Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys

by Mary Gibson

  ***

  Bermondsey was burning. And for the first time in six years May was glad of it. For they were the victory bonfires. Pyres and beacons were lit, tall as houses, constructed from the still plentiful bomb wreckage strewn all over the borough, and the flames crackled up into the air. Instead of the sirens’ wail came a bellowed, delirious chorus of song, in which she joined until she was hoarse. For so long, the acrid stink of smoke and charred wood had conjured up defeat and loss, but today it was the sweet smell of victory. She had her arms round Peggy, but Mr and Mrs Gilbie had preferred to stay at home with a quiet drink, looking after the children. May knew why they didn’t feel like celebrating: the war in the Far East was still coming to its tortuous end. They had two sons coming home, but there was still no word of their eldest. But though they’d heard nothing of Bill since he’d been reported missing six months earlier, May was still convinced she would know if he was dead.

  Before she and Peggy left the Gilbies’ house for the celebrations, Sam Gilbie had called May out into the backyard. The sun was low over the rooftops, an orange disk that only accentuated the jagged silhouettes of broken roofs and splintered trees beyond the garden fence.

  ‘I want to show you something before you go, May,’ he said, ducking under the lean-to where the mangle and washtub were kept. He emerged with the old penny-farthing bicycle. May gasped. What she saw brought a smile to her face.

  ‘It looks brand new!’

  The twisted wheels had been straightened and their spokes now shone, so that they caught the orange glow of the setting sun. The metal frame was newly painted and the saddle re-upholstered.

  ‘It’s beautiful, Mr Gilbie. I didn’t even know you still had it.’

  He smiled. ‘Well, it’s done my family proud over the years, and our Bill was always on at me to fix it up again. I’d hate to think it was still a wreck by the time he gets home.’

  She looked into his brimming, dark eyes, and put her hand over his on the handlebars.‘He’s told me so many stories about this bike, how you used to wheel him round and round the yard on it when he was little. I know he’d be pleased it’s getting a new lease of life.’

  Mr Gilbie gave a little smile. ‘Jack’s just the same, never gets tired of having a ride on it. But listen, May, I wanted to let you know how proud I am of you. It’s hard, what you’re doing, going off to a foreign country, and I dare say your mother’d rather you stayed home. But I know why you’re doing it and if you need anything at all, you just say the word. And don’t forget to let us know if…’

  ‘You’ll be the first to know if I hear anything about Bill, I promise.’

  May had been touched that Bill’s father wanted to show her the penny-farthing. She knew it had always been a sort of symbol of hope for the Gilbie family; that was why, though it had long outlived its usefulness, they still held on to it. Now she felt she’d been invited into their circle, and given a magic talisman to take with her on her journeying.

  Tomorrow they were planning a victory street party, but May wouldn’t be there, for this was her last night in Bermondsey. Victory in Europe! How long they’d waited, and the announcement came just as her signals training at Guildford was ending. But there was no turning back now. It seemed perverse, but after so many years longing for the war to end she was about to set off in search of the tail end of it, almost as if it had become such a part of her life she couldn’t bear to let it go.

  But tonight she had been content to spend with her sister, singing themselves hoarse and being kissed by far too many strange men before leaving the bonfires, which would certainly burn through the night. After collecting Pearl and Jack from the Gilbies, they were making their way back to Peggy’s house in Fort Road, when May stopped.

  ‘You go on, Peg. There’s just one more goodbye I need to say.’

  And though Peggy asked where she was going, she shook her head. ‘Tell you later, don’t wait up!’

  When Peggy hesitated, May shooed her on. ‘I’ll be fine. I’m going halfway round the world on me own – you can’t be worrying about me now!’

  The blackout had already been lifted, and the skyline was ruddy with firelight, but even had it been pitch-black May would have been able to find her way there. She stood at the top of St James’s Road, tilting her head back to look at the whirling stars, and listened to the distant shouts of revellers. Walking further along the Blue, she caught the strains of ‘We’ll Meet Again’ drifting over from the Blue Anchor pub, and passed tipsy groups celebrating in the streets. One of the young men made a good-natured grab for her and though she evaded his clutching hands, she was grateful to pass under the repaired John Bull Arch in the little group’s company. For even on a night like this, the arch had the power to sap her courage. Once through, she hastened along Southwark Park Road, till the particular bend in the street and the tilt of the stars overhead told her exactly where, in all that crushed rubble, her home had once been. When she found the spot, she bent down, took up a handful of ashes and poured them into her handkerchief. Making a little pouch, she stuffed it into her coat pocket.

  ‘What sort of bird am I?’ she asked the ruined ground.

  ***

  They were going the wrong way. There were no signposts in the sea but she, of all people, knew west from east, and they were not sailing east. But they should be sailing east. Every evening since leaving Southampton she’d made her way up to the deck, so that she could watch the sunset. She never tired of the way the sea turned to molten gold, but they had been journeying into the setting sun for over three days. No one could work out why – unless the captain feared some rogue U-boat captains were still hanging about in the Atlantic, but there certainly weren’t going to be any Japanese subs in the vicinity. The only explanation was that the orders hadn’t yet been changed. Convoys headed for the Far East had always dog-legged into the Atlantic to avoid enemy shipping, and until the order came to desist, May could only assume the captain was sticking to the rules. But she wished they would just get a move on. The fact that she was losing patience with the voyage so soon after their departure didn’t bode well. She had another five weeks at sea. If only she could have flown. But ATS signals girls weren’t priority passengers and so she would have to make the best of it. She turned away from the setting sun and looked eastwards.

  She surprised herself by being a good sailor. Some of her fellow passengers had started being sick an hour out from Southampton, but apart from a little nausea during a choppy spell on the second day, May quickly found her sea legs. She’d even begun to find sleeping in a hammock quite fun. When she and the other fifty-odd ATS signals girls had first boarded the grey bulk of the troopship they’d each been handed a ticket by an MP, showing which part of the ship they would be sleeping in. She was allocated a space on the lowest mess desk – just above the water line. It was uncomfortably cramped. They each had a space at the mess table, above which they were to sling their hammocks at night. She spent half the first night rolling out of the hammock and landing on the table with an uncomfortable thud. After a couple of sleepless nights she was so tired she simply gave herself up to the swinging cocoon and started sleeping like a baby. She couldn’t help comparing her experiences to Bill’s descriptions of the troopship he’d sailed on and could only conclude that she was having a better time of it. One of his letters described how he’d been detailed to work in the galley, which he said was hell, especially when the ship reached warmer climes and the temperature soared into the hundreds. But May’s only duties so far were to attend lectures on Indian culture and turn up for PT parades, which would have been a welcome change if it weren’t for the fact that they formed the morning’s entertainment for a ship full of a thousand men. Some of the girls took advantage of the scores of eager servicemen, but that was one distraction May simply wasn’t interested in. In fact the highlight of her first week was when she noticed that she had to change her position on deck to view the setting sun. They were heading south now, but it was only wh
en the ship was pointing due east and began steaming through the straits of Gibraltar that she felt she was really on her way.

  In the Mediterranean, she was grateful for her tropical uniform of light khaki drill blouse and skirt. She would certainly have melted in her old woollen battledress. Soon her arms and legs turned golden, and one night, as they approached Port Said, though it was forbidden, she took her hammock on to the open top deck and slung it between two lifeboats. The night sky was an enveloping velvet quilt, a deeper black than she’d ever seen. Swinging gently in the hammock, she gazed up into the heart of the Milky Way, scarcely believing that she, May Lloyd, home bird, was actually here, with the deep sea beneath her and a million stars above. She was such a long way from home and yet she felt at peace, soothed by the distant engine thrum and the cool, salt-laden breeze.

  When she woke next morning the sea’s astringent saltiness had been replaced by an altogether more human smell. They had entered Port Said. She tipped out of the hammock and ran to the railing. The first sight that greeted her was the bare backside of an Egyptian fisherman, protruding over the stern of a passing dhow. He appeared to be taking his morning ablutions in full view of the entire harbour. May hadn’t been the only one drawn to the side. A group of gunners were jeering at the dhow. One of them exaggeratedly wiped his eyes and shouted to his mates. ‘Sod me, that one got me right in the face. Better duck, boys, I can see right up his jacksy and there’s more on the way!’

  The ship berthed overnight, but they were not allowed ashore, and May was content to experience the alien sounds and smells coming off the wharfside from the safety of the deck. Once through the canal, their destination was confirmed – after a stop at Bombay, they would disembark at Calcutta. This was the best posting she could have hoped for, as she knew from a letter that had evaded the censor, Bill’s final posting had been an airfield not far from Calcutta. The sense that she was following in his footsteps was overwhelming. She hugged herself with secret joy, that in India she might find, if not Bill himself, then at least his last whereabouts.

  After two days in Calcutta port, sitting below with kit ready, sheltering in their berths from the heavy monsoon rains which had just begun, they were finally allowed on to the wharfside, only to be ushered through crowds of curious dock workers to a waiting steamer. With uniforms soaked through, kitbags heavy with rain, they streamed up the gangplank to be packed like sardines on the deck of the steamer. There was a central awning which the girls jostled to get under. May couldn’t see the point, she wasn’t going to dry out any time soon, but after an hour of chugging down the coastline, the pelting of the rain on her head became painful and she found a small corner beneath the awning to sit under. She could see nothing of the coastline, it was veiled in chutes of rain, and it was impossible to chat to the other girls for the drumming on the awning was worse than sitting under the John Bull Arch with ten trains thundering overhead. It was the worst journey of May’s life, and made even more uncomfortable because they had no idea where they were going.

  A young girl from Liverpool sat shivering beside her. ‘Oh, I do feel ill.’ She looked up at May, pasty-faced, teeth chattering. They had been issued malaria tablets every day, but some girls didn’t like taking them. May suspected the girl had a dose of malaria and hoped she wouldn’t faint because there was nowhere for her to fall but on May.

  ‘Can you hold out till we get there?’ she asked the girl, who shook her head weakly.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  May squeezed herself upright. ‘I’ll go and look for Sarge. Hang on.’

  She picked her way through damp bodies and finally spotted the sergeant through the cabin window, talking to the CO. She quickly ducked inside, letting in a bucketful of rain, just in time to hear the sergeant ask the CO: ‘Couldn’t we get these girls below deck, sir, or by the time we arrive in Chittagong tomorrow morning, they’ll all be down with fevers!’

  The blast of rain had caught the sergeant’s attention and as May stood sucking in the raindrops still trickling over her lip, she turned impatiently. ‘What is it, Private Lloyd?’

  ‘Private Donnelly’s sick, ma’am.’

  A look passed between the CO and the sergeant. ‘All right, Lloyd, get back to her and we’ll send a first aider out.’

  That night the sergeant got her way and they were squeezed below deck, with cold rations and no hope of sleep. For the first time since she’d left Southampton, May began to wish she was sorting letters in a warm depot in Nottingham.

  When morning came, they emerged still damp so that May felt as wrung out and stiff as a shirt put through the mangle on washing day. The wharfside was a running stream. Lorries sloshed through it to take them through town to their billets. Though the town was hazy with pounding rain, a bright red building that looked like a temple caught May’s eye. As the lorry jolted through muddy ruts, she wiped steam from the window and gasped. She’d seen that building before. But where? Then she remembered. A few months before Bill went missing she’d received a parcel, with some tiny, poor-quality snaps. And on the back of one Bill had written: Me and my pal Bert outside the railway station. He’d been dressed in bush hat and tropical uniform, lean, serious-looking and squinting into the sun. Of course, there must be a million buildings like it in India, but she called down to where the sergeant sat, ‘Sarge, do you know what building that is?’

  ‘I think it’s the railway station, Lloyd. Why, you thinking of going on a trip?’

  The other girls laughed, and the suffering Donnelly chimed in, ‘Yeah, I’ll join you, all the way to Liverpool Lime Street, eh?’

  ‘Is there an airbase here, Sarge?’ May asked, ignoring their laughter.

  ‘Oh yes, quite a big one, you’ll find Chittagong full of airmen, RAF and Commonwealth, Yanks too. They go on raids over the border into Burma all the time, and they’re making airdrops for our troops, of course.’

  At home, with the war in Europe over, it had been hard to imagine the war still going on out here, but now May realized just how close she had come to the fighting. Their lectures on the troopship had made it clear that although the allies had been pushing the Japs back from the north of Burma all the way to Rangoon, the Indian border lands were still full of pockets of resistant Japanese troops. The war was certainly not ended, over here, and her job in communications would partly be to relay reports and orders to and from the ever-changing front line as the army tried to mop up the intransigent enemy forces.

  *

  It was stupid to go in the monsoon. Even though the old hands assured her that the rains would soon end, May couldn’t wait. She had to get out. She was fed up of being stuck either in the thundering drum of their tin-roofed billet, or the steamy depths of the wireless room. So when a group of girls suggested a trip into town, May jumped at the chance.

  ‘I think a trip to the flicks’ll do you the world of good, want to come with us?’ she said to Sadie Donnelly, the young private who’d been ill on the steamer. After leaving the sick bay she’d attached herself to May. It felt odd to be the experienced one, but May had happily taken her under her wing. Sadie confessed that she’d signed up well under age, fearing that the war would be over before she could see any of the excitement. She’d got her wish and hadn’t been in the ATS for more than a few months before she’d landed an overseas posting. She was even more homesick, if it were possible, than May had been in her early days at Pontefract.

  After being virtually confined to camp for two months, a trip into town was like a holiday. But it wasn’t just that she needed a change. May wanted to see more of this town, which she was sure Bill had been in, just to reassure herself that she’d not been imagining things. They went in on an army lorry and were dropped by the station in the afternoon, with orders to be back there for pickup before sunset. The town was like a swirling watercolour and immediately she recognized the same gaudily painted, hooded rickshaws that Bill had described, being pedalled around the flooded streets. At the station they were inu
ndated with gharry and rickshaw drivers clamouring for trade.

  ‘Shall we get one to the cinema?’ May suggested and she and Sadie hopped aboard the nearest rickshaw. On the way she spotted other things she recognized from Bill’s descriptions: the temple with its gilded rooftops, the children begging beside the road, the street traders carrying impossibly heavy loads on baskets slung on poles over their shoulders, the short-horned skinny cattle wandering along the middle of the road – it was all as he’d described it. And now she remembered seeing the sickle-shaped, sharp-prowed fishing boats lined up in the harbour when they’d first come into port, and how Bill had marvelled at the boatmen’s skill in standing up to row the slender craft. As the rain beat upon the domed hood of the rickshaw, May looked out on a world that was totally alien and yet felt strangely familiar. It was odd to think that her connection with Bill had brought her to India a long time before she had actually set foot upon its shores, and she thought of their pact to meet every night in the fairy ring of Hainault Forest, a place where time zones and distance had no meaning.

  Bill’s description of the fleapit had, unfortunately, been as accurate as the rest of his accounts of the town. It was steaming, so much so that the condensation hanging in the air threatened to obscure the screen. The seats were sticky, the air thick with the food being cooked at the back of the cinema. They saw an odd film, which featured about as much rain as still pummelled the roof of the cinema. It was called I Know Where I’m Going, the story of a plucky young woman who travels to the Outer Hebrides to marry one man and ends up with another. Almost from the opening scene rain was falling in sheets, and the heroine, lashed by stormy weather, spent half the film in a sou’wester. It was a very watery film, which Sadie said she didn’t quite get. But May had to admire the young heroine for sticking to her guns – at least for most of the film.