The Girls Who Went to War

by Duncan Barrett

  The following week they travelled up together by train. It was late by the time they reached the small picturesque town of Grantown-on-Spey, but the Macbeth family were all still awake, and were thrilled at the prospect of meeting Jessie. The door to the house flew open and Mac’s father Willie pulled her into a hug, declaring, ‘So here’s our Mac’s bonny wee girl!’

  ‘Oh, Mac, she is bonny,’ said his eldest daughter Isabel, hugging Jessie in turn and planting a big kiss on her cheek.

  Next it was the turn of Mac’s younger sister Betty, a pretty girl who couldn’t have been more than 13. She threw herself on Jessie, smothering her with hugs and kisses as if she was her favourite person in the world.

  Jessie felt quite overwhelmed by all the physical affection. Her own parents had never showed any, either to her or to each other.

  ‘Well, I think this calls for a celebration!’ Willie Macbeth declared. ‘Let’s crack open the whisky.’

  Over a late dinner, he and Mac set about demolishing an entire bottle, while he regaled Jessie with tales of his time in the trenches during the First World War. ‘I’ll show yer my battle scars if ye like,’ he said. ‘Right on the shoulder blade!’

  Meanwhile Mac’s sisters showered Jessie with questions, wanting to know everything about her. They had clearly been filled in quite a bit already, she realised. Mac must have been writing home about her a lot, and from the way they talked it was clear they thought of her as his girlfriend.

  After dinner, the neighbours piled in to meet Mac’s ‘new lass’ too. Before long he had got his violin out and the whole clan were singing merrily. The warm, jovial atmosphere couldn’t have been further from what Jessie was used to in her own family home, and she could feel herself relaxing into it.

  In the morning, when Mac took her out for a stroll in the surrounding countryside, she realised how different the landscape was to what she had grown up with around Holbeach Bank. Jessie was used to flat fenland country, but Grantown was on the edge of the snow-topped Cairngorms, by the crystal clear waters of the River Spey. Mac hadn’t been exaggerating when he told her the area was stunning.

  As an only child, Jessie had always longed for siblings, and now she felt as if she had two new adoptive sisters in Isabel and Betty, who treated her like one of their own. The girls joined Jessie and Mac on a boat trip to the Hebridean Islands, showing her around Iona and Mull, and taking her to the strange rock formation on Staffa known as Fingal’s Cave. It was a magical time, and in the bosom of Mac’s family Jessie felt happier than she had for months.

  Being treated like an established couple by everyone else had an undeniable effect on Jessie and Mac, too. Now he kissed her whenever he got the chance, and she kissed him back. The earth never moved like it had when Jim held her in his arms, but after months of keeping Mac at arm’s length, Jessie finally had to admit that she had feelings for him.

  While Jessie and Mac were getting closer, Elsie Acres’ relationship with her young sailor was developing as well. It was the first time Elsie had allowed herself to get close to someone since her fiancé had been killed at Dunkirk and, back at Bunny, Jessie could see that the quiet sadness her friend had carried around with her for so long was finally lifting. ‘We’re going to get engaged the next time Charles has shore leave!’ Elsie confided one evening.

  ‘Oh, I’m so happy for you,’ Jessie told her.

  But while Elsie waited and waited for the expected shore leave to come up, it always seemed to be delayed for some reason. Then one day, Jessie came into the hut to find her friend clutching a letter. ‘It’s from Charles’s mother,’ Elsie said quietly. ‘His ship went down, and there were no survivors.’

  Jessie could scarcely believe it. How could fate be so cruel to one girl, she wondered, taking away a second boyfriend just when she had finally got over the loss of the first? ‘Oh Elsie, I’m so sorry,’ she said, squeezing her friend’s hand. She knew from her own bitter experience that there was nothing anyone could say or do to stop the pain Elsie was feeling right now.

  ‘Every man I love seems to die on me,’ Elsie said, limply. ‘I think I must be jinxed.’

  ‘Please don’t say that,’ Jessie told her. ‘You know it isn’t true.’

  ‘No, I think it is,’ Elsie replied desperately. ‘I’m cursed! How can I ever get involved with anyone again, if this is what always happens to them?’ Miserably, she lay down on her bed.

  Since Elsie and Charles weren’t married, or even officially engaged, she wasn’t entitled to compassionate leave, and she received no formal letter of condolence. Jessie could see her friend’s heart was breaking, but she knew that Elsie wouldn’t make a fuss, she wouldn’t cry – she would just carry on, like they all had to.

  Before long, the battery was on the move again, this time to Gorleston-on-Sea, a small town about three miles down the coast from Great Yarmouth. The popular seaside resort had endured its fair share of bombing from the Luftwaffe, with more than 50 air raids that had left 10,000 houses damaged, many of them beyond repair. During one attack, eight Wrens had been killed when their hostel sustained a direct hit.

  By the time the men and women of 518 mixed battery arrived in the area, however, things had quietened down considerably. At most, Jessie found herself hauled out of bed a handful of times every week, and even when the alert did sound, it was only rarely that any targets could be engaged. Most enemy bombers seemed to veer off course just before they came in range of the guns, leaving the ack-ack team to stand down and return to their Nissen huts.

  Nonetheless, Jessie and her friends remained in readiness, drilling every day, brushing up on their aircraft recognition, and making sure that their instruments were perfectly calibrated. The Regent cinema in Great Yarmouth was a handy local landmark by which Jessie could check that her height-and-range finder was reading distances correctly.

  It might have been a quiet time on the actual gun park, but as ever Jessie and her friends were kept busy with fatigues around the camp. One day, instead of normal cookhouse duty, she was assigned to the officers’ mess, to cover for an orderly who was on leave.

  Jessie crawled out of bed before reveille had even been sounded, and sleepily reported for duty. She was met by the officers’ cook, a thin, fastidious bombardier called Albert. He had been a butler in civilian life and had the smooth voice to match – although, rather incongruously, whenever the officers were out of earshot he swore like a navvy. ‘Well, bugger me!’ he announced when he saw how perfectly Jessie had laid the table, a skill her mother had drummed into her in childhood. ‘You’re the first ATS girl I haven’t had to show how to do that.’

  Once everything was ready for the officers, Albert asked Jessie if she would like to have some cornflakes for breakfast. At the camp, they were normally reserved for officers only, so she jumped at the chance, but when they got the box down from the shelf, she was shocked to see a mouse leap right out of it. She peered inside the packet and saw that mixed in with the cereal were a number of tiny dark droppings. ‘We can’t eat this, Albert,’ she said.

  ‘No, we can’t,’ the cook agreed. Then he added, ‘But they can. The light’s not very good in here so I doubt they’ll notice a few black bits.’

  Albert began distributing the pooey cornflakes among the bowls on the table, and then opened a fresh packet for him and Jessie to tuck into. When they had finished, it was time for the officers to be called in to eat. ‘All right, go and let those bloody swine know their swill’s ready,’ Albert told Jessie.

  Jessie stifled her laughter and went off in search of Captain Rait and the other officers. ‘Breakfast is served, sir,’ she told the captain in her most polite voice.

  As the officers sat down, Jessie watched from the doorway, feeling a secret thrill at the fact that for once she was one up on her superiors. For the rest of the day she kept a close eye on Captain Rait to see if the breakfast had left him with any adverse effects, but as far as she could tell he seemed to be in perfect health – and blissfully ign
orant of what he had eaten.

  Despite the lack of action on the gun park, the war continued to rumble on – and it soon became clear to Jessie and her friends that something significant was brewing. The local beaches had been placed off-limits to all but infantry men, but in her time off Jessie enjoyed walking along the cliff-tops around Yarmouth. Looking down at the sand below, she could see the men of the Hallamshire Battalion practising wading ashore from landing craft.

  Jessie knew well enough not to ask questions about military manoeuvres, but it was obvious what was going on: at last, the long-awaited ‘D-Day’, when the Allies would finally take the war back to Europe, was on its way. What she was witnessing was a rehearsal.

  As Jessie gazed down at the men on the beaches, scurrying up to the foot of the cliffs like a thousand little ants, she couldn’t help wondering how many of them would survive the real thing.

  It wasn’t long before 518 mixed battery sustained a nasty casualty of its own, when one of the radar girls, Corporal Pottle, fell from the top of an aerial she had been cleaning and suffered a blow to the head. As she lay on the ground, with blood seeping out of one ear, a crowd gathered round her unconscious body. ‘I reckon she’s a goner,’ remarked one of the men, shaking his head.

  Corporal Pottle was rushed to hospital in a military ambulance, and was diagnosed with a serious brain injury. Gradually, she recovered well enough to be able to walk and talk again, but those who knew her said she was never quite the same.

  After the accident, a sergeant announced at parade one morning that some of the girls were to be sent on a first-aid course. Jessie was one of those singled out, and soon found herself billeted at a grand house in South Walsham, learning to make splints and bandages. She didn’t mind the practical side of the course, but the girls were also taught to diagnose various battlefield injuries, with the instructor talking them through a series of grisly colour photographs that made Jessie feel sick to her stomach. Many of them showed dead soldiers with their heads half blown away, or their guts spilling out from abdominal wounds.

  This was the reality of warfare, Jessie realised – the horror that Jim must have experienced in Tunisia. In a way, despite doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the ATS, she had been sheltered from the most awful side of the conflict. The sight of the bombed-out houses in Hull had moved her profoundly, but she had seen them after the event, when the blood had been wiped away and the screams of the injured had fallen silent. Now she was getting a glimpse of war in all its gory detail.

  Back in Gorleston, Jessie found that things were busier than ever. The roads were packed with jeeps and lorries from dawn until dusk, and among them she saw several American units passing through the town on their way south. Everything was gearing up for the big event.

  Jessie couldn’t help having mixed feelings about all the preparation for the invasion. Like everyone in the country, she had been waiting for this moment for years now, but she knew too that the forthcoming battles would exact a heavy cost. How many more women would soon be getting letters like the ones she and Elsie had received, telling them that the men they loved were never coming home?

  Since Jessie had arrived in Gorleston, she and Mac had written to each other regularly. While they were with his family in Scotland she had allowed herself to grow closer to him, but now she began to worry that she was setting herself up for another heartbreak. Until the war was over, no one was truly safe, she realised. How could she risk falling in love again, with all the pain she knew it could bring?

  Despite her fondness for Mac, and all the kindness he and his family had shown her, Jessie felt determined to end things between them before she got hurt. ‘It’s the wrong time in my life to get involved with someone,’ she explained in a letter, ‘and anyway, who knows what might happen to either of us.’

  But the young Scot wouldn’t take no for an answer. He wrote back straight away, telling her that there was no need to call a halt to what had developed between them, and if needs be he was willing to wait until she was ready for a more serious relationship. Clearly, shaking him off was not going to be easy, now that they had got closer in Scotland.

  That night, Jessie put on her service dress and went down to the Floral Hall in Gorleston, along with a couple of sisters who worked with her at the camp. The Navy had a fleet of motor torpedo boats moored in the River Yare, and the ballroom was full of young sailors eager to twirl the ack-ack girls around the room. Before long, Jessie and her friends had found themselves a trio of petty officers – she danced with a lad from Gloucestershire called Bernard, while the two sisters paired up with his friends George and Chris. The boys were all too pleased to find some Army girls to partner with, since apparently the Wrens they worked with wouldn’t look at anyone lower than an officer. By the end of the night they had made plans to meet the girls again the next time they were on shore leave.

  The following morning, Jessie sat down to write a reply to Mac’s letter. ‘I’m involved with the Navy now,’ she told him, ‘and I’m having fun.’

  His shocked response arrived a few days later. Mac told her he was hurt and amazed by her letter, and that he hadn’t seen it coming at all. ‘I knew this happened to other people,’ he wrote, ‘but I never thought it would happen to me.’

  This time, Jessie simply didn’t reply.

  On 5 June 1944, the group of young men Jessie had gazed down on as they crawled along the beaches on their bellies left Great Yarmouth on a train bound for the south coast. That night, no air-raid alarm sounded, but the girls in her hut were kept awake nonetheless by the drone of aircraft passing overhead. By the time they rose from their beds in the morning, the sky was thick with planes, and all of them were heading in the same direction: France.

  It was a glorious summer’s day, and the girls spent the morning outside, listening to a lecture on aircraft recognition. On the roads beyond the camp they could see a steady stream of vehicles trundling by. Just before noon Jessie and her friends were ordered to report to the NAAFI, where a wireless had been set up so that they could listen to a ‘special announcement’. Men and women from all around the camp gathered as the midday bulletin from the BBC Home Service began, and the newsreader John Snagge declared, ‘D-Day has come.’

  Everyone held their breath as further details of the invasion were announced. A combined air and sea assault was in progress, involving more than 150,000 men. Six thousand ships were crossing the Channel, along with many smaller vessels. The night before, British gliders had landed in France, and their crews had successfully captured the bridges that would allow the Allied forces to advance. American paratroopers, meanwhile, were already behind enemy lines, ready to link up with the main invasion force.

  The newsreader went on to quote General Eisenhower’s Order of the Day, which he had addressed to every member of the Allied Expeditionary Force. ‘The free men of the world are marching together to victory,’ he read. ‘Good luck, and let us all beseech the Blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.’

  As soon as the broadcast came to an end, Jessie and her friends were ordered straight back to work. As they filed out of the NAAFI, a girl who did Jessie’s job on the height-and-range finder in ‘D’ Section commented thoughtfully, ‘There’ll be a lot of sore hearts by the end of the day.’

  The girls did their best to concentrate on the jobs they had to do, but the wait for further news of the invasion was agonising. Jessie couldn’t help wondering – what happened if the great gamble didn’t pay off? She had always been a natural optimist, but losing Jim had affected her profoundly, and right now she wished she had a little more of her old buoyant confidence.

  By the following morning, however, it was clear that D-Day had gone well, and by 9 p.m. that night the BBC was broadcasting that a solid foothold had been secured in Europe. But in the first 24 hours of the invasion more than 3,000 Allied soldiers had been killed. Among their number was the husband of Jessie’s counterpart in ‘D’ Section – the girl’s pr
ediction had proved more true than she could have imagined.

  14

  Margery

  The more time Margery spent around the lads at RAF Kasfareet, the more she began to see in them the innocent teenagers they had been when the war first interrupted their youth. She was taking a shortcut through the men’s billets one evening, when she spotted them inside their hut, clumsily trying to teach themselves ballroom dancing using Victor Sylvester’s handbook. They had missed out on the dances and parties that they should have been attending in their teens, and had no idea how to foxtrot or tango.

  One of the lads spotted Margery watching through the window. ‘Are we doing it right?’ he asked her uncertainly.

  Margery did her best to make a few helpful suggestions, but she could see that the room they were in just wasn’t big enough to practise properly. ‘Why don’t we go out on one of the football pitches?’ she suggested.

  They headed over to the pitch, where Margery found herself in the unfamiliar role of dance teacher to a class of eager students. There was no doubting the lads’ enthusiasm, but the nimble footwork she had witnessed when they played sports together was sorely absent now.

  A few days later, a dance was being held at the Warrant Officers’ Club, and Margery and the lads decided to go along. With a gramophone playing familiar numbers, the men did their best to remember the steps she had taught them. They had made some progress, but they lacked confidence, and whenever Margery danced with one of them, she found herself having to virtually shove him around the room.

  As usual at Kasfareet, the women were ridiculously outnumbered by men, and Margery found herself much in demand as a dancing partner. But as the evening drew to a close, she found Doug suddenly by her side, insisting that they dance the last waltz together.

  A little uncertainly, Margery agreed. Although she liked Doug very much, so far she had always been careful to keep him at arm’s length. When they went on long walks around the camp together, strolling between the mountains of cases piled up in the storage area and talking for hours on end, she allowed him to escort her back to the entrance of the women’s compound afterwards and give her a quick peck on the cheek, but no more. Despite her best efforts, though, she was aware that the other lads were beginning to see her as Doug’s girlfriend.