Far From Home (24 page)

They fell to talking of the kind of exercises they would be engaged in and the questions came thick and fast. Eventually, Mrs Camfrey said, ‘Now, if there are no more questions, is everyone all right about what they must do?'

They all nodded except Sylv, who gave an indifferent shrug, and Mrs Camfrey looked sharply at her but went on: ‘Now then, it is organized like this. Groups of six or more will be called a sector and will be headed by a senior sector marshal, and each sector will be in charge of an area housing approximately five hundred people.' Kate looked askance at Sally and Susie – she thought five hundred people were a lot to be responsible for.

‘Now, if you make an orderly line in front of this door, you will be told what to do next,' Mrs Camfrey said, and they all obediently queued up and filed into a
room where two ATS girls were sitting behind counters. While one marked each one of them off on a register and assigned them to a sector, the other dished out uniforms, tin helmets, a whistle and a rattle.

‘Now,' Mrs Camfrey said when they had all been seen to. ‘Remember you are going to be the first line of defence in the raids. People will look to you for help or advice, such as where the shelters are and so on. You will be doing a very valuable job, so always remember that. Please report tomorrow night to the sector you were assigned to – you will meet your fellow colleagues and the sector marshal then.'

On the way home, the three girls looked at each other. Even in the half-light, Kate could see the slight shock registering on the faces of the others. ‘I thought they'd just sort of tell us all about it and let us go away and have a think whether we want to do it or not,' Susie said.

‘Don't think they have the time for niceties like that,' Kate said. ‘Anyway, isn't it great that we have been assigned to the same sector and the warden post is only in Marsh Lane?'

‘Yeah, that is good,' Susie said. ‘And I'll tell you what I'm pleased about as well – that that girl Sylv is not in our sector. She was right behind me in the line and I was scared that she would be.'

‘Yeah,' Kate said. ‘Don't know what she's doing here anyway. She doesn't seem that bothered.'

‘And she bit the head off that old man,' Sally said.

‘Yeah, I wouldn't say working with her would be a bundle of laughs,' Kate maintained. ‘And, as you once said, Susie, humour is all we have.'

‘I stick to it as well,' Susie said. ‘At least we three are all together, and someone else will have to deal with Sylv. Now I just hope our sector marshal is nice.'

They were to find out that she was very nice. Kate guessed her to be in her thirties; she had her brown hair cut in a bob. She greeted them all warmly in a very pleasant-sounding voice with only a slight trace of a Brummie accent. ‘My name is Jane Goodman,' she said. ‘And we don't need to stand on ceremony amongst ourselves.' She shook hands with them all and Kate noticed her kindly grey eyes and just knew she would get on well with her.

After the introductions, Jane said they had to report to Erdington Baths where St Johns' Ambulance would be conducting classes in first aid. ‘See,' Kate said to the other two as they made their way there, ‘it's a bit like marriage. We are in now, for better or worse.'

Over the next weeks, as the summer took hold of the city, the German offensive began, with the Luftwaffe attacking coastal towns through July. More shipping convoys were sunk and there were more raids. The three girls were only too aware that the RAF squadrons from airfields throughout Britain were being sent to try to repulse these attacks and also to try to save the ships. The announcements on the wireless and those in the newspapers were reporting on what they called, ‘The Battle of Britain'. Dogfights were common and the results were printed in the papers, and were even on notice boards in the city centre, the girls heard. ‘It's like some game they are playing, and if the Germans lose twenty-three planes to our eight or nine, it is counted as a victory. Yet each loss is a tragedy,' Kate said.

She knew too that one of those planes lost could have her husband or Susie's inside it, and that thought made her feel sick. And yet she knew it had to be done, because across a very small stretch of water, Hitler had amassed an armada and was ready for invasion. The papers and broadcasters on the wireless assured them
that if ever the RAF lost supremacy in the air, there would be nothing to stop German craft carrying men and machines from landing in Britain.

Everyone was talking about the heroism of the boys in blue, well aware that the survival of Britain rested on the slim shoulders of these young pilots. The need for pilots was so pressing that most of those being sent up into the air to face merciless enemy gunfire had only had time for a very basic training course lasting a scant six weeks. But knowing her husband was doing an essential job did nothing to ease the aching worry that often deprived Kate of sleep and took away her appetite.

And she knew that without her work with her fellow ARP wardens, she would be a lot worse off. This way she had less time to think. As Mrs Camfrey told them, they were being trained for things they might have to do in the event of raids on the city. And so they engaged in realistic exercises in parks and roads, rescued mock casualties from damaged buildings, put out blazes, dealt with incendiaries in specially constructed huts and made trial runs from the depots to check the time it took to cover the area they were responsible for. They also practised decontamination routines.

On top of this they went two nights a week to learn first aid and practised the skills taught on volunteer victims. This, together with working overtime, ensured that Kate at least went to bed exhausted. But once she lay down, the visions would come to haunt her. She wasn't helped by the reports she read in the papers of the long hours the pilots spent flying: quite often
they would be on seven sorties a day. Far too many: surely tiredness affected reaction times? And a tired pilot might make mistakes and any mistakes made in the air might be catastrophic.

As David had once said, he lived for her letters, so now she lived for his. They came spasmodically and they were brief missives, but though he could tell her little, the fact that he had written at all showed Kate that he was still alive – and that was the greatest news of all.

And Birmingham continued to wait. No one now believed that being two hundred miles from the coast would protect them.

 

On 1 August, Hitler issued a directive ordering an intensification of the air war prior to an invasion of Britain. This news was conveyed to Kate and Sally by the sneering voice of Lord Haw-Haw, the traitor who broadcast on a programme called
Germany Calling
. The British were not supposed to listen to it, but many did, because the man seemed to know what was happening, though he delivered it in a hateful way as he revelled in the defeat of the British. ‘We will soon be invading your shores and unopposed when we have blown the Air Force out of the sky,' he said with glee one evening. ‘You will no longer have the Air Force so prepare yourself for a blood bath.'

Sally looked at the colour draining out of Kate's face and she snapped off the wireless. ‘Why do we listen to him anyway?' she said to Kate. ‘He is nothing but a scaremonger. What does he know?'

Kate didn't answer. She wished she could believe Sally,
but she knew that Lord Haw-Haw was accurate a lot of the time and she felt as if she had a coiled spring wrapped tight inside her, crushing her heart.

And Haw-Haw seemed to be just as accurate this time, for almost immediately the Luftwaffe began to attack the airfields, though they kept up the pressure on the ports and shipping too, and the raids stretched as far as the Thames Estuary and Liverpool. In the middle of this, the first bombs fell in Erdington on 9 August. Few in Birmingham were even aware of the three bombs that were dropped; no sirens were sounded and the first many knew about it was the report in the paper, when they saw the devastation caused to the  houses in Lydford Grove, Montague Road and Erdington Hall Road, where the bombs fell. And although the people from the ruined homes were shaken and some had to be pulled from the rubble, the only fatality was a young soldier who had survived Dunkirk and was home on leave.

Birmingham suffered almost daily raids from then on, but these were localized and few came that close to Erdington, although the girls were out at the post in Marsh Lane through many of them, watching the arc lights illuminate the sky in the distance and listening to the tattoo of the anti-aircraft guns. ‘Glad to know someone's awake anyway,' Kate said one night. ‘Don't know where the spotters are, though – those sirens never sound, do they?'

‘No,' Susie agreed. ‘According to Dad, the Royal Observer Corps should relay information to us, and we have to send that information to factories and schools where the sirens are.'

‘Well, we can't send information on if we don't have it in the first place,' Kate said. ‘And I would say that they can't be that good at observing if they can't see a formation of planes heading our way till they're on top of us. A policeman pedalling through the streets blowing a whistle is not good enough. Maybe a more efficient system should be set up?'

Kate gave a yawn and said wearily, ‘I wish the “All Clear” would go now, though. I haven't heard explosions for a while and I am dead beat.'

‘Not sleeping?' Susie asked, and Kate gave a grimace. ‘Is anyone in this godawful war?'

‘No,' Susie admitted. ‘I'm the same. Mom says this is the fretting she was hoping to avoid for me and that was why she didn't want me to marry, but what difference would that have made?'

‘None at all,' Sally told her. ‘I wasn't married to Phil, for all I loved him enough to marry him, and when I heard that he had died I wanted to follow him. It still catches me now at times.'

‘I'm not surprised at that at all,' Kate said. ‘If you love someone then you love them – married or not, makes no odds.'

‘I agree totally,' Susie said. And then before anyone could say any more the ‘All Clear' sounded and Kate gave a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God for that,' she said. ‘Well, I'm away home. I might just surprise myself and drop off.'

 

Even people in the government acknowledged the fine job the RAF was doing, and Winston Churchill made a speech about it in Parliament on 21 August that was
broadcast on the wireless. It was a long speech, but a few phrases seemed to sum it up for Kate.

It was stirring stuff, and just what the exhausted airmen wanted to hear. But the fighting went on, and just a few days after this, on Saturday evening, there was another raid. The main thrust of it seemed to be in Aston. All three girls were on duty, and when they were told that the wardens there were shorthanded and asked for volunteers, it was the words of that speech that encouraged Kate to put up her hand. Sally and then Susie followed her lead.

As no sirens had sounded again, many had slept through the policeman's shrill whistle, and the first they had known about the raid was the sound of the bombs falling. Mothers had struggled to dress themselves and their children and they had more or less tumbled out on to the streets. Frightened toddlers clung to their mothers' skirts, swaddled babies cried and older children rubbed their sleepy eyes and staggered as they looked wide-eyed at the scene before them. There were the crackling fires from incendiary bombs, the weaving arc
lights, piles of masonry and debris from the houses already destroyed, and the crump and crash of bombs dropping from the droning planes above them. The air was thick with the smell of brick dust, cordite, heat and smoke.

The girls could see straight away that the most important thing was to get people under cover, but the back-to-back houses did not have gardens to put any kind of shelter in, and the nearest public one was under the tennis courts in Aston Park. Kate and another warden who introduced herself as Trudy led the way there, while Sally and Susie searched the area for people still in their houses.

‘It's ever so good of you to come over like this,' said Trudy as they shepherded the people along as quickly as they were able. ‘Should be six of us, but Beattie has gone down with a chest infection. I saw her myself and she is in a bad way. And as for Babs, she got a crack on the head from a falling roof beam in an earlier do. Split her head clean open and she is in the hospital herself, and so is Chris because her boy has the whooping cough and he took a turn for the worse this afternoon and she has gone to be with him, poor little bugger. My own mother lost two with the whooping cough, but I don't know what the three of us would have done with so many people.'

‘Think nothing of it,' Kate said. ‘We all have to pull together.'

‘You're right,' Trudy said. ‘And the sooner we get this lot inside, the better I will like it, and then we can have a go at fighting them bloody fires. No point in observing the blackout with the fires lighting the whole area for them murdering buggers above.'

‘No point at all,' Kate said. And she worked with Trudy all night. Though the raid was not fast and furious, it was relentless, and the ‘All Clear' did not go until seven and a half hours later. And so it was the early hours when the weary girls got home, very glad the next day was Sunday.

However, the next night the bombers were back, this time in force, and the scream of the sirens used for the first time sent fear coursing through many a person. Neither Sally nor Kate was on duty that night, but neither could rest, and they went out into the streets. The city centre was attacked in the main, although parts of Aston also caught it, and the bottom of Slade Road was heavily bombed, and so Kate and Sally were kept busy there and, as the raid continued in its intensity, they were joined by Susie.

It was strange, Kate thought, as she helped to douse the fires: she was never afraid, despite the cacophony of noise, the throb of the planes, the boom of bombs, the sliding crashes of the disintegrating buildings, the ack-ack's response, the cries and screams from the people and the bells of the emergency services ringing frantically as they tore through the streets. And the searchlights were constantly combing the sky, illuminating the bombers releasing their instruments of death.

There were some people who didn't want to use any sort of shelter and would hide out in pantries under the stairs, and if the house was hit these people had to be dug out of the rubble. The same thing sometimes happened with those who had used Anderson shelters and thought themselves safe. If the shelter was caught in the blast, it would often collapse, burying people
inside. Some people would be dug out virtually unscathed, but other times people were injured and often burnt.

Never was Kate more grateful for her first-aid training, but this was no practice, this was for real. It was the first time Kate realized that blood had a smell all of its own or that the stench of burned human flesh was enough to turn the strongest stomach.

When the ‘All Clear' sounded, she hurried home, hoping like the others that she would be able to snatch a few hours' sleep before the alarm would peal out. And surprisingly she did sleep, only her dreams were often lurid and upsetting.

The next day they found out the extent of the damage elsewhere in the city. Much of it was in the Bull Ring. The Market Hall was hit, the roof shattered, and it was completely burned out inside. Fortunately, it being a Sunday, few people were about and no one was in the Market Hall; the night watchman, seeing the bombers heading his way, had managed to release all the animals from their cages before taking cover himself.

‘Must have been a brave man to do that,' Sally said to Kate as she read it out in the paper.

‘Must have been,' Kate agreed. ‘I think there is a lot of bravery in war situations. I mean, you are still so young, and yet you work as hard as any of us, and never show any fear, even when we are in the thick of it.'

‘You haven't time to be scared,' Sally said.

Sally was right, but Kate was still filled with respect for her and the way she was coping. The previous evening she had taken great risks in crawling into buildings in danger of collapse, searching for survivors. She
was often the only one small enough to wriggle into tiny spaces that people had managed to uncover; many had told Kate they were astounded by her courage.

‘Mind you,' Sally said, ‘I wouldn't mind a night in my own bed tonight. Do you think Jerry might give us a rest?'

‘Don't know,' Kate said, with a shrug, ‘but I wish he would.'

Alas, it was not to be, and she had barely closed her eyes when the sirens wailed a short time after midnight. Groaning, they clambered from their beds and dressed hurriedly, but because they weren't on duty and the raid didn't seem that near, they carried blankets and pillows down to the shelter and settled themselves side by side on one of the hard benches Frank had fitted to either side. They tried to get comfortable, but the corrugated iron structure sunk into the earth was cold, and so damp that condensation ran in rivulets down the walls. It was very dark, too, despite the candles Kate had brought down in her pockets, and the only positive thing to say about the shelter was that the raid was a little bit more muffled in there. ‘We must make this a little bit more comfy,' Kate said with a sudden shudder. ‘If Jerry is going to hit us like this every night, we might be forced to spend more time in here after all.'