by Hilda Newman
Now may God bless you all. May He defend the right. It is the evil things that we shall be fighting against – brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution – and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.
I looked around the servants’ hall. Mr Latter, Winnie Sapstead, Mrs Lovett: all the head servants; the footmen, the housemaids – I saw a tear glistening Dorothy Clarke’s eye – the kitchen and scullery maid, and my own dear Roland. No one said a word. Each was looking inward, thinking of family and loved ones, as I was of Jim, my little brother who would now, I knew, be called upon to fight and to kill and to face men – boys – just like him who would be trying to fight and kill him.
We were at war. And nothing would ever be the same again.
Chapter Thirteen
To the ATS and Farewell to Croome
Daily Express, Saturday, 8 May 1948
LADY JOAN KEPT TITLE SECRET
College riddle of 48 hours off
Express Staff Reporter: Newbury (Berks) Friday
Lady Joan Blanche Coventry, 23-year-old sister of the Earl of Coventry, lived for a month as Miss Coventry, a business student, at Newbury, where she was found dying in an hotel last night.
She left Croome Court, the family seat near Worcester, to register at a commercial college in Netwon Road, Newbury. She wanted to be a business secretary. She told nobody that her father was the 10th Earl of Coventry, killed in action in 1940, or that her 14-year-old brother is the present Earl.
Then on Tuesday she asked the college principal for 48 hours leave. She gave no reason. It was granted and she was due to return to her studies today. Late last night a police surgeon was called urgently to the Chequers Hotel. ‘Miss Coventry’ was unconscious in bed in her nightdress. At her side was an empty aspirin bottle. An ambulance took her to hospital. She died; and then her identity was discovered.
Said Mrs Spackman, principal of the commercial college: ‘Joan was a good mixer, pleasant, and keen to get on. It was a surprise to all of us to learn who she was. We knew her as plain Joan.’
Results of a post-mortem will not be known until tomorrow. A pathologist is making further investigations. Late tonight police were trying to discover why Lady Joan wanted 48 hours off. They were tracing her movements since Tuesday.
Her mother, the Countess of Coventry, today drove from Croome Court to help the police, who were puzzled by another query: why did Lady Joan choose Newbury?
Lady Joan’s father was master of the Croome Hunt and she was a fine horsewoman. She often exercised horses at Mr Fred Rimmel’s Kinnersley racing stables near Croome. After leaving Malvern school she went into the ATS, in which her mother was Chief Commandant. Later she was commissioned. Said a friend: ‘She was shy and reserved outside her circle. But to us she was charming.’
Nine years had passed since Mr Chamberlain’s sombre announcement of a new war with Germany. Nine years – not such a long time in the scheme of people’s lives – and no more than a fraction of the time I have been on this planet. But these were nine years in which everything changed: the whole world was in upheaval, lives were uprooted and – all too often – ended, and the social hierarchies of England, which had seemed so certain to continue when a few short years earlier the country had celebrated the coronation of its new King, were shattered and cast to the four winds.
And what of Hilda Mary Mulley, trained dressmaker-tailor turned lady’s maid to the mistress of one of the greatest aristocratic houses in the land? My life, too, would be turned upside down and then inside out. The change began a few mornings after the announcement of war. I was taking my mistress her morning cup of tea, preparing her bath and laying out her clothes when the axe fell.
‘War has come, Mulley,’ Her Ladyship said wistfully. ‘It will be a terrible business – perhaps worse than the Great War. It will affect every one of us here at home as well as those poor boys who are sent overseas to fight.’ I wondered if she was talking about my brother: Jim was of fighting age to be sure. But then it dawned on me that she had concerns rather closer to home: her husband. The Earl of Coventry was not yet 40 and was sure to volunteer: noblesse oblige – the price you paid (for there is always a price for everything) for the privilege of being one of the gentry.
‘Everyone must do their bit, Mulley,’ my mistress continued and I nodded. ‘His poor Lordship,’ I thought. He was never the strongest amongst us – why, even the prospect of riding out to hounds with his wife and children would regularly send him scuttling back to his bed and pleading sickness. How would he possibly cope with the hell of warfare? But my concerns were misplaced, for the Countess had other sacrifices in mind.
‘I shall, of course, join the ATS. I would like you to volunteer also, Mulley. If we join together, you can be assigned as my batman and I shall not have to do without your services.’
So that was what Her Ladyship meant by sacrifice! She wanted me to join up and she wanted this, or so it seemed, not because I would in some way be serving the country in its darkest hour, but so that I could continue to wait on her hand and foot! Well, I’d heard some things – some cheek in my time – but this took the biscuit. ‘You’re in a real pickle now, my girl,’ I thought as the Countess slipped off to enjoy her hot bath. ‘What on earth are you going to do about this little fix?’
So what was this outfit the Countess wanted us to join? The Auxiliary Territorial Service had been set up a year earlier as the government finally saw that war was coming. There had been a similar organisation set up during the Great War – the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) but that had been disbanded in 1921. The ATS was organised much on the same lines as an all-encompassing body for women in uniform. It was attached to the existing men’s Territorial Army and, that September of 1939 it, too, was made up of volunteers. That would change in December 1941 when all unmarried women between the ages of 20 and 30 were conscripted into service but, for now, there was – in theory – an element of choice about joining up.
I say an element of choice because the mood in the country was pretty much universally that of everyone wanting ‘to do their bit’ – that’s another phrase I haven’t heard for a long, long time: a reminder, perhaps, that in the darkest of hours the nation came together in a way I think we have lost in the decades since. And so there was great – if largely unspoken – pressure from society for girls like me to put King and country before ourselves. But, of course, I was not in the same position as other girls my age. I was a servant to a great lady and, if societal pressure wasn’t enough, when the Countess said jump, the only real question was: how high? I sighed inwardly. Without a shadow of a doubt, I was going to have to swap my civilian ‘uniform’ (if the white pinny I had to wear for the hours spent brushing Milady’s hair could be called that) for the khaki dress and skirt of a volunteer woman soldier. Still, I consoled myself with the thought that I would at least still be with my mistress and that my duties were unlikely to be much different – war or no war.
I suppose I should have realised, even then, that my life was about to take a dramatic turn for the worse but I think that, with the terrible fear of war which clouded everyone’s mind, I didn’t think too deeply about what was to come – and after all, it wasn’t as if I had much of a choice. So I wrote home to Mum and Dad with the news that I was going to join up.
When the letter came back from Stamford, it was with the news that my brother Jim had also enlisted. The Military Training Act, which had been introduced in April 1939, had required all men of fighting age to register with the army for a six-month training stint. And when the war broke out, a lot of men – my brother was one of them – volunteered to join up full time. Britain could still only muster an army of 875,000 men and within a month of Chamberlain’s speech all men between the ages of 20 and 23 were ordered to report for duty in one of the armed services. You could, in those early days, choose which one you went into – army, navy or air force. Jim plumped for the army and was assigned to the Royal Engineers, the same unit which
I think Dad had served in during the First World War. It felt strange and terribly frightening to know that my little brother – and that’s how I still thought of him – was now to be a soldier and would before long be setting off to fight Hitler’s mighty Nazi military machine. All through the previous two years this had crashed its way into country after country, crushing any opposition in its path: now my Jim was setting off to try and keep it away from the shores of Britain.
Within a day or two of receiving my orders from the Countess, she had been true to her word and joined the ATS. Now it was my turn. I took the bus into Worcester and found the office where I was to sign my papers. I explained to an officious woman in uniform that I was personal maid to the Countess of Coventry, that she had enlisted and that she wanted me to join up too and be assigned as her batman. The woman gave me a look.
‘The army will decide where you are posted and who you are attached to, not your present employer – however mighty she might be. Sign here.’
Did I realise even then what I was doing by putting pen to paper and carefully inscribing my signature? You know, I’m not sure that I did.
Within a week or so an official brown envelope arrived at Croome Court addressed to Pvt. H.M. Mulley: my call-up papers. I was ordered to report to Norton Barracks, on the outskirts of Worcester. Did you notice that title the army had assigned me? I was to be a Private – the lowliest rank in all the service. Hardly surprising, I suppose, but there it was nonetheless. I thought that maybe this was the rank assigned to all batmen, whose main job was to look after the officer assigned to them. And that should tell you something else: while I was to enter service as just another member of the rank and file, the Countess was to walk right in as an officer from day one. It was a very peculiar thing – and a sign of the times we lived in back then – that any member of the aristocracy was automatically assumed to be worthy of an officer’s rank, while the rest of us were gathered up in the somewhat dismissive catch-all of ‘other ranks’.
There was a report in the Daily Mirror (the paper of choice for families such as mine, although it would never be seen inside Croome Court!) that rather summed the whole thing up. Under the headline GIRLS IN CAMP, the journalist described a visit to an ATS weekend training camp Her Ladyship had attended.
Militiamen have had a fair amount of limelight recently. So have territorials. No doubt they all deserve it. But what of the girls? Thousands of them, too, have been in camp and their lot has been much harder than that of the young men. They have had to contend not only with cold but with floods. And still there have been no complaints.
A girls’ camp has much of that delightful informality and untidy orderliness which one associates with the Portuguese Navy. Whatever may be said against hanging the day’s wash from the wireless aerial from an aesthetic point of view, no fault can be found with the idea in practice if the radio still works. And in a girls’ camp everything and everybody does work. The Auxiliary Territorial Service at Tidworth Pennings proves that.
Two of the most interesting women there are Countess of Coventry, County Commandant for Worcester, and Lady Elizabet Pleydell-Bouverie, sister of the Earl of Radnor …
Lady Cov, tall, dark, with beautiful brown eyes, was the Hon. Nesta Philipps, Lord and Lady Kylsant’s daughter when she married in 1921 aged only 18. Now she is chatelaine of one of England’s loveliest homes, Croome Court in Worcestershire.
Two of the visitors to the camp have been Dame Helen Gwnnse-Vaughan, Director of the Service, and the Duchess of Marlborough, who were amazed at the good spirits still prevailing in the washed-out camp.
I don’t think anyone would have reported on me as I prepared to do my bit, much less call me ‘one of the most interesting’ women in any camp. Yet there she was, my mistress and employer, being feted in the press and receiving other equally high-born ladies as ‘visitors’. Oh, and for good measure, she had been appointed to the rank of County Commandant.
‘Hey ho,’ I thought. ‘That’s just how the world is,’ and went to tell my mistress that I had done as she asked and that I had made clear to the ATS that the Countess of Coventry had requested I be assigned to her as a personal servant.
As it turned out, the officious officer at my signing on had been far more astute than either Milady or me. The army, in all its wisdom, had decided that the Countess was to be based at a quite different set of barracks, many miles away from Norton, at Warwick. Her great plan for us to see the war through together – with me still meeting her everyday clothing and bathing needs – was not to bear fruit. For the first time in five years we were to be separated.
Now, maybe that doesn’t seem like much to you but you have to remember that I was only 19 when I joined the staff at Croome and my adult life to date had been bound up completely with hers: every part of my day was tied to Milady’s needs and wishes. Whilst I could never say that she replaced my family, in a funny way I was terribly fond of her – as well as being completely dependant on her too. After all, my food, my warmth and the very roof over my head were all part of the job of being in service to a great lady.
That’s when it hit me. With my mistress away in one barracks and me serving at Norton, I was going to have to leave Croome. There would be no reason for me to stay on in the lovely big room at the top of the magnificent house because there would be no Countess living there to serve. I was going to lose my home and, with it, everything I had loved. Because I had grown to love the place. I treasured the times when I was free to wander over the vast estate – a place of wonder and peace and tranquility. My friends – such as I had – were other servants: I had barely seen my old school chums from Stamford in the five years I was in service. And then there was Roland, the man with whom I was in love and who had become so precious to me. What was to happen to our romance? And what would happen to him?
Roland, of course, volunteered. He was, by then, 35 and, although men of his age were not yet being called up, he felt it was his duty. But the army had other ideas about that too. In those days you had to be assessed by a doctor and pass a fairly strict medical to enlist. Roland failed, marked down as medically unfit to serve. It was a terrible blow to him: men that he knew were already in uniform and being sent overseas to fight. Even His Lordship, with all his seeming illnesses, was accepted and given a commission.
Poor Roland felt ashamed that he wasn’t good enough to serve his country. On top of which he was to lose his job: with the Earl away fighting and the Countess in charge of whatever ATS unit she had been given, there would be no place for a chauffeur at Croome. In fact, there was to be no Croome at all: the great Court was shut up and turned over to the War Department.
The first thing I had to do was to find somewhere to live. With Croome under dust sheets and the idea of living in at Norton Barracks not deemed suitable by the army, I was homeless. Fortunately, Roland’s brother Arnold came to the rescue. He offered me digs at the farm where he worked, and one sad day in late September 1939 I took my little cardboard suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe, packed up my few belongings and made ready to say goodbye to life at Croome.
You might think that such a momentous occasion – for that was how it felt to me – would stick in my memory. But the truth is I can’t remember a single thing about it. I must have bade farewell to Mr Latter and Winnie and all the under servants; I must have taken one last lingering look at my wonderful bedroom – bigger than I had ever been used to in my life before service; I must, too, have attended one last time to my mistress, brushing her hair and making sure she had everything she would need for the day ahead. Yet I can’t recall a single moment of it and, if Her Ladyship said anything to mark our separation or to recognise my years in her service, it has slipped away into the mists of my fading memory. But, you know, I’m not even certain that she did.
Our story must now split into distinct and separate sections – and ones which I have only been able to glue back together in the years since the world descended once again into war. Perha
ps they are like the reels of a great film, which have been separated and can at first only be viewed individually.
One reel follows Private Hilda Mulley in her new life at Norton Barracks – and, in truth, that is a short reel. Another shows the war as it tore up the countries of Europe, leaving a generation of young men as names only to be listed in the ever-growing roll call of casualties. While the third will give us a peek into the life of Croome Court when its owners and all their servants have departed. And that, I think, is a very interesting reel indeed. I shall try my best to glue and splice the frames of these films into a single story.
Norton Barracks – a depressing 20-acre hodge-podge of tarmac and Nissen huts (great prefabricated steel buildings) had existed for more than 100 years by the time I reported there for duty. In 1939 the function of the Depot was to train recruits and administer the ‘home’ of the Worcestershire Regiment. That training was divided into ‘Primary’, covering the first six weeks of a new recruit’s service, and ‘Corps’, which concentrated on the more advanced skills they would need to operate as infantry troops in battle. What struck me most of all on my first day in uniform was the sheer number of men gathered there. Everywhere I looked men were marching, or being yelled at by fierce-looking sergeant majors, or running at a sort of half-trot between the various barracks buildings. It seemed like half of the army must be concentrated here and, in fact, their numbers were so great that an old disused jam factory had been requisitioned and a brand-new camp of wooden huts had been constructed at one end of the base. It was to this camp that I was assigned.
You might have thought – and I most certainly did – that my training as a dressmaker-tailor might have been noted and some use found for it. But there’s an old saying that the army never actually thinks in straight lines, and so it proved. As I stood before the Commanding Officer that day, I learned that my great service to King and country was going to be waiting on tables in the Officers’ canteen – or mess as it was called in the services. It seemed then – and still to this day I feel the same – an act of short sightedness: wasn’t there a need for my skills?