With the disciplinary rigmarole concluded, Kathleen was free to report for duty at the Armoury. She was met there by a cheerful, red-faced master gunner with a strong Devonshire accent, who soon began showing her the ropes. The camp largely dealt with Seafire aircraft – the Navy’s equivalent to the RAF Spitfire – and every time one came in to land, Kathleen’s job was to rush over to it on the runway and, once the pilot had gone off for a cup of tea in the ward room, get inside the cockpit and begin stripping out the ammunition. Alongside her were the girls who checked and repacked the parachutes – an arduous job since every one of the 72 pieces of silk they were made up of had to be inspected in turn – the radio mechanics, who confirmed that the plane’s communications systems were still working correctly, and the air mechanics, who checked it over for more serious problems. When things ran smoothly, it was like a perfectly choreographed dance, each girl playing her part efficiently and keeping out of the others’ way.
The more Kathleen practised, the more swiftly she was able to carry out the procedure. After a couple of days, she found she could leap into the cockpit, strip the ammunition and get it back to the Armoury hut while the other girls had barely begun their work. Once inside the hut, her job was to count and weigh the .303 machine-gun bullets and 20mm-calibre shells to make sure that all were accounted for. She had heard tales of unscrupulous pilots selling ammunition on the black market, and the Navy were keen to make sure that no ordnance was lost without a pilot actually engaging the enemy.
Over her first few days at HMS Hornbill, while Kathleen was settling into her job at the Armoury, she began getting to know her cabin-mates as well. As at Mill Hill, many of the other Wrens at Pegasus were from distinctly well-to-do backgrounds. A young woman called Imogen had a father who was a shipping magnate, with a fleet of vessels currently sailing the seven seas. Another’s owned several aeroplanes, while a very tall girl called Penelope was the daughter of a highly successful banker. With her clipped, precise vowels she could almost have been a member of the royal family, and Kathleen couldn’t get over the fact that she always called her fellow Wrens ‘gels’.
The more upper-class girls in the cabin also seemed to be the least worldly. They were shocked when a dark-haired Wren called Ethel described her time working in a factory before she joined up, explaining that her job had involved putting ‘male’ engine parts into ‘female’ ones.
‘What on earth do you mean?’ asked Imogen with a grimace.
‘Well, you know, like a bolt going into a nut,’ Ethel told her, forming a hole with her left hand and poking her right finger into it.
‘Good God!’ said Penelope, as they all stared at Ethel in horror.
Penelope in particular had led a very sheltered existence. Aside from boarding school, she had never been away from home on her own before, and had never had to deal with washing her own clothes, let alone scrubbing floors. ‘Whatever would Daddy think if he could see me now!’ she laughed.
But despite their different backgrounds, Kathleen found she got on well with her new cabin-mates. At night, they would all sit around together in the hut for a singalong, or share the latest bit of news they had heard around the camp. For all their refinement, the posh girls loved nothing better than a good bit of gossip, or a risqué joke, and Kathleen was happy to oblige them. One night she told them about a sign she had seen up in the clothing stores, where a delay on new material coming in had meant that men’s uniforms were being prioritised over women’s. The prankster who had written the sign had put it this way: ‘Wrens skirts will be held up until the men’s needs are satisfied.’ The young ladies in Kathleen’s cabin thought the joke was the most outrageous thing they had ever heard, and they laughed like drains for hours.
Another time, the talk of the cabin was how a female petty officer had been caught inviting girls back to her private room in the evenings. Whether or not anything untoward was actually going on, the Navy had acted swiftly and removed the woman from Hornbill altogether. In the women’s forces there was a clearly defined procedure to be followed in the event of suspected lesbian affairs, and on raising the alarm, a base commander would be sent a copy of a memo euphemistically entitled, ‘A Special Problem’. Nearly always, the offending servicewoman was quietly posted elsewhere and the matter swept under the carpet as quickly as possible.
One topic the girls in the cabin never tired of hearing about was Kathleen’s dashing fiancé Arnold, and the romantic dates he had taken her on in London. Since he had been posted abroad, Kathleen had written to him regularly, but his own letters had become a little less frequent, and often took several weeks to arrive. Sometimes all Kathleen received was a standard-issue Field Service Post Card on which Arnold had scratched out the various multiple-choice entries, leaving only, ‘I am quite well’, along with his signature and the date. He still wasn’t able to tell her exactly where he was or what he was doing, but Kathleen was just relieved to know that he was alive and in good health. In the absence of any actual words from her beloved, the little cards were enough to keep her going.
Although the women at Pegasus Camp were half a mile away from the men stationed at Argos, they spent plenty of time socialising together in the evenings. Hornbill’s roster of events and entertainment always took place in a large wooden building at the men’s camp, and Kathleen and her friends soon grew used to trudging along the road after work, on their way to the latest concert or film screening.
It was the dances, though, that really brought Hornbill to life, and Kathleen had not been working there long before she and her new friends were setting off to one. Since they weren’t allowed to wear anything more glamorous than their uniforms, the Wrens put extra effort into their make-up, sharing around one girl’s lipstick and another’s mascara until everyone was done up to the nines.
When they arrived at the dance hall, which had been decked out with balloons and a mirror ball, Kathleen kept her eyes peeled for Ginger Ferguson. She hadn’t forgotten her promise to dance with him if they should run into each other again.
Sure enough, the cheerful young man was soon at her side, and offering to lead her in a tango. ‘I don’t know how to do this one,’ Kathleen protested. ‘Can’t we wait for a waltz?’
But Ginger was not to be dissuaded. ‘Ah, it’s easy,’ he told her. ‘You just follow me.’ Soon the two of them were whizzing around the room together, and Kathleen was having a whale of a time.
Ginger was a wonderful dancer, and as the night went on he found himself very much in demand, but every so often he made sure to return to Kathleen and lead her back onto the dance floor.
At the end of the evening, after one final dance, Ginger brought Kathleen back to the table where the girls from her cabin were sitting. But when she tried to introduce him to her cabin-mates, she found they weren’t exactly keen to get acquainted. ‘Don’t you think we’d better be going?’ Penelope asked pointedly, just as Ginger was about to draw up a chair.
‘All right then,’ Kathleen replied, a little disappointed. ‘I’ll see you next time, Ginger.’
‘Cheerio, Kath,’ Ginger replied as he went on his way. ‘Nice to meet you, ladies.’
On the walk back home to Pegasus, the other girls made their feelings about Kathleen’s friend clear. ‘He’s rather a funny boy, isn’t he?’ remarked Imogen, and Penelope asked, ‘How did you come to pick him up?’
Kathleen was a little surprised at her friends’ attitude. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked innocently.
‘Well, he’s so …’ Penelope faltered, wrinkling her nose. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know quite how to describe it.’
‘Oh, don’t mind Ginger,’ Kathleen replied with a laugh. ‘He’s just a Cockney. He’s a nice bloke, you know.’
‘What’s a Cockney?’ Penelope asked with genuine confusion.
‘A Londoner,’ Kathleen replied, a little incredulous. ‘You know, from the East End. Haven’t you ever met one before?’
‘Certainly not,’ Penelope replied with
a frown. ‘When my family goes to London we always stay at Claridge’s.’
Kathleen found her friends’ incomprehension hard to get her head around, but she was determined to give them an education in all things Cockney. They listened, fascinated, as she told them all about the rhyming slang, and sang them a few of the Cockney songs she knew, including ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ and ‘Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road’. By the time the little group arrived back at Pegasus Camp, they were all merrily doing the Lambeth Walk together.
One day, the girls had been granted what the Navy called a ‘make-and-mend’ – an afternoon off, which, as the term suggested, they were supposed to use for tending to their kit and uniform. In practice, though, most Wrens simply treated the time as holiday, and Kathleen and her friends decided to make the most of it, catching a lift on a Navy lorry that was heading into the local town of Abingdon. As it passed Argos Camp, the vehicle picked up a handful of men who’d had exactly the same idea, and among them was Kathleen’s friend Ginger.
The mixed group of Wrens and sailors spent a pleasant afternoon looking around the ancient, picturesque town, and afterwards they lazed on the riverbank, watching the water roll by. Kathleen and Ginger sat next to each other, and fell into a relaxed conversation. She found it so easy talking to him – although he was a man, there was never any hint of romance between them. He had heard plenty of stories about her fiancé Arnold, and had told Kathleen all about the girlfriend who was waiting for him back in London.
‘Ain’t this beautiful?’ Ginger said thoughtfully, after they’d been sitting there for an hour or more. At first Kathleen thought he meant the river, but as she turned to look at him, she saw he was holding out a flower to her.
‘What, this daisy?’ she replied as she took it from his hand.
‘Is that what it is?’ he asked. ‘I ain’t never seen one before.’
‘You’ve never seen a daisy?’ Kathleen asked, astonished.
‘Well, I don’t know much about flowers,’ Ginger admitted. Kathleen couldn’t help noticing that he pronounced the word with one syllable – ‘flars’.
Kathleen looked around her to see what else she could show him. ‘Well, here’s a buttercup,’ she said, offering up a perfect yellow flower. ‘If you put it under your chin it’ll make it glow. And this one with all the little seeds is a dandelion.’
Ginger listened, fascinated, as Kathleen talked him through the various common flowers that were growing all around them. She knew he had grown up in London, in the heart of the East End, but the idea of being so cut off from nature seemed very sad to her. Ginger, meanwhile, was clearly determined to make up for lost time, and he pestered her with dozens of questions about the anatomy of the little plants, and what all the different bits were for.
‘Ginger, what made you want to join the Navy?’ Kathleen asked after a while.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it all started one day when I was a kid. Me dad came home with half a crown he’d been given for lookin’ after some bloke’s horse. He told us we could either ’ave a slap-up meal at home, or go to Sarfend for the day.’
‘Sarfend?’ Kathleen repeated, confused.
‘You know, by the sea,’ Ginger told her.
‘Oh, Southend, you mean,’ she replied.
‘Yeah,’ he continued. ‘Well anyway, we decided to go to the seaside, so we took a bag of broken biscuits to eat for the day, and we got in this charabanc. And as soon as I saw the sea coming in on the beach, I said to my dad, “I’m going to join the Navy.”’
‘That’s lovely, Ginger,’ Kathleen told him. She felt touched by her friend’s story, but it wasn’t so much his first glimpse of sea that affected her, as the realisation that, for Ginger’s family, a bag of broken biscuits might be all they ate in a day. She looked around at her well-to-do cabin-mates from Pegasus – their childhoods couldn’t have been more different from his. They had grown up with everything they could wish for, while for Ginger the three square meals he was given in the Navy must seem like a luxury.
Kathleen had never felt closer to Ginger than she did at that moment, and a few months later, when he was sent away to sea, she felt very sad to see him go. Of everyone she had got to know since joining the WRNS, he was the best friend she had made.
13
Jessie
It was a bright sunny day, and as Jessie and Elsie Acres walked along the little country lane to the bus stop, a couple of rabbits hopped across their path. ‘I can see why they call this place Bunny!’ Elsie joked.
They were camped in the grounds of a stately home called Bunny Hall, ten miles outside Nottingham, and it was their most rural posting yet. Surrounded by gentle hills, beautiful countryside and the sound of birds singing, Jessie was starting to feel human again, and so far there had been no raids at all.
The girls caught the bus into the city together and spent a relaxed day drinking tea, walking around the shops and going to the pictures. When they got back to camp that evening there was a note waiting for Jessie. It was from Mac, the Scottish radar engineer who had visited them on Humberside. He’d heard she was in Bunny, and said that he hoped to be able to come and see her some time soon.
Jessie read the letter with mixed feelings. It was one thing letting Mac join the band in the NAAFI and dancing with him now and then while he was staying at her camp, but the idea of him coming specially to visit her was different. Her heart was finally starting to heal after Jim’s death, but she certainly wasn’t ready to get involved with another man yet. If Mac did turn up, Jessie told herself, she would just have to explain that to him, but she doubted he would get round to it anyway – his job meant he was constantly on the move from one camp to another, and she was sure that wherever he went there was no shortage of girls eager to spend time with him.
Several weeks passed, and Jessie had forgotten all about the little note, when one day, as she was sitting in her hut doing some embroidery, a girl came running in and announced, ‘Mac’s waiting for you in the guardroom!’
‘What?’ Jessie replied, taken aback.
‘He came on a motorbike!’ the girl said, excitedly.
Jessie put away her embroidery and walked over to the guardroom. There was Mac all right, with his dark curly hair looking a little more windswept than she remembered it.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jessie asked.
‘I’ve come to see you, of course!’ he replied. She couldn’t help feeling rather flattered.
‘Can ye get the evening off, then?’ Mac asked her.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Jessie told him. ‘I don’t have a free night until Friday.’
‘Ach, come on!’ Mac protested. ‘I’ll bet yer can swap with someone.’
‘Well, I’ll try,’ Jessie said weakly. Since he had made the effort to come out to the middle of nowhere to see her, it hardly seemed right to send him away again.
As it turned out, one of the other girls was happy to swap shifts for the evening, so Jessie found herself spending it with Mac at a cinema in Nottingham. He was as cheeky and talkative as she remembered, doing his best to entertain her with funny stories, and telling jokes about other people in the battery.
At the end of the evening, he asked if he could come and see her again. ‘I get moved around a lot, but I can always borrow the dispatch rider’s motorbike,’ he told her. ‘As long as I move the mileage back afterwards no one’ll ever find out!’
Jessie laughed. Mac was incorrigible. ‘Listen,’ she told him, ‘I do like spending time with you, but I don’t want anything more at the moment.’
‘Of course,’ he replied kindly, giving her a peck on the cheek before zooming off on his motorbike.
After that, Mac became a regular visitor at Bunny. The girls in Jessie’s dormitory grew used to spotting him waiting for her in the guard hut, and would rush back excitedly to let her know he was there. ‘He’s just a friend,’ she always insisted, as she gathered her things and ran out to meet him.
Mostly, they spent their ti
me together just walking and talking. Neither of them had much money, and, having grown up in the Highlands, Mac was happiest out of doors. He told Jessie all about the beautiful countryside in Morayshire, and how he loved to go climbing when he was back home. ‘You’ll have to come and try it for yourself one day,’ he said.
Jessie ignored the comment. Her friendship with Mac was a pleasant distraction – as long as it remained on the surface. That was how she liked to keep things these days.
Mac, however, evidently had other ideas. When he wasn’t visiting Bunny, he was sending Jessie cards, or calling her from whatever ack-ack camp he had been sent to. One day a poem arrived in the mail, carefully cut out of the latest issue of Punch. Entitled ‘Gunfight Goodnight’, it was an ode to an ack-ack girl, in which the author waxed lyrical about the alluring smell of cordite in his loved one’s hair.
That evening, when Jessie showed the poem to Elsie Acres, the two of them fell about laughing. How could the wretched stench from the guns ever be considered attractive, they wondered. The girls always did their best to eliminate it, scrubbing their scalps furiously with antiseptic soap – yet it seemed to linger regardless.
The next time Jessie saw Mac he arrived bearing news. ‘We’re going to be neighbours!’ he announced. ‘I’ve just signed up for a course in Derby.’
‘Why?’ Jessie asked him, astonished.
‘Because it’s closer to you!’
She laughed. ‘Well, I hope you’re interested in the course as well.’
‘Oh no,’ he said, grinning. ‘I can’t stand it!’
The next time Mac was granted a week’s leave he asked Jessie if she would like to come and spend it with him in Scotland. ‘You have to save me,’ he implored her. ‘I get so bored hanging around with my sisters!’
Heaving heard him wax lyrical on the wonders of the Highlands, Jessie had to admit she was tempted. Although her job in ack-ack was taking her all over the country, she had never been to Scotland before.
The Girls Who Went to War Page 18