by Anne Bennett
It was, and it did no good going on and on about it, so, as they settled themselves in the tram, David said, ‘Well, we both think you need a bit of spoiling, so how about going for a nice meal tonight?’
‘Nice thought, but a nice meal seems to be a thing of the past as well,’ Kate said wryly.
‘Yeah,’ said Susie with a laugh. ‘You’ll probably get something with spam.’
‘Anyway,’ Kate said, ‘there will in all likelihood be a raid tonight. We probably only got away with it last night because of the fog.’
‘But you said you haven’t got to be on duty while I’m here.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Kate said. ‘But these raids are severe. You’d not want to be caught out in one.’ And then she caught sight of David’s disappointed face and said, ‘Look, when we get off the tram let’s see if the fish shop has any fish in? That’s as near as we get to a feast these days.’
David was quiet as they alighted from the tram a little later, and Kate slipped her arm through his. ‘Stop sulking,’ she admonished. ‘This is just the way life is at the moment, and if we have to put up with it, then I’m afraid you do too. And look, judging by the queue outside, at least they have got some fish in.’
Their wait was rewarded with fish and chips for three, and they hurried home to eat them while they were hot. They had all finished, and Kate was clearing up the plates, when Sally said, ‘Fish and chips was the first meal I had in Birmingham. Remember Kate? I was so scared of what your reaction might be to seeing me, and cold and miserable and so hungry, and I thought the fish and chips you brought in that day was the nicest food I had ever tasted.’
The siren wailed out before Kate was able to reply to this, and Sally jumped up from the table. ‘Better get my uniform on.’
‘You were on duty yesterday,’ Kate said.
‘I know, and this isn’t official or anything,’ Sally said. ‘But I would rather be out there being of some use and that.’
Kate wondered if it was that, or if she felt awkward and maybe envious seeing her and David together. ‘What do we do?’ David said as the drone of planes could be heard in the distance.
‘We take blankets and pillows from the bedroom and make ourselves as comfortable as possible in the shelter,’ Kate said.
But David was to find there was little comfort to be had in the cold, sunken corrugated shack, with potatoes growing in the roof, a muddy puddle on the floor, condensation down the walls and the only light from the candles that Kate had brought from the kitchen. And no end of pillows and blankets could make rigid benches anything other than basic so, even though he was still incredibly tired, he didn’t think he would get much sleep in that place. He hoped the raid would not be a long one.
The planes were flying above their heads, and from the numbers of them Kate guessed the raid would be fast and furious and could last some hours. She didn’t share this with David, but noticing him shivering she did say, ‘Are you very cold?’
‘Yeah, it’s the damp that makes it worse.’
‘I know,’ Kate said as the first crump of explosions could be heard. ‘Some of the women at work have paraffin lamps or even heaters in their shelters, though of course the paraffin is sometimes hard to get hold of. Another woman was telling me today to light a candle and put a flowerpot with holes in the bottom over it, and that supposedly takes the chill off the place a bit. But Sally and I hardly ever use the shelter, so it hardly seems worth it.’
There was silence for a moment or two and then Kate, her head cocked on one side listening, said, ‘It doesn’t seem to be our turn tonight, not yet anyway. I would close your eyes and try and rest while you can. Would it help if you put your head on my knee?’
‘I’m sure that will make all the difference,’ David said with a leering look at Kate.
‘Take that look off your face, or you won’t get within a hundred yards of me,’ Kate said sharply, sitting down on the bench. ‘I am offering you a cushion for your head and that is all.’
‘I know,’ David said with a grin. ‘And I will be good, at least until I get you inside and into bed properly.’
The following day the rain was teeming down, bouncing off the pavements. David, bored, was twiddling with the wireless trying to find something to listen to, and got a news programme announcing that Neville Chamberlain had died that day. ‘Ah, that’s a shame,’ said Kate. ‘He only resigned as prime minister in May. He must have been ill then.’
‘Mm,’ said David. ‘I couldn’t ever work out whether he really believed that Hitler would stick to that agreement they drew up in Munich in 1938, or whether it was a ploy to give us time to prepare for war because we just weren’t ready then.’
‘We’ll probably never know for sure,’ Kate said, looking through the window at the depressing weather. ‘Will you just look at that rain?’
‘Yes,’ David said, joining her. ‘What d’you fancy doing this afternoon?’
‘Let’s cheer ourselves up and go to the pictures,’ Kate said. ‘The Maltese Falcon is showing at the Plaza.’
‘The Plaza is still operational then? You said it was bombed.’
‘It was,’ Kate said. ‘But it was only closed for a few days.’
When they arrived at the Plaza they found that Susie and Nick had had the same idea. ‘Sally not with you?’ Susie asked.
‘No,’ Kate said. ‘The offer was there but she didn’t want to be a gooseberry.’
‘I think we’re a bit past cooing and canoodling in the back row,’ Nick said.
‘You speak for yourself,’ David said. ‘That’s all I’m coming for.’
‘Then you best go with someone else,’ Kate said. ‘Because I want to watch the film.’
‘Spoilsport!’ David muttered and, ignoring him, Kate said, ‘It’s not that we’re past it, it’s just that we don’t have to do that any more.’
‘Are you kidding?’ David said. ‘If you ask me, the biggest passion killers are Hitler and his bloody Air Force.’
‘That’s true,’ said Kate. ‘But I think that despite the rain they will pay us a visit tonight, so let’s go to the cinema and forget the war for a bit.’
There was a raid that night, and the planes returned on Sunday evening as well.
The raid was in full swing as David kissed Kate goodbye and she watched him swing himself into the truck that would take him and Nick back to the airfield. Kate was surprised at the relief that flowed through her, because she had the feeling that David hadn’t enjoyed his leave that much. The wet, cold weather hadn’t helped, and the raids curtailed anything else and ensured that he didn’t sleep very well either, and so he only looked marginally better than when he had arrived home.
TWENTY
Four days after David and Nick went back, German bombers, taking advantage of a fine night and a full moon, had launched a raid of some magnitude on Birmingham. The girls had been on duty throughout. After a scant few hours’ sleep, Sally and Kate rose the next morning, still tired, and Sally put on the wireless as they ate breakfast to hear the details of the memorial service being held in St Martin’s in the Bull Ring that day for Neville Chamberlain.
Suddenly a voice cut across the eulogies for the ex-prime minister. ‘Reports are coming in of a massive attack on Coventry.’
The girls looked in alarm at each other. Coventry was only about fifteen miles from Birmingham; it also made lots of things for the war. It had been bombed before, but the newscaster announced that the raid on 14 November was the most severe that it had suffered. Over five hundred German bombers had dropped high-explosive bombs, parachute mines, incendiary petrol mines and thousands of incendiary bombs all through the night. It was estimated that six hundred people had been killed, a thousand more seriously injured and sixty thousand buildings either destroyed, or so badly damaged as to be unusable. The Birmingham Gazette called it ‘Our Guernica’; meanwhile, a new word entered the German language: Koventrieren or Coventration, which described the razing to the ground of a pla
ce.
Sally and Kate looked at each other with wide eyes and Kate felt a shudder run all down her back as she said, ‘So now we know what a man like that is capable of.’
‘Was there any doubt then?’ Sally asked.
‘No, I suppose not,’ Kate said. ‘I feel all of atremble inside, and yet I need to leave now or I’ll be late for work.’
‘Me too,’ Sally said. ‘It will be on everyone’s lips today, I expect, but there are no words written that will bring any sort of ease to those poor people.’
Sally was right, of course, though Kate discussed it over and over with Susie in the tram going to work. When they got to the factory, the whole place was buzzing because they all knew that what had been done in Coventry could just as easily happen in Birmingham.
The majority of the residents of Birmingham were nervous when the siren screamed out the following evening, but it was a light skirmish in comparison to some of those suffered in the past. And so it went on all over the weekend. On Monday, at the warden post, Sally said, ‘D’you think maybe Herr Hitler isn’t going to give us a pasting like he did Coventry?’
‘It would be nice to think you were right,’ Susie said. ‘But I honestly think that Birmingham is never going to be sidelined.’
‘Yeah, but does he know what we make?’
‘Course he knows,’ another woman put in. ‘It’s his job to know. And Lord Haw-Haw knows too, ’cos he was blowing on about it a couple of days ago. More or less said we had it coming.’
‘Did he really?’ Kate said. ‘We hardly listen to him now. Think it’s a bit disloyal.’
‘Only if you believe the claptrap that comes out of his mouth,’ the other woman said. ‘He does sometimes give an indication of where the bombs are going to fall.’
‘He don’t always get it right though, does he?’ another piped up. ‘Look how he went on about the invasion and what the Germans were going to do when they got here, and they never even tried invading us in the end.’
‘Well,’ the other woman said, ‘I think this time he isn’t talking through the top of his head.’
‘He says things like that to put the fear of God into us.’
‘Does he?’ Susie said. ‘Well, if that’s his intention, then it has worked, because I am terrified of having a Coventration in this city.’
‘Here, here,’ said Kate in agreement.
The massive raid that Birmingham had been bracing itself for began at seventeen minutes past seven the following day: Tuesday, 19 November. Kate and Sally were already dressed in their uniforms, as they were officially on duty that night, and they only stopped to hang their gas masks around their necks and don their tin hats before they slipped out of the door. They had reached the warden post, with Susie following just behind them as the strains of the siren ceased, and they were aware of a rumbling drumming in the sky. Kate looked up to see the black waves of planes approaching and she gasped because she had never seen so many at any one time before.
People without their own shelters were streaming out of their homes, carrying all manner of possessions, or sleepy babies or toddlers, small children holding the hands of older ones. In the light of Kate’s torch, they all seemed white-faced with terror and began giving little yelps of fear as the incendiaries began falling from the planes like rain, setting up fires all around them. Kate no longer needed her torch, for the night was lit up like daylight with the many flares, illuminating the planes above them. The scream of descending bombs and the resultant explosions seemed to lend wings to people’s feet and set up a wail among the children – and a fair few of the adults too.
Kate, like Sally and Susie, was an experienced warden, having been involved in many raids, but none of them had experienced anything like that night before. With the roads empty of civilians, they were set to work to try to douse the crackling fires burning fiercely all around them, licking orange and yellow flames against the night sky. The wave of menacing black planes were filling the sky, releasing bombs that plummeted down with a piercing whistle. The crash of explosions mixed with the clatter of more incendiaries tumbling down to hit the ground in a burst of flame, and the arc lights held the German bombers in silhouette, pinpointing more planes approaching as the ack-ack guns began their response.
Hour after hour it went on. Some time that night, Kate volunteered to be taken to Aston, where the situation was worse, and where so many wardens had already been injured that additional help was needed. Here the bombs were plunging down in clusters and building after building would sway, topple and fall, leaving not one or two gaps, but a whole sea of devastation awash with fire. People’s screams added to the general cacophony.
It was so hot that the tar again had been set alight and had slid into the gutters, mangling up the tram lines. It was difficult to breathe in such intense heat, and the fierce fires were making it almost impossible to reach some of the people trapped and crushed in the collapsed buildings; there was not enough water to douse them, even though the canals had been drained. Many mounds that had once been buildings had to be left to burn, while redundant hosepipes dribbled uselessly in the gutters, and burst and soaking sand bags bled into the pavements. Some of the gas pipes had been fractured too; many people were in danger of being gassed to death, and that was a risk to the victims and rescuers alike.
But along with the smell of gas was the acrid stink of cordite, singed brick dust, the fetid smell of blood, the nauseous stench of scorched human flesh and the black smoke that billowed out from the fires and enveloped everyone. They expected very few survivors and, looking at the seas of rubble, Kate thought it was no surprise. They had to be sure, however, and – dead or alive – they had to get as many bodies out as possible. And through it all the bombs, landmines, parachute mines and incendiaries continued to fall from the sky, and the bells of the emergency services rang frantically as they tried to negotiate their way around war-torn streets.
Time and again, Kate crawled into collapsed buildings, her torch playing before her to try to locate and reach any trapped inside. The buildings were often still smoking and smouldering and she was given a scarf to semi-cover her face to protect it from the heat and the burning ash dropping on her. She would feel and smell the material of her overalls singe as she crawled over broken bricks, assorted mangled debris and shattered glass that cut into her hands and knees. The airless, intense heat made her lungs feel as if they were bursting. The bodies of the children affected her greatly, some so badly burnt they were unrecognizable. The first time she carried out a child’s body like that, bile rose in her throat, but she hadn’t allowed herself to be sick: far too many people needed her help, and worse by far were the people she would reach who’d crumble away at her touch.
Some people were held fast by mounds of bricks, fractured roof beams or broken, buckled machinery; they would need lifting gear and specialist help. Most of these were already dead and some knocked clean out – Kate thought them the lucky ones. She knew those few still alive and conscious would in all likelihood be burned to death before they could be released; hearing their screams was very hard to bear. She was no stranger to death, but death on such a massive scale was totally mind-numbing and she knew that that night she had seen, heard and done things she thought no human being should ever have to endure.
When it was discovered that Kate had done a first-aid course, though, she was redirected to the makeshift shelter and used her skills to help the Red Cross nurses tend any minor injuries. The poor dispossessed people seemed shocked and bemused; many were covered with a layer of brick dust and only had the clothes they stood up in, and most of those were ripped or stained. A small fleet of ambulances had battled their way through falling masonry and were waiting to ferry the badly injured to any hospital that had room to take them. Kate felt a wave of despair wash over her and she had the urge to sob for those people who had lost everything.
However, tears were another indulgence that she couldn’t allow herself, and she sighed and bent to the
task in hand as newly injured were being brought in all the time.
Much much later, when the ‘All Clear’ had sounded, Kate made for home. She needed no torch, though, because so many of the fires still blazed that the whole sky was lit up with a reddy-orange glow as Birmingham burned. This made it easier for Kate as she trudged her weary way home to avoid the sodden sandbags lying everywhere, the bomb craters, the twisted tram lines and the piles of masonry that had spilled on to pavements and roads.
It seemed to take for ever, though, and Kate wondered if any areas of Birmingham had escaped being bombed that night. Slade Road hadn’t, she realized, as she passed Salford Bridge and turned into it; she was further upset to see the house where she and Sally had had the flat was just one of many houses that had been extensively damaged. She had a fleeting worry about her own house and wondered for the first time if it was still standing.
She had reached Stockland Green and she turned gratefully into Marsh Lane, but was stopped from going down Bleak Hill and home by a burly policeman holding a stout torch, which he turned on her as he said, ‘You live up there, missis?’
‘Yes, what’s wrong?’ Kate said in a voice make husky from the smoke inhaled and slurred with tiredness.
The policeman looked at her with sympathy. She was still in her torn uniform, which was filthy from the smoke and burnt through in places. He couldn’t really see much of her face but it was obvious what she had been doing that night and he spoke gently. ‘An unexploded petrol bomb is lodged in Hesketh Crescent and the whole area has had to be evacuated until it can be dealt with.’
‘Unexploded bomb?’ Kate repeated. ‘But my young sister is in there. She’s only seventeen.’
‘No one is in there,’ the policeman assured her. ‘As I said, this whole area has been evacuated. Every house was checked.’