Across the Mersey

by Annie Groves

  Now with Jean so obviously sick with fear for her own son, Francine couldn’t bring herself to ask her yet again to try to persuade Vi to relent. At least Jack was safe. But was he happy? Vi did not love him – Francine had known that immediately. That was the hardest thing of all for her to bear. How could she not have known before? Why had she not had a mother’s instinct to warn her that Vi had not kept her promise to her and loved Jack as though he truly had been her own?

  ‘What will happen to them, Sam? If the Germans take them prisoner.’ Jean’s voice cracked with fear.

  ‘General Lord Gort will have them all evacuated before that happens,’ Sam told her, but Jean could see that he wasn’t any more convinced than she was herself that it would be possible to bring so many men home safely so very quickly.

  According to the papers, Hitler’s Panzers had now taken Calais and were surrounding the BEF at a place called Dunkirk, where they were now trapped. The inconveniences of war the month had brought, like the increase in the cost of petrol and the butter ration being cut, meant very little when compared with what was happening on the other side of the Channel.

  Jean went to put the kettle on whilst they all sat close to the wireless, waiting for the BBC news, just like virtually every other household in the land.

  British and French Forces held a thirty-mile stretch of coastline running from Gravelines through Dunkirk to Nieuport. Inland the front reached almost to Lille, where the French Divisions were surrounded by seven German ones.

  Lord Gort’s BEF was determined to get home come hell or high water, according to the papers, and despite everything the Germans could throw at them on land, by sea and in the air, and Lord Gort was equally determined to have them home. But the country waiting desperately for news of its men knew the enormity of that task and the slenderness of it being accomplished.

  The news came on. Jean’s hand trembled so much she couldn’t even pour the boiling water onto the tea leaves and had to let Grace do it for her.

  When the newsreader announced that eight thousand men had been evacuated from Dunkirk’s beaches Jean sobbed out aloud.

  ‘Eight thousand? But there are three hundred and fifty thousand of them to bring home.’

  Sam got up and went over to her, putting his arms around her. Sharp tears stung Grace’s eyes. She had never seen her mother like this, and her stomach churned sickeningly at the thought of the fate of all those brave men who were still there.

  NINETEEN

  Saturday 1 June

  Every man on the ward was listening to the wireless that Sister had unexpectedly allowed to be brought in, as the BBC reported the latest numbers of soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk.

  The nurses were listening as keenly as the patients as they went about their duties of setting up trolleys and trays for bed baths, temperature taking, and the giving out of medicine.

  ‘Another sixty-eight thousand brought off yesterday,’ old Mr Whitehead announced with evident satisfaction. ‘That’s just under two hundred thousand brought back safe, by my reckoning.’

  Grace paused to smile at this good news before checking that the wheels of his bed were all turned inwards just as they should be.

  The whole country had been holding its collective breath and saying its heartfelt prayers, following the speedy evacuation of the BEF, elated with relief when they heard a new report of more men brought off, and then plunged down into anxiety again when there were reports of the ships bringing them home being hit by the Luftwaffe despite the RAF’s stalwart attempts to keep them at bay. At least three Allied destroyers had been sunk and seven more damaged in one of the worst air attacks, on 29 May.

  ‘Aye, but what about them that are still there?’ Bill Johnson, another patient, asked grimly. ‘By my reckoning there are still a hundred and fifty thousand of them left.’

  ‘Time to take your temperature, please, Mr Johnson,’ Grace warned him firmly, but she was smiling at him as he dutifully obliged and stopped speaking so that she could carry out her task and then mark his temperature down on his chart before moving on to the next bed.

  ‘Gort won’t stop until he’s got them all back safe, and neither will Admiral Ramsay,’ Mr Whitehead insisted loyally.

  ‘Gort’s back in England now and what’s left of the BEF will have to look to Major General Harold Alexander, poor sods. They haven’t got a cat in hell’s chance,’ said Bill Johnson.

  ‘We can’t give up on them,’ Grace burst out, looking up from the empty bed she and Nurse Ellis, the other junior, were about to start making up, forgetting herself for a moment as her emotions overwhelmed her, her face burning when Staff Nurse Reid frowned in her direction.

  ‘The lass is right,’ one of the other men said. ‘We’ve got to keep hoping and praying for them, even if it’s a miracle we’ll be praying for.’

  No explanation had been given to the junior nurses as to why they had had to make up extra beds and prepare those patients who were considered almost well enough to go home to leave earlier than originally planned, but they had all guessed that the empty beds could be needed for returning injured soldiers.

  Teddy confirmed this when he and Grace managed to snatch five minutes together at lunchtime.

  ‘We’re all on standby in case we’re needed to bring back the wounded from Lime Street when they’re brought off the trains.’

  He wasn’t looking very well, and it seemed to Grace that he was finding it harder than normal to breathe but she knew that telling him to rest was all too likely to have the opposite effect to what she wanted.

  There’d been no word as yet from Luke, and although her father kept on saying that no news was good news in an attempt to cheer up her mother, Grace could see in her eyes what she feared. For the first time since she had started her nurse’s training, Grace wished she was still in the St John Ambulance Brigade, since their volunteers were all being sent to the stations to be ready for the troop trains coming up from the south coast bringing the BEF men back to their bases.

  The military hospitals down south had taken those most in need of emergency treatment, of course, but as Teddy had warned her, their own hospital was on an alert ready to take injured men for whom there were no hospital beds elsewhere.

  Seb closed his eyes, but it was no use, the images were still there. Marie, her brown eyes fierce with determination as she told him that even if she could leave for safety with him, she would not do so.

  ‘France is my country. And if I must die for her then I will do so. I cannot do the work you have trained me for in your country, Sebastion, you know that. My place is here.’

  Had he been naïve or just stupid in not understanding how the pressure of the secret and urgent work he had been sent to France to do might affect him? When he had been recruited in England, trained and then sent to France to help set up and, in turn, train cells of Frenchmen and women to use special codes and wireless equipment to report back to England, if, as now looked likely, France should fall, it had never occurred to him that he might feel like this. He had argued fiercely with Command in England to be allowed to stay on and work with those he had trained, but he had been told that his role was now over and he must return to England. Like a coward, leaving those braver than he to face the enemy and, in all probability, to die. None of them was under any illusions. The life of a member of an underground cell was more likely to be short than long. Short and extremely unpleasant, if they were captured and tortured. He could feel the sweat breaking out on his forehead.

  The train travelling north had been full of BEF men returning home and he had only just managed to squeeze on to it. He’d been later leaving France than originally planned and had got caught up in the retreat. When the Luftwaffe had machine-gunned the line of men he was standing in, waiting to get on board one of boats at Dunkirk, he’d ended up with a shoulder wound – nothing serious, he’d been told. He had a day in London being debriefed, with his shoulder hurting like hell, unable to get Marie’s face out of his mind, and
now he was on his way to Liverpool to take up his new post at Derby House, as a member of an offshoot of what was known as the ‘Y’ Section. Their ‘secret’ job was to listen in to enemy Morse code and other messages, translate them, and then pass them on to their headquarters at Bletchley Park.

  Sebastion had not wanted to recruit Marie in the first place. She had been too young, in his opinion, and too pretty, the kind of girl that men would always look at. They had been taught to look for recruits who could fade into the background and pass unnoticed. Marie, though, had been determined. She had been good as well, quick to learn, cool and controlled, where some of the recruits were too hot-headed and reckless.

  Her circumstances had been perfect for their purpose as well. Her parents owned a small bar where she worked, the kind of place where comings and goings were a normal part of its daily routine. Even better had been that beneath the tabac was a series of interconnecting cellars, two of which they had hidden behind a false wall.

  From that cellar Marie would report back to England. He should have been there with her. He had recruited her and he felt responsible for her. But orders were orders, and his were to return to England. He’d still felt like shit climbing into that boat, hearing a young sailor telling him cheerfully, ‘Soon have you back in Blighty, old chum.’

  No, he shouldn’t have recruited her. He should have turned her away, left her safe to grow up and get married and have children of her own, instead of risking her life. And she would risk that. He had read that in her face. She was fiercely and proudly partisan about her country and her desire for its freedom, for its liberty, and equality.

  He had left her knowing that the German Army was advancing, knowing that it was his duty to obey his own orders, and knowing too that he despised and hated himself for leaving her behind to face what she would have to.

  ‘I would not have it any other way,’ she had told him when he had said this to her, and begged her to let him take her to safety. ‘My choice is to fight for my country. My safety counts as nothing compared with that.’

  Jean had been working down at Lime Street as a volunteer, her heart shredded with shocked anguish by what she saw in the expressions of the returning men. Some were still wearing their battledress, sea-stained and in some cases bloodstained as well, the smell of damp khaki sharp on the nostrils, especially when allied to unwashed flesh.

  Some of the men were so exhausted that she’d had to hold the cup for them so that they could drink the tea she was handing out. Great big tall, broad-shouldered men, trembling and crying like babies in their disbelieving relief at being spared the fate they had thought would be theirs, and shame for their public defeat.

  And all the time she was offering kind words and a drink of tea, Jean was scanning the sea of male faces, looking for Luke’s.

  Some families had already had word via one of the postcards provide by the WVS, which the men had filled in as they passed through the English ports; others had received telephone calls. But the Campions had heard nothing. And now, six days after the final evacuation had taken place, Jean could hardly bear to think of where Luke might be.

  Over forty thousand men had been left behind to be taken prisoner by the Germans – if they were lucky. Others had been killed by the Luftwaffe in those ships that had been sunk. The needs of the living must, of course, always come before those of the dead and, as Sam kept saying, they shouldn’t give up hope.

  ‘I’ll take over here now, Mrs Campion,’ one of the other members of the WVS group offered.

  Tiredly, Jean nodded. She had been at Lime Street since early this morning and she needed to get home. Sam would be wanting his tea.

  * * *

  ‘I thought they said we’d be taking a few of the overspill that they couldn’t find beds for,’ Hannah complained wearily to Grace as they each grabbed a quick bite of supper. ‘We’ve been operating nonstop since nine o’clock this morning.’

  ‘Our ward’s full,’ Grace agreed between mouthfuls of shepherd’s pie, ‘and as I came down for supper Sister was saying that we’d have to fit in another four beds. Some of those poor men, though, Hannah. What they must have been through.’

  ‘I know,’ she agreed quietly. ‘We’ve had some really nasty injuries in, arms and legs gone – and worse – caused by shrapnel.’

  They looked at one another.

  ‘Mr Leonard operated on two men who he reckons won’t last the night. And then there was a lad, only seventeen, half his face gone.’

  Grace put down her fork, her food suddenly tasting like sawdust.

  The first thing Jean saw when she walked into her kitchen through the back door was the army greatcoat thrown over the back of a chair, salt-stained and encrusted in places with dark splodges that her brain hoped were mud, but which the sickening twisting pain in her heart told her were blood.

  Then she looked up from the coat and saw Luke standing in the doorway to the hall, his gruff, ‘Mum,’ having her running to him, tears spilling from her eyes, a choke of something she couldn’t truthfully articulate clogging in her throat as his arms closed round her and she hugged him tightly.

  ‘You’re back.’

  ‘Got home half an hour ago. Wasn’t sure whether or not there’d be anyone in so I went round to the Salvage Corps’ HQ in Hatton Gardens to see if Dad was around, and luckily he was.’

  Now Jean could see that Sam was standing in the hallway behind Luke, a look of fierce fatherly love and pride in his eyes. Fresh tears filled her own as she mentally said a thankful prayer for her son’s safe return home, and added another for the renewal of the father-and-son bond she had feared at one time had been destroyed for ever.

  From upstairs the sound of one of the twins’ favourite records suddenly broke the silence.

  Releasing Luke, Jean shook her head and exclaimed, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. I’ll go up and tell them to turn that off.’

  ‘No don’t, Mum,’ Luke urged her. There were shadows in his eyes and in the sharper lines of his face Jean could see the man he had now become. ‘There’s bin many a time these last few days when I’ve have given anything to know I’d hear them playing that gramophone of theirs again. Aye, and plenty of times when I thought I wouldn’t, an’ all.’ His voice broke, his hand shaking as he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes, turning away from her to light one. Because he did not want her to see what he was feeling?

  Sam’s calm, ‘Get the kettle on, love; we’re both gasping,’ and the quick jerk of his head in Luke’s direction behind Luke’s back helped to steady her. This was a time when Luke needed his dad, perhaps even more than he needed her. There were things they could say to one another man to man, perhaps, that Luke would not want to say to her.

  ‘He’s had a bad time, hasn’t he?’ she asked Sam later when, after a bath and a change of clothes, Luke had insisted on going up to the hospital to try to see Grace and tell her that he was back safely.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of injured mates who might be up there, so I can see them as well,’ he had told them before he left.

  ‘Yes,’ Sam told her. ‘He’s told me a bit about it but not all of it, I reckon. That’s how it is for a man; there are some things that he can only talk about freely with them that was there with him. It’s a bit like that in the Corps sometimes, when we’ve had a bad ’un to deal with. According to what he’s told me they were given the order to retreat to Dunkirk and then told it was every man for himself. The Royal Engineers had built a bridge, which they held for them. Seemingly they only just got across it before the RAF blew it up to stop the Germans from making use of it. When they got close to Dunkirk, Luke said that all they could see was smoke from the fires because of the Germans bombing the oil depots. They were sent to a place called La Panne. Luke said if you’ve ever imagined hell then La Panne was it.’

  Jean bit her lip. She knew how it would have affected Sam to think of his son exposed to such horror and danger, and him not being there with him to protect him.

 
; ‘There were men queuing everywhere: across the sand and right out into the water waiting to be taken off the beach, and all the time the queues were getting longer. Luke said he saw one captain threatening to shoot his own men when they broke ranks and tried to make for the sea instead of joining one of the lines. There was a beach master in charge of it all, but he didn’t have any control over the Germans, who were dive-bombing the men as they stood there.’

  Jean had started to tremble. Even though Luke was safe, the pictures Sam was creating inside her head were sharply shocking and painful.

  ‘Three days it took them to reach Dunkirk, and then another two waiting to be taken off, all that time with no food and only the water they’d brought with them.’

  Sam sighed. ‘Our Luke was only a lad when he left us, Jean, but he’s come back a man. They were dive-bombed by the Germans over and over again, and Luke said that you never knew when it was going to happen but when it did you didn’t dare leave the line in case you lost your place so you just had to throw yourself down in the sand where you were and hope for the best.

  ‘He said that the captain, the same one that had threatened to shoot his own men, had to put a bullet through a poor lad who’d been that badly wounded he couldn’t have survived. Then, when they finally got their turn to get onto one of the boats taking the men out to the ships, it almost capsized and the three men last on had to get off again. Luke said he saw a ship bombed and set ablaze from stem to stern, men jumping off it in all directions.’

  ‘Oh, Sam, it just doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘Maybe not, love, but it has to be thought about, because if we don’t think about it then we won’t fight ruddy Hitler and he won’t be stopped. We need to stop him, Jean. We need to stop him, and we ruddy well will.’

  Grace had never seen the area inside the main entrance to the hospital as busy and crowded as it was today. Everywhere she looked there seemed to be men in uniform – mainly the walking wounded, who had been told to report to their nearest hospital once they reached home, and also, of course, the close relatives of those who had received far more serious injuries and who had been brought to the hospital by ambulance.