Far From Home

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Are they?’ Kate said in surprise. ‘But then I suppose it makes sense. They would probably have all the machines for fine work. Mind you, anyone who does work like that would have to be fairly dexterous, I’d say. I’d probably be all fingers and thumbs, but your Mom is so good with her hands I think that sort of work will suit her very well.’

  ‘Well, she’s excited enough,’ Susie said. ‘She says it will be good to have her own money in her pocket that she can spend as she likes. She has never had that; it was expected in those days that the women would stay at home after marriage.’

  ‘And do what exactly?’ Kate said. ‘Thank goodness the war has knocked such outdated notions on the head.’

  ‘Yeah, I agree,’ Susie said. ‘Did your Mom have an opinion about this ARP business?’

  ‘She doesn’t know what it entails really,’ Kate said. ‘She just repeated what she has said since war was declared – that if the bombs start falling, I am to go home to Ireland.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘Not likely,’ Kate said. ‘I’m not running away. Birmingham is where I’ve made my home and I will fight for it if I have to. Anyway, what about Sally? Mammy would never welcome her back home.’

  ‘I really can’t understand her being so hard-hearted about Sally,’ Susie said. ‘She was kindness itself to me when I was a child. Even though I knew that she hated me going on about Birmingham at first, I was always made welcome in your home. Not knowing about this great non-romance with you and Tim Munroe, you could have knocked me down with a feather when she began not only positively encouraging me to talk about the delights of Birmingham, but asking if I could find you a job and place to live over here.’

  ‘I know,’ Kate said, smiling at the memory. ‘Your face was a picture.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet,’ Susie said. ‘But I never would have said she was a cold woman.’

  ‘Nor would I,’ Kate said. ‘It must be because my parents particularly made so much of Sally when she was little and incredibly sweet; maybe because they spoilt her, she had farther to fall.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, what did she actually do wrong?’ Kate said. ‘She ran away from home, but she only did that after she had overheard Mammy telling a neighbour that she would not let Sally come over here, not even on a holiday, and that she wanted her to find a local man to marry when the time came. Sally told me she thought of all the men and boys she knew and none of them inspired her, so the thought of marrying one of them and being buried in the country filled her with gloom.’

  ‘Oh, I can well understand that,’ Susie said. ‘I mean, it is a beautiful place, but a bit of a dead-and-alive hole for a young girl.’

  ‘Yeah, well, Sally decided to take matters into her own hands,’ Kate said. ‘But she had no money of her own, so she took Mammy’s egg money. But if she’d been given a wage for the work she did, she would have had no need to do that. I’m not saying that what she did wasn’t wrong,’ Kate said. ‘But I can understand that desperation, that need to flee and no money to do it, and the temptation of the egg money just lying there.’

  ‘Oh, so can I.’

  ‘Anyway, she knows she did wrong and she has apologized for it over and over and paid every penny back, and still she is not forgiven,’ Kate said. ‘And yet I married a man in a registry office, and sent Father Patterson away with a flea in his ear. Mammy was angry and upset, as I expected she would be, but she didn’t actually disown me. I find the whole thing hard to understand.’

  ‘And I would,’ Susie said, getting up. ‘Come on, this is our stop. What are the arrangements for tonight anyway?’

  ‘All the volunteers have been told to assemble outside the council house at seven o’clock, so try not to hang about after work.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Susie said. ‘I will be out of there like a shot as soon as the buzzer goes.’

  There was a motley group of them collected together that summer’s evening at the foot of the marble steps leading up to the council house in Birmingham, and though most were women of varying ages, there were two older men. As Kate surveyed them, she wondered if any of them would be any good at the tasks that they might soon have to deal with, for they looked a very raggle-taggle group.

  Even while she was thinking this, however, a woman came determinedly out of the building and stood on the second step to address them. Just by her stance, it was clear she was obviously a no-nonsense sort of woman, and that was before you looked at her resolute face. She had the sort of eyes that missed nothing and she scanned them all and gave a small nod. Kate knew that if anyone could lick them into any sort of shape, then she could. The woman thanked them for coming and introduced herself as Mrs Camfrey. ‘Now, if you would like to follow me,’ she said, and led the group up the steps and into the reception hall, where they were told that all the ARP activities – as well as various other organizations helping Birmingham prepare for possible air raids – were supervised by an Emergency Powers Committee.

  ‘Sounds very grand,’ Kate whispered to Sally and Susie out of the corner of her mouth.

  ‘They work from a fortified gas-proofed basement,’ Mrs Camfrey told them. ‘And that is where I’m taking you now.’

  Kate followed the others down the steps. Now she was actually here she had butterflies in her stomach, especially when she thought of the piles of concrete over her head. Noises from the city were effectively cut off in the bunker, but she knew that, above her, life was still going on.

  The bunker too seemed a hive of activity. Mrs Camfrey led them along a corridor; in the rooms leading off on either side, people were busy working. Eventually, she stopped at a small room and ushered them inside. The chairs were in rows and they took their places while she stood behind the desk. Kate glanced around and saw most of the others, including Sally and Susie, looked as nervous as she was. ‘What sort of hours will we be working, like?’ one of the men asked. ‘I mean, I want to do my bit and all that, but since Dunkirk I’ve been working a minimum of fifty hours a week.’

  ‘Haven’t we all, granddad?’ a young, heavily made-up girl snapped out rudely. ‘What you doing here if you’re not prepared to do owt?’

  ‘You are impudent, miss,’ the man said, outraged. ‘I never said I wasn’t willing to help. Let me tell you, I was in the last little lot and I should have retired last year but offered to stay on. I am no slacker, I’ll have you know.’

  The girl shrugged and another older woman said, ‘Anyway, it’s a reasonable request,’ and she glared at the younger woman.

  ‘And I suppose I’m entitled to an opinion, same as anyone else?’ the girl snapped back. Kate could see even the girl she was with looked embarrassed. ‘Oh, crikey, Sylv,’ she cried, ‘put a sock in it, do.’

  ‘Yes,’ put in another women. ‘Makes me wonder who the enemy is. Thought we were fighting Jerry, not each other.’

  ‘And so we are,’ Mrs Camfrey said. ‘And if you stop arguing amongst yourselves, I will tell you all you will need to know. Before I do, let me remind you that, in the event of a raid, you might easily have to depend on each other. Personal issues have no place here and neither do disrespectful remarks.’ She glanced reprovingly at the young girl as she spoke. Kate could see, even under her make-up, that she had coloured up, though she still looked incredibly sulky as Mrs Camfrey continued: ‘Account is taken of the fact that a great many of those here will have full- or part-time jobs of one kind or another, and so the hours of duty will be split into day and night shifts, and you will work the hours that you are able to within that shift.’

  There was a little sigh of relief and then the other, younger man asked, ‘And what will our duties be?’

  ‘At the moment you will have to patrol the streets making sure people are sticking to the blackout restrictions,’ Mrs Camfrey said. ‘You will also be trained in identifying a gas attack, given a whistle and a rattle to sound the alarm, and taught what to do in the event of a raid, assisting and directing people to shelte
rs, reporting when necessary to emergency services and assisting in rescue afterwards. You will also learn the correct way to douse incendiary bombs and other fires and you will learn basic first aid.’

  ‘My friend has been a warden for a while and said we have to practise all these things,’ said another younger woman.

  ‘You certainly do,’ Mrs Camfrey said. ‘It is really important – maybe to people’s survival – that you are proficient at these things. It is no good us just telling you: you must actually do it.’

  They fell to talking of the kind of exercises they would be engaged in and the questions came thick and fast. Eventually, Mrs Camfrey said, ‘Now, if there are no more questions, is everyone all right about what they must do?’

  They all nodded except Sylv, who gave an indifferent shrug, and Mrs Camfrey looked sharply at her but went on: ‘Now then, it is organized like this. Groups of six or more will be called a sector and will be headed by a senior sector marshal, and each sector will be in charge of an area housing approximately five hundred people.’ Kate looked askance at Sally and Susie – she thought five hundred people were a lot to be responsible for.

  ‘Now, if you make an orderly line in front of this door, you will be told what to do next,’ Mrs Camfrey said, and they all obediently queued up and filed into a room where two ATS girls were sitting behind counters. While one marked each one of them off on a register and assigned them to a sector, the other dished out uniforms, tin helmets, a whistle and a rattle.

  ‘Now,’ Mrs Camfrey said when they had all been seen to. ‘Remember you are going to be the first line of defence in the raids. People will look to you for help or advice, such as where the shelters are and so on. You will be doing a very valuable job, so always remember that. Please report tomorrow night to the sector you were assigned to – you will meet your fellow colleagues and the sector marshal then.’

  On the way home, the three girls looked at each other. Even in the half-light, Kate could see the slight shock registering on the faces of the others. ‘I thought they’d just sort of tell us all about it and let us go away and have a think whether we want to do it or not,’ Susie said.

  ‘Don’t think they have the time for niceties like that,’ Kate said. ‘Anyway, isn’t it great that we have been assigned to the same sector and the warden post is only in Marsh Lane?’

  ‘Yeah, that is good,’ Susie said. ‘And I’ll tell you what I’m pleased about as well – that that girl Sylv is not in our sector. She was right behind me in the line and I was scared that she would be.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kate said. ‘Don’t know what she’s doing here anyway. She doesn’t seem that bothered.’

  ‘And she bit the head off that old man,’ Sally said.

  ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t say working with her would be a bundle of laughs,’ Kate maintained. ‘And, as you once said, Susie, humour is all we have.’

  ‘I stick to it as well,’ Susie said. ‘At least we three are all together, and someone else will have to deal with Sylv. Now I just hope our sector marshal is nice.’

  They were to find out that she was very nice. Kate guessed her to be in her thirties; she had her brown hair cut in a bob. She greeted them all warmly in a very pleasant-sounding voice with only a slight trace of a Brummie accent. ‘My name is Jane Goodman,’ she said. ‘And we don’t need to stand on ceremony amongst ourselves.’ She shook hands with them all and Kate noticed her kindly grey eyes and just knew she would get on well with her.

  After the introductions, Jane said they had to report to Erdington Baths where St Johns’ Ambulance would be conducting classes in first aid. ‘See,’ Kate said to the other two as they made their way there, ‘it’s a bit like marriage. We are in now, for better or worse.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Over the next weeks, as the summer took hold of the city, the German offensive began, with the Luftwaffe attacking coastal towns through July. More shipping convoys were sunk and there were more raids. The three girls were only too aware that the RAF squadrons from airfields throughout Britain were being sent to try to repulse these attacks and also to try to save the ships. The announcements on the wireless and those in the newspapers were reporting on what they called, ‘The Battle of Britain’. Dogfights were common and the results were printed in the papers, and were even on notice boards in the city centre, the girls heard. ‘It’s like some game they are playing, and if the Germans lose twenty-three planes to our eight or nine, it is counted as a victory. Yet each loss is a tragedy,’ Kate said.

  She knew too that one of those planes lost could have her husband or Susie’s inside it, and that thought made her feel sick. And yet she knew it had to be done, because across a very small stretch of water, Hitler had amassed an armada and was ready for invasion. The papers and broadcasters on the wireless assured them that if ever the RAF lost supremacy in the air, there would be nothing to stop German craft carrying men and machines from landing in Britain.

  Everyone was talking about the heroism of the boys in blue, well aware that the survival of Britain rested on the slim shoulders of these young pilots. The need for pilots was so pressing that most of those being sent up into the air to face merciless enemy gunfire had only had time for a very basic training course lasting a scant six weeks. But knowing her husband was doing an essential job did nothing to ease the aching worry that often deprived Kate of sleep and took away her appetite.

  And she knew that without her work with her fellow ARP wardens, she would be a lot worse off. This way she had less time to think. As Mrs Camfrey told them, they were being trained for things they might have to do in the event of raids on the city. And so they engaged in realistic exercises in parks and roads, rescued mock casualties from damaged buildings, put out blazes, dealt with incendiaries in specially constructed huts and made trial runs from the depots to check the time it took to cover the area they were responsible for. They also practised decontamination routines.

  On top of this they went two nights a week to learn first aid and practised the skills taught on volunteer victims. This, together with working overtime, ensured that Kate at least went to bed exhausted. But once she lay down, the visions would come to haunt her. She wasn’t helped by the reports she read in the papers of the long hours the pilots spent flying: quite often they would be on seven sorties a day. Far too many: surely tiredness affected reaction times? And a tired pilot might make mistakes and any mistakes made in the air might be catastrophic.

  As David had once said, he lived for her letters, so now she lived for his. They came spasmodically and they were brief missives, but though he could tell her little, the fact that he had written at all showed Kate that he was still alive – and that was the greatest news of all.

  And Birmingham continued to wait. No one now believed that being two hundred miles from the coast would protect them.

  On 1 August, Hitler issued a directive ordering an intensification of the air war prior to an invasion of Britain. This news was conveyed to Kate and Sally by the sneering voice of Lord Haw-Haw, the traitor who broadcast on a programme called Germany Calling. The British were not supposed to listen to it, but many did, because the man seemed to know what was happening, though he delivered it in a hateful way as he revelled in the defeat of the British. ‘We will soon be invading your shores and unopposed when we have blown the Air Force out of the sky,’ he said with glee one evening. ‘You will no longer have the Air Force so prepare yourself for a blood bath.’

  Sally looked at the colour draining out of Kate’s face and she snapped off the wireless. ‘Why do we listen to him anyway?’ she said to Kate. ‘He is nothing but a scaremonger. What does he know?’

  Kate didn’t answer. She wished she could believe Sally, but she knew that Lord Haw-Haw was accurate a lot of the time and she felt as if she had a coiled spring wrapped tight inside her, crushing her heart.

  And Haw-Haw seemed to be just as accurate this time, for almost immediately the Luftwaffe began to attack the airfields, though they kept up t
he pressure on the ports and shipping too, and the raids stretched as far as the Thames Estuary and Liverpool. In the middle of this, the first bombs fell in Erdington on 9 August. Few in Birmingham were even aware of the three bombs that were dropped; no sirens were sounded and the first many knew about it was the report in the paper, when they saw the devastation caused to the houses in Lydford Grove, Montague Road and Erdington Hall Road, where the bombs fell. And although the people from the ruined homes were shaken and some had to be pulled from the rubble, the only fatality was a young soldier who had survived Dunkirk and was home on leave.

  Birmingham suffered almost daily raids from then on, but these were localized and few came that close to Erdington, although the girls were out at the post in Marsh Lane through many of them, watching the arc lights illuminate the sky in the distance and listening to the tattoo of the anti-aircraft guns. ‘Glad to know someone’s awake anyway,’ Kate said one night. ‘Don’t know where the spotters are, though – those sirens never sound, do they?’

  ‘No,’ Susie agreed. ‘According to Dad, the Royal Observer Corps should relay information to us, and we have to send that information to factories and schools where the sirens are.’

  ‘Well, we can’t send information on if we don’t have it in the first place,’ Kate said. ‘And I would say that they can’t be that good at observing if they can’t see a formation of planes heading our way till they’re on top of us. A policeman pedalling through the streets blowing a whistle is not good enough. Maybe a more efficient system should be set up?’

  Kate gave a yawn and said wearily, ‘I wish the “All Clear” would go now, though. I haven’t heard explosions for a while and I am dead beat.’

  ‘Not sleeping?’ Susie asked, and Kate gave a grimace. ‘Is anyone in this godawful war?’