Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys Page 16

  ‘Em!’

  Emmy Harris charged up the middle of the barrack room and in an instant she had swept May up in a bear hug, bouncing her up and down, so that May’s tin hat fell off the top of her locker and the curlers and pins scattered across the floorboards. Emmy let out her familiar throaty laugh.

  ‘Trust me to come and mess up your tidy corner!’

  But it was a mess that May welcomed with open arms. For the sight of Emmy had been like coming home.

  ‘Oh, Em, I’m so pleased to see you! But how did you get here?’

  Her friend was grinning from ear to ear. ‘I was sent here, same as you!’

  May looked at her friend, conscious that she must have the same silly grin on her own face, but didn’t care.

  ‘Em, you look so good in uniform!’ And May realized that Em also seemed much healthier – she’d filled out and her normal pallor had been replaced by a sun-browned glow. She was wearing battledress and even the slacks suited her.

  ‘Army life’s not so bad, love. It’s better than hanging up stinking hides all day, I’ll tell you that for nothing. And you’ve grown up all of a sudden, look at you!’

  Emmy took May’s hand and spun her round. ‘But all your lovely barnet’s gone – you look so different!’

  All the while May’s friends were looking on, smiling at their joyful reunion – until Bee, pointing to her own hair, said to Emmy, ‘Excuse me but could you spare my hairdresser for half a mo’? I’m only semi-curled!’

  ‘Sorry, love, she’s such a skiver!’ Emmy laughed and May made the introductions. As she finished rolling Bee’s hair, and then got hers done, Emmy recounted tales of her own basic training, which sounded much like May’s. When it was time to go to the ablution block, May took Emmy with her. They walked to the end of the row of barrack huts, wrapped in their overcoats, and May put her arm through Emmy’s. She pulled the girl in close. ‘Em, it’s almost as good as getting leave, having you here.’

  ‘Poor May, Granny Byron told my mum she thought you’d take it hard, being away. But, tell the truth, I’m loving it. Look at that!’

  Emmy pointed to the wide blackness of sky and the thousands of stars dusting it. ‘You don’t get stars like that in Bermondsey, do you, love?’

  Just then, a streak of light shot low over the far barrack huts.

  ‘Shooting star?’ Emmy asked.

  ‘Duck!’ May pulled her friend to the ground as the incendiary bomb exploded yards from the huts.

  It seemed the Luftwaffe wanted to get the gunner girls before they’d even seen a gun. They sheltered low in the lea of the ablution block, scanning the sky.

  ‘Looks like a lone one, dropping its load,’ May shouted as the camp erupted around them. But May and Emmy were so familiar with the drone of German planes that they knew it was receding. ‘On its way back home, I reckon. Come on, Em, let’s get in the ablution block while everyone’s in the shelters.’

  The ablution block was spotless and spartan. Standing in front of the small mirror, Emmy put her hair into a net.

  ‘This reminds me of all those false raids in Garner’s. We used to run Bill Gilbie ragged, didn’t we? Him trying to get us in the shelter, us dawdling along rabbiting. Did you keep in touch?’

  May knew it wasn’t as casual a question as Emmy made it sound.

  ‘I wrote to him, sent the letter to his mum’s, but I haven’t heard back. He went in the RAF, you know, probably finished his BT. He could be anywhere by now.’

  ‘Well, you soppy mare, you should’ve made sure you got his forwarding address, shouldn’t you?’ Emmy said unsympathetically. ‘Should have grabbed him while you could.’

  They finished brushing their teeth and walked back through the silent camp to an empty barrack room. All the girls were still in the shelter. The blackout boards were over the windows, so it was pitch-black, but from somewhere in the darkness came a soft choking sound.

  ‘Who’s there?’ May asked, using her night vision, which was much better than Emmy’s, to make her way along the bunks. ‘Everything all right?’

  She came to a halt in front of a seemingly empty bunk, but the sound was definitely coming from there. She hunkered down. Feeling around under the bed her hand found a foot, then a leg. She tugged it, only to receive a sharp kick in the face.

  ‘Sod you!’ She rubbed her cheek. ‘Come out of there.’

  Emmy came to kneel beside her, and between the two of them they pulled the resisting figure out from under the bed.

  ‘It’s the bombs – I get so that I can’t move. I’m so ashamed of myself.’ The voice trembled.

  May edged forward. ‘You shouldn’t be. It’s natural to be scared. It’s only that me and Em’s got used to it, where we come from.’

  The girl reached out, gripping her overcoat. ‘Don’t tell anyone, please!’ she begged, and in the darkness May reached out, to find a face wet with tears. ‘It’s all right, Pat,’ she said. ‘We won’t tell.’

  12

  Defences

  Late Spring 1941

  ‘No woman shall ever fire a gun,’ the instructor said, looking at them with a bullish, defensive look. ‘The rule is clear.’

  May felt a moment’s defiance as he glared at them, daring one of them to contradict him. But May was learning the ways of the army, and often things were not called by their true names. They were destined to serve not in anti-aircraft companies, but in ack-ack; the guns were archies, their mattresses were biscuits and church parade was knee drill. When they paraded in full kit, they were on Christmas Tree order. And so when the instructor told her she wouldn’t be firing a gun, she immediately translated that into what would actually happen. In training sessions she’d learned that controlling the predictor was firing a gun in all but name. The machine, a square black box, with eyepieces and dials on each side, was used to calculate the exact time when the gun should fire in order to hit the moving aircraft. A team of girls manned the predictor, following a small moving image of the plane through the eyepieces. At the optimum moment the Number One on the team would call out ‘the fuse’ to the gunner sergeant, effectively ordering him when to fire at the target.

  Over the past four weeks, May had learned to distinguish enemy planes from their own, she’d learned how to use the telescopic identification instrument for spotting enemy planes and she’d learned to plot their position on the height-and-range finders, which were like huge double telescopes. But manning the predictor gave her the greatest satisfaction. It was the closest she would ever come to actively engaging the enemy who was destroying her world.

  When she looked through the eyepiece at the tiny image of the plane, when she shouted ‘the fuse’ at the top of her lungs, she did not – could not – allow herself to see a man in the cockpit of the plane above. She hadn’t travelled that far from herself. She knew that most of this new self would hardly be recognizable to the old May – that peace-loving, home-maker would be horrified. And yet, for her, there had been no other possible response to her brother’s death but to dismantle the broken parts of herself and rebuild them into this woman with a steel core that she barely recognized. Jack’s death had propelled her forward with the force of a shell bursting from one of the big guns she was now directing.

  She suspected that such a change in a person would normally take a lifetime, but hers was no ordinary lifetime, that much she knew. Born into a time of bitter conflict, all ideas of what was normal had vanished that first day of the war, when she refused to go to the shelter because she had to put the Sunday dinner in the oven.

  Her instructor was a broad-shouldered man with no neck and a broken, concave nose. However much he might balk at the idea, ATS women were now considered essential to the war effort and had been, if not exactly welcomed, then grudgingly accepted into the Royal Artillery. From now on batteries were going to be mixed, with men loading shells and manning guns and women taking over the tracking instruments. And if the RA wanted to cling to the notion that women never fired the guns,
then let them. May didn’t care.

  Soon she would be leaving Oswestry and crossing the border into Wales proper for the last phase of her training at Ty-Croes, the firing camp on Anglesey. They would practise as teams on actual guns. From the minute they arrived in Oswestry, they had been drilled in the teams which they would stay with for their final Company postings. It was essential, the instructor said, for them to work like a ‘well-oiled’ machine – the spotters to identify, the height-and-range finders to feed the position to the predictor girls, who calculated the right time to fire, shouting the order to the gunners. They had to be able to rely on the split-second reactions of each other. There were no second chances – once the German bomber had passed beyond the searchlight’s glare, it had escaped to destroy another house, orphan another baby, kill another Jack. May felt her focus sharpen to a pinpoint of light as she honed her skill on the predictor. There was a freedom in it. Everything else fell away – her grief for her brother, her thoughts of Bill, her fears for her family at home. She was free, and it seemed her freedom gave her an accuracy that had drawn the attention of her instructor.

  After the lecture was over he called them up one by one to be placed in their final teams and given numbers within their group. May waited anxiously, both fingers crossed behind her back, hardly daring to admit what she wanted, out of some superstitious remnant from her father’s teaching. ‘Never,’ he had taught her as a child, ‘never look forward to anything. That way you’ll never be disappointed.’ So now she concentrated on not looking forward to being made a predictor operator. When her turn came she stepped smartly forward to the instructor’s desk. Glancing down at the sheet in front of him, she looked for her name but couldn’t see it. She hoped she hadn’t failed out.

  ‘Lloyd? We’re recommending you for Number One.’ He paused.

  Yes, but Number One on what? She clenched her fists, squashing down hope.

  ‘Once you get to Anglesey, you’ll be in charge of A-team on the predictor. Are you up to it?’

  ‘Yes, sir! Thank you, sir.’

  She felt her stomach contract, recognizing not apprehension, but eagerness, and she almost ran from the room.

  Outside the lecture hut, she waited for her friends. Girls who’d already learned their fate were waiting in little groups, congratulating each other or commiserating. One after the other her friends came out. Bee, Mac, Emmy and Ruby were all on her predictor team.

  ‘For once the army’s showing some sense!’ Bee said, clearly relieved. ‘You couldn’t get a more well-oiled team than us!’

  ‘Well-oiled on gin and its – that’s us!’ Mac retorted.

  Pat came out of the hut and wandered over to them. ‘I’m on TI. Sarge said I was a natural for it,’ she said, smiling nervously at May.

  ‘Good for you,’ May replied, happy to let her have her moment, and only too relieved that Pat was going to be a spotter and not on her predictor. She and Emmy had tacitly agreed never to mention Pat’s terror on their first night in Oswestry. But May feared that Pat was like a cracked china cup, just waiting for the day when full of hot tea, it would break, scalding whoever was holding it. May was relieved that her predictor team would not have to be holding Pat when she broke. Still, the girl had definitely changed since that night and it had made for a pleasanter atmosphere in the hut.

  On the way back to the cookhouse for their dinner, May stopped off in the camp post office. There were times when she almost forgot about Bill, but now, in the glow of her success, she found herself longing to be able to tell him about it. She had received no reply to her letter sent from Pontefract. But other girls in her hut had similar long delays: with people being moved at a moment’s notice all over the country, it wasn’t unusual for letters to take weeks in arriving. She found a letter there for her, but it wasn’t the reply she was hoping for. The handwriting on the envelope was her own, and marked in thick blue crayon on the front was: Return to sender. Not known at this address.

  Her stomach lurched. Emmy had been right – what a fool she had been not to get his forwarding address. His family had obviously moved from Grange House, perhaps bombed out, perhaps evacuated, who knew these days? Although she’d told Bill that she lived in Southwark Park Road, she couldn’t remember ever giving him the house number. And it was a long, long road, looping like a necklace across the heart of Bermondsey. At least four hundred buildings: there were shops, pubs, schools, factories as well as houses, and hers was up at the far end, in the three hundreds. Would Bill care enough to knock at each one? It would be quite a search. And if she tried to find him, would the neighbours in Grange House know where his family had gone? She felt bombarded by all these questions as she emerged from the camp post office. She crumpled her letter, feeling sick with misery. Too miserable for company, she certainly didn’t feel like facing any more of Emmy’s ‘told you so’s’. She needed to be on her own, but where?

  The post office was near the bike store, and on impulse she borrowed a bike, setting off on the road out of town, heading for the old hill fort, a huge circular earthworks they’d passed on their last route march. It had loomed above them, vast concentric rings of dykes and ditches, impressing her with its ancient, immovable strength. She’d looked up at the high green ramparts of the ancient defensive fort, built to keep long-dead raiders at bay, and she’d felt a connection. She knew what it was like to be part of that endeavour. The gun batteries she was becoming familiar with were no different. Whatever gun site she ended up at would only be a modern-day version of these ancient defences. Artillery, gunpowder and shells replaced stones and spears, but at heart it would be a hill fort, high and forbidding, declaring: Thus far and no further.

  She didn’t know what had drawn her there now. But as she approached its lower slopes, she leaped off the bike, letting it fall to the ground. She began climbing, trudging up the steep slopes, one after another, up and up again, ever higher, till at the top, it seemed that all of Shropshire and half of Wales was spread out before her. Spinning, with one foot on the ground, the other propelling her round, a step she’d learned in an old English dance, she surveyed all the hills and valleys, calling silently on the spirit of the place to give her strength; imagining all the ancient defenders, rank upon rank of them on the old earthwork, each one ultimately alone, in the face of their enemy.

  She stayed up on the green banks till the distant hills turned purple in the dusk, and the chill of evening got into her bones. She knew that for now, she had to concentrate on becoming the best defender she could be. Romance and love, surely that was for a time of peace? On her ride back to camp, she realized that she would not look for Bill. She had already lost one dearly loved boy to the war, and she feared that if she found Bill only to lose him too, she’d never be able to bear it. Better to leave what they had as a sweet memory of her earlier, softer self. For now, she felt one with the warrior bones buried beneath that hill fort and it would be her entire focus till the war was, one day, over.

  *

  ‘Em! Can you believe it? We’re going home!’

  Before their final training at the Anglesey firing camp began they’d been granted a few precious days’ leave. Excitement bubbled up so that May had to grab Emmy’s arm as they were jolted by the rocking of the lorry on its way to Oswestry train station.

  The only contact she’d had with home since leaving had been the regular letters from her father and the parcels from her mother. Each of the parcels had made her cry – carefully saved rations of chocolate and clothes’ coupons, a crocheted cream shawl that her mother had made in the long hours spent sheltering at London Bridge Underground Station. Since losing Jack, Mrs Lloyd’s nerves had shredded, and she no longer slept in Southwark Park Road, preferring to line up half the day for a sleeping place in the deep tunnels beneath the station. Her father slept at home, but most of his nights were spent on ARP duties anyway. If May had been there, perhaps her mother might have been stronger, but May had to believe she was where she was meant to be.
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br />   ‘Do you think it will look different?’ Emmy asked.

  ‘Well, the bombing hasn’t stopped while we’ve been away, love, so yes, I think it will.’

  ‘Are you going to look up Bill Gilbie?’

  May hadn’t told her friend about the returned letter, out of embarrassment more than anything else. But now she did.

  ‘Oh, May, you never know, you might bump into him on leave.’ Either Emmy had become much more tactful or her own face had betrayed enough disappointment to deter her usual teasing. The lorry stopped outside Oswestry Station and Emmy picked up her kitbag.

  ‘I might,’ May said, reaching for her own, ‘but perhaps it’s just as well. We’ve got work to do, haven’t we, and anything else, well, it might just get in the way.’

  ‘But we’ve got to live. I think we should have a bloody good time on leave.’ Jumping down from the back of the lorry, Emmy grinned and held out a hand to May. ‘And if we meet any fellers, well, we should enjoy life while we can!’

  May couldn’t argue with that. She followed Emmy and they leaped on the train with seconds to spare.

  They spent half the journey planning outings for their leave, which Emmy was determined to make the most of. But long delays and an unscheduled overnight stop had taken the edge off their excitement and left them both bone-tired. When their train eventually passed along the viaduct through Bermondsey, May was able to judge just how much her home had changed. The viaduct itself had been shored up where bombs had found their targets. Battered streets, bombed into a different geography, were unrecognizable. Sometimes all that remained were small mountains of rubble or canyons of bomb craters, with a few truncated houses, shored up by timber frames. It was a sight that tightened her throat with dammed-up tears. It had never been beautiful, not unless you counted the river, but it had been home, and she had loved every sooty brick and stone of it. She had been proud of every attempt to make it look better: women like her mother whitened their steps and cleaned their windows with vinegar and newspaper, or men like her father repaired rotten window frames and dug over dusty backyards to grow a few flowers. And the council, too, had played its pioneering part, planting trees and flowers, replacing slums with new flats, public baths and health centres. All that effort and civic pride – torn down, undone, blasted by the twisted will of a raging madman across the Channel.