Margaret was beginning to realise that her in-laws were pretty special people. But after a while she discovered that Jack had one, rather familiar, flaw. Walking past the kitchen one day she saw him take a brown paper bag out of a cupboard under the sink, quickly pour himself a large whisky, knock it back and hurriedly put both the glass and bottle away again. Margaret was shocked. She had been led to believe that alcohol was shunned by the good Christians of Arlington. There weren’t even any bars in the town for the white men.
It wasn’t long before she started to suspect that Lawrence had discovered the secret stash too. He began staying up late, coming to bed after she had gone to sleep, and not emerging in the morning until ten or eleven o’clock. When he did, he seemed on edge, as if his nerves were jangled, and any loud noise hurt his head. But when she questioned him about it he claimed it was just the heat.
The children in the house were learning to avoid Uncle Lawrence in the mornings. One day, when young Lawrence Cowart was making a lot of noise, his uncle hissed at him, ‘Listen boy – if you don’t be quiet I’m going to twist your head off, put it on the table and watch you wiggle on the floor!’ The child made a hasty exit.
While Jack seemed to be able to manage his drinking and still go out and do a long day’s work, Lawrence increasingly just hung around the house and wasn’t helping on the plantation. Margaret had thought that once he was back in America, surrounded by his family, he wouldn’t need to reach for a drink, but now she began to worry that he was slipping back into his old ways.
She decided to talk to her sister-in-law. ‘Have you known Lawrence to drink before?’ she asked her.
‘Oh my dear child,’ Ellen said, giving her a pitying look, ‘he’s been tied to the bottle since his student days.’
She told Margaret that their late mother had gone up to the University of Georgia to try and straighten Lawrence out, but to no avail. He had been kicked out of the university for his wild antics. She also told her that the prominent scar across Lawrence’s nose was the result of a drink-driving accident when he was in his early twenties, in which he had gone through the windscreen.
‘As soon as I heard he was getting married I was worried,’ Ellen said, shaking her head. ‘I foresaw there would be problems for Lawrence’s wife.’
Margaret had a sinking feeling. During his court case in England, Lawrence had blamed his drinking on the stresses and strains of his war jobs, yet now she realised the problem had started long before. What was more, it seemed entrenched in the culture of the South. As well as Ellen’s husband Jack, she discovered it was an open secret that numerous men in the family and the community had drinking problems, or worse. One uncle had such a serious addiction to morphine that his wife had locked him in a room to go cold turkey, and his howls could be heard for miles around. When he was finally released, his iron bedstead had been twisted like spaghetti. Even the doctor in neighbouring Edison was an addict, and had got several of his patients hooked on drugs.
Margaret began to feel that if Lawrence was to have any chance of staying on the straight and narrow, they would have to leave Georgia, and soon. But she was torn: she loved Ellen and the Cowarts, and they had been so kind to her. She had felt more of a sense of family and community here than she had anywhere else.
But one day, she overheard a conversation that convinced her the time had come for them to go.
‘He’s always taking advantage of you,’ Jack was telling his wife. ‘You don’t hear from him for years, but as soon as he’s in trouble and needs money he shows up again!’
Margaret didn’t need to be told who they were talking about.
Much as she hated the thought of upping sticks again when she was now heavily pregnant, she urged her husband to look for work elsewhere. Since Lawrence had squandered his inheritance, and they weren’t getting any payments from the Army due to his dismissal, the only way they could stand on their own two feet was if he got a job.
Luckily, Lawrence announced that one of his old army contacts had offered him a position as a buyer at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company headquarters in Akron, Ohio. Many Southerners were flocking to the industrial northeast for jobs, and Akron – famous for its tyre companies – was booming thanks to the war.
Margaret was pleased, and with that weight off her mind she was able to enjoy a goodbye dinner with the Cowarts before leaving for their new home. Relations might be strained between her and Lawrence, but looking around the table at the faces of the people who had made her feel so welcome in America, she felt she couldn’t have married into a better family.
11
Rae
With the war on the Continent now well underway, there was plenty of work to do at Chilwell Depot, where damaged vehicles were brought in for repairs before being sent back to the front. Rae had been shocked to learn of the number of amphibious tanks that had sunk on D-Day, despite all she and her colleagues had done to render them waterproof. But while many of those were now rusting underwater off the Normandy coast, new battle-scarred vehicles were arriving every day for repairs, and the men and women at Chilwell were busier than ever.
While her colleagues would replace broken tank tread or install new guns, Rae was responsible for repairing small holes and gashes in the metal with her welding torch. It could be a gruesome responsibility given the kind of action the vehicles had seen in France. As the muddy tank tracks warmed up, they would release the sickening smell of dried blood.
One day, a tank came into the depot that all the male welders seemed keen to avoid. Rae decided to investigate, climbing the ladder onto the top of the vehicle and looking down into it.
Immediately, she was hit by an odour even worse than those she had got used to, and soon she saw why. The inside of the tank was bloodied, and lying on the floor was a pair of human fingers that had obviously been ripped off at the knuckle.
Rae gagged as she stared at the bloodied stumps, and covered her mouth to avoid breathing in any more of the terrible smell. But there was work to be done, whatever the unpleasant conditions. She climbed down to fetch her welding torch, steeled herself for a moment, and then returned to get on with repairing the tank.
The months of waiting since Raymond had been sent to France had been difficult for Rae. She had volunteered to go to the Continent herself in one of the REME’s (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers’) mobile workshops, which were sent out on D-Day plus five, but her mother had refused to sign the papers. ‘I’ve enough children overseas with the Army,’ she had told Rae firmly.
Rae understood her mother’s anxiety, but she found it hard staying put in England while her husband was in France. Since Raymond’s hospital unit had arrived in Cherbourg, Rae had heard from him only occasionally, and she was gripped by any news she could get hold of about how the war was going. She kept as busy as she could with her work, but dark thoughts and worries never went away completely.
The Normandy landings had been only the start of the American war on the Continent. In September 1944, tens of thousands of Allied airborne troops dropped into Holland as part of Operation Market Garden, which aimed to end the war before Christmas by capturing bridges on the border with Germany. It was the first major defeat for the Allies since D-Day, and proved that victory over Germany wouldn’t be easy.
Even greater American losses occurred three months later at the Battle of the Bulge – the final German offensive of the war. During six weeks of bitter fighting in freezing conditions the Americans lost 19,000 men, their worst death count in the entire war.
Rae’s husband Raymond was sent to the ‘Bulge’ – named for the shape the Germans had created in the American line – along with some medics from his hospital in Cherbourg. She was shocked to read in his letters how, short of reinforcements, the Army had given him and the other cooks rifles and sent them up to the front lines.
The Allies’ eventual success at the Battle of the Bulge was decisive, and a German victory now seemed all but impossible. But with GIs con
tinuing to die every day, the waiting didn’t get any easier.
Meanwhile, Londoners were still suffering the ‘flying bomb war’. One V-2 rocket fell close to Rae’s family home in Neasden, ripping a corner off the local school and reducing several houses to rubble. Her sister Mary rushed to join the neighbours in the search for survivors, with one local resident foremost in her mind – her friend Lil, whose house had been opposite the school.
Mary found Lil’s mum, who told her Lil was missing, and together they began searching the rubble, calling out her name at the tops of their lungs. Finally, they received a response from beneath a huge mound of fallen masonry. ‘I’m all right, Mum,’ came Lil’s muffled reply. Furiously they raced to pull away the piles of bricks and rubble, until the voice grew clearer and more distinct. ‘I’m all right, Mum, I’m all right,’ Lil kept calling. But when they finally got her out, she died in her mother’s arms.
There was no time for Mary to stop and mourn her friend, however – other people were still desperately searching for their loved ones and needed help. One family had been looking for their eighteen-month-old baby for hours, but the child seemed to have completely disappeared. Every so often, they would stop and listen quietly for the faintest hint of crying, but they heard nothing. Mary joined in the search, but however many bricks they turned up and however hard they looked, there was no sign of the child.
Towards dawn, Mary happened to look up from the rubble, and saw a sight overhead that would haunt her for the rest of her life. There, in the branches of a tree, was the little baby, hanging by its nightgown, limp and silent.
Something in Mary changed at that moment. The next morning she went along to the local recruiting office and volunteered for the ATS, just as her sister had done before her.
While Rae was proud of the decision that Mary had taken, she felt more and more worried about their mother. First Mrs Burton’s husband had left her for a woman half her age and now she was all alone, in a city where bombs continued to fall. Reading her mum’s letters at her billet in Chilwell, Rae was alarmed. They were fearful and bleak, but frustratingly there was little Rae could do since her leave had been cut to a five-mile radius.
Eventually, Rae decided to risk the consequences and go AWOL. There was nothing she could do to help her husband serving on the Continent, but she could at least give her mum some support down in London. One Friday after work, she hopped on a train at Nottingham station, keeping an eye out for any military police who might ask awkward questions, and turned up in Neasden unannounced.
Her mother was delighted to see her, but asked immediately, ‘When do you have to go back?’
Rae hugged her tightly. ‘Not for a couple of days, Mum,’ she told her, not mentioning the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be there at all.
Rae found that in some ways she needed the visit as much as her mum did. She had been lonely up in Chilwell ever since Raymond had left for Europe, and it felt good to be with family again. Her presence seemed to lift Mrs Burton’s spirits too, and by Sunday evening they were both feeling better.
On Monday morning, Rae got up early to pack her things. Her mother had already left for her shift at the factory where she worked, a mile or so up the road, and Rae was planning to drop in and say goodbye to her on her way to the station. As she packed her bag, she heard a chugging noise coming from outside and looked out of the window. There in the distance was the menacing outline of a doodlebug passing over houses opposite. Then suddenly the noise stopped. Rae knew what that meant – the flying bomb was about to fall.
She ran away from the window and down the stairs. Halfway down the staircase to the landing, Rae heard the explosion of the doodlebug outside. The shock made her stumble and she fell down the rest of the steps, scraping the skin off her knees and hitting the side of her face against the wall at the bottom.
Dazed, she scrambled to stand up again, the noise of the bomb still echoing in her ears, and ran back up to the front bedroom to inspect the damage. Remarkably the windows had not been shattered, but the street outside was a scene of mayhem as people ran about in panic.
Rae took her bag and went downstairs and into the street. There were wardens dashing past in the direction of the bombsite round the corner in Dog Lane, and Rae could see smoke rising into the sky.
She rushed up to the North Circular Road and headed for the shelter opposite her mum’s factory, sure that she would find her there.
When she arrived, Mrs Burton was already inside. ‘Thank God you’re all right!’ she cried. ‘I was worried about you.’
She saw Rae’s grazed legs and sore eye. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, nothing, I just fell over,’ said Rae. She had been so preoccupied that it wasn’t until now that she felt the pain from the fall.
The inhabitants of the shelter waited patiently for the all-clear signal – a green flag flown by a spotter on the roof of a building opposite – and then began to pour into the factory yard. It was a working day and they were expected back at their production lines.
But just as the last of them were leaving the shelter, the man on the roof dropped his green flag and put up a yellow one, indicating that another doodlebug was on its way. The men and women turned and began to file back in again. Then the yellow flag was replaced with a red one, signalling imminent danger.
The bodies pushing and shoving began to grow more frantic. ‘Come on, hurry up!’ someone shouted, ‘There’s a bomb about to fall out here!’ Rae felt herself being shoved this way and that, and she and her mother were separated from one another. ‘Mum!’ she shouted, and saw Mrs Burton looking around for her. Then in the confusion, Mrs Burton lost her footing and Rae saw her fall over. The woman behind her tripped over her and also fell to the floor, and as the people behind them carried on surging forward, both of them began to be trampled on. Rae heard her mother screaming frantically.
‘Stop!’ Rae shouted. ‘My mum’s under there!’ She pushed and shoved her way towards her, elbowing people out of the way. A warden got there first and hauled Mrs Burton up by the back of her dress, which was dirty with footprints. She had always taught her children not to swear, but at that moment she emitted the most ear-aching string of expletives Rae had ever heard.
She was silenced by the sound of the doodlebug exploding outside.
Everyone held their breath for a moment, until they realised they were safe. The bomb had fallen nearby, but not close enough to do them any damage. Ray hugged her mother tightly, shaken by the ordeal.
‘Well, at least it didn’t hit us, that’s the main thing,’ Mrs Burton said. Rae could feel her trembling.
Once the green flag went up again, everyone filed out of the shelter. Rae felt terrible leaving her mother, but she knew she had to get back before anyone noticed she had gone AWOL.
‘I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go now, Mum,’ she said.
‘All right, love,’ her mother said sadly. She squeezed her hand, and Rae watched her head back into the factory.
As Rae sat on the train back to Nottingham, troubled by the morning’s events and now sporting a black eye from her fall, she felt far from reassured about her mother’s wellbeing.
Fortunately, the threat from the skies was only temporary, and as the advancing Allied armies in Europe overran the V-1 and V-2 launch sites, the flying bomb war came to an end. It was only a matter of time until the ground war followed suit.
But for Rae, waiting it out from the relative safety of Nottingham, the suspense was unbearable. Her mind kept fixating on one question: who will be the last man to die? Day by day, the Allied forces in Europe grew closer to Berlin, but still the Germans were putting up resistance, and still British and American men were being killed. Rae felt like she wanted to scream, ‘Get it over with!’
One day, some of the other ATS girls were surprised to find her sitting on her bunk, sobbing her heart out. Rae wasn’t normally one for tears, but the suspense had proved too much for her.
‘What’s ha
ppened?’ they asked, worried that she had received some bad news.
‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I just don’t think I can take any more of this.’
12
Sylvia
On 12 April 1945 President Roosevelt died suddenly of a stroke, and at the Washington Club, where Sylvia volunteered, the Stars and Stripes flew at half-mast. But even this tragedy couldn’t dent the belief among the Americans and their allies that victory was now within reach. The Germans were fighting a defensive war, falling further and further back within their own country as the Americans and Russians moved in. A more positive mood pervaded all over London.
Sylvia was feeling more like her old self again. She still thought of Carl Russell now and then, and worried about Wally, Frank, Tom and all the others in her own personal pen-pal club. But as she collected the plates and glasses at the Red Cross club, she sang along to the jukebox at the top of her voice.
One evening, Sylvia had just come out of the kitchen with a cloth to wipe down the tables when Issy Bonn’s ‘There! I’ve Said It Again’ came on. Since it was an English song, she really belted out the number, causing a young GI sitting with his back to her reading the paper to turn around in surprise. ‘Holy smokes, you really have a voice!’ he remarked.
Sylvia stopped singing, instantly self-conscious.
‘Do you always sing like that?’ he asked.
‘Oh, well, when the jukebox is on I usually sing along,’ she said shyly.
‘What’s your name? And what are you doing here?’ he asked her, putting down his paper.
‘My name’s Sylvia,’ she replied. ‘I work at the Piccadilly Hotel and I just come down here after work to volunteer.’
‘Well, Sylvia, my name’s Bob. And I think you could really go somewhere with that voice,’ he said. There was a twinkle in his hazel eyes that made her giggle involuntarily.
GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love Page 10