Youth at the Gate: A young woman’s memoir of life during the First World War

by Ursula Bloom

  Helplessly I said: ‘I haven’t a shilling. Have you?’

  I think Montie recognized my anxiety though I tried to conceal it. He knew as well as I did that Mother would hate this, and I was so scared that he would say something rude about her which I could not bear.

  ‘I’m sure I have some money,’ he said. ‘Light another match for me,’ and he pressed the little stiff box into my hand.

  I lit the match and we peered at the coins lying in his palm. Instantly we knew the worst, for there was no shilling. Perversely the match flickered out again and we stood at the foot of thinly carpeted stairs which rose after an angle to four bedrooms above. I had forgotten the war. Being in the dark with Montie was far more ominous.

  ‘What ‒ what do we do?’ I quavered at last.

  I suppose he knew that I was torn between my inherent fear of the dark and the knowledge that to be discovered alone with him at this hour in the unlit house might be wicked. He took my arm.

  ‘It’s all right, dear. Nobody could possibly blame us. I can’t think where they have gone at this time of night or what they are doing. If there is a fuss it’s their fault for going. I don’t see how your mother could be angry.’

  If not angry, she would be hurt and disappointed in me. I was desperately fond of her and I did not want her to be hurt. The excitement of the war had been eclipsed by the agonizing horror of being in this position. We sat down on the lowest stair hand in hand. We did not talk, both of us were too embarrassed and anxious and I wanted to cry. If the lights of Europe were going out, far more urgent was the dominant fact that ours had already gone out and there was nothing we could do about it!

  We heard the sound of approaching footsteps coming rapidly down the street to turn in at our front gate. I was thankful but apprehensive. There was the rattle of Joscelyn’s key in the lock, by this time it must be almost half past twelve, then Mother came in. Montie called to her in case she should be alarmed, warning her that we were already there. When she spoke, I heard that her voice was distressingly tired, and it worried me lest she had overdone it.

  ‘Jos and I went up to St. Peter’s Street to see if we could hear the news when it came. We are at war.’ She paused. ‘Whatever are you two doing, sitting here alone in the dark?’

  ‘The gas has given out, and we haven’t got a shilling,’ I told her; the truth sounded silly.

  She said nothing.

  I think now that the magnitude of the events of that night had affected her in a way that we three in our youthfulness could not understand. To her war looked so enormously final that by comparison with it nothing else mattered. She fumbled in her pock-marked half-crown bag, found the shilling that she kept in the centre compartment for this purpose, and handed it to Joscelyn. He took it to the cellar-head, rasping open the wheezy door, and instantly the smell of starved air came across the cheap little hall like a gust from some reopened vault. He groped in the dark against the meter, there was the tinny sound of a coin dropping, and Montie lit a match.

  The light was sallow. It illuminated our faces which in the last few moments had grown jaded with fatigue. Mother was white, her cheeks seemed to be drawn in so that she looked quite different, and for a moment I wondered if that haunting malignancy was returning. At this moment, the actual beginning of the First World War, she looked considerably older than she had done before. I waited for reproof.

  ‘We ‒ we couldn’t help it,’ I began, almost in tears.

  My mother’s eyes had not given us even a second thought, I knew, it was not that which made her look so changed. She had been at school in Bonn in 1875, she knew more about the Germans than we did. She said: ‘War will be so different today. I may not live to see the end of this, Heaven only knows how far it will spread, or even if we shall win it.’

  It was shocking that Mother should ever think that we could lose! We were the greatest force in the world, this was the Land of Hope and Glory being made mightier still, and we knew it if she didn’t. She horrified me.

  Montie said: ‘Oh, I say! Oh, my word! We’ve got Kitchener, Baden-Powell, and Jellicoe, how could we lose it? My word! What an idea!’

  The light sharpened her weary face and she looked at us as if she were the only one who understood, which was annoying. The old always think they know, and never realize how foolish they are. Then she smiled at me.

  ‘It’s getting awfully late, you’d better go home now, Montie, and thank you for staying with Ursula. We must get to bed quickly, for Jos has to get to the works at six.’

  Montie went to the door. It had always been a cheap door, the rent of the place was twenty-eight pounds a year and its stained-glass panels rattled when it was opened or shut.

  He said, ‘Good night, all,’ and went out into the Hatfield road beyond. There came the distant sound of men singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.

  Chapter 3

  After the cinema and the late night I did not wake until after nine. Lying there in the front room, Mother’s bed in the far corner, mine under the window, I remembered that last night had been strangely different from its predecessors.

  I looked out of the window. Was the day really changed? It was the same; hot and bright, fair with August. The milk cart was going the rounds, cloppety-clop; children were playing in the Clarence Park opposite; morning had begun.

  I dressed and went downstairs where Mother was devouring the morning paper.

  GREAT BRITAIN DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY

  was the headline, and under it:

  ALL EYES ON THE NORTH SEA

  The declaration of war, very much wanted by the masses, had let loose the passionate tide of patriotism. We were in a state of excited joy. Already recruiting offices all over the country were clogged by eager young men who had gone straight from Buckingham Palace last night to help England in her need. When King George the Fifth and Queen Mary came on to the balcony, all the straw boaters in the world were flung into the air with enthusiasm. The sound of singing could be heard the other side of the Thames, some said at Clapham, where once the more seedy of my two grandmothers had lived.

  To the manhood of our country England was now a maiden threatened with assault, and how they wanted to fight for her! It would be sheer hell if the war were over before they had the chance to get into it. Each at heart was a St. George, each faced the dragon individually and proudly. It was very thrilling.

  We now knew that Sir John French would take control of the Army, Sir John Jellicoe of the Navy. The war would be over by Christmas, probably by Michaelmas Day, for undoubtedly Germany had never thought we should come into it and had been taken by surprise. Recruits were wanted, said the paper. How those recruits went along! They chuckled as they waited hours. They made rude remarks about Kaiser Bill. It was their war, said the youth of the country, and they were doing their bit.

  As we read all this, Alfred Leete must have been preparing his famous poster Your Country Needs You from which the hypnotic eye of Kitchener fixed one and his finger austerely pointed to you yourself. Life was moving fast.

  During that day we learnt that even the Boy Scouts had been ordered to report ‘for war duties’. They were to act as a stop-gap for those suddenly joining the Forces, were to be helpful with traffic, and watch for anything suspicious. Even then the spy horror had become a complete obsession. It grew like a mushroom in our midst and for a time there was no ridding ourselves of it. The duties of the Boy Scouts lasted some weeks, they got Army rations and pay, and their parents were furious until the Special Reserve took over from them.

  Next day there were astonishing photographs of recruiting queues, the young, the gallant, and the inspired. Joining-up seemed to provide a grand opportunity for having a good time. We visualized a khaki-clad Army dashing across to France and dealing such a blow that Germany never recovered from the shock. We’d march into Berlin. We foresaw a Christmas when a strengthened Entente Cordiale settled down to an eternal partnership with a great victory and the German nation ground under t
he heel.

  ‘I only hope you’re not misled,’ said Mother. ‘The German Army was always very powerful.’

  When my brother returned from the works in his dirty blue overalls, Mother noticed that he had gone very quiet. She was one of those people who could read your thoughts, and she said: ‘Whatever’s happened, Jos? Don’t let yourself be rushed into anything yet. You’re under age, and you couldn’t join up even if you wanted to. Think about it first, and when you do go, choose the regiment which is best for you.’

  ‘Everybody’s joining up,’ he said sullenly.

  He had always been one of those quiet people who are extremely obstinate, and when they go silent nothing will make them tell you what is on their minds. I had to start off for Harpenden, so I left them to settle the matter. I got my hat, a floppy one which all girls wore, over hair wrapped in a big plait round my head to make me look older. I deeply desired to look really grown-up.

  It was striking me that this war might come very close to us, and although it was fearfully exciting, the first feeling of ‘not quite so sure’ began to jab at me. I had wanted a change, for my life had up to date been routine-ridden, and routine is something that I have always detested.

  I had been very unhappy over my father’s and mother’s marriage breaking up, and my childishly stupid attempts to bring them together again having failed. I had always felt that I ought to have done that vague ‘something more’ which I had never achieved. I was haunted by the anguish that my mother’s growth would return, and although I had tried to put that out of my mind, it was still there. Our financial difficulties, and the fact that insufficient meals did not buoy me up, made it worse. I was anxious about my engagement to Montie which had worried my mother so much although she had reluctantly agreed to it at the time, and I wanted to marry him, possibly because he was the only young man friend that I had. I knew that he was what was then known as ‘beneath me’, which in 1914 was a major obstacle.

  Until we came to live at St. Albans I had not realized that his father had an open-fronted shop there, known as the Works, which had given me quite a different idea, and it was situated almost in the hallowed Close. He sold machinery, nails, hammers, kitchen equipment and such and had an unfortunate notice hung up acquainting the world with the fact that he also cleaned chimneys. When he met Mother, ill-advisedly but courteously he addressed her as ‘ma’am’.

  Facing family resentment, I had turned stubborn. I liked his old father and his mother had been kindness itself to me. Although I realized that these were not professional people I insisted on sticking by him. I stayed loyal.

  Now a great outside event had occurred which might change everything, and none of us dreamt how much. We were well-coached imperialists, patriotism was a blazing trail, and such people could only see victory ahead. I felt that Sir Edward Grey had not been right last night when he had looked out of the windows of the Foreign Office across St. James’s Park in its exquisite summer twilight, and said: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’ When I came to think about it, far more important to me had been the fact that our gas had gone out, and I had been left alone with Montie unchaperoned at the wrong time of the day.

  The morning’s Daily Mail was looking to the North Sea. The Navy was out on business, and that was where the big coup would come, they foresaw. That very day a young snottie wrote in his diary:

  Sea ‒ Scapa Flow ‒ Sea

  We had to sleep in the Gunroom last night, as we expected an action during the night, in which case all the W/T doors down to the chest flat would have to be closed. Arrived back at Scapa at 6 a.m. and started to coal from a grain ship temporarily acting as a collier. Took in 950 tons at about 160 an hour. Nobody in this ship knows anything that is going on as the Skipper won’t publish the news he gets.

  Declared war on Germany at midnight last night.

  Young Gower Robinson was actually fighting on the war front, as I wrote fragments of scanty news scratched with hairpins on the slides when Mother came over to relieve me for a spell. Oh, how those slides were applauded by a war-hungry audience! Gower Robinson took it casually as he worked early and late in the Accountant branch of the Royal Navy, for he was a far less emotional person than I was. If he had had time to think about it at all, he probably would have said that it was a hell of a lot of fun!

  That idea had already bogged down slightly on me.

  By the next day life had changed very much, and the morning papers announced that the Germans had crossed the frontiers of France and Luxemburg; this made Mother glum.

  ‘This is going to be a bad war,’ she said, ‘I am convinced of it.’

  I had seen a gun-carriage going along the Hatfield road whilst I was dressing. My first gun-carriage was indeed something.

  The papers had this notice:

  YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU

  Will you answer your country’s call?

  Every day is fraught with the gravest possibilities, and at this very moment the Empire is on the brink of the greatest war in the history of the world.

  In this crisis your country calls all her young unmarried men to rally round the Flag and enlist in the ranks of her Army.

  If every patriotic young man answers her call, England and her Empire will emerge stronger and more united than ever.

  JOIN THE ARMY TODAY!

  It was to us a most inspiring message, moving myself and my brother, though my mother was far more impressed by a little advertisement she had found in a corner, and which was more after her own heart. It read:

  Daily Mail War Map on sale next Monday. Price 6d. Order at once.

  ‘We could pin one up on the wall,’ said Mother, ‘and then they send you flags which you move every day. Everybody ought to have one of these.’

  When I got to the cinema by the routine train, neither Montie nor Mr. Clements was there. I checked Teddy’s tray for him. Lovering, the operator, had questions he wanted to ask, but there was no one to give him instructions, so that I was shouldering quite a lot of responsibility for one so young, but the show had to go on. Brooker’s dark coat with its gold lace rings round the cuff, hung pitifully on the hook, reminding me that we had no commissionaire. Would they expect me to help if we got a drunk in the fourpennies? Surely not!

  The audience was scanty. Half the people had gone up to the station to watch troop trains going through, which was the right entertainment for a nice warm afternoon, and they had lost interest in Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, and Fatty Arbuckle.

  We were thrilled with the news that H.M.S. Amphion had sunk the German minelayer Königen Luise in British waters. In wild elation I scratched it on the slide, and rushed to the piano, grabbing the keyboard from Mother waiting to greet the announcement with ‘Rule, Britannia’. This was the way to win a war! The scanty house rose and cheered to a man! Hats shot into the air. God bless H.M.S. Amphion, already the war was almost won!

  It made the next day more disastrous when I had to record on one of my beastly little slides that H.M.S. Amphion had struck a mine and had sunk with the loss of 131 men. Nobody quite understood how this could happen (in home waters too, who had let the cads in?). It brought us up with a jerk.

  It was regrettably pitiful that in this moment we never gave a second thought for the men who had gone down in the Königen Luise. That was not our worry! We had got rid of them, and that was all that mattered.

  I did not see Montie that evening until I had played the National Anthem, and the audience had shuffled out. We finished the books and the tray, then locked the doors on the place, and started across the common to the station.

  He began to talk. ‘There’s something I ought to tell you, dear. My word, I believe this war is more serious than we think, and every young man who can fight, should. If my King and Country want me, I’m going. In fact I am going.’

  This day last week it couldn’t have happened!

  Now the war, only a few hours old, was sneaking into
the private house. It was almost as if we ‒ who had always been entirely free before ‒ were like pieces on a chessboard waiting for some unseen hand to move us.

  ‘It’s all a chequerboard of nights and days, and Destiny with men for pieces plays,’ I muttered.

  ‘Whatever are you talking about, dear?’

  ‘Just that,’ I said. Somehow I had never thought of Montie as being a soldier.

  He had been making enquiries and found that if he joined the Army they would give him twenty-four hours in which to put matters right at the cinema and with the office in St. Peter’s Street. I could possibly work a little harder at the cinema whilst he was away ‒ it couldn’t be for long! ‒ and I’d done quite a lot before now with the chocolate tray, the takings, and the slides.

  ‘Yes, oh yes,’ I agreed, then in a timid little voice: ‘But where will you go?’

  The right to the private life of an individual had never before been challenged in my simple existence, and I could not imagine what might happen next. I did not want him to go. I did not want him to be in danger. The Land of Hope and Glory was jolly fine in a song, thought I, but I did not want it butting into my own life.

  He did not know where he would go, for the future of the world lay in the lap of the gods, and when you joined the Army they sent you where they liked, and that could easily be the last place to which you wished to go! In an excited voice he told me that he would be dispatched to train, and there was a sense of anticipation in his tone (it was a pleasurable anticipation) that suddenly conveyed to me the bewildering impression that men are born with the primitive desire to defend their rights and are not entirely anti-fighting, whilst to women it is agony.

  ‘But you wouldn’t go overseas?’ I implored him. ‘I mean, you couldn’t kill people?’

  ‘I shouldn’t like it,’ he admitted, ‘but I might have to. I mean to say, if somebody started to whack at me, my word, I’d have to whack at him, shouldn’t I?’