Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys Read online

  ‘No, I didn’t go home. Well… haven’t really got one. Dad’s overseas and Mum’s dead.’

  May immediately felt guilty for every unkind thought she’d had towards the girl and, nudging Emmy to move over, she picked up a nearly cool cup of cocoa and offered it to Pat.

  ‘So where did you go?’

  ‘Stayed with my uncle, out in the sticks. Leave was all right. Not so much fun as Ruby’s, though!’

  May was relieved to see some of the others softening, if for no other reason than, as part of their gun team, it would help to have Pat on their side.

  The hard biscuits on the iron bed kept her awake for what was left of the night. It was surprising how quickly she’d got used to the normal comforts of home, but it was just as well she’d spent so much of her leave catching up on sleep. When the bugle sounded reveille at six-thirty she’d forgotten where she was, and it was only when she heard the clatter of feet along the duckboards as people rushed to the ablution block that she remembered she was back in her other life. She groaned when Emmy came to roll her over and out of the bed.

  ‘Come on, love, can’t let the hut down on the first day. Don’t want ’em saying the Bermondsey girls are sweatin’ in the bed half the bleedin’ morning!’

  May grabbed her toilet bag and toothbrush and moved, heavy-lidded, towards the ablutions. Outside the wind whipped across the field, stinging her eyes. She squinted at the guns, silhouetted now in the grey morning light. The truth was, she was sick with apprehension. She still didn’t know how she’d stand up to real action. How would she cope when the fire-breathing dragons finally opened their great jaws?

  But however convenient, Essex wasn’t an easy posting, positioned as they were in the direct flight line of Heinkels searching out the Thames Estuary, following the guiding light of the river straight into London’s heart and beyond. They were supposed to have a week or so familiarizing themselves with their positions on the gun encampments, but that night, after only a day at their new posts, the alarm sounded.

  A raid so soon? She didn’t feel ready, and found her breath coming in shallow gasps as she jammed on the tin hat and then fumbled with her leather jerkin. With gas mask slung round her neck, she joined her steps to the thundering feet on the duckboards. There were a few cries as some girls slipped off the edges, turning ankles, but there was no time to stop. May sped across the field, blessing her keen sight, as she avoided uneven ground, to arrive safely at the predictor machine, before standing to attention. There were eight big guns spread out in two semicircles in the centre of the field, with the instruments for each gun set up twenty odd yards away within concrete bunkers. At the bunkers her team stood ready, two spotters with binoculars and another two girls manning the huge double-ended telescopic identification instrument. Four were on the height-and-range finder and before she knew it her predictor team was flanking each side of the large, dial-covered, metal box. She had no time to be nervous, for almost immediately a searchlight operator shouted ‘Expose!’ There was a loud hum and searchlights pierced the blackness above with their silver arrows. The sky soon thrummed with the noise of a hundred enemy engines, and when one was caught in the net of beams cast across the sky, the spotter yelled, ‘Plane sighted!’ May’s focus then became as bright and sharp as the beams etching the sky. She bent to the eyepiece and saw the tiny image of a plane. Keeping her eye fixed on the image and alert for the shouts from the height-and-range finder, she waited, aware of a fine trembling throughout her body. Suddenly there was a high-pitched whizz and rumbling explosion, as the whole gun emplacement shook.

  May flinched, along with the other girls, as earth and shrapnel shot their way. But they held their positions and May called out to her team, ‘Steady! Steady!’

  What was going on? They hadn’t even had time to fire. One plane amongst the swarm above them must have decided to start dropping its bombs early, and it seemed they were the target.

  She heard numbers, shouted in the rather shaky voice of Number One on the range finder. A few short months ago, they would have been incomprehensible to May, but now she had a clear image in her mind of the plane and where in the sky it would be.

  ‘On target!’ came the call as May’s team sprang into action, spinning dials, swiftly pinpointing the plane, and calculating how long to set the fuse. The calculation was done in seconds, then May roared at the top of her lungs. ‘Fuse! One point eight!’

  From over at the gun came the answering call from the men, ‘Fuse! Fire!’

  A ball of flame exploded from the barrel, sending up clouds of eye-stinging acrid smoke. As more planes were spotted, all the guns joined in an unending chorus: booming, bellowing, belching flames in a hellish glare that, instead of confusing May, seemed only to sharpen her concentration to a diamond-hard point.

  All night the planes came. They stayed at their posts until dawn, when the all-clear sounded, and May finally stood up from the predictor, arching her back in a long stretch. She looked up at the wide Essex sky, streaked with smoke, pewter and rose, above a low horizon broken only by the black rim of the forest. May and her friends linked their arms round each other’s waists, walking in companionable, drunken tiredness towards the hut to catch up on some sleep. Something had changed between them, and suddenly, she knew she could trust these girls with her life. Even Pat. Although May had spotted her almost cuddling a sandbag at one point, the girl had controlled her terror just long enough to identify the planes. May didn’t have time to realize, until later when she was lying in bed, ears still ringing, that though she might not have shot down an enemy plane that night, she had finally engaged the enemy.

  ***

  As the raids on London gradually decreased, those on the rest of the country increased and the Thames Estuary was the bomber’s favourite highway from the Channel. They saw action almost every night for months. As May shouted herself hoarse each night, she sometimes forgot who she was. She became the thunder in her ears, her only concerns angle, bearing, height, range. The target was all and yet that almost ceased to be a physical thing, flying through the sky above her, and became merely an image on a screen, which at all costs had to be eradicated. Not even the hot shrapnel raining down, pinging on to her tin hat, had the power to deflect her. And she knew her teammates felt the same. Becoming an amalgam of each of their skills, the parade-ground drill which had been dinned into them, making them one marching unit, now made them one fighting unit. May became the eyes and ears of the fire-breathing dragon and sometimes, in the early hours, when there was a brief lull in the shelling and they were allowed to sit below in a bunker, it took her what seemed like forever to come back to herself.

  She was in the bunker, in that semi-state between fighting and resting, wondering if she had either the energy or the courage to read a letter from Peggy that she’d tucked inside her tunic before coming on duty, when she heard the bomb fall. The roar ripped through the sandbags and the concrete, making the earth beneath the bunker shudder. She leaped up and scrambled to the surface, followed by Mac and the others. Their own guns were silent, but the sky was lit by a lurid, orange glow coming from across the field, where a ‘spider’ was ablaze. It looked to May as if the huts had taken a direct hit, one of the men’s spiders further up the field. For a moment she was paralysed, fearing that her trembling legs wouldn’t carry her, knowing she had to move and yet unsure which way to run. She looked about her, then heard shouts coming from the other side of the guns. Should they man their positions or run towards the huts? There was chaos, with shouted commands ringing through the darkness. The German bomber had taken them all by surprise, no doubt a stray, left behind, getting rid of its load on the way home. By now it would be long gone.

  ‘Get over there and help them!’ It was their gunner sergeant.

  As she began to run, there was another explosion as one of the girl’s ablution blocks went up in flames. Crackling fire expanded, snapping at them, and necessity chased away the remnants of fear as she heard screams comin
g from one of the huts. Her teammates were running with her and other frantic figures, black against the bright conflagration ahead, were converging from different directions. But when they neared the huts she heard an anguished cry as one of them tumbled headlong on to the grass. May tripped over her. It was a corporal she recognized from another team. She was on her back, her face livid in the glare from the blaze, eyes wide with shock. She shook her head. ‘Leave me. I’m all right. Go and help the others!’

  But May could see enough to know she wasn’t all right and looked around desperately for help. Just then Pat ran past, charging in the opposite direction from the huts. May grabbed her hand but as she tried to pull away, May held her tight.

  ‘What you running that way for? Pat, for God’s sake, you’re not doing this again – you’ve got to help me, look at her!’ The corporal’s tunic was soaked with blood, a jagged piece of wood protruding just above her elbow, from where blood was pumping in a steady stream.

  ‘If we don’t get her help, she’ll bleed to death! Now you bloody well hold her legs, while I take her arms.’

  Pat hesitated, then seemed to make a decision. She picked up the corporal’s feet. May took her under the armpits, and ignoring her cries of pain they carried her towards the medics.

  ‘You’ll be all right. Just hold on, we’re nearly there!’ May spoke to the corporal, more as an encouragement to herself, for the woman wasn’t responding.

  A small triage station had been set up on the edge of the gun site and they carefully laid the corporal down, while a young medic checked the projectile still poking from her arm.

  ‘We’ll need this out pronto. Stretcher here! Out of the way, you two, go and make yourselves useful.’

  Dismissed, May paused, scanning the chaos. Fire crews were aiming jets of water into the blazing huts, and the stench of charred wet timber came to her on the wind. It felt like being back in a night raid in Bermondsey – the smells were the same, and the sounds, the shouts, the thuds, the screams. They were nothing she hadn’t seen before and the memory of why she’d joined the ATS came to her with a vivid burst of flame, the thought seeming to renew her courage There were still bodies, unattended. She ran towards an unmoving figure closer to the guns. To her horror, she realized it was Emmy. She must have been running behind May and taken a hit.

  ‘Oh, Em, hang on, love. It’s May. I’m here!’

  Looking round for Pat, she realized the girl hadn’t followed her. She would just have to move Emmy herself. Just then, she heard an approaching ‘rat-a-tat-tat’. Glancing back, she was horrified to see just behind them clods of earth exploding in a double row, like so many small underground explosions, accompanied by bursts of fire. They were being strafed! A German plane must have circled back and, seeing them vulnerable, was hunting down easy pickings by the light of the fires. May gathered up Emmy into her arms. Making her own body into something resembling a magic carpet, she rocked herself into motion, and with one massive effort rolled them out of the path of the bullets. Time stood still, as she waited to be hit. Holding her friend in a grip tight as death, not daring to move until the machine-gun fire had receded, it suddenly occurred to her the plane might come round again. She certainly wasn’t going to be waiting for it, and with strength that seemed to come from outside of herself, she dragged Emmy back into the shelter of a bunker. Hunkering as close to the sandbagged wall as she could, she knew she was spent. Her chest heaving, her muscles screaming, she held the still unconscious Emmy in her arms until the night fires died down to be replaced by a bleak dawn.

  *

  For their part in the night’s drama, May’s team was mentioned on parade and May earned herself a commendation and a promotion to Lance Corporal. Pat came up to her as they left the parade ground.

  ‘May, wait!’ The foghorn quality of Pat’s voice could still make her wince, but May was more forgiving these days. After all, the girl had battled her demons and helped save someone’s life last night. Pat, surprisingly, flung her arm round May’s shoulders as they walked.

  ‘Listen, May, I just wanted to say thanks… for last night. I never thought I’d be able to do something like that. I’m glad you made me stop and help.’

  ‘I know it’s harder for you, Pat, harder than for any of us, I reckon, but you deserved the commendation just as much as me.’

  But Pat shook her head. ‘You know as well as I do, I was running the other way. I’ve tried, but I’m not cut out for this, May. I’ve asked for a transfer to stores.’

  May was inexplicably disappointed. Pat, for all her faults, was one of the team now.

  ‘What about all your training?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘I’ll be more use in the stores, and if you ever need anything, you just let me know!’ She winked and walked off in the direction of the stores.

  ‘I will!’ May called after her.

  In stark contrast to the high drama of the previous night, May spent the morning on kitchen fatigues, scouring pots, her arms elbow-deep in greasy soda water. It seemed that even a heroine’s place was still in the kitchen.

  After fatigues, she made her way to the infirmary. She’d heard that Emmy had been lucky, concussion and a broken collarbone. But the sight of her battered friend made her realize how close she’d come to losing her, and she gave her a relieved hug.

  ‘Blimey, May, you’re doing more damage than Gerry,’ Emmy said, wincing. Then she grinned. ‘Always a silver lining, though.’ She turned in the bed to get herself comfortable. ‘Guess where I’m going?’

  ‘Not home?’

  Emmy stifled a painful laugh and nodded. ‘They said this’ll take weeks to heal. I’ve got early Christmas leave!’

  ‘You lucky so-and-so!’

  But Emmy’s expression was serious and her usual flippant reply didn’t come. She took hold of May’s hand. ‘Wouldn’t have been lucky if it weren’t for you, May. Thanks, love.’

  May spent half an hour with her friend, so it wasn’t until her off-duty hours that afternoon, when she was sewing her first stripe on to her uniform, that May remembered the letter from Peggy. After making sure the stripe wasn’t crooked, she fished the letter from her tunic pocket. It smelled of fire smoke and something indefinable. She put it to her nose. California Poppy! The sweetest smell in Bermondsey. It transported her back to Southwark Park Road and her sister’s tangled life.

  The first paragraph was all about her mother. Mrs Lloyd was getting worse and one morning last week their father had been forced to go to London Bridge and bring her home. She’d decided she might as well stay there all day. But it was the second paragraph that caused May to let out a long groan.

  16

  Passionate Leave

  Autumn 1941

  The red siren suit was too revealing. Peggy stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself from the side, and tried tightening the belt, which only made her swelling stomach more obvious, at least to her. She would have to go back to wearing frocks at work, but the new utility styles were so ungenerous, with all excess folds and pleats forbidden, that soon she’d be showing even in dresses.

  She had only told one person – her sister May – writing to her in the first sickening realization that she was pregnant. Perhaps she shouldn’t have, but she’d felt so alone, with Harry already posted to Southampton.

  But although May was the only person Peggy had told, she wasn’t the only person who knew. Somehow Granny Byron had found out, using her own intuition and God only knew what other methods, a crystal ball for all Peggy could tell. Her grandmother had been waiting for her one evening, outside Atkinson’s, and Peggy had been so shocked to see her there, she’d assumed there’d been some sort of accident.

  ‘What’s happened?’ She’d rushed up to the incongruously colourful figure, with her hoop earrings and wide-brimmed feathered hat.

  ‘Nothing!’ Granny Byron had her arms folded, a large black handbag over one arm. ‘I’ve just been to see Mrs Tucker, up Alma Grove, bedridden now, poor old cow, so
I do her a home reading now ’an again. I had a feeling I’d bump into you.’

  Peggy was mystified. Her grandmother never came to see her at work.

  ‘Come for a drink with your old nan,’ she said and it was more a command than a request, as she led the way towards the Turk’s Head. The narrow old pub, with its Ottoman-looking cupola stuck incongruously atop one corner, stood on the corner of the alley leading to the factory and was a favourite drinking place for the Atkinson’s workers. She felt slightly embarrassed to be dragged in there by her grandmother. But Granny Byron liked a drink and insisted that she had been weaned on Guinness. Peggy knew that May sometimes asked their nan for a reading, but she never had. Perhaps she was less captivated than May by the Romany family heritage, failing to see how being born in a caravan had any merit at all.

  But that evening Granny Byron bore out her claims to ‘the sight’. Taking a sip of the creamy-topped Guinness, wiping the foam from her top lip, putting the glass down deliberately and leaning forward over the large bag that sat in her lap, she asked, ‘How far gone are you then? Three months?’

  ‘Nan!’

  Peggy looked swiftly round. She’d already spotted a few women from Atkinson’s, meeting their chaps here after work.

  ‘Keep your voice down. How do you know that? Did May tell you? Have you told anyone else?’ Peggy was panicking. She knew it had to come out, but not yet. She wasn’t ready.

  ‘May’s not said a word. I knew you was carrying on, ages ago. That didn’t take no crystal ball, what with your new clothes and your make-up, and gawd knows what. I’ve seen that look in a woman’s eyes before, when they come to me and want to know “Does he love me?” Weeks and weeks you’ve been miles away. Anyway, don’t matter how I found out you’re expecting. I’ve told no one. But before the balloon goes up, what I wanted to say to you is this…’ She tapped a tobacco-stained finger on the edge of the beer-shiny table. ‘You can always come to me. Don’t matter what your mother says, nor your father, nor George. If you need anything – you come to me.’