‘So, you’re our new land girl,’ Mrs Ashbourne said, eyeing Kathleen with interest. ‘How delightful. And how is old Shaw treating you – not too roughly I hope?’
‘Not at all,’ Kathleen answered. ‘He’s been very kind.’
‘I’m so glad,’ the lady continued. ‘My daughter Jane here works as a nurse in the local hospital, you know. It’s terribly hard work, but the young must do their bit for the war, I suppose.’
Jane looked up and gave Kathleen a feeble smile.
Looking around the room, Kathleen saw that it was hung with a number of old oil paintings depicting the family’s ancestors. Mrs Ashbourne was delighted to talk her through them all, introducing each long-departed family member one by one. From what Kathleen could gather, the Ashbournes, along with most of the other wealthy families in the area, were Quakers. They had all made their money in manufacturing, and by now they had intermarried pretty thoroughly.
At dinner, however, it was Kathleen’s family that was the object of conversation. The Ashbournes had never had anyone like her sit at their table before, and they were fascinated by every detail of her life when she was growing up. Story-telling was Kathleen’s forte, and she warmed to the task, entertaining them with tales of her parents’ romantic meeting in Cape Town and the struggles they had faced coming back to England, where they had survived on the rabbits they caught and skinned for dinner. The whole family hung on to her every word – in fact, the only difficulty she faced was trying not to giggle when the servants she had been playing cards with the night before winked as they served her potatoes.
After dinner, Kathleen snuck back down to the basement for a cup of tea with the maids and listened to them gossip about the family. ‘They’ve got 12 children, you know, and at least two of them are doolally,’ Minnie told her.
‘They say the Ashbournes are running out of money,’ the girl with the deformed hand chipped in. ‘It was all invested overseas, and now they can’t get it ’cos of the war.’
‘And as for that Jane,’ the head housemaid, a woman of about 40, added, ‘I’ve heard she’s in love with one of the wounded soldiers she’s been treating down at the hospital – and it turns out he’s a lorry driver in Civvy Street!’
‘Ooh, I don’t think madame would be too pleased about that!’ declared Minnie. The group of women laughed together until their sides ached.
Kathleen enjoyed the chance to join in with the servants’ gossiping, but she soon discovered that the head housemaid had a romantic secret of her own. That night, when Kathleen tiptoed down to the kitchen to fetch herself a glass of water, she found the woman perched on the kitchen counter with her legs wrapped around the postman.
Kathleen gasped, and the couple sprang apart in embarrassment. As the postman hastily picked his trousers up off the floor, she backed out of the room, blushing, and fled up the stairs.
Kathleen’s own love life was continuing as well as could be expected with her boyfriend hundreds of miles away up in Scotland. She and Arnold continued writing to each other regularly, and she kept him up to speed with all the strange goings on at the grand house. But it wasn’t long before she had a new and entirely unwanted admirer to deal with.
The fields neighbouring the Ashbournes’ estate were owned by a young farmer who had recently inherited them from his father. He had several land girls working for him already, but when one of them fell ill he asked Mr Shaw if he could borrow Kathleen for the day to help harvest his Brussels sprouts.
‘Aye, ye can ’ave the girl,’ the old man replied, ‘but only if ye promise not to overwork her. The poor lass is thin as a rake, you know!’
Kathleen set off, happy for a change of scene and hoping to get to know some of the other land girls. But she soon discovered she would be spending the day all alone in a ten-acre field, her only visitor being the farmer. The young man took a keen interest in the flame-haired girl who was picking his sprouts, and stopped to stare at her whenever he passed by on his tractor.
It didn’t take long for him to find an excuse to come and talk to her. ‘You be a pretty little thing to be getting your hands so muddy,’ he remarked admiringly.
‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ Kathleen replied, carrying on with her work.
‘Got a boyfriend, have you?’ the man asked her.
‘Yes, I have,’ said Kathleen, firmly.
‘That be a shame,’ the man told her wistfully. ‘I been looking for a wife to run this ’ere farm wi’ me.’
Kathleen said nothing, and eventually the man went away. But over the next few weeks he kept asking Mr Shaw if he could ‘borrow’ her again. The young man was clearly lonely and longed for someone to share his days with, but Kathleen soon grew sick of him pestering her.
One day, the young farmer took Kathleen with him into Bury St Edmunds, where he had some errands to run. She sat in the passenger seat of his van, wrapped up in her own thoughts and doing her best to avoid conversation.
Suddenly there was an almighty crash as the van collided with another vehicle. Kathleen was thrown from her seat and her head smashed straight through the windscreen, lodging there as the van came to a halt. Her neck was completely surrounded by glass, and it was cutting painfully into her skin. If she moved even an inch, she was sure it would sever an artery.
Before long the police were on the scene, carefully dismantling the windshield around Kathleen’s head and freeing her from the prison of glass. She was rushed to the local hospital, where her cuts were bandaged up, but the accident left her with a ring of tiny scars around her neck.
Before long, the case came to court, and Kathleen was called as a witness. The young farmer was claiming that the other vehicle had come out of nowhere when he hit it, and she was asked what she remembered of the incident.
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,’ she replied. ‘I just don’t remember a thing.’
‘You must have seen what happened,’ the magistrate protested. ‘You were sitting right up in the front!’
But Kathleen had been so busy daydreaming that she had no recollection of anything before the moment her head hit the glass.
The young farmer was duly fined for dangerous driving, and after Kathleen’s failure to corroborate his account, he never asked her to pick his sprouts again. It was scarcely the easiest way to free herself from his unwanted advances, but it seemed to have done the trick nonetheless.
It was many months now since Kathleen had last seen Arnold, but his letters had kept her going through the long, hard days on the land. At last, when she went home to her mother’s house in Cambridge for some leave, he was able to join her for a day. To Kathleen he seemed even more charming than she remembered, and her feelings for him were stronger than ever before.
Mrs Skin did everything she could to make her daughter’s handsome officer welcome, using up an entire week’s rations on a single magnificent meal. But it was when she finally went out on an errand that Arnold revealed the true purpose of his visit. ‘My darling,’ he said breathlessly, taking Kathleen in his arms, ‘you know we belong together. Will you marry me?’
Kathleen felt as if her heart could have burst then and there. ‘Yes, of course!’ she cried, falling into his embrace.
Arnold drew a little box out of his pocket and handed it over to her. Inside was the most beautiful ring that Kathleen had ever seen, set with a stone of yellow citrine. He tried to push it onto her finger, but to her disappointment it just wouldn’t fit. ‘Oh dear,’ he murmured. ‘I suppose we’re going to have to get it altered.’
‘No – don’t take it away,’ Kathleen pleaded. ‘I’ll wear it around my neck on a chain. That way it’ll always be with me when we’re apart.’
Kathleen hoped it wouldn’t be long before the two of them could be married, but to her surprise Arnold told her that he wanted to wait until the war was over. ‘I’ll never forget the woman who used to wash our steps and windows,’ he told her. ‘She had been wealthy once, but when her husband was killed in the last war sh
e was left with two young children to support by herself. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you, my dear.’
‘Yes, of course, you’re right,’ Kathleen replied, trying to hide her disappointment. If it was up to her, she would have married Arnold then and there, but she was willing to abide by his decision.
After Arnold had left, Kathleen showed her mother the ring. ‘I knew it!’ Mrs Skin declared, ecstatically. ‘I just knew that you’d be married before the year was out! Oh isn’t he wonderful, Kath. What a lovely man you’ve found yourself! I’d better start seeing about your trousseau.’
‘We’re not getting married until after the war, Mum,’ Kathleen protested weakly. But it was no use reasoning with her mother. Mrs Skin was already off to tell all her friends, and gather material for her daughter’s bottom drawer.
7
Jessie
After Jessie’s first exhilarating experience of a bombing raid, 518 mixed battery hadn’t seen much action in Sheffield, and a decision was made to move them to a gun-site at Barrow upon Humber, just across the river from Hull.
An all-male battery had recently been stationed there, and when Jessie and her friends arrived they were greeted with an impressive piece of the men’s handiwork: an enormous mural on the wall of the canteen, depicting Adam and Eve in what could only be described as their full splendour.
‘Well, that would take your mind off the quality of the grub,’ one of the gunners commented, as he marvelled at Eve’s enormous breasts.
A sign writer was hastily summoned by a rather flustered ATS officer. ‘I need you to paint some foliage over the … ah, intimate areas,’ she told him.
The man dashed off to fetch a tin of green paint, but before he returned word had got round the camp, and soon the whole battery was jostling to get a look at the lewd artwork before it was censored.
It was a wonder the all-male battery had found time to paint while they were at Humberside, since the ack-ack guns there had been almost constantly in action, as Hull endured a devastating battering from the Luftwaffe. Over six months, hundreds of tonnes of high explosive had been dropped by the German planes, along with over 100,000 incendiaries. The number of homes destroyed or damaged had already reached five figures, and almost a thousand civilians had been killed.
It had been a tough time for the local anti-aircraft batteries, and the departing all-male crew were adamant that their gun-site was no place for women. ‘You lot won’t last long here,’ one of them told Jessie as he piled into a departing lorry. ‘Give it a month and you’ll be begging to be posted somewhere else.’
Jessie had heard that kind of male bravado before, and had seen the men of her own battery eat their words when they realised that the women were every bit their equals. But, as she and her friends soon found out, nothing in their previous experience had prepared them for the job of defending Hull. There were alerts at all hours of the day and night, and they soon found that it was rare to sleep through until dawn without having to leap out of bed and run to the gun park. By the time the men and women had made that frantic dash for the seventh or eighth time in a single night, everyone’s nerves were beginning to fray.
To make matters worse, often the team would rush out to the guns, only to be ordered to stand down without a single shell being fired. Planes flying above 12,000 feet were out of range, but there were also strict rules on where in the sky an enemy target could be engaged. Bombers approaching south of the Humber were fair game, but anything flying directly above the city was off limits, for fear that the guns might bring down a plane full of bombs on a populated area. As a result, Jessie and her colleagues spent a lot of time watching as the city across the river was engulfed in fire, unable to do anything to help.
As well as high-explosive bombs, the Germans were dropping plenty of incendiaries, and some of these ended up landing near the gun park. There was a lot of dried grass around, which the girls did their best to keep short, but one night, despite their efforts, a large patch caught fire. Staring down the eyepiece of her height-and-range finder, Jessie could see the blaze growing out of the corner of her eye. But since no order had been given to stand down, all she and the other girls could do was stay at their posts and hope whoever was on fire-picket dealt with it quickly.
More sinister than the incendiaries, though, were a new German invention: the butterfly bomb. These small metal contraptions would fall to the ground and then explode as soon as somebody picked them up. ‘If you see something unfamiliar on the ground, whatever you do, don’t touch it,’ the ATS girls were warned in a special briefing. Across the river in Hull, dozens of curious children had already lost their arms to the new weapons.
On the gun-site, the longest nights seemed to go on for ever. One time, Jessie counted nine alerts between dusk and dawn, and none of them turned out to be a false alarm. Every few hours a new wave of bombers would come over, and she and her friends rushed over to the gun park to meet them. But despite their weariness, the moment captain Rait bellowed ‘Engage!’ everyone was focused and alert.
That night, the ack-ack guns fired more than ever, and since the Luftwaffe were flying almost directly overhead, a lot of the flak fell right back down onto the gun-site. As the shards of hot metal pinged off the girls’ helmets, Elsie Acres turned to Jessie and said, ‘This is bloody dangerous, you know!’
Despite the severity of the situation, Jessie couldn’t help laughing. In all their time on the gun-sites none of the girls had ever really acknowledged the risks that went along with the job. But they had all heard the story of poor Nora Caveney, the first ack-ack casualty of the war. She had been hit by a German bomb splinter while working on her predictor, managing to stay on target long enough for another girl to take over, before falling to the ground and dying at her colleagues’ feet. Throughout the whole incident, the guns had never stopped firing.
Then there were the poor searchlight operators who helped illuminate the targets for the ack-ack girls. Jessie had been out on the gun-site one night when the girls two fields away came under machine-gun fire from a German plane determined to put out their beams. Unlike the gun-sites, which gave off as little light as possible, the searchlights were easy to spot from the air, and were popular targets with the Luftwaffe. Yet when a group of searchlight operators begged the Army for a machine-gun so that they could fire back, they were refused, on the grounds that arming the girls would mean violating the Royal Proclamation that limited servicewomen to non-combatant roles.
While 518 mixed battery was far from the safest posting for a young ATS girl like Jessie, there were few jobs in the forces more thrilling than manning the ack-ack guns – and one direct hit was worth all the terror and exhaustion that preceded it. Jessie was still laughing at Elsie’s comment about the danger they were in when she saw something that made her heart soar – a German plane with smoke billowing out of it. Before long, she knew, it would be dropping from the sky like a stone.
After the all-clear was finally sounded, the girls traipsed back to their Nissen hut, desperate to catch a few hours’ sleep before they were woken again in the morning. ‘You know,’ Jessie told Elsie with a sigh, ‘when I get demobbed I’m going to bed for three months!’
Jessie and her friends had grown used to seeing Hull from across the river, but after a few weeks she decided she wanted to get a closer look at the city they were protecting. From the nearby village of New Holland it was possible to catch a ferry across the Humber, and the 25-minute journey was rather lovely, especially just as the sun was going down in the evening.
But what Jessie saw in Hull itself was far from beautiful. After months of pounding by the Luftwaffe, the city had been utterly devastated, and the destruction was unlike anything she could have imagined. More than half of the housing stock had been either ruined or badly damaged, and as Jessie gazed aghast at the smashed houses and piles of rubble, at the giant craters where people’s homes had once been, she found it hard to comprehend that such devastation was possible.
> The battered city was a shadow of its pre-war glory, with many public buildings put out of use. The municipal museum had been wiped off the face of the earth, the General Post Office was gutted, and the City Hall and Guildhall had suffered direct hits. The grand department stores that once lined the main shopping thoroughfares had taken their fair share of knocks too – among them Hammond’s, Edwin Davis and Thornton-Varley. Banks, churches, cinemas and even the Royal Infirmary were closed owing to bomb damage, while in the area around the docks, factories, mills and warehouses had been razed to the ground, and barges sunk to the bottom of the river.
For the people of Hull, though, it was the damage to domestic properties that hurt the most. As Jessie toured the blitzed streets, gazing up at fractured terraces, with house after house ripped open to expose what was left of its owner’s belongings, her heart went out to them. Almost half the population had been made homeless at some point or other, but outside the city their suffering was almost unknown. To avoid giving the Germans an opportunity to gloat, national newspapers never specifically mentioned Hull in print, only making vague references to raids on ‘a north-east coastal town’.
But while their troubles were not widely spoken of, the locals were well aware of how much the anti-aircraft batteries were doing to protect them. As Jessie and her friends roamed the battered streets, they realised that the white ack-ack lanyards they wore on their uniforms were seen as a badge of honour in the city.
One night, when Jessie went out to the cinema in Hull, a woman came up to her in the queue and thrust a ticket into her hand. ‘You have mine, love,’ she insisted. ‘It’s the least I can offer after all you girls have done for us.’
Jessie accepted the ticket gratefully. After so many long nights out on the gun-site, it was nice to be reminded of who it was she and her friends were protecting.
In the ATS, leave was supposed to be granted every three months, but Jessie had been in khaki more than twice that long before the Army finally sent her home for a week’s rest. She spent the time in Holbeach Bank feeling desperately bored, wishing she could be back with her friends in the battery. Her father continued to pester her with questions about the guns, although they both knew that she wasn’t allowed to answer them. At her camp, every hut and office was plastered with posters proclaiming, ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ and ‘What You Do Is Not For General Knowledge’.
The Girls Who Went to War Page 10