‘How many more do they think are in there?’ I asked him.
‘We’re not sure. Can you wait a bit?’
‘Of course.’
As we waited my mind flitted between themes: the wonderful job the rescue teams were doing, the knocking sound I’d heard in the engine as we drove to the incident, whether Dan Lowell was a German sympathiser, my longing for a cup of tea and food; but the recurring thought was of Michael, who was going away today to goodness knew where. I had no idea when I was likely to see him again. He had told me he loved me; I was loved. The last person who had loved me was my mother, and I was sure she would have approved of Michael.
I looked up at a scream of ‘Silence!’
A rescue worker was stretched flat out with an ear to the wreckage. One, two, three seconds passed. Then he began tearing at the rubble as if possessed. Others joined him, and the hole they made became larger. A man was lowered into the cavity. Five long minutes went by. The rope was hauled up and he appeared carrying a girl of fifteen or so, who was clutching a small dog to her chest.
It was the dog that had saved her, I found out later. They were trapped together in the cellar, with gas wafting around them. The terrified dog began to whine, and so she picked it up and, in an attempt to calm her pet, sang songs to it. The rescue worker heard her singing.
As Lily dealt with the girl’s cut arms and legs, another shout came from the site. Three men appeared, carrying an elderly man in their arms. He held a towel over his bloodied face and seemed dazed. We loaded both of our wounded into the back of the ambulance and Lily covered each of them with a blanket. My job now was to get them to Middlesex Hospital as fast as I could. As I pulled out, Squire and Harris came back to the site in the Ford ambulance. They pulled up close to rescue workers who dug frantically into rubble, near where the old man had been extracted.
I drove steadily west at sixteen mph, but was diverted south into various little streets where torn blinds and curtains fluttered from empty, shattered windows and I drove over layers of shattered glass, dodging the contents of shop windows now scattered across the road. The area beyond was a wasteland. Two parachute bombs had landed and at least eight high-explosive bombs also. High Holborn was open, but had taken another hit. I drove along New Oxford Street, which was again partly in ruins, but found Bloomsbury Street was impassable, cordoned off because the British Museum was still on fire, so I continued on to Tottenham Court Road. Not far along, and it was also blocked. I turned into the narrow side-streets and drove all around the houses until I finally arrived at the red-brick Middlesex Hospital.
Lily helped to unload the wounded. As she disappeared into the hospital I called out, ‘Be sure we get our two blankets back.’
Blankets were scarce and we would need them for the next patients.
We did. It was a very long day.
Lily and I arrived back at the station after our fourth pick-up at around five o’clock. Apart from a quick cup of tea and a piece of cake I’d grabbed at a tea van in Theobald’s Road, I’d not eaten all day.
We rolled into the garage and I almost fell out of the ambulance.
‘We need to eat,’ said Lily. ‘And have a cup of tea. Moray can’t send us out again until we do.’
But when we arrived in the common room Moray told us that there were no more pick-ups at the moment. ‘Squire and Ashwin are standing by at an incident in Holborn, just in case someone comes up alive, but they’ve told us to rest here until they’ve dug out some more survivors to be transported. It’ll be mortuary runs all day for tomorrow’s shift, poor sods.’
A plate of sandwiches was on the table and a freshly brewed pot of tea. Harris poured me a cup as I wolfed down a couple of sandwiches.
‘I heard about you being bombed out,’ I said to her. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She patted my hand. ‘Thank you, Halliday dear. I think it was bound to happen some time, but it was the house I’d moved to with my late husband when we were married and I did love it so. My eldest daughter wants me to come to her until things are more settled.’
‘Where does she live?’
Harris grimaced. ‘That’s the problem. Right out in East Finchley. I may have to ask for a transfer to a closer ambulance station, though I hate to think of leaving you all.’
I was sad to think we’d lose Harris, who mothered us all while keeping us as firmly in line as did Moray.
‘Is there any news about Armstrong?’
She shook her head. Moray appeared in his office doorway with chits in his hand. ‘I need two ambulances to go to Regent Square. They’re finding survivors. Powell and Purvis, you go now. Lily and Halliday, eat something first, then get going.’
By eight that evening we had all returned to the station and were sitting around the big table finishing our dinner when the door opened and Armstrong entered. Squire jumped up and went over to the boy. There was a dead look in his eyes that I associated with shock.
Squire led Armstrong to the table and sat him down. He gestured to Harris, who poured him a strong cup of tea and put in a couple of spoonfuls of our precious sugar.
Armstrong gulped the tea, then sat back in his chair, eyes fixed on the table.
‘What happened?’ asked Sadler, in a surprisingly gentle voice.
Armstrong looked up at him. There was a quiet dignity to the boy, but nothing could mask the horror in his eyes.
‘Direct hit on the shelter behind my sister’s house. Lost my sister, her baby – it was a little girl, Lois – and the twins, George and Penny. They’d just turned three.’
The room was silent. No one could think of a thing to say that would fit such a list of horrors.
‘Joy’s husband’s a sailor and he’s away at sea. Dad’s in Liverpool on war work. There’s only me and Joy, and I wanted to spare Mum the pain of having to identify the bodies, so I did it.’ His voice was a monotone, as if by showing no emotion at all he could deal with what he was telling us. ‘The people at the morgue had done their best, but …’ He looked up at Squire with haunted eyes. ‘You know the worst bit?’
Squire shook his head.
‘I told them it wasn’t Joy’s body, because Joy had a scar on her hand where the kettle had scalded her when she was a kid.’ He swallowed. ‘I said it looked like Joy, but it couldn’t be my sister because that woman’s hand had no scar.’ His voice dropped and we could scarcely hear him say, ‘They said that it was someone else’s body under the sheet. They do that quite often, they told me, to make the person think that their loved one is – is intact.’
Still the boy didn’t cry. He finished his tea, put the cup carefully on the saucer, and sat up straight. ‘Aunty May’s looking after Mum, so I thought I should come in, because you’ll all be really busy tonight if there’s another big raid.’
‘That was thoughtful of you,’ said Moray quietly. ‘We’ll need all the help we can get if they come over again. You’re with Squire, in the Ford.’
He looked at Squire, who nodded and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
‘Come on, mate,’ said Squire, ‘let’s check the vehicle.’
They walked out together, the tough old former boxer from Seven Dials and the boy who’d lost most of his family in one night, but thought he should come in to help.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
There was no follow-up raid that night, or the next night, or the night following, or the night after that. Occasionally there were sirens, which made my heart race, but there were no raids.
One week, two weeks, and no repeat of the raid of tenth/eleventh May. Our nerves were stretched almost to breaking point as we waited for another big raid. We sat in the common room to discuss it on Sunday morning, exactly two weeks after living through the Longest Night.
‘It’s the weather,’ said Harris. She had decided to move in with her younger daughter, who lived closer to Bloomsbury, saying she’d become too used to us all to leave the station. Today she was knitting socks in navy blue.
‘I
heard they don’t want to bomb us in case they kill Rudolf Hess,’ said Powell, ‘because Hitler flew him over secretly to negotiate peace.’
One of our biggest shocks after the big raid was to find out that, while London was being bombed to pieces, Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, had parachuted into Scotland. Germany reported that he was mentally ill, had stolen a plane and Hitler had not authorised his departure.
‘Nah,’ said Sadler. ‘That Hess, he’s mum and dad.’ At Lily’s puzzled look, he elaborated. ‘Barking mad. Negotiate peace, my foot.’
‘I think it’s because they’re too busy bombarding our troops in Crete to bother with us at the moment,’ said Purvis.
‘Maybe the Blitz is really over,’ whispered Armstrong.
‘Shhhh,’ said Squire, as if the Germans might hear him and be provoked into another attack. Sadler knocked on the wooden table. Moray fingered the lucky gold sovereign I knew he kept in his pocket.
‘They’re still attacking the other cities,’ I said. ‘Provincial cities are still being hit, just not London.’
‘Which means the Blitz is like a good West End show,’ said Purvis, with a weak smile. ‘After a long run in London, it’s touring the provinces.’
‘That joke is in bad taste,’ said Harris, looking up from her knitting. ‘Personally, I think it’s psychological. They’ll hold off for a while, convince us that the Blitz is over, then destroy all our hopes with a really big raid.’
‘I think you’re right,’ said Lily, usually one of the more optimistic of us. ‘They’re giving us a break to destroy our morale for good.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a good old Blitz on London next Saturday,’ said Squire.
‘Then we’ll see the rest of Westminster Abbey go,’ said Lily bitterly. ‘And St Paul’s probably. And maybe Big Ben, too.’
‘Nah,’ said Sadler, ‘they’ll wait until autumn, then blast London to smithereens and invade.’
Powell nodded. ‘Apparently one of our leading astrologers – who is almost always right – has predicted that the next raid we have on London will be the worst ever in the history of the world.’
‘Well, it hasn’t happened yet,’ said Celia, in a bracing voice, ‘so buck up everyone. Who wants a cup of tea?’
‘I’ll help,’ I said, and followed her into the kitchen, desperate to escape the never-ending talk about when the next raid would come.
‘A whole fortnight without a raid,’ said Celia, as we were preparing tea. ‘I can’t think why they don’t try and finish us off.’
Living without raids, not knowing when the bombers would next come over, was more taxing on the nerves than living through the worst of the Blitz.
When I arrived at the station early the following week, Moray announced that the Home Guard were conducting ‘invasion exercises’ in the ruins of the City, and they’d asked for ambulances from various stations to be on hand.
‘What’s an invasion exercise?’ I asked.
‘Hundreds of men will run around pretending the invasion has come and we need to fight them on the beaches, etc. Any volunteers?’
‘I’ll go,’ said Lily. ‘I’ve not seen the City since the big raid.’
‘And me,’ I said.
We set out in the Monster. Lily drove past devastated Russell Square, along Southampton Row with its shattered windows. There was only an enormous pile of rubble as we turned into Kingsway, where Heavy Rescue had finished dynamiting what remained of a large bank. The rubble from the explosion was being shovelled into large lorries. I’d heard that London’s rubble was used to make airfields, from which, no doubt, our bombers took off to wreak the same sort of havoc on German cities, in an insane and never-ending cycle of hate and devastation.
Lily drove up the Strand, along Fleet Street, through Ludgate Circus and up Ludgate Hill. New paving had been laid over the yawning craters, but we couldn’t miss the glimpses of ruination in the little side streets, where buildings were down like teeth torn at random from a jaw. Office blocks were shattered, little shops burned out, everywhere boards where there had been glass.
The Home Guard exercises were to take place in the area of worst devastation, a wasteland nearly three-quarters of a mile square around St Paul’s. The cathedral still stood proud on its hill, but around it scarcely a structure remained intact, and many had been obliterated. The dynamite squads had tidied it up, so that what remained had a more peaceful look, as if a great wind had destroyed all in its path.
‘That was the centre of the publishing trade,’ said Lily, gesturing at stunted ruins, where fire-seared walls surrounded shells of what had been great blocks of warehouses. ‘Seven million books went up in flames on the night of the big fire raid at the end of December.’
Lily parked the Monster behind the other five ambulances that were lined up in the street.
‘Here to watch the fun?’ asked a chubby young woman with a pretty smile as we joined drivers and attendants from other stations at the mobile refreshments van. ‘I’m Violet.’
‘Maisie. Can’t wait.’ I reached up to take the cup of tea passed to me by the girl in the van.
‘Did you hear?’ said Violet. ‘We shot down thirty bombers last week as they crossed the coast. The RAF is becoming a dab hand at getting the blighters at night.’
‘Do you really think it’s carrots?’ asked the woman in the van. ‘I’ve taken to eating them at every meal, but I can’t see any better in the blackout.’
‘Maybe it takes a while to start working,’ said Violet, ‘and that’s why it’s taken eight months before our boys have been able to hit Jerry at night. I reckon that’s why they’ve stopped coming to London. Too many losses.’
As I sipped my tea, I looked around at the destruction that had been wrought by eight months of bombing. Were the attacks on London really over? There had been planes that dropped a few bombs, but no major raids on the capital since the big one in mid-May. The provincial towns and cities were still being hit, though not as badly as before. Like many Londoners, I suspected the Germans were simply waiting for autumn and the longer nights to resume the attacks on London. And yet, I couldn’t help wondering if Violet was right and it really was due to our improved night fighting techniques. Thirty ‘kills’ last week was an amazing result.
‘No troops ever had such a realistic place to train in,’ said a gaunt-looking man, as he surveyed the devastated City. ‘It’s a dream.’
‘It’s a nightmare,’ said Lily.
Home Guardsmen acting as ground defenders sat at machine-gun posts amid the debris. Riflemen poked their weapons through shattered, first-storey windows in the occasional remaining building. Their ‘attackers’ were steel-helmeted Scouts, who advanced down the blasted streets of the City.
As the main attack developed, the Home Guardsmen worked forwards, moving slowly, clambering over remnants of City offices. They were forced to scramble through shattered glass, relics of filing cabinets and typewriters, rusty radiators and fire-blistered safes. The men crawled around the edges of bomb craters, now choked with avalanches of rubbish, and gathered to draw breath within the shelter of the blackened walls of a burnt-out church.
It was a lot of fun to watch, but had a dark purpose. These were the men who would protect us if Germany launched a ground assault on London. They were grimly efficient, but many were old, many very young. There was an air of controlled chaos about it all, and I wondered how long London would survive if these men faced the sort of action our troops had faced on Crete. We’d just heard that after twelve days of what had been described as the ‘fiercest fighting of this war’ and sustaining ‘severe losses’, it had been decided to withdraw our forces from Crete.
Of course, there were casualties in the Home Guard exercises also. A man in his sixties collapsed with what was thought to be a heart attack. There were ten sprained ankles, one broken wrist and numerous cuts and grazes caused by the many glass shards that littered the site.
When the manoeuvres were
finished, the Scouts and Home Guardsmen settled in for well-earned cups of tea and biscuits. One nuggety cockney standing near me congratulated his mate on his handling of the exercise.
‘I reckon we’d show Jerry a tough time if he invades,’ he said.
His mate, a tall lanky man with a thin moustache, took a long swallow of tea and then waved his mug at the wasteland around us.
‘These blighters just wasted their bombs,’ he said, in all seriousness. ‘Imagine if they had done this to something that really mattered.’
The following Friday was the premiere of Ambulance Girls At War. It wasn’t a fancy Hollywood premiere, but we’d been told that it would be shown then for the first time before the main feature. Lily, Celia and I decided to make a night of it, and turn up at the Odeon, along Jim and Simon and some from the station, to watch it together.
Clothes rationing had been introduced the week before, but hats weren’t included. So I decided to spend Friday afternoon in bomb-damaged Selfridges, looking for a new hat to celebrate the occasion. I’d loved the grand department store since I was a girl. If Mam was working at the Corner House, my first port of call was Selfridges in Oxford Street. I would gaze at the ball gowns on the first floor and imagine myself in them. Sometimes I’d ride the lift to the terraced gardens on the roof, and watch the fashionable ladies and their well-dressed partners promenading around. There were cafes up there, a mini golf course and a women’s gun club. The Selfridges roof gardens were the height of sophistication to a girl from the Sheffield slums. Now the shop was a fire-blasted shell of its former glory.
It was as I was walking through the Soho Square gardens on my way to Oxford Street that he stepped out in front of me. A thick-set man, some inches shorter than me who had very short blond hair. I thought he rather resembled photographs I had seen of Nazi storm troopers and I remembered Simon’s remarks about Germans changing their names in the last war.
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