Growing into War

by Michael Gill

  The damage to the old part of the town stupefied the senses. Teams of workers came down from London, digging, sawing and carting away the beams and rubble that had been the preciously preserved homes of many generations. Now, rising above the clouds of dust and smoking debris in all its untouched majesty, the cathedral had never seemed so triumphant. Only the Victorian library sheltering besides the cloisters was destroyed by a direct hit.

  This providential delivery was not only the work of God. Hundreds of fire bombs rained on the parapets, but the devoted civilian guardians scrambled all over the roofs throwing the venomous hissing sticks of flame down onto the surrounding grass and gravel. No damage came to the cathedral. Its saviours were not firemen by training, but mostly middle-aged townsfolk who had chosen to volunteer for the Auxiliary Fire Service, or, like my father, to be an ARP warden. Yet for the superstitious there was another fact to ponder. Throughout the war, fifteen bombs fell in the cathedral precincts. Not one scored a hit.

  As the shattered ruins of ancient streets, pulverised pilgrim inns and the wreckage of the Georgian mansions of minor clergy were cleared away, long-masked views of the cathedral were revealed. Never had it looked so dominant. Even the smoke and ruin of those sunlit days of June 1942 had an echo in the distant past. Marauding Vikings had burnt the city and martyred the clergy in the eleventh century. Then the citizens settled down to rebuild: plaster and wattle dwellings that had now been finally destroyed. So what? There was comfort in the thought of that earlier rebuilding. Canterbury would rise again, and in the meantime we could rejoice at the revelation of so many new visions of the cathedral.

  Nor did it take long for the battered city to get on her feet. The morning after the raid a bucket of drinking water was delivered to every house, an essential aid in avoiding the spread of typhoid. Hand delivery continued morning and evening for three weeks, until the main water supply was restored. A communal restaurant was set up for the many hundreds who had lost their kitchens. Situated in a big marquee on a school playing field near the West Gate and run by the Women’s Voluntary Services, with a choice of freshly cooked food, it became a popular social gathering place. The Archbishop, Mayor and other visiting worthies such as the Royal Family and Mrs Roosevelt patronised it. There was no problem either about having a hot cup of tea at home. In those days virtually every house still had an open fire or two. It would be very different today. Loss of electrical power would probably lead to a panic, darkness and looting. Nothing less gloomy than lunch in the communal kitchen could be imagined. The lovely sunny weather probably had something to do with it; so had the feeling – pretty generally shared – that an unprecedented challenge had been faced and mastered.

  A symptom of this was the huge congregation that turned out for the funeral of Mr Marks, the Town Clerk, who was the most distinguished of our victims. I know it was a large gathering, because I had the almost impossible job of stopping every mourner and ascertaining his or her name, initials, address and function. Many people regarded this as an impertinent impingement on their private grief. Others were only too anxious to make sure that their presence was noted. Perspiring under my heavy dark suit and unaccustomed black tie, I counted it the most unpleasant job I had had to do for the Kentish Gazette.

  It was to my considerable surprise that I was still working on the local paper. On the morning of 2 June I had managed to get into the area that had been our office only with the greatest difficulty: the offices had vanished and in the works puddles of coagulating molten metal showed where the printing machines had been. But in the crisis Mr Hews had been less indecisive than I would have youthfully expected. He had persuaded our rival paper, the Kent Messenger, to allow us to use its printing machinery (the two papers went to print on different days).

  Altogether forty-three people were killed in the raid and forty seriously injured. Many, including our family, stayed out of the town for a few days, sleeping with friends in the local farms or villages. There were a number of small follow-up raids, but their impact compared to the attack on 1 June was similar to a Volkslied following a full performance of The Ring. Now that the damage had been done the British authorities increased the defences, including a layer of silver balloons. Their presence, turning pink in the summer twilight, was definitely comforting, though I never heard how many planes they actually brought down with their trailing cables.

  A few days later we were visited by another placebo, the Duke of Kent. Why a tour of the sites by minor royalty should be considered an encouragement to the bereaved masses is hard to define. But its practice must go back to the appearance of the king before his troops on the morning of battle. It would be hard to see the languid Duke in that role. I’ve been trying to think of any memorable remark he made in the whole of that day when I was at his elbow with pencil at the ready hoping for a bon mot to start off my article: nothing. The most startling thing about him was the thick yellowish-orange make-up that plastered his weakly pleasant face.

  Another childhood illusion gone. His marriage to the beautiful and elegant Greek princess, Marina, had been one of the fairy-tale romances of the 1930s. Now its magic was as rapidly dispersed as the medieval streets of our city. I was beginning to learn that proximity did not necessarily increase respect.

  8

  STAMPING ON THE HINGE OF FATE

  I

  The train was packed. I squeezed myself into the last possible seat, pushing my small suitcase uncomfortably behind my knees. This being England, a series of protesting grunts and sharp exhalations of breath were the sole acknowledgement of my rickety progress over the trampled feet of my neighbours. Once I had snaggled and wriggled and eased myself into the notional free seat – a few square inches on the middle of one side of the compartment – all my fellow travellers let out a collective sigh of sympathy for the suffering my late arrival had inflicted on my immediate neighbours and proceeded to examine me from behind their papers with an icy and suspicious reserve. An attitude no doubt reinforced by the posters prominently displayed on such public places as railway stations warning us that careless talk cost lives. With it often went a grudging dislike of all the young people in uniform, who might for some illogical reason be thought to be enjoying the war. The sort of attitude that expressed itself about our American allies (who were just beginning to appear in considerable numbers on the streets) as over-paid, over-sexed, and over here. Yet where would we be without the potential self-sacrifice of the young of all the allied nations?

  As I thought this, it came over me with a powerful shock wave that I was one of the possible young victims. All my life I had been protected, nursed and pampered by my doting mother. I had just left her (on Paddington Station) for the very first time. I was journeying into an unknown future without her. Whatever happened to me at the RAF Reception Centre at Cardington, I sensed with bitter fright that I would never be able to shelter behind her again. When I thought of all those thousand acts of gentle kindness that she had given me, my eyes swam . . . Hastily I pulled out the New Statesman and Nation, which she had thoughtfully provided for my last journey as a civilian. But for once V.S. Pritchett was not an adequate escape. I could guess enough about the future to know that. No sharp-brained Squadron Leader was going to discuss with me Pritchett’s left-wing politics, nor warm-hearted NCO tuck me up with a hot-water bottle when I had a feverish cold. (Curiously, both these incidents were to happen to me in the next few months, but I had not got the benefit of fore-knowledge.)

  Nor could I know that on this very day when I was joining the Air Force a very much more exalted person was leaving it. The Duke of Kent would be making no more demands on liquid make-up. His plane crashed through Scotch mists into a mountain top killing all on board.

  To me, on that grey Tuesday 25 August 1942, the future was clouded with fateful uncertainty. I would have to face it alone without my mother. My desperate knowledge of my loss, my recognition of the end of my boyhood, was too much to bear. Oblivious of the portly middleaged civilia
ns bulging on either side of me, I cried and cried. It was not only the loss of my mother, but of all the happy days at Highfields, Jack Packham’s blood-curdling stories, my friendship with Patch, Grandma Taylor’s memories of Victorian England, playing on the beach with my father; a world that the bombing of Canterbury had visibly shown to be over.

  Once the tears had begun there seemed no stopping them. I tried disguising sniffs with coughs and splutters; it only drew attention to my emotional collapse. Nothing was said, but I was uneasily aware of being examined by eighteen pairs of critical eyes. It was too much. I got up and plunged across the assault course of legs and feet. The grunts this time rose to verbal protests: ‘I say look out there’; ‘Cor watch it mate’; ‘’Ave an ’eart.’ Forgetting my bag, I scrambled into the corridor. It was blessedly empty save for a few lonely figures contemplating the passing scenery through the wraiths of their cigarette smoke. I pressed my forehead against the sooty window-pane and abandoned myself to my misery.

  Nothing that happened on that beastly day made me feel that I had gone too far in expressing my despair. Quite soon we reached Cardington. I got out and was looking for the RAF squad which was supposed to be meeting new recruits, when there was a shout and a heavy blow on the back of my neck. The train was leaving and one of my fellow travellers, noticing that I had left my overnight bag in the compartment, had kindly and accurately thrown it at me.

  Immediately afterwards an RAF Sergeant materialised in the station entrance.

  ‘Aircraftman Second Class Gill? Come on, hurry up. You’re the last. Get on board the transport and quick about it.’

  Every single communication from higher authority issued in the next six weeks included an admonishment to move faster. But what transport? I looked wildly around for some sort of bus.

  ‘Up on the three-tonner now. Stop being so dozy, Aircraftman, unless you want to run all the way.’

  A large open lorry was backing out of the station entrance. Sitting or squatting among the old tyres, spades and other implements were some dozen pimply morose-looking men of assorted ages. No doubt these were my fellow conscripts.

  Have you ever tried to get on board a large lorry when its movement precludes you climbing up the wheels? Eventually three of my fellows seized me under the arms and threw me down among the tyres, further bruising elbows and knees. For the second time in ten minutes my overnight bag was hurled after me. Despite the skinned shins, my main preoccupation was how dirty the tyres were getting my sports jacket. But then I remembered I would not be wearing my own clothes any more . . . for how long I wondered? (Four-and-a-half years as it happened.)

  Here, in the midpoint of the war, Cardington was the bottleneck which equipped all those entering the Air Force. It had never been built with such a massive intake in mind. Yet I suppose one has to say it did not do too badly, if you accept queues of Gracie Fields-type dimensions. The Air Force gave you everything from the mug to drink your tea, to the billycan to boil your water, from the tin hat to protect you from enemy shrapnel, to the knee-length woollen underpants (three pairs) meant to save you from lice. It was said that many of the poorer intake had never worn underwear till the Air Force gave it to them.

  But it could not protect you from everything. At the end of an exhausting first day we were herded into a barnlike wooden building, crowded with metal beds each with an issue of four woollen blankets. So far I had hardly spoken to a soul. Now my next-door neighbour started a probing conversation. Dark and shifty; instinctively I distrusted him. My mother had given me £5 in ten-shilling notes. How should I hide it with this sharp-eyed neighbour watching my every move? Eventually I took advantage of a drunken fight that caught his attention to slip my wallet under my pillow.

  That first night in the Air Force was a breath of hell; literally, as many of the new arrivals expressed their nervousness through upset bowels and the toilet facilities were totally inadequate. The transition from being relatively free agents to obeying instantly sets of rules that we neither knew nor understood affected us all. The authorities recognised that we were undergoing a severe self-adjustment. For some, drink was a help. There were several bars (run by the NAAFI) on the camp. All through the night recruits were tottering into the dormitory, falling over the beds, vomiting on the unfortunate occupants, fighting each other, cursing and shouting their discomfort. To all this the RAF police turned a relatively blind eye.

  Lying awake in the darkness (lights were put out at 10.30 p.m.) my thoughts returned to my family. This time not so desolately as on the train. I recognised that I was in a sort of limbo. If nothing got much worse than this I reckoned I would survive. But it seemed likely that it was going to be a lonely sort of life. I had not seen anyone among all those frightened faces who might be a chum. With this gloomy thought I fell asleep.

  When I woke up it was light and people were stirring. I looked across at my neighbour’s bed. It was empty. I pushed my hand under my pillow. My wallet had gone.

  II

  I never saw my bed neighbour again. Nor did I report the theft. What could the authorities have done about it, except to tell me to be more careful next time? There was nothing I could have spent the money on anyway. The whole day we were occupied marching from one depot to another. There was something irresistibly comic in our gradual transformation from a polyglot group of civilians, shuffling and stumbling under the rising pile of assorted kit, from plastic gas capes to black leather boots, to the sort of parody of a military squad that we evolved into. Divided into groups of thirty, we were constantly passing and repassing the other groups. The donning of a crucial item, like the blue serge tunic, brought a rousing cheer from other squads that had not progressed so far.

  This irrepressible good humour seemed a characteristic of the British serviceman. It could cushion the severest shocks: one of which was about to hit us. A man of considerable authority (I expect that meant he was a leading aircraftman: I had not yet learned to read all badges of rank), this wielder of our fate, called us to attention. Having repeated this command three times and each time told us to be quicker about it, he got to the point. As the weather was so good, the kindly station commander had decided we would all enjoy a spot of camping. Tents were being put up at that moment in an adjacent field.

  He failed to tell us that the input of recruits had surpassed the numbers that could properly be dealt with. The neat rows of bell tents looked very handsome from a distance. Each tent might have contained four sleeping figures at a pinch. Ten men were allocated to each. And every one of us now had a bulging kit bag of equipment to look after.

  There was only one possible solution. Each of us must lie on our side facing in the same direction, with our legs bent up under our chins. I suppose now this would be called the foetal position. It did not allow for any individual movement, like stretching the legs or turning over. Nor, of course, did it account for calls of nature.

  Such superhuman immobility was beyond our control. When a pair of hairy legs descended on top of ours it was impossible for us not to wriggle our legs out from under and put them on top of the heap, shortly to be pushed aside by another pair of interlopers from the other side of the tent. It was very like that game where you pull your hand out from the bottom of the heap and slap it on the top. Naturally we got very little sleep that or the next night. It did, however, perforce get us to know our neighbours. The man on my right was a barber from Putney, one of the gentlest, kindest men you could ever meet. He was thirty-nine years old with spectacles and a bristly moustache. I knew all about the bristles as several times I woke up with my face jammed against his.

  It was remarkable how calmly we all took these total invasions on conventional privacy. To get out of the tent once we had all jammed into it was a major exercise. How to urinate in the middle of the night was therefore a serious problem. It was most easily solved by easing the penis out of its covering, pointing it upwards and in the general direction of the open tent flap, and letting rip. A waving motion crea
ted a sprinkling effect, not unlike a rain shower on which you could loudly blame the sudden downfall. Several people who had thought themselves lucky by getting head space near the entrance decided to try sleeping out the next night. Being England, there was a genuine rainfall in the early hours and a sudden descent on us of four or five soaking and unwelcome tent mates.

  Those nights in the tent seemed to me the limit of conceivable discomfort. But I was soon to be proved wrong. By Thursday morning we were completely kitted out, dressed in blue and learning how to salute correctly. Once more we were formed into long lines, this time waiting for the interview that was to decide our fate in the Air Force. In my case it took less than five minutes. The blond and clearly bored personnel officer confirmed that there were no vacancies for radar observers. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I would suggest clerk SD; that’s what most of you failed air crew go in for.’

  I didn’t particularly like the idea of being a clerk.

  ‘It’s not a desk job,’ said the officer, glancing at his watch. ‘You’d be a plotter. You’d have to pass a trade test first.’

  ‘When would I take that?’

  ‘I’ll give it to you now.’ He looked down at a typed sheet on his desk. ‘How many times will six go into twenty-four? How do you spell accidental? What’s the capital of New South Wales? Here’s a page of geometrical figures; point out an isosceles triangle. Good, good, good. You’ve passed. After six weeks on the general training course at Skegness you’ll go to the plotters’ school at Leighton Buzzard. Send in the next man as you go out.’