I crouched down near a pillar next to a woman with her hair tied up in a bandanna. She had three young children lying beside her under a blanket.
“Everyone seems very calm down here,” I said to her.
“We’ve ’ad practice,” she replied. “Since the bleedin’ Blitz started, we’ve been down ’ere every bloomin’ night, seems like. Our kiddies were evacuated to the country last year but they missed their mum and I missed them. So I brought ’em back home and then Hitler starts all this bleedin’ nonsense. Least we ’aven’t been bombed out yet, so we’re luckier than some.”
She offered me tea from a thermos, and a biscuit, both of which I accepted. As we chatted, I learned that her husband was in the Royal Navy. She hadn’t told him the children were back with her in London, as she didn’t want to worry him. “He’s got enough worries — what with the U-boats and all.”
I mentioned that German submarines hadn’t troubled us on our trip over from Halifax last month. She said that her husband had been to Halifax more than once. His destroyer was part of a convoy that guarded ships bringing supplies to Britain across the North Atlantic. When I said I was from Canada, an old woman lying nearby decided to join our chat. She had a cousin in Winnipeg, she announced. The family’s name was Smedley. Perhaps I knew them? I smiled and explained that Winnipeg was a long way from Toronto. Every English person, it seemed, had a relative in Canada.
The harmonica players down at the far end now had a fair-sized group around them, and snatches of rollicking old songs kept drifting our way. It occurred to me that if Hitler really believed the bombing would destroy the morale of the British, he’d better think again.
Suddenly we heard the sirens wailing once more. This was followed by thudding explosions. The singing stopped. One bomb must have fallen nearby, since the whole platform shuddered. My neighbour in the bandanna put her arms around her children and drew them close. The old lady said, “They must be aiming for St. Paul’s again.”
I knew that St. Paul’s Cathedral had been a frequent target for the Luftwaffe. And although it had been damaged a little, its great white dome still stood as a symbol of defiance for Londoners. I’d seen it while crossing London Bridge, so realized it couldn’t be far away.
I suddenly wondered if I shouldn’t be up top helping. They hadn’t told us what to do if we were caught in an air raid. But I was a soldier after all. If Mackie were here, he’d want to do something.
As I stood up and headed towards the stairs, the woman in the bandanna called out to me, “You mustn’t go, Canada! They ’aven’t sounded the All Clear yet!”
I turned and gave her a little salute and then sprinted up the stairs.
It was pitch black on the street. And it smelled of gas and heavy smoke. Looking up, I could see searchlights raking the sky, illuminating barrage balloons. Then, above the rooftops I saw flames licking upwards through billowing smoke. As I walked in the direction of the fire, the air thickened and glowing cinders and ashes blew past my face. Turning a corner I suddenly saw a whole block of shops in flames. On the street a double-decker bus was already a blackened shell. I hoped that it had been empty when the bombs hit. Firemen were already on the scene, the water from their hoses illuminated by the light of the flames. But one fire engine wasn’t enough to fight this fire.
Then I saw an older man with an air-raid warden’s badge on his black overcoat. He was wearing a steel helmet and passing out buckets to some teenaged boys. I went over and asked if I could help.
“You can join this bucket brigade if you like,” he said, passing me a tin bucket.
Some of the boys had run down to the river and were passing up water in buckets. At first each boy had to run several yards with his bucket, but before long more people joined us and we were able to simply pass buckets on to the person next to us. It seemed crazy to be fighting a huge fire with only buckets, but at least we were doing something. Another fire engine arrived just as a large roof collapsed, sending up a huge cloud of flames and fiery debris. The air-raid warden shouted and waved us back from the area. We retreated for a much-needed breather and, after a while, the bucket brigade began again.
As the sky lightened, the fire died a little and the firemen began hosing down smouldering beams that had fallen inside the stone walls. A truck arrived with some water tanks and the air-raid warden bailed out water from a dipper to his volunteers. I gratefully drank from the dipper when it was passed.
A breeze stirred a swirl of charred embers from the pavement. I was shocked to realize they were pages from books.
“These were bookshops,” said the air-raid warden, “and had been for hundreds of years.”
I kicked a blackened pile of ashes to reveal some books that were still intact. Bending down, I pulled out a leather-bound one that still had shiny gold trim on its pages. It was Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott, one of my father’s favourites. I buttoned it into the largest pocket of my jacket.
I then turned and saw the great dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral still standing in the dawn light. My chest was filled with smoke and my face and uniform were black. But I felt very calm and strangely happy.
I knew that this had been one of the most unforgettable nights of my life.
CHAPTER 5
ON THE SOUTH COAST
December 5, 1940
Dear Mum:
I made it to London!
Enclosed is a picture of Mackie and me in Trafalgar Square, all covered in pigeons — just like that photo of you and Dad on your honeymoon. Even with a war on, the photographers there still manage to soak the tourists!
It was a thrill to see all the famous spots like Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace — even with sandbags around them. (The queen was home but didn’t ask us in for tea …) I couldn’t get into the Tower of London but a pleasant English fellow showed me around the outside of it.
London “carries on,” as you’ve no doubt heard on the radio. The Blitz has only made the English more determined. And London is still the grandest city I’ve ever seen.
This is only a brief note, as they’re shipping us out somewhere. Even if I knew where, I couldn’t tell you. The military censor would only black it out of this letter, anyway.
But you needn’t worry about me, I don’t think Jerry’s about to invade. All the action we’ve had so far is just drills, drills and more drills.
Love to Elspeth and Doreen,
Alistair
I didn’t tell my mother about the air raid — it would only have upset her. And I didn’t tell Mackie and Murph much about what had happened to me, either. They only wanted to talk about the girls they had met at the Hammersmith Palais. (Mackie, I knew, did a mean jitterbug, and apparently the girls were lining up to be tossed around the dance floor by him.)
Sergeant Hartley wasn’t impressed with my smoke-blackened uniform and boots, or my story of how they got that way.
“Doing a little night fighting on leave, were you, Morrison?” he said when I told him about the air raid. “No medals for that, my boy.”
His sarcasm kept me from telling anyone about my Blitz experience for a long, long time. I washed my blackened khakis in a washtub and pressed them by laying the pants and jacket under my mattress. But the uniform smelled of smoke for months afterwards. Fortunately I had a second uniform, so I was able to wear that for inspection.
I wrote the letter to my mother in a train car crammed with soldiers heading for England’s south coast. Our destination turned out to be a town called Lewes — I said it once and a local told me straight off that it was pronounced “Lewis” — which is only a few miles inland from the more famous seaside town of Brighton. Glowering over Lewes is a hulking stone castle that was built by William the Conquerer eight centuries before. Looking up at its high walls, I imagined the defenders inside pouring boiling oil down on their attackers. But the castle wouldn’t be of much use in a battle with tanks and bombers, the kind of invasion we were expecting might come any day.
Our bat
talion spent four months in Lewes, a time we all called “waiting for Jerry.” Yet all they had us doing was marching, marching, marching, and keeping fit and rifle drills. Sometimes we took part in war games called “manoeuvres” with other battalions. Once we had to play the part of the Jerries in a mock attack against the British Home Guard, a volunteer group of civilian Brits. These (mostly elderly) English gents armed with wooden rifles and broom handles took it all very seriously, though.
In Lewes we stayed in the old town hall and slept on big burlap bags filled with straw called “palliasses.” At Christmas, the Red Cross and some women in the town put on the best English Christmas dinner they could make for us, given wartime rationing. (The rum in the plum pudding seemed to be real, though likely it wasn’t.) But Hitler chose to play Scrooge by using the holiday season as a time to step up the Blitz. The Luftwaffe pounded London in heavy night bombing raids right through New Year’s. They kept trying to hit St. Paul’s Cathedral, but I heard on the radio that its white dome still stood intact. I thought of the navy wife and her three children that I’d met huddled in the nearby Tube station, and hoped they were all right. At night we could hear the steady drone of Luftwaffe bombers passing overhead. Sometimes on our route marches we would see a downed German bomber lying in a field. Occasionally we’d see a crashed RAF Spitfire and hope that the pilot had bailed out in time.
There wasn’t much snow during our first English winter, but the daily freezing drizzle made it seem colder than any winter in Canada. I did like it when snowdrops and crocuses began popping out of the ground in the gardens during January and February, though — much earlier than I ever saw them in Ontario.
In April we were transferred to Winchelsea, a town near the seacoast. There we slept in wooden cottages on the beachfront and really shivered when the raw April winds blew in off the English Channel. During daily exercises we dug slit trenches, laid minefields and practised manning our defences.
But still we had our endless route marches along the coastal roads. I noticed Mackie casting envious looks at the soldiers who roared by us on English-made Norton motorcycles that were painted a military green. One morning after parade, Lieutenant Whitman made an announcement. “Any man here who has experience riding a motorcycle, step forward!”
Mackie instantly took a huge step forward, placing himself right under Twitman’s nose.
What the heck is he doing? I wondered. Mackie had never ridden anything faster than his grocery-delivery bicycle! He and a couple of other volunteers marched off behind Twitman. When I saw him at lunch that day he was very excited. “I’m gonna be a dispatch rider,” he told me, grasping imaginary handlebars and making a revving-up noise. “Running messages to Hastings, Brighton, all over the place.”
“Mackie!” I said in a low voice. “What happens when they find out you don’t know how to ride a motorbike?”
“Who says?” he replied. “Who says I don’t know how to ride? I can ride, Allie-boy, I can ride, ride, ride!” With that he clasped the phantom handlebars once again and vroomed off.
I didn’t see much of him over the next few weeks. One day he drove into camp on a Norton motorcycle with his canvas dispatch bag slung over his shoulder. Most of our platoon soon surrounded him and he revved the motor and made everyone jealous. Then he did a quick circle around the camp and roared away towards the sea.
June 24, 1941
Dear Mum:
Just a quick note to ask you for a small favour. Mackie is in the hospital. He had an accident on his motorcycle, but it’s not serious. He’s broken his wrist and maybe a rib or two, so it may be a while before he writes to his family.
Would you mind popping across and telling Mrs. Mac that he’s okay and she shouldn’t worry? I’ve just seen him and he was telling jokes about it and says he’ll be out in a couple of days.
The weather has turned warm here, a nice change after all the cold rain. With Hitler attacking Russia it looks like the Jerries won’t be invading England anytime soon. I wonder what they’ll do with us Canadians now?
Thanks for the package with the socks and the book and the homemade fudge. (My greedy mates thank you, too!)
Love,
Alistair
“Hey, Mack,” I said when I greeted him in his hospital bed, “even Lord Haw Haw knows about you!” He gave me a grin that turned into a wince, since half his face was bandaged and his arm was hanging from a pulley.
Lord Haw Haw was the nickname for an Englishman with a snooty accent who made propaganda radio broadcasts for the Germans. Some of the guys would listen in to hear what new rumours Haw Haw was spreading. The night before, he had said that it would be easy to eradicate the Canadian army. “Simply issue every Canadian soldier with a motorcycle and turn him loose,” he quipped.
“It’s those damn Harleys,” said Mackie when I related this. “I liked the Nortons better.”
The Americans had supplied the Canadian army with new Harley-Davidson motorcycles. They were powerful but had a low undercarriage, which meant they could bottom out on rough ground. Mackie had been roaring along the coastal road when he met a convoy of trucks coming around a curve. He swerved off the road and the Harley went haywire and sent him flying. Mackie said they’d found him near the top of the cliffs. His injuries were a little more serious than I’d described in my letter. His leg was in a big cast and it looked like it would be a while before he’d be walking again.
Mackie had planned to go up to Scotland with me on our next week’s leave, but I had to catch the train for Glasgow without him. In the end it was just as well I was on my own. My memories of that trip are of sitting in damp parlours in front of smouldering coal fires (which always had china dogs on the mantel) sipping endless cups of tea with my relatives.
Mackie would have made a hasty retreat to the nearest pub in seconds flat if he’d been with me. In the end, I decided to make my own escape and took the train to Edinburgh, where I walked up to the castle and around the narrow streets of the ancient city and felt proud to be a Scot.
In November Mackie rejoined our battalion, still limping a little. There was no talk of him returning to being a dispatch rider. Only a few days later we were loaded into trucks and transferred to a large estate in East Sussex called Oldlands Hall. We were billeted in one wing of the huge old mansion. Its owner, Sir Bernard Eckstein, lived with his servants in the main part of the house. Sir Bernard was a very wealthy man who had donated a Spitfire to the Royal Air Force. He was also a noted art collector, and the formal gardens of Oldlands Hall had classical statues surrounded by neatly trimmed hedges. I loved being in such a beautiful place and Mackie regained some of his energy and high spirits while we were there.
Lieutenant Whitman liked to speak with Sir Bernard and we sometimes saw them walking together in the gardens. Twitman always wore his suck-up smile and had his swagger stick tucked under his arm. One day after parade he pasted the smile on again and said to us, “I wish to have a word with you all about the village.”
The village near Oldlands Hall was called Uckfield. It didn’t take us long to guess what Twitman’s request was going to be. “Sir Bernard has asked me,” Twitman continued, “to remind you that the name of the village is Uckfield. Just Uckfield. If you must add a certain consonant before the name of the village, we would ask that you not do so in front of the villagers.”
We all laughed loudly, since Twitman’s smile indicated that this was one of his having-a-laugh-with-the-chaps moments. I later got a big laugh myself at the local pub by sending up Twitman. “Chaps, if you simply must … ”
Another big night at the pub came when we heard that Germany and the United States were at war. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese had attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. When the Americans declared war on Japan, Germany — as an ally of Japan — declared war on the United States.
“The Yanks are in!” we cheered as we raised glasses of warm English beer.
“Now we’ll give them a show!” cr
owed Pullio.
Everyone was saying that with the Yanks in the war, the Canadians would be sure to see some action soon. There was certain to be a big push coming. Unlike Mackie and the others, who wanted to see some “action,” the prospect of real fighting filled me with dread.
CHAPTER 6
IN TRAINING
May 19, 1942
“Something’s up!” announced Turnbull, one of our platoon-mates. “Basher’s here. Looks like we’re being shipped out.”
We had hardly seen our commanding officer, Lt-Colonel Hedley Basher, since we had been sent to the south coast over a year ago. I remembered him standing stiffly erect on the parade ground in Aldershot with his huge St. Bernard, Royal, beside him.
Turnbull’s news couldn’t always be trusted, of course. A few weeks ago he’d heard “for sure, for certain” that the Canadians were being sent to fight in North Africa. Which never happened. So we had learned to separate the truth from Turnbull’s bull. But it turned out that he was right this time. That morning before inspection, Lieutenant Whitman had told us to pack up our gear and report to the parade ground at 1100 hours for an address by our commanding officer. (Turnbull immediately put on his I-told-you-so expression.) During the inspection, Mackie was missing.
“I see that Private McAllister is not gracing us with his presence this morning,” said Whitman dryly. “Have him report to me as soon as he returns.”
This wasn’t the first time that Mackie had been absent without leave. He now had a girlfriend named Mavis that he saw whenever he could. It had been customary for Mackie to have several English girlfriends on the go — until he met Mavis at a dance just after we were transferred from Oldlands Hall in January to an army camp on Salisbury Plain, near the ancient monument of Stonehenge.
After a month on Salisbury Plain we were transferred south to Witley Camp, near a town called Horsham. On weekend leave, Mackie would take the train from Horsham up to Salisbury to see Mavis and sometimes he didn’t make it back to camp till Monday morning. He’d been docked so much pay for being AWOL that he practically owed the army money. I began to worry that he might not show up before we were shipped out that morning.
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