by Ian Porter
Ruby stared back at him. My girl indeed. I’ll give you my girl.
But she bit her tongue and nodded. She expected him to carry on with his lecture but he just stood and glared at her for a few seconds, radiating his most intimidating stare to add gravitas to his words. It failed to impress its target audience, but Ruby played the game.
“Yes sergeant,” she barked officiously, like a squaddie on parade.
“Yes sergeant,” aped Granger softly, while giving her a knowing look that told her he knew full well that his words of censor had fallen on deaf ears.
He had heard that this WPC had been a Suffragette and was married to a man with an infamously villainous reputation throughout the East End. But beggars could not be choosers so the Force had taken the woman on. The sooner this war was over and these women could be packed off back where they belong, the better, as far he was concerned.
“Now, as I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted, the Boleyn ground cannot hold the match because the East End munitions factory whose team is playing against this Preston lot, needs all its women to work all day on Saturday. We need every shell we can get, to carry on driving the Hun back. As you know we’ve nearly beaten the so-and-sos at last, so it’s no time to shirk now. Our boys in the trenches have got to ram home the advantage. But as you so correctly stated WPC Nash, the football match is to raise funds for charity. So it will still go ahead. The match is going to be held at night. The first ever football match at night. Using searchlights would you believe. But the church, and their tenants West Ham United have, quite reasonably I would say WPC Nash, expressed concerns that their ground may be damaged by what would obviously be quite major construction, all for just one game. But Clapton Orient have agreed to the lights being installed at their ground instead.”
Ruby was delighted to hear that the game was still going ahead. A match at night! How exciting!
But she kept her enthusiasm to herself, maintaining a professional straight face while the sergeant proceeded to tell her all the details she needed to know for her night’s duty.
******
The Dick Kerr’s Ladies football club had started life as a Preston munitions factory team. They had recently attracted 10,000 paying spectators to watch them play at Preston North End’s Deepdale ground in a local derby against their biggest rivals, St Helens Ladies.
But Ruby had been told that Preston wasn’t even as big as her home city, Southampton. How many would the mighty Dick Kerr’s team attract in a place the size of London? West Ham’s massive Boleyn ground might have been able to handle the crowds, but Clapton Orient?
Ruby had piled into a police van outside Leman Street, along with a dozen colleagues. It was an old Black Maria, with the single person wire cages removed. She remembered sitting in such a cage with her knees forced up against her chin in her Suffragette days, on her way to Bow Street Magistrates court. Goodness how her life had been changed by this war.
On alighting from the van outside the stadium, Ruby saw that while it was no Boleyn Ground, Clapton Orient was a far bigger stadium than the one in which she had played in that inter-factory match. Perhaps it would not be so bad after all.
She and her fellow officers flooded through an entrance gate to be met by a sea of further policemen. It was two hours before kick-off and still daylight. They had all received orders before setting out from their respective police stations, but now it was time to get themselves acquainted with the topography of the ground and receive specific logistical information from a team of sergeants.
The majority of constables were to be deployed outside the ground, to keep the turnstile line-ups orderly, stamp out jostling and queue-jumping, and keep an eye out for other problems associated with crowds such as pickpockets. Others were to head for the local train and tube stations to help railway porters and underground staff keep things orderly there and to stop fare dodging. But the biggest potential problem was going to be when the ground capacity was reached and the gates were locked. It was expected that many thousands outside might be turned away disappointed, and this had the potential for a dangerous crush to occur.
Sergeant Granger was there. He beckoned Ruby over to him. He made it clear that as a slip of a woman, he considered her usefulness in crowd control to be limited, so he had appointed her to a team looking after the security of the searchlights. The things had been rigged up on top of stanchions in each corner of the ground and angled down on to the pitch. She was assigned to one of the four of them. She was to deal with any likely lads seen throwing things up at it and ensure only people with the correct pass gained access to the searchlight operator’s hut. And most important of all, keep everyone away from the area where its generator was installed.
Ten minutes before kick-off the ground was full and the turnstiles closed. It was mayhem on the streets outside as seemingly the entire population of London had descended on the place. Thousands were locked out, and there were not enough police to control the situation.
Ruby was exasperated to be standing about doing nothing while all this was going on, with not a stone throwing lad or suspicious character roaming the searchlight area, to worry about.
Her generator was humming away and it was now dark. Time for the searchlights to crank in to life. One by one each segment of lights came on. It was now as bright as day. More lights flickered to life. It was now brighter than day. By the time all the lights were on, it was glaringly bright. The teams took this as their cue to run on, to a huge roar of approval from the enthusiastic, packed crowd.
Ruby could see part of the pitch from her assigned spot. She noted that the footballs being kicked around during the warm up had been whitewashed. They were going to play with a white ball. Ruby thought this would surely add weight to the already heavy leather. She remembered the last bit of action in her football match. She thanked goodness that she was not playing tonight. If she headed a powerfully kicked whitewashed ball on the top of her head she’d be knocked over for sure!
The match kicked off but no sooner had it started than her searchlight went out completely. A quarter of the pitch was now in darkness, which made the other three-quarters seem even brighter. Like the best thespian troupers, the referee, linesmen and players carried on regardless. And the crowd were greatly amused. Above the hubbub Ruby heard a wag close to her shout out to a player chasing the ball into the darkness to stuff it up her shirt while no one was looking and smuggle it in to the goal!
But Ruby wasn’t laughing. It was all well and good, but if another searchlight went out, the game would surely have to be called off. And then what would happen if all those inside the stadium suddenly made a dash for the exits? The exit gates would probably not get opened in time. And even if they were, the streets outside were probably still badly overcrowded. It was clearly a potentially hazardous situation.
Her searchlight operator’s hut was only a few feet away so Ruby took it upon herself to see what was happening. As she burst through the door and into the hut, a guilt-struck young operator stared back at her like Guy Fawkes caught in a cellar. She didn’t have to say a word. The man shouted an abject apology the moment she entered, followed by an explanation. The searchlight had got an airlock.
Ruby asked what could be done. The man nodded at his field telephone. He could call the operator of the opposite searchlight to tell him to boost his wattage to maximum. It should be able to provide enough light to illuminate the dark side of the pitch. To a police officer with no knowledge of electric lighting whatsoever, it seemed like a good idea. She told him to go ahead.
The telephone call duly made, the other searchlight went into overdrive. It became so bright that people in the crowd were momentarily blinded. Some fell to the ground. The Dick Kerr’s star player, their left winger, Lily Parr, was dribbling the ball along the touchline when she had to stop because she could no longer see the ball or anything else for that matter through the glare. The
ball came to rest near the corner flag. Nobody on the pitch could see it. The game stood still for a moment. At which point an enterprising little urchin with his back to the light, ran on to the pitch and stole the ball. Chaos duly ensued.
Ruby had seen all this through the window of the operator’s hut. It was time to cover her back. The operator received as grim an expression as she could muster.
“You didn’t know for certain it was an airlock. You never told the other feller to turn up his light. You told him you would turn up your light to see if it cleared. He must have misunderstood. I’ll back you up. No point in either of us getting in to trouble is there? You got my drift young man?”
The man’s expression changed from stressed woebegone to stressed enthusiast. He nodded his acceptance of the arrangement.
******
If it had been any of Sergeant Granger’s other constables, man or woman, he would have believed them. But odd things seemed to happen when WPC Nash was about. He did not believe a word of what he considered to be her cock and bull story. But the tall tale had been supported by a suspiciously sheepish looking searchlight operator, and despite the mayhem that had occurred, no damage had been done.
The brightness had stunned half the people in the ground, causing them to turn their backs away from the most powerful light, and stay where they were. They were too dazzled to make for the exits. This had allowed the police time to liaise with ground stewards to get the exit gates opened speedily. The Pathe News film crew were some of those caught in the glare so, much to the relief of the local authorities, they didn’t get any footage of the fiasco. And the government were delighted to hear that the crowd had numbered many thousands, who had paid a healthy admission charge, a percentage of which was going into the war chest in the way of entertainment tax. But because the match was, partly at least, in aid of war charities, there had not been too much fuss kicked up by people wanting their admission money refunded.
Nevertheless, Granger had begun to wonder whether WPC Nash’s report of her chase after the young soldier outside the hospital was all it appeared to be. Could she have actually caught him? Did he have some way of bribing her to let him go? And the searchlight operator did likewise? This woman Nash was, after all, the wife of a known villain. Perhaps that was it. She had become a police officer simply to make a few bob on the side from nefarious means? She was not merely disrespectful, but crooked.
Chapter 28
“I know of men who did themselves in…soldiers weary of sitting in the trenches who cut their throats during leave.”
Gaston Boudrey, Belgian writer,
Van den Grooten Oorlog
Dorothea had been proud of the way Peter took control of the situation and rescued poor Aldo. On arriving home she had been looking forward to sharing a meal with him, followed by passionate love making. It had made his sudden declaration, almost as soon as he had walked through the door that he was reporting back to the trenches the following day, all the more shocking.
She had initially exploded into mere temper at his stupidity, but the longer she railed against his decision, the more she realised how much she cared for this man, and so the greater her rage increased, transforming into quiet, trembling, incandescent fury. How dare he do this to me? To himself!
Words were said which both sides regretted the moment they spoke them, not that anything was retracted. Quite the opposite. The argument escalated the way only arguments between lovers can. There was no sharing of a meal, and Peter spent the night sleeping on the floor.
“Sleeping there will get you used to the trenches again!” being answered by “except the trenches are a good deal warmer I think!” was the level of name calling the argument had descended in to by the end of the evening.
The next morning, Dorothea was accompanying Peter back to Supreme Army Command headquarters, where the soldier was to explain himself. His nurse was to be there as his physical sick note, confirming that the man she had been attending could not have reported back any sooner due to a blow on his head received when the soldier was heroically doing the police’s work for them during a riot. He was just about to return to his army duties when he caught the flu. Of course this did not last long, but it was her professional opinion that had he reported back sooner, he would have been at risk of passing the illness on to other soldiers. And surely that was the last thing the Fatherland needed right now.
No doubt both of them would receive a severe flea in the ear for their tardiness, but it was hoped that was all. And if there was anyone the army needed almost as much as soldiers right now, it was nurses. Surely there was little point in either of them being disciplined further.
The obvious friction between the couple would at least have any army interrogator mistakenly believe there was no love lost between the two. The frosty nurse was clearly annoyed that she was having her time wasted by being dragged along here by this soldier. She was there on sufferance, doing her duty.
But their tram from Mitte soon became stuck in a traffic snarl up which, given the non-existence of petrol to all except public transport vehicles and those who could afford black market prices, meant it was mostly trams. Peter was not in the mood to be patient. He glared at Dorothea and nodded in the direction of the street that was a hint that he was going to jump off and she could follow him or not. Her choice. The two of them alighted on Leipzigerstrasse, just short of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Bridge spanning the Spree River near the Imperial Palace.
They strode along at the fastest pace Peter’s legs could carry him. Dorothea was not going to give him the satisfaction of asking him to slow down. She marched, and occasionally shuffled to keep up, alongside him.
They passed close by the royal palace and continued to head west towards the Reichstag before coming to a halt at Charlottenstrasse. It was now clear what had caused the traffic problems. A wall of police, stretching along the street, swords and pistols in hand, were a great dam holding back a torrent. A huge protest march, many thousands strong, had been stopped from heading towards the home of Kaiser Wilhelm. The wording on the banners and in the aggressive chanting made it clear that this was a demand for an end to the war.
“Your English is better than mine Peter Fueschel,” said Dorothea sharply. “Charlatan is an English word for hoodwinker, is it not? The greatest hoodwinker of them all is protected on Hoodwinker Street. Apt yes?”
Peter thought it quite a caustically witty remark, typical of his girlfriend. The ice was broken.
“You have turned in to your friend Ursula I think.” he said with a smirk on his face to let her know he appreciated her comment. “And of course your English is better than you let on actually. He is saved this time but Kaiser Hoodwinker is finished. The war is over! Let us go home.”
Chapter 29
“Depression on faces very marked in trains and trams. People very full of sad cases of death from influenza. A great sense of dread about everything.”
Caroline Playne, diary entry,
October 1918
WPC Nash was informed through Sergeant Granger’s gritted teeth that due to her brave work chasing the soldier through Whitechapel, and her quick thinking in preventing what could have been a serious crowd control problem at the football match, she was considered by the powers that be, at least, to have a bright future.
Assuming the sergeant had made a double pun, when immediately after mentioning the floodlit football match he had stated the ‘powers’ that be said she had a ‘bright’ future, Ruby laughed.
“Oh, very good sarge.”
Granger did not allow female constables to call him ‘sarge’. Too intimate by half. And why on earth was this disrespectful young woman laughing at him? Normally he would have given her a severe dressing down, but he had other things on his mind.
“It’s sergeant to you, WPC Nash,” he rebuked pompously, and left it at that.
Ruby realised she had misundersto
od, and was pleasantly surprised by not receiving more severe chastisement.
“Sorry sergeant.”
“Now, I have a new recruit. PC Cyril Pemberton. He’s as green as grass. So given the ability you have shown recently, I would like you to take him under your wing at Trafalgar Square this morning. All my other male police officers will have their hands full, so won’t have the time to show him the ropes. I thought it would be a good job for a talented woman police officer.”
“Yes sergeant,” said Ruby.
An hour later Ruby’s thoughts turned once again to her Suffragette days. The police van was dropping her, Pemberton and several other constables outside Charing Cross Hospital, around the corner from Trafalgar Square. She had been involved in many a Suffragette rally or protest in the square, many of which had degenerated into scuffles with the police in Whitehall. And some of those had included acts of police brutality. When she had become a policewoman she had made a vow both to herself and her husband that she would never allow herself to be used as a government thug against people who were merely protesting. If, or more likely when, given the way people were starting to turn against the government, she was ever asked to be a thuggish pawn of the state, she would shed her uniform and tell her sergeant where he could stick it. She had joined the police force to help people. Women in particular. Not abuse them. She doubted Granger would be advised today into which part of his anatomy he could painfully insert her uniform, but if it came to it, so be it.
But these considerations were driven quickly from her head. Once she and her colleagues had walked around the corner, she stood wide eyed in amazement at the scene in front of them.
Trafalgar Square had been transformed into a ruined French village. From their vantage point on the steps of the National Gallery, looking down on the square, Ruby had a great view. To her right was a battered windmill; immediately in front of her was the ruin of an old white church; and to the left of that were a couple of what she assumed were French style cottages with parts of their roofs missing. Around these buildings were clods of earth and sods of grass to make the place look suitably battle ravaged. There were also various wooden and canvas huts, several field guns and a couple of mock shell holes to complete the image. And behind the windmill and church ruin stood a massive four-sided poster encircling the base of Nelson’s Column which read ‘Feed the Guns with War Bonds and help to End the War’.