was his. Yes, she would be shot at, and so would he, when he was flying his missions. Yes, she knew what she was doing, and arguing was pointless. The ATS had selected her. The RA needed her. She was a gunner girl, and there was nothing Paul could do about it.
All of that logic laid out for him would calm him for a letter or two, but then he’d start again, pushing and pushing. This talk of a transfer, however, was new.
She read the paragraph again, her heart catching in her throat to see the words “holds his heart” in his bold handwriting. It had been so long since they’d met—nearly six months!—and all she had were passionate letters with no true declarations. He still hadn’t said he loved her, although sometimes he came close.
She knew she couldn’t place the blame entirely at his feet. She’d been holding back too. Paul was life lived at double pace, from meeting him at the dance to the day at the beach. He’d asked her to be his in a matter of hours and then, just a few weeks later, he’d been in her mother’s sitting room asking her to remember him because the next day he would be gone. They’d hardly known each other a month, yet the force of her own emotions frightened her.
At the barracks in Leicester, too many girls had had stories of soldiers, sailors, and airmen who’d broken their hearts. Love came fast during these times, the danger of war thrusting couples into each other’s arms with the irresistible pull of two magnets. Yet Paul was different from those men. It was in the worry of his words.
I almost wish that you’d been shipped off to some foreign pocket of the war where you would always be on base and the most I would have to worry about is the baking sun burning you crisp. It would be easier knowing that my Louise was safe. Still, I suppose I must reconcile myself to it.
The one comfort is that it won’t be long until I see you again. I think I’ve finally secured leave. It took every bit of persuading my commanding officer, but I was able to wrangle a week away. A week! Think of all we’ll be able to do in that time if you too can secure leave. Dancing in London, dinners in restaurants with white tablecloths, introducing you to my parents. They’ll adore you almost as much as I do.
I miss you, darling. I can’t wait until we see each other again.
Yours,
Paul
Louise sank back into her chair, unable to help her grin. She’d be seeing Paul again soon. He hadn’t mentioned the exact dates—she knew he wouldn’t do that until he’d secured his transportation passes—but he was coming back to England. She’d have to figure out how to convince Bombardier Barker to sign off on her leave, but she was determined. It had been too long since she’d seen him.
“Good news from your pilot?” Vera asked as Louise folded up the letter and stuffed it in its envelope.
“Don’t move,” Charlie ordered. “You’ll ruin my angle for the sketch.”
Vera scowled. “I’m not moving. And anyway, Louise has had a letter from Paul.”
“He’s managed to get leave,” Louise said, glossing over the fact that the letter had come some days ago.
“That’s wonderful news,” said Vera.
“But he’s still worried about me being on Ack-Ack,” Louise added.
“If he wasn’t, I’d be worried about him,” said Charlie.
“He wants me to transfer,” said Louise. “But of course I’d never do that.”
“Hmmm . . .” Vera’s lips thinned. Vera, unlike Paul, actually had the familial clout to put in a word and make such a transfer happen. Except she hadn’t offered one to Louise. They were a unit, and it hadn’t taken much for them to realize that they were better together. If one of them was falling down in her duties, the rest read up with her, reviewing the materials or procedures until they joked they could recite schematics for their respective instruments by heart. None of them had forgotten what Corporal Clovis had told them.
The RA doesn’t just need your service. It needs your intelligence . . . You’re smarter than most of the men you’ll meet in life, and I suspect you’re tougher too.
“What I wouldn’t give for a bath hot enough to boil myself in and a glass of sherry,” said Mary, stretching in her seat.
“I still say we should take our next make-and-mend and find the nearest village pub,” said Charlie. It was a favorite pastime of their unit, making plans for what they would do with their weekly afternoon off, only to fail to use that time for anything but sleep.
“What about the rules?” Nigella asked, her eyes wide.
The day they’d arrived on base, they’d been told to kiss alcohol and cigarettes goodbye. Shaky hands were a sure way to make errors on the precise instruments controlling the guns. Despite never having been a smoker herself, Louise thought it was unjust that Cartruse, Williams, and Hatfield were allowed to smoke and certainly drank when they were off duty.
“Rules be damned,” said Charlie.
“A half-pint or two isn’t going to send any of us down the garden path,” agreed Vera. “I’d be willing to wager we could get to and from the Pig’s Ear in an afternoon, no problem. It would be even faster if we could find some bicycles to borrow.”
“I’ve never ridden a bicycle,” said Mary.
“What?” Charlie dropped her pencil in horror. “How can you call yourself an Englishwoman?”
“Girls!” Lizzie called from across the mostly empty canteen. Behind her, she dragged Hatfield, who was blushing hard, by the arm. Cartruse and Williams followed close behind, laughing all the way. “Girls!”
“Why does Hatfield look like he wants the earth to swallow him up? Has Barker finally shouted so loud her passion killers split and he was there to see it?” Charlie muttered.
Louise and Vera stifled laughs, the image of their stern bombardier exploding out of the notoriously voluminous ATS-issued bloomers was too ridiculous.
Lizzie only let Hatfield go when he was standing right in front of the empty chair at the head of their table. “Hatfield has news,” she announced.
“What is it, Gunner Hatfield?” Nigella asked, her cheeks a pretty pink. They all knew that Nigella, who was the youngest of them and delicate as a doll, had developed a crush on the broad-chested Hatfield the moment she set eyes on him. It made her at once painfully shy but also eager to speak to him at any chance she could get.
“I’m really not supposed to tell, Lizzie,” Hatfield said, taking off his cap and twisting it between his hands.
Lizzie stuck a finger in his face. “Don’t you back down on me now, Hatfield. It’s not fair to the rest of us.”
Each of the girls leaned in.
“Go on, Hatfield. It’s just us,” said Vera, her soft, posh voice pitched perfectly for persuasion.
Hatfield glanced to the other men. Williams puffed on his cigarette so furiously one might’ve thought he would fall down dead if he stopped, but Cartruse just shrugged.
“I want to know too,” Cartruse said.
Hatfield looked around and then sighed. Leaning in, he said in a low voice, “I’m not supposed to know this, but I think we’re being shipped out.”
“We’ve got our assignment?” Mary hissed.
“Where?” Louise asked.
“I really can’t—”
“Hatfield . . .”
Hatfield shot her a pained look. “London. We’re going to London. South of the Thames.”
They all sat back at that, stunned. If they’d wanted action, now they had it. Although not as frequent as they’d been in the Blitz last autumn, when the Luftwaffe had struck London on fifty-seven consecutive nights, the raids were still very real. After weeks of shooting at target balloons and markers and wondering when they would finally be allowed to use their skills on actual German planes, B Section was going to be sent right into the belly of the beast.
“Are you sure?” Charlie asked.
“Yes, how can you be certain?” Vera asked.
Cartruse laughed. “Hatfield has himself a bird, doesn’t he?”
“I don’t understand,” said Louise.