She explained that when he started work at the airline, Arnold had got his boss’s daughter pregnant, and had been left with no choice but to marry her. ‘We only found out recently ourselves,’ Arnold’s father added. ‘He invited us to come to Geneva for a special meal, and told us to make sure we dressed smartly. It wasn’t until we got there that we realised it was his wedding breakfast.’
As the firstborn, Arnold had always been the golden boy of the family, and Kathleen could see that his parents were struggling to cope with what he had done. Now she realised that his younger brother’s odd remarks about buying baby clothes had been a way of trying to warn her.
‘You know,’ Mrs Karlen said, patting Kathleen’s hand, ‘I think you might have saved yourself a lot of trouble in the long run.’
Kathleen thought of the girl she had seen in the bath that morning. Perhaps Arnold’s mother was right. For a moment she even felt a flash of pity for his wife – the woman was shackled to a cheating husband for good.
But the thought didn’t make Kathleen feel any better about herself. Her entire world, and all her hopes for the future, had just come crashing down around her.
Back home in England, Kathleen had never felt so down in all her life. But now that her teacher training was finished she had to support herself, and that meant going out and getting a job. She took a position at a girls’ school in Middlesex, from where she wrote a heartfelt letter to Peggy, apologising for bringing her into such an embarrassing situation. But the other girl never replied, and Kathleen realised that her intended maid of honour was now lost to her too.
She did, however, receive a letter from Arnold. He wrote to her cheerfully, almost as if nothing had happened, asking if she would be willing to meet him in London. He wants me for another bit on the side, Kathleen thought, her heart burning with shame. She felt such a fool for ever falling for Arnold’s charms in the first place. But her anger and frustration was mixed with another feeling too – despite everything he had done to her, as she read over his words she could feel herself drawn towards him. She wasn’t sure that she could trust herself if they ever did see each other again.
Kathleen didn’t reply to Arnold’s letter. Instead she told her landlady to keep a look-out for any more post from Switzerland, and to put it straight in the bin without telling her. Then she did her best to force herself to forget about the man on whom she had wasted so much of her youth. For the most part, she was able to push him to the back of her mind, but one day, when she was riding through Clapham on the top deck of a bus, she caught a glimpse of his parents’ old house. In an instant all the hurt and humiliation washed over her once again, and the experience left her reeling. ‘You’re a fool, Skin,’ Kathleen kept telling herself. ‘Why didn’t you see what he was like?’
The school Kathleen taught at was in a rough part of Hayes – so rough, in fact, that the taxi drivers refused to go near it. It was close to a stretch of factories that included not only Cadbury’s chocolate and Quaker Oats but the home of the Fairey Aviation Company. It was here that many of the aircraft Kathleen had worked on as an armourer had been built – the Swordfishes, Fireflies, Albacores and Barracudas. After everything that had happened to her since she had left the WRNS, it felt strange to be just a stone’s throw from the production line.
Kathleen threw herself into her teaching, doing her best to distract herself from what had happened by putting everything she had into her job. The harder she worked, the more she got back from the children, and far from being rough and unruly, as everyone around her kept saying, she found them to be intelligent and receptive as long as they were inspired in the right way. Many of them were behind in their lessons because their education had been so disrupted by the war, but Kathleen excelled at finding new, inventive ways to engage them. She would take them to a graveyard and let them make rubbings of headstones to teach them about history, or break open rocks so that they could see the geological layers inside them. Every Christmas she wrote a pantomime for the kids to perform, and composed her own carols for them to sing.
In teaching, Kathleen had truly found her vocation, and she was popular with staff and students alike. But as time went on, she began to feel that there must be more to life than what she was making of it. When one of her colleagues retired, Kathleen attended the party thrown in her honour, and was shocked to discover that the woman had worked at the same school all her life. To a girl who had always longed for adventure, the idea of staying in one place for so long seemed stifling. Arnold’s betrayal had dented her natural self-confidence, but that didn’t mean she was willing to settle for a life of caution and limited ambitions.
That Sunday, Kathleen went out and bought a copy of the Times Educational Supplement. Over breakfast she scanned the recruitment pages and saw that a number of organisations were looking for teachers to volunteer for postings abroad. There were schools opening up in Uganda, Malaysia and Chile, and Kathleen felt a long-forgotten spark of excitement reignite inside her. She hadn’t had the opportunity to go overseas with the Navy, and her plans to move abroad with Arnold had come to nothing, but perhaps she could fulfil her dream in a different way.
Kathleen wrote off straight away, applying for all three of the foreign postings. She had experienced too many rejections during her years in the WRNS to risk trying just one of them.
A few days later, she received a trio of replies – and each one contained an invitation to come for an interview. Fortunately, the three organisations were all based within a couple of hours’ train ride of each other and she was able to schedule them all on the same day, so there was no need for her absence to attract too much attention at work.
In the end all three of the organisations offered Kathleen a job, and as she looked over the various acceptance letters she could scarcely believe what she was seeing. Finally, she would be going abroad after all.
The only thing that remained was to choose which of the postings to accept. She decided to place the decision in the hands of her class at school – they picked Malaysia, so Malaysia it was. Kathleen handed in her notice, and her colleagues threw a farewell party in her honour.
Soon she was back at Heathrow, boarding a plane once again. There was no man at her side, but by now she had come to realise she didn’t need one. Life in the WRNS had taught her the value of independence and self-confidence, and had shown her that every new beginning brought with it opportunities for friendship and adventure.
The girls from Kathleen’s school had come to see her off at the airport, and as the plane began to soar into the sky, she gazed out of her window at the little figures smiling and waving on the ground. In a few moments they were gone and all she could see below her was green fields. Then they too gradually receded from view.
As she bade England farewell, Kathleen’s regrets about the past seemed to fade away too. All she saw now were blue skies, stretching for ever, as the whole world opened out in front of her.
Epilogue
In the Malaysian jungle, Kathleen finally found the exotic adventure she had been dreaming of since childhood, when reading Swiss Family Robinson had first kindled her desire to travel. She lived in a small hut in a village 20 miles away from the nearest road – so remote that supplies had to be air-dropped in. The jungle was home to leopards and tigers, as well as plenty of poisonous snakes, and the locals instructed her in how to defend herself with a blowpipe.
Still somewhat scarred from her experience with Arnold, Kathleen enjoyed living out in the middle of nowhere, and she loved her work. But after a couple of years, the small jungle community was beginning to feel a bit limiting, so she applied for a posting at an Army school in Kuala Lumpur.
In the city, she found love for a second time, with an English doctor called Raymond who she met through a local Gilbert & Sullivan society. She had been cast as the captain’s daughter in a production of HMS Pinafore, and the young medic was in the band, playing the oboe. He was meant to give her the first note of her solo, but every
time they rehearsed the song, somehow he managed to get it wrong. ‘I’m ever so sorry,’ he told her, after one particularly frustrating rehearsal. ‘Do you think I could take you out for dinner to make amends?’
The two of them hit it off immediately, and before long they were engaged to be married. Their friends in Malaysia threw them a party to celebrate, but as Kathleen and Raymond took to the dance floor, his legs suddenly gave way and he collapsed. His sister told Kathleen that it wasn’t the first time it had happened, but none of his doctor colleagues had been able to work out what was wrong with him.
The couple decided to postpone the wedding while Raymond flew to Australia, hoping that the doctors there would be able to help. But they too could find nothing to explain his strange symptoms, and he returned to Malaysia seemingly recovered.
Kathleen went back to planning the wedding, hoping that the problem had gone away for good this time. But when Raymond was shopping for his wedding outfit he collapsed again, and was rushed to a local hospital. This time, it was clear he wasn’t going to recover.
Kathleen obtained special permission for the two of them to be married at his bedside. A few days later, Raymond was dead.
The autopsy revealed that his body had been riddled with cancer, and it was a miracle he had survived so long. Instead of organising their wedding in Kuala Lumpur, Kathleen found herself helping to arrange her new husband’s funeral.
After Raymond’s death, Kathleen stayed in the Far East, determined not to give up on the two remaining loves of her life: travel and teaching. For the next few decades she moved from one far-flung location to another, working in schools not just in Malaysia but Uganda and Japan as well.
She never married again, but she felt that her life was a full one. Everywhere she went, she was adored by the children she taught, and soon earned the respect of her neighbours. In one posting she became known for rescuing orphaned animals, after helping to raise a baby tiger and a crocodile until they were old enough to be released. In another, she fostered local girls who needed a home.
In between her foreign postings, Kathleen returned now and then to England. During one visit, she was walking around London when she saw a man selling fruit from a stall by the side of the road. ‘Please don’t touch ’em, lady,’ he told a customer who was fingering some pears. ‘I’ve gotta sell ’em afterwards, you know.’
The man had his back to her, but there was no mistaking that voice. ‘Can I touch them, Ginger?’ Kathleen asked, sweetly.
Her old friend spun round and flashed her the same cheeky smile she remembered from their days at HMS Hornbill. ‘You can touch anything you like, mate!’ he told her cheerily.
Kathleen learned that Ginger was now married with three children, and he proudly whipped out his wallet and showed her photos of all the family. She was pleased to know that everything had turned out so well for him. All those years ago the two of them had been ships that passed in the night, but Kathleen had never forgotten him.
In later life, Kathleen returned to Cambridge, where she still lives today. She is a member of her local Wren Association chapter, which meets regularly to reminisce about old times in the Navy. Many of the other women there share tales of their exotic postings during the war – how they travelled with fellow Wrens to Colombo, Australia or Singapore.
But while Kathleen’s own wartime service never offered her the same opportunities, in the years after they were demobbed none of the other women in her group have lived lives that match hers for adventure.
Margery’s marriage to Alistair was a happy one, and together they brought three children into the world – two boys and a girl. While he worked for the council as an electrical engineer, she put her book-keeping skills to good use at the Co-op, travelling from store to store doing audit work. With the help of a loan from the Royal British Legion, they were able to buy their first home together.
When their children left, the couple moved to Alresford and Margery took a job helping out in the shop of a local golf club. One day, when the golf tutor died, she was tasked with ringing round all his pupils to let them know. To her surprise, one of the names on the list was her old friend Doug from Kasfareet. ‘I don’t believe it!’ he exclaimed, when he heard Margery’s voice on the other end of the line, and he immediately rushed round to see her.
It turned out that Doug was living just up the road, and he told Margery he had been approached by somebody from their Kasfareet days who was organising a reunion up in Yorkshire. His wife wasn’t keen on making such a long journey, so he asked Margery to accompany him instead. Alistair came along too – and to Margery’s relief, he and Doug got on famously.
The reunion was a great success, and Margery enjoyed the chance to reminisce about her days as a WAAF in Egypt. Soon it had become an annual event, and in between meet-ups she received a monthly newsletter called the Kasfareet Kronicle, full of stories and photographs of the camp.
After Margery and Alistair retired, she joined her local WAAF Association, a group of women who would meet at a church hall in Portchester to share stories of their experiences during the war. She also attended the AGMs of the national organisation, and in 2008, when the old committee decided to step down, she was asked if she would consider standing as Assistant Treasurer. ‘As long as the accounts are done manually,’ Margery insisted. At nearly 90, she had no intention of learning how to use a computer.
Margery was duly voted in, and when the Association’s Treasurer died, she stepped up to take her place. Soon she had devoted herself to a major campaign to raise funds for a permanent WAAF memorial. Thanks in large part to Margery’s efforts, more than £10,000 was brought in, and on 11 June 2011 the memorial was officially dedicated at the National Memorial Arboretum. Inscribed with the various jobs that WAAFs took on during the war, it stands as a proud reminder of the great contribution made by the women of the Air Force.
In 2013, the WAAF Association chairwoman died, and with no one else willing to take over, Margery decided to put herself forward. Now in her mid-nineties, the once-timid girl from North Wallington runs an organisation with more than 700 members, helping to organise their grand reunion every summer, when the former WAAFs meet up – dressed in their smart navy blazers and skirts – for their AGM and gala dinner, complete with a sing-along of old wartime songs.
Jessie and Mac remained together for almost 20 years, and between them they raised a beloved son, Neil. But as time went on they began to drift apart, and eventually, when Neil went off to university, they parted.
Jessie did find love again, and funnily enough with an old friend – the polite young baritone who she had got to know in Hamburg. It turned out that Ralph had been carrying a torch for her all through the intervening decades, and hadn’t so much as looked at another woman.
Jessie and Ralph shared 30 years of blissful happiness, singing and dancing through their life together until they were separated by his death a few years ago.
She continued to keep up with other Army pals as well. Her dear friend Elsie Acres died of breast cancer at the age of just 47, but Jessie and Elsie Windsor remain in touch to this day. The two old friends have never quite lost their old ack-ack skills either. Whenever Jessie sees a plane flying overhead she can’t help estimating its height, while Elsie can make a pretty good guess at the length of fuse required to shoot it down.
Despite Jessie’s father’s insistence that she had single-handedly won the war, she had never thought of her work in ack-ack as particularly heroic or significant. She was a small cog in a giant machine, she had always told herself – and if it made even a tiny difference then that was enough.
One day, as she was buying some fish and chips in a shop in Aberdeen, she felt sure she recognised the accent of the woman behind the counter. ‘Are you from Hull originally?’ Jessie asked her.
‘That’s right,’ the woman replied. ‘Do you know the city?’
‘I was there during the war,’ Jessie told her.
The other woman l
ooked at her for a moment. ‘You weren’t on one of them guns, were you?’ she asked.
Jessie nodded, and a broad smile spread across the woman’s face. ‘Oh, you don’t know what they meant to us in the city,’ she told her. ‘Whenever we heard the guns open up, it gave us a bit of hope to hold onto.’
The woman’s words had a powerful effect on Jessie. Suddenly it was as if she was back on the gun-site in the middle of a raid – she could hear the captain’s orders, smell the cordite and feel the whoosh of air as the guns blasted their shells into the heavens. As the flashback faded, she realised there were tears streaming down her face. ‘I’m just glad it helped somebody,’ she said quietly.
Today, Jessie is a committed member of the Royal British Legion. She attends a local meeting every month and always wears her beret with pride. Until a few years ago, when she broke her hip in a fall, she joined in the annual parade on Remembrance Sunday, marching along enthusiastically with the other former servicewomen, just as she learned to do all those years ago during her basic training in Leicester.
It is the one day of the year when Jessie’s emotions always seem to get the better of her. As soon as she hears the words, ‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,’ a lump forms in her throat, and she struggles to get out the final line – ‘We will remember them’ – without choking. The passage of time has only made the words harder to bear.
Every November, Jessie lays a poppy down for Jim, the husband who never had a chance to grow old with her. A few years ago, when she was standing by the Cenotaph, an Army chaplain walked up beside her. ‘It’s a long time ago, dear,’ he said. ‘But your heart never quite mends, does it?’
‘You’re right,’ Jessie told him, blinking away a tear.
These days, at the age of 92, Jessie can no longer march in the parade, but she still does her bit for the Legion, standing out in the cold for hours at a time, selling poppies by the entrance to her local supermarket. She always wears her old medals for the occasion – meticulously polished and buffed up, just like they taught her in the Army.
The Girls Who Went to War Page 31