Thus, for most, the principal preoccupations were the traditionally feminine concerns of home and hearth. In 1944 the author Margaret Goldsmith set out to inquire on women’s wartime state of mind. Many wives, she reported, ‘are so homesick for their pre-war way of life that they seem to have created in their imagination a glowing fantasy of what this life was like. All the small yet grinding irritations of domesticity are forgotten.’
But what would the reality be in that longed-for home, in that imagined dream-time ‘after the war’? The millions of women who had taken on war work or been conscripted knew that the world they’d grown up in would never be the same again. They would still be mothers, housewives, feeders, healers, carers and educators. But after so much sacrifice, they wanted to believe that life after the war would be better than what had gone before.
So when, on 2 December 1942, the liberal social reformer Sir William Beveridge published a report which promised a ‘comprehensive policy of social progress’, the women of Britain turned eagerly to its pages to discover what plans their leaders had to improve their lot. Was it possible that the government was starting to recognise that half the population of Britain lived lives of unaided struggle, and that there existed a genuine political will to assist and support their efforts?
That evening, Nella Last listened to Sir William broadcasting to the nation as he laid out a utopian vision. In the new, post-war world Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness would be regarded as the evils of a past age. He explained with care the workings of a contributory scheme which would supply a comprehensive safety net covering all eventualities, for the entire population. There would be Family Allowances, a National Health Service and National Assistance for the unemployed. The pioneering scheme offered everything from maternity grants to funeral grants, ‘from the cradle to the grave’.
‘Never since I first listened to a speaker on the air have I felt as interested as I was tonight by Sir William Beveridge,’ reported Nella. His broadcast left her feeling profoundly hopeful about the future. The scheme would surely make a huge difference to women: ‘It is they who bear the real burden of unemployment, sickness, child-bearing and rearing – and the ones who, up to now, have come off worst. There should be some all-in scheme.’ As she wrote up her diary that night, Nella was struck by how Beveridge’s proposals seemed in so many ways to chime with her own deepest aspirations. She recalled pre-war days when she would discuss social issues with her sons and their friends. Back then her proto-feminism had not gone down well: ‘[They] thought I was a visionary when I spoke of a scheme whereby women would perhaps get the consideration they deserved from the State.’ But could this be her vision coming true?
Yes, war could change things for the better. Nella Last had no regrets about the pre-war days; she knew all about want, disease and squalor. There was dreadful poverty in Barrow during the Depression. Wages were so low that children in the town went barefoot; and they all had toothache, because their parents were too poor to send them to have their teeth pulled. Impetigo was rife – the kids were scabbed and raw from it. The husbands were tyrannical when it came to money. They spent their wages on cheap beer, yet held their wives to account for every penny.
It now dawned on Nella how selfish Will, her husband, could be, how he had never made provision for his dependants in the event of his death, or paid for insurance, or given her decent housekeeping money. And now here he was complaining that, under the new scheme, he would have to work till he dropped. Nella felt angry. She didn’t want to be ‘cared for’ by her husband; she wanted to be appreciated and she wanted some understanding of how housewives like her were always on the sharp end when things got difficult. Will Last was simply unaware of what narrow margins his hard-worked wife survived on. Her husband’s tight-fistedness left her having to subsidise the children’s welfare with what she could save from the housekeeping. When sickness struck, or an operation had to be paid for, life became tough indeed. If implemented, Beveridge’s proposals would sweep away all this hardship. From now on, something started to change in this fifty-two-year-old housewife from Barrow-in-Furness. Nella’s Mass Observation diaries track a growing contempt for her husband, a rage at his dismissive attitude towards her and a gathering sense of her own value and talents. ‘I’m beginning to see I’m a really clever woman in my own line, and not the “odd” or “uneducated” woman that I’ve had dinned into me,’ she wrote.
The Beveridge Report sold over 600,000 copies. Mollie Panter-Downes reported to her New York readers that Londoners had queued up to buy the doorstop manual for two shillings, ‘as though it were unrationed manna dropped from some heaven where the old bogey of financial want didn’t exist’. These avid purchasers had read it with new optimism:
The plain British people, whose lives it will remodel, seem to feel that it is the most encouraging glimpse to date of a Britain that is worth fighting for.
For Nella Last, and for many others, the Report read as a manifesto for women, a true attempt to offer them a better future.
Though the Beveridge report continued to be kicked around parliament like a football for the remainder of the war, its huge popularity ensured that no government could now duck out of the post-war creation of a welfare state. Family allowances would become a reality; there would be a National Health Service. Hopes soared that scrimping and saving, drunk tyrannical husbands and scabby barefoot children with rotten teeth would all become distant memories. The bitter sacrifices of housewives across the nation had, it seemed, gained some official recognition at last.
8 Over There
A Song and a Cheer
By the fifth Christmas of the war, there was a depressing shortage of festive fare. ‘No chance of chicken, turkey or goose,’ wrote diarist Vere Hodgson. ‘If we can get a little mutton that is the best we can hope for.’ Coal was ‘a worry’. But the embargo on bell-ringing was lifted, and Christmas Day passed without reports of enemy activity over Britain.
In Scotland Naomi Mitchison hung up garlands gathered from the woods and rejoiced in her ersatz Christmas pudding and tinned pears. There were even stockings for the children. In the afternoon Naomi organised a round of rampageous games, from ‘The Farmer’s in his Den’ to ‘In and Out the Dusty Bluebells’. But there weren’t enough crackers to go round.
Wren Maureen Bolster, based at Southampton, wrote to her fiancé, Eric Wells, describing the revels at the sailors’ mess: ‘I must say I’ve had one of the best Christmases I’ve ever known.’ On Christmas Eve the Wrens stumbled round with a torch being Father Christmas, distributing parcels. There were real eggs for breakfast, followed by carols at the mission. Dancing, drinking, community singing and egg-and-spoon races went on till three in the morning. In Inverness, Joan Wyndham and her fellow WAAFs spent Christmas night downing quantities of port and dancing with fighter pilots.
Nella Last wished her husband a happy Christmas. ‘He scowled and muttered.’ The sweet coupons were tight in his pocket, and it was clear that not so much as a sugar mouse was coming her way this festive season. Nevertheless she stuffed and roasted a corner of pork, found a dash of rum to liven up the sauce for her plum pudding and managed to rejoice at the sight of four late-blooming roses on her Christmas dinner table.
In Croydon, Elsie Whiteman was unwell, and her friend and flatmate Kathleen Church-Bliss enjoyed a holiday from her work in Morrisons No 1. Factory. In common with much of the nation, Elsie and Kathleen spent much of the day listening to the wireless, pausing especially for the King’s broadcast to the nation at three o’clock. Clara Milburn went to church – it was packed – and later enjoyed a hoarded bottle of 1926 Graves. ‘Grand!’ Then she too sat down to hear His Majesty’s message:
Some of you may hear me in your aircraft, on board your ships, or as you wait for battle in the jungles of the Pacific islands or on the Italian peaks. Some of you may listen to me as you rest from your work, or as you lie sick or wounded in hospital. To many of you, my words will come as you sit in t
he quiet of your homes. But, wherever you may be, to-day of all days in the year, your thoughts will be in distant places and your hearts with those you love. I hope that my words, spoken to them and to you, may be the bond that joins us all in company for a few moments on this Christmas Day.
As the notes of the National Anthem crackled across the airwaves, Mrs Milburn needed no reminding of absent loved ones:
All day long we think of Alan and long to have him here. Every hour of the day one wonders what he is doing. And will he be here next Christmas? May we all be here together.
Watching, waiting and praying were predominantly female activities; but in many cases women themselves were far from home. Mike Morris of the ‘Y’ Service, now based at Allied Supreme Headquarters in Algiers, had hoped to go home for Christmas after two years abroad. But the Italian invasion meant that her vital interception skills could not be spared. She was disappointed, but the festivities were infused with hope for the future. General Eisenhower was convinced that 1944 would see an Allied victory; ‘his optimism was infectious’. And on Christmas Day 1943 there was work to do. Mike and her colleagues were frantically busy with preparations for Operation ‘Shingle’, the amphibious landings at Anzio, now planned for less than a month away.
*
Irrepressible, unprompted, hope for an end to the war was flickering into life. The enemy was being rolled back by a series of military successes. A huge boost to British morale came on Boxing Day, when the German warship Scharnhorst was sunk with the loss of 1,900 lives. Early in 1944 the news from the Eastern front continued to be encouraging to the Allies as the Red Army drove German troops backward across the Dnieper and towards the Polish border. German civilians suffered, too, from the successive assaults of the RAF throughout 1943 and 1944. Firestorms consumed German cities, and thousands died. The Italian campaign was hard-fought; on 22 January 37,000 US and British troops landed at Anzio, and the British press celebrated the lack of German opposition (prematurely, as it turned out). In the Pacific, American warships were making headway against Japan’s expansion, though that nation’s ferocious tenacity was to prove intractable over the coming year; meanwhile intrepid Indian, Gurkha and British forces in Burma were holding out in a terrible war of attrition. The tide would eventually turn against the Japanese, exhausted by disease and defenceless against British tanks. And though its exact location was a closely guarded secret, the entire British nation understood that a Second Front was in preparation. ‘Some people think it will start in the Balkans, some favour Norway and few think we shall try through France,’ wrote one anxious Mass Observation diarist. Many like her were restless and impatient, awaiting the onslaught that would, surely, mean the start of the endgame.
In this atmosphere of expectation and suspense, it was vital to keep morale high among the soldiers, some of whom had, by this time, been away from home for years. Many men who had embarked on troopships with a song and a cheer back in 1941 were, by 1944, battle-weary, despondent and desperately homesick. They missed domestic comforts, they missed female companionship, they missed their children, they missed the little finesses of everyday life that their wives, mothers and girlfriends could provide, and they missed their physical presence. Typically, soldier Peter Jackson wrote to his fiancée, Joan Tamlin:
I’m just living for the day when I can hold you in my arms forever … It’s a heart aching experience, loving you like I do and being away from you.
Basil Dean, who set up ENSA (the Entertainments National Service Association, otherwise known as Every Night Something Awful) in 1939, persuaded the government to support his efforts in lightening the load of war workers and soldiers. Over the course of the war ENSA mounted two and a half million performances, involving four out of five members of the entertainments profession in Britain. Women performers were hugely popular, adding a welcome touch of lipstick and femininity to the laddish environment of army camps and barracks. For some of these women, the experience of travelling to far-flung theatres of war and offering up their talents to the Allied cause was to prove profoundly life-changing.
*
For the soldiers who couldn’t go home, home might travel to them. Women were its representatives.
Early in the new year of 1944, two women set sail from Liverpool. Joyce Grenfell had packed her trunk, said goodbye to her husband, Reggie, and now – as far as her loved ones were concerned, for her destination had to be kept secret – headed into the unknown. Joyce, a singer and comedienne, was possessed of a deep faith, an infectious zest for life and an infallible instinct for the ridiculous. Viola Tunnard, funny, quiet and clever, was her accompanist. By early February the pair had arrived in Algiers for the first stop of a thirteen-month tour that would take them to hospitals, army bases and far-flung military units in fourteen countries. Joyce both wrote home and kept a diary throughout, recording her observations with humour and compassion. That year of entertaining the troops was ‘the time of my life’.
From the outset they were often giving three concerts a day. In Algiers she and Viola performed at Hospital No. 95, occupied by 2,500 men wounded in the desert war. They started out in orthopaedics; a piano was pushed into the centre of the ward. Before the concert Joyce chatted to the patients. ‘There were two of the illest men I have ever seen I think. Just skulls but with living wide, very clear eyes.’ Joyce apologised to them for the awkward positioning of the ‘stage’. ‘I said to the illest of the two very ill ones that I hoped he’d excuse my back when I had to turn it on him and he said he would if I’d excuse him for not being shaved. Oh, gosh.’ Next day she discovered that he had not survived the night. ‘I wish I could tell his family how he smiled and even sang with us the day before he died.’ Over the next few days they worked their way round the huge hospital, adapting as well as possible to their improvised concert venues. Making music in tarpaulin marquees was challenging – ‘their acoustic properties are exactly nil’. Despite this, they got the men joining in, fortissimo. Later they performed to sixteen eye patients. There was a shy boy who had lost his sight; Joyce noticed how his pals were endlessly gentle and caring towards this young soldier, looking after him ‘with all the tenderness of mothers … They were happy when he was and exchanged looks … He sang with us; and he cried a little.’ Next door Joyce met another man who had lost both eyes. ‘He has reached the accepting stage and had a look of strange radiance.’
In March, Joyce and Viola moved on to Naples. The city was covered in pink volcano dust. Just to the north the battle for Cassino was raging, German forces holding on to their defences after the bombing of its famous monastery.
Monday, March 20th, 1944
Oh God, the sights I’ve seen today. We haven’t touched the war till today. Bed after bed filled with mutilated men, heads, faces, bodies. It’s the most inhuman, ghastly, bloody, hellish thing in the world … It was quite numbing.
Crowded out, the days whistled by: ‘Tuesday Malta, Wednesday Cairo …’ In early April they were in Baghdad, from where they were driven out to Kut, a sandy outpost, ‘115 miles from anywhere’, to give a show in the local NAAFI to eighty English troops.
Friday, April 14th, 1944
Oh the desert! Oh the desert in heat! Oh the desert in heat and wind and dust!
… I do not like dust storms. Very depressing and poor for the morale. Felt far away from home and sanity and safety.
On the way back to Baghdad the dust blew up again, as hour after hour their jeep jolted across the mirage-strewn desert. Once, a camel train came into distant focus through the swirling sand. Soaking off the grime in two inches of cold water that evening, Joyce contemplated the (unfounded) rumour that Allied troops were already invading northern France. ‘My heart sank like lead. Will we get home?’
Touring sprang surprises on them at every turn: in Maqil the piano had no A sharp, and its lid harboured an angry scorpion. Joyce recorded tussles with cockroaches, beetles, ants and fleas (‘Flea won’), as well as seatless lavatories: ‘my lav-life is of
great importance to me. I’m affected here by having to do all from a stand or crouch position.’ Their work continued to be emotionally harrowing; Joyce couldn’t bear to sing songs like ‘Someday’ or ‘All My Tomorrows’ to dying men. But she was never in any doubt of its value. Time and again she and Viola were compensated by the men’s laughter and the way music and comedy could make them forget. They talked to the men too – about ‘home and ordinary things’. It was clear that they were needed. Men in hospital craved distraction – though perhaps not of the kind accidentally implied by the ‘bounder’ who introduced her and Viola as having arrived ‘especially to entertain men in bed’, at which a wag from the back of the ward piped up: ‘Cor, they’ve laid that on now!’
Travel, too, had its own rewards. The pair had left for sunnier climes just before the Luftwaffe renewed their attacks on England in what became known as the Little Blitz, and Joyce appreciated her fortune in being far from home at that time. ‘I’m so b---y lucky to be here doing this job and seeing this beautiful country, and being full of fruit and sun.’ Over an exotic meal of chicken followed by pancakes filled with pineapple jam, Joyce admired a sunset sky full of flying storks.
Back home, everyone was obsessed with food. The scarcity of fruit in particular had become distressing. Joyce and Viola, meanwhile, were being driven up to a leave camp in the mountains above Beirut:
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