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

by Ursula Bloom

  By the same post I received a letter from Montie who was being sent overseas. He was now a second lieutenant, the rank which topped the casualty lists, and that thought in itself was disturbing. He asked if he could come down for a night to say goodbye, and I asked Mother, sure that she would say no, but she said yes.

  I went up to the station to meet him and we walked down the sea-front to the house together. I had to admit that I felt strange and awkward, vaguely embarrassed, and he seemed to be considerably changed. He told me that he had joined what was known as the Suicide Club in the Army, a band of young men who volunteered for dangerous duties in the course of which they died like flies. He expected to be sent out to India but knew nothing for certain.

  We supped at home, Mother going to bed early, for she felt weak, at the end of a course of radium, and the reaction was severe. Montie was sympathetic. He thought it dreadful for me to be living this way and had come down with a plan. Would I marry him before he sailed and so get the marriage allowance? I sat in the sitting-room which gave the impression of affluence (an impression which had at all costs to be maintained), and I tried to think that this was one of the big moments in my life, all the time knowing that it was not. The whole of my future could change now, and suddenly I knew that I couldn’t do it. In a sense I had grown away from him; this had come too late.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, ‘but I can’t do it.’

  He mentioned it again next day when we walked up to the station together, and I went into it more fully. I blamed myself for that unhappiness which perhaps had precipitated the return of Mother’s illness, so I had dedicated myself to her; whatever she wanted I would do, but somehow I did not think that she would want me to marry him. We said goodbye calmly. I walked back and Mother was waiting at the gate. Her eyes interrogated me, she had a way of always knowing things about me, so I told her.

  ‘He asked me to marry him and I said no,’ I said. That was all.

  We were staying in Gower Street, and the prices had gone up again, which was a blow. Twenty-three-and-six for bed and breakfast and a high-tea-supper seemed dear, we thought, for in 1914 it had cost nineteen-and-six, and they had given us bacon and egg for breakfast; now it was only ‘egg’. We were staying there when the whole of London was shaken by the newsboys rushing through the streets with a special edition, for the Cunard liner S.S. Lusitania had been sunk off the coast of Ireland.

  ‘But it can’t be true,’ I gasped, standing on the iron balcony which curled before the ‘drawing-room’ first-floor windows.

  The Lusitania was a mighty name. We had not thought of her in the same way as we had thought of the unsinkable Titanic, but she certainly had been the next best thing. Her mission overseas had been harmless, and it seemed impossible that she could have been sunk, but she had been. It had been two o’clock in the afternoon when she had been torpedoed off Kinsale, had quivered, then turned on her side. She had gone down almost at once, and only a few boats had got away. The sordid pictures showed line after line of little children lying on the floor of the mortuary; I have never forgotten it.

  At that time young Gower Robinson, now getting a lot of war experience, wrote in his diary:

  May 7th, 1915. At Sea

  Been going north all day, and are now about latitude 63°, with the result that although it is just on midnight it is almost broad daylight. Sub-calibre firing in the forenoon, anti-torpedo-boat firing in the afternoon. Very cold and windy. The Lusitania has been sunk by the Germans, and 1,400 lives lost. How awful!

  He had however recovered somewhat from the shock a few days later.

  May 11th, 1915. Rosyth

  Frightfully busy all day, so busy that I had to go without my breakfast; a proper red letter day! Very cold and wet. The Maori has struck a mine and has been destroyed. The Admiral has called for ‘reliable and adventurous midshipmen of a mechanical turn of mind’. I wonder what for!

  It seemed to me that the catastrophe of the Lusitania was the most horrifying thing that had yet happened, including the gas attack at Ypres. After all, at Ypres they were then attacking armed men and this murder of civilians stung us out of that period of lethargy which winter had set upon us. The news went round that this was the work of spies; the sailing date had been disclosed, and up blazed the old fanatical hatred and the mob was out for blood.

  That night the crowds raided the shops which had German name-boards over them. Appenrodt’s was smashed up and hundreds of sausages were bouncing about the street. Broken windows were everywhere and people injured. Next day the German sausage was re-named breakfast sausage, which it has been called ever since, and Frankfurters disappeared.

  In the hostel people were vehement. They thought all Germans should be pushed out of this country, good and bad alike. A woman who went out leading a little dachshund, had it stoned to death on the pavement, for there was no stemming this ugly tide of racial hatred to which the sinking of the Lusitania had given rise. It eclipsed those news items which had interested us through the laggard spring: the Brides-in-the-Bath case, and George Joseph Smith remanded for trial at the Old Bailey; the amputation of Sarah Bernhardt’s leg; that worry and argument about choosing a badge for the Welsh Guards, should it be a leek, a daffodil, or a dragon? Now, it seemed, we wanted blood.

  Today of course it does not seem extraordinary that women and children should perish in world warfare, but then it was an affront to all the laws of civilization, and even the mildest people were up in arms about it.

  As we travelled back to Walton, Mother tried to comfort my apprehensions for the future. She foresaw the war coming closer, but said that at all costs we must not become scared. She knew also that she was dying and realized I should be left entirely alone, and helpless. It was no advantage that I have always been appallingly young for my years. Perhaps she wanted my happiness more than anybody else has ever done, and she had not the power to give it to me. Through it all she never referred to her own malady, nor did she use it as an excuse. Once when she found me in my room crying about it, she came and took my hand almost commandingly.

  ‘You must never cry about this,’ she said, ‘it’s so silly. Lots of people we know will die before I do, it is only because you know that I must die that it upsets you. All of us go some day, but we don’t cry about it.’

  One night I was disturbed by a jangling sound like chains, and it was quite a guttural noise. I went to Mother who was awake and we thought it wiser to go downstairs. People were running about the street, the ‘Specials’ were busy, and whistles were being blown everywhere. We daren’t turn on the gas, for I regret to say we had never managed to get those wretched curtains to fit. Out of the distance came the splutter of gunfire.

  ‘Now what was that?’ I asked.

  ‘A bomb, I suppose,’ and as the clanking guttural sound came nearer, ‘that’s a Zepp speaking German.’

  She became fascinated by it, and decided that the thing to do was to ensure a satisfactory front seat and sit on the doorstep, for she did not intend to miss any of it. Out we went, I dithering, but Mother treating it as if it were a Command Performance for which someone had sent her a free ticket.

  It was a warm night with people everywhere. I heard a shriek of wrath from an outraged spectator because one miserable man lit a cigarette. ‘We might all have died for that there,’ he screamed.

  Three cigar-shaped airships were in the sky over Harwich, and the Dovercourt-Harwich peninsula on the far side of the backwater seemed to have caught fire. It blazed defiantly and the ominous copper reflection was eerie. Every now and then one of the big cigars swerved round and came lumbering our way, croaking as it came, then went back to the target.

  ‘It’s absorbing,’ said Mother. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

  It lasted about an hour, then through the night came a small British plane, like an irritatingly buzzing little bee. If the thing was a midget, and it looked it, it had the courage of a giant. It began shooting, making pop-gun noises
against the heavy thud of bombs. Some of us prayed for the gallant young man who was risking his life in that rickety little plane and shooting only with a pistol. The miracle happened.

  One of the Zepps hovering round made a new sound. Her engine missed fire, she lurched cock-eyed to one side, recovered, lurched again, then edged off making ghastly noises. We screamed: ‘Bravo, bravo! Go on, go on, go on!’ and that young man did go on; how he ever kept up I cannot think. It was the first battle of my life, I wish to heaven it had been my last.

  Ten minutes later when the peninsula was a dart of scarlet flame and copper glow, we heard the bugles of the Sea Scouts telling us we were safe again.

  We went up to bed, and I had gone limp. I supposed this was something one associated with the white feathers old ladies and pert debs gave to unhappy young men who had not joined up. I cried a little when I was alone. Only a year ago I could not have believed that such a thing was possible; in August of last year I had been proud to be in this war, now there was the uncertainty all the time, the doubts, and the apprehensions.

  I prayed that the brave young man in the silly little aeroplane had not been hurt. I thought of the whining, hiccuping, wounded Zepp who had turned to the sea and who I was quite sure could never get back to Germany intact, and, anyway, the last I had seen of her was with the young man shooting madly at her. The young men in the Zepp had wives and mothers too, and although I knew that it was a shameful thing to be sorry for the Germans, I wondered what had happened to them. Had they reached the Vaterland safely?

  Of course we wanted all Germans to be killed, but lying in bed there with the sound of the sea coming into the room, the recurring thought came to me: What had happened to those young men?

  If food prices went up with the war, the price of clothes did not rise in the same way. Longcloth nightdresses with a lot of remarkable broderie anglaise on them were still only four-and-six, glacé ward shoes only two-and-six, and I could buy a pleasant hat for a shilling, a vest for one-and-six, and enough white voile to make myself a blouse for one-and-nine. (Voile was the mode.)

  After that Zepp raid, whenever Mother had to return to London for further treatment she took me with her, not liking to leave me behind. I loved staying in London, and when she was in the Radium Institute I walked miles because I could not afford the bus fares, but I found it the greatest fun. Privately I had been afraid of being left alone in Hertford House, never liking the dark and being even more alarmed at the thought of ghosts than I was over Germans. Some idiot had told me that the house was well known to be haunted. It was untrue, for we never saw anything whilst we were there, and the only haunting was by the ants which we could not keep out of the larder and which at times drove us crazy.

  I was enjoying the Brides-in-the-Bath case which was now being heard at the Old Bailey. Everybody argued for hours about it, though at heart we all thought George Joseph Smith was a horrid man who had done it entirely for money, which is perhaps the lowest form of murder of them all.

  I was becoming more nervous about my mother’s condition. The nurses and doctors at Riding House Street were friendly, and at first I had been misled by the hopefulness of their demeanour and had not realized it was their cunning armour against too close enquiry. It was evasion. Mother, I gathered, had not recognized this, or if she had done was herself also pretending. But this gallant game of pretence probably on both sides was hard to play, particularly as I think each of us knew we must lose in the long run.

  One afternoon when she was away I sat in the drawing-room of the ladies’ hostel and I heard the sound of obstreperous singing coming along Gower Street. For one moment I thought perhaps the war was over, and went on to the balcony. The noise came from a crowd dancing up the street, and all the Italians from the Italian quarter were romping towards me, arms linked like a lot of children playing Nuts in May. They waved small flags, they sang, and I rushed out to join them. Suddenly in that moment I realized that for months now I had been starved for fun, for youth, and for joy, and here it was in the street itself.

  ‘What’s it all about?’ I asked.

  An Italian pushing a hurdy-gurdy in the gutter took off a huge fusty hat and bowed. ‘Signorita, we are the companion. We fight together,’ and he beat his hairy chest ‒ his shirt was open ‒ like a gorilla.

  This is victory at last, thought I, and in an instant had attached myself to the tail end of the dancers and off we went. They sang, and I sang too. As we pranced up the street amorous young men indicated my fair hair, saying: ‘Bella! Bella!’ I felt bella! I stole an Italian flag from somewhere, and I did a pas seul round a lamp-post with it. ‘Brava. Brava,’ clapped my gay associates. War was fun! Victory was sweet! What a thrill that was!

  We danced into the Euston Road, hopped round Maple’s and gavotted back into Torrington Place, all of us together, and what did anything matter save the sheer joy of the moment? When I returned to the hostel my hair was half down, a dreadful ignominy for such an era, my blouse was torn, for in a quicksilver here-we-go-round-and-round someone had snatched at it hoping it would act as a brake. I had confetti down my neck, and I did not think that my mother would consider any of this was quite the thing to do.

  The last time we had stayed here I and some medical student friends from University College Hospital had heard an all-masculine crowd approaching, and had rushed out in defence of Phineas, the effigy in the hospital courtyard. That had been a fight, and we had come down Gower Street, Phineas and all, then up Gower Street, Phineas and all, and I had been found prostrate in the gutter, having done little to defend Phineas, but nobody could say that I hadn’t tried. Mother had been annoyed. The fight was far too male for me, and I admit that I was bruised for days.

  But the Italians were in the war. If I could not find the money to get into the gallery and see Potash and Perlmutter at the Queen’s Theatre, at least I had had some entertainment. And as I kept telling myself, surely this must mean that victory was in sight?

  Chapter 7

  At this time Arthur Denham-Cookes was involved in the move which would bring him down to Walton-on-the-Naze to meet me and to marry. So far his war had been plain sailing, save that he found the General trying at times. The regiment were stationed at Bishop’s Stortford, which was close enough to London for them to come up for entertainment there almost nightly, and to enjoy themselves. There was, however, trouble ahead. The General went out to meet another general who was his senior in rank, and they got wrong. The two aides commiserated with each other; the start of the row was the rice pudding Arthur’s General had wanted and didn’t get, and about which he was extremely rude.

  The old gentleman (he seemed very old to me when I met him) having been Indian Army, had the internal condition to which Rudyard Kipling referred so aptly as having ‘liver and lights like lead’, and he had to be careful about his choice of puddings. The two aides became seconds in a fight, and the cad who was the senior general behaved like a swine. As Arthur put it, ‘He would have to kick up a dust at the War Office.’

  Arthur’s General became a brigadier-general and was sent home (I have always regretted that I never knew exactly what it was he said), and Arthur ceased to be an aide, and was now on the move which was to bring him to Walton-on-the-Naze where the Queen’s took over from the Essex Cyclists.

  The other young man who later would be preoccupying my life seemed to be closer to the real war.

  Sea ‒ Sheerness

  A most exciting day following the swept channel nearly all day, with four destroyers escorting us. Endless messages coming through saying that submarines had been sighted a few miles ahead of us, and mines as well. Very nearly had a collision with a collier which crossed our bows. Got into Sheerness at 2100, and half of us went on leave.

  Sheerness ‒ Chatham ‒ Home

  Came up this morning and exactly 12 hours later I was throwing mud up at mother’s window trying to wake her after a very large supper at Victoria station.

  We returned to Walton, a
nd it seemed that the explosions out at sea grew worse. Soldiers were working day and night building heavy sandbag reinforcements all along the front, and some of the cliff between us and Frinton collapsed through their strenuous efforts. It was then that I wrote youthfully and glowingly to my father, explaining how very much I was enjoying the excitement of the moment.

  Hertford House,

  Saville Street,

  Walton-on-the-Naze

  July the 4th, 1915

  Dear Dad,

  It is tremendously exciting at times here, and things are always happening. I hear great-Aunt Fenella slept two hours in the cellar in her nightdress, bombs all around her at Woodbridge; she must have had a scare, poor dear! Yesterday we could hear them dropping bombs to the south of us, Southend, we fancied, and last Sunday destroyers went past and took 3 German submarine into Harwich. It was such fun, you’d have loved it. By the by, I suppose we are going to win the war? I mean it does seem to be going on for a beastly long time, what do you really think?

  I am embroidering a cushion cover for you, and the colours all wash, so you need not worry about it.

  With love,

  URSULA

  We would sit most of the day doing crochet on the front (in the Marine Gardens), watching the soldiers working on the sandbags, and listening to the distant gunfire. ‘Practice’ was what Mother always said, in case I got worried, but I think half of it was most certainly not practice.

  In the middle of the month my father wrote to me.

  Whitchurch Rectory,

  Stratford-on-Avon.

  July the Fourteenth, 1915

  Dearest Ursula,

  I have got to come down to Walton to see both you and your mother about something which I think is very serious, and the sooner we all have a talk the better. You are in considerable danger. Don’t mention this, or talk to any soldiers, until I have seen you. I have had a long confidential letter from the Bishop of Worcester which I cannot divulge but which deals with your behaviour at Walton, and I think that the best thing I can do is to come to see you immediately.