The Girl from Station X (34 page)

She seemed to always love these spectacles in Catholic countries; I thought of the
fiestas
she had enjoyed so much when I was an infant in Spain. Perhaps with her love of ceremony it
would have suited her to have been brought up a Catholic.

After Joe had returned to his job, Anne wrote in her diary that she was enjoying Brussels so much more now she had seen it with him.

She met more Belgians who had been in the Resistance, and on 6 June – the anniversary of D-Day – when Eisenhower announced that all the troops could have the day
off in commemoration – enjoyed the Marché aux Puces. Then, just before leaving Belgium for Germany, she had a wonderful trip, first with Claude Knight to the Ardennes, followed by one
night at Yseult de Jonghe’s parents’ house, Château de Fontaine, in the village of Anthée.

I thought I was going mad with pleasure when I looked out of my window onto green woods and newly cut hay . . . the chateau is mediaeval, with turrets and a kind of
drawbridge . . . I sat in the hay and watched a large fox loping along . . . The Germans were in the chateau twice this war, first the S.S. Panzer Divisions and Rommel himself stayed there for 3
days, and later other Germans. Last war, the Crown Prince stayed there and the Visconte showed me a signed portrait of him, of which he seemed v proud and surprised me somewhat.

My mother then lapsed into one of her rhapsodic soliloquies about
how one is more at home with people of one’s own world of another nationality than with people of another
class of one’s own, our ideas and manners are far more akin, which is rather awful I suppose.
She seemed to have conveniently forgotten her diary of a few weeks earlier, when she
had attacked those of her own class for being mired in past traditions. However, on that visit to the château, despite loving its fairy-tale aspect, Anne also noted:

Mme de Jonghe was telling me all about the concentration camps, only now do I begin to realise just how awful it has been for these people . . . every day they
still hear about another one who has died from the effects of torture or lack of nourishment, a great many of them too were young people, not more than about 22. She said that the Belgians cannot
relax over the peace, because the horror still weighs so heavily upon them. Yseult was at a service yesterday for someone who had died of torture in a concentration camp . . . another family that
they know, one son died on his way home from lack of food and ill treatment and the other one is still missing. One does not realise just how ghastly it has been for them in this way until one
hears personal stories from such people as the de Jonghes – my goodness England has been lucky in some ways – this was one of the loveliest weekends I have ever spent.

One virtue of her often changing her point of view – something that used to irritate my father and me – meant that she was able to be flexible after new facts she had heard, and
after new experiences. I realised that my mother could be refreshingly open-minded.

B
y mid-June, both Anne and Joe Darling were stationed in post-war Germany. She was with Tactical Air Force (Main) 2, at Bad Eilsen, near Hanover
– the same outfit she had been with in Brussels – and Joe was at Höchst, just outside Frankfurt. On 8 June, in one of the many love letters that he wrote to her in two years, he
describes his new quarters at the IG Farben building, the offices of the chemical company that had helped Hitler and the Nazis to power and which had held the patent for Zyklon B, the gas used to
exterminate the occupants of certain concentration camps.

From his letters, it appears that he was doing Intelligence work and related information gathering. I wrote to the US State Department and found that Joe had attended the University of Berlin in
the summer of 1929; he must have retained German friends and contacts from that period and would certainly have spoken the language adequately, if not fluently.

Anne arrived in Germany on 12 June 1945, in a Dakota, with twenty-one others.

We landed at B116, otherwise Wunstof. The hangars were v. well camouflaged and hidden in the trees surrounding the airfield. The first thing I saw was people
haymaking with ox-carts and the fields were full of blue cornflowers. It all looked very prosperous and the crops appeared to be flourishing. We drove about 30 miles along very good roads, all the
people looked well-fed and well-dressed and there were no signs whatsoever of war, except for a number of lorries and carts piled high with luggage of all descriptions and people sitting on the
top. I suppose they were people returning to their houses. The fields were full of poppies in amongst the corn and the country looked very beautiful. Numbers of the women were dressed in wide
scarlet long skirts with black bodices and had white scarves over their heads, most attractive it looked as they worked in the fields as their skirts exactly matched the colour of the poppies. The
children were attractive too with their blond hair and lots of the little girls had pigtails.

At first she felt at sea in these unfamiliar and challenging circumstances.

H.Q. 2nd TAF (Main) RAF, B.L.A. (Bad Eilsen. Schaumberg-Lippe, Germany.)

June 13th 1945.

Am in an office of my own with rather an attractive view over to the mountains in the distance. It seems to rain incessantly here. It is difficult to imagine that
these people are Germans and our enemies. I feel terribly depressed and alone just now. It is hell living in the cramped space as we are at the moment for 4 days. Have never felt so cut off as I do
now. Went to an army party, the other side of Minden, the only girls were some ATS and some displaced Poles and Russians, the officers are quartered in an old schloss, rather attractive –
Minden is quite quaint. This is a queer life and no mistake. I can see it driving me crazy within a week or two if not before – depends on whether we can get around and how often we get leave
– we can’t even unpack our things yet, due to the roof of the house falling in and are living in cramped style with half our luggage in one house and half in the other – absolute
hell. We are not far from Hamelin, otherwise Hamelin of Pied Piper fame here – wd like to see it and Hannover very much. When I told McCorquodale that I was half American, she said ‘I
knew that before you told me, you look American’. I can think of nothing but America these days, I am so much happier with them than I am with English people, it has always been the same
since I went there as a child and received more kindness than I have ever met in any other country, except perhaps now, in Belgium.

In these post-war diaries Anne writes almost nothing about the actual details of her day-to-day work. She was not really half-American, except that her mother was born there, and her Aunt Dita
had married an American and her grandfather Michael had worked and lived there after leaving South America and before moving to England. But she was certainly gravitating seriously towards her
American beau, Joe. She noted that the WAAFs in TAF were not allowed to drive cars, carry revolvers, ‘mess’ with the men or go into the bar. Furious, she wrote that the RAF treated her
and the other women as
a mixture of tart and skivvy considering that we have worked for them for six years. My God, I can’t imagine how English men have been allowed to get away
with this kind of behaviour for generations and I am pretty nearly resolved to go and live in America after this war, where they are courteous, kindly and even minded towards their women and treat
them with respect.

She was certainly in the right frame of mind to have a love affair with an American. During those five months in post-war Germany, when she had so much contact with Joe, her diaries are cheerful
and positive. Besides building up her confidence, Joe made her feel safe.

She was also fascinated by what she saw around her:

June 15th.

Have been grumbling about never leaving this place and have got the Int. Section on my side about it. At the moment it is very quiet in Germany, as all the Luftwaffe
and the Army in this part are in POW camps and the only members of the armed forces who surrendered ‘entierement’ and have remained with their units under their own commanders are up in
Schleswig Holstein.

It is considered safe to wander over most of Germany at the moment, although there are some isolated bands of Russian Guerillas (who fought with the Germans) at large in the hills
and one of these attacked a farmhouse a few miles from here with m/guns 2 nights ago and stole a lot of food. Most of the Germans look at one completely blankly when you pass them in the road, but
the children sometimes wave. This place is in the province of Schaumberg-Lippe, an ancient principality and was chosen because it is one of the most undamaged parts of Germany. We went down to HQ2
Group at Detmold, the Int. Section. Driving down there was v interesting, the country being v pretty, rolling with woods. We crossed the river Weser, all the bridges have been blown up and have
been replaced by wooden bridges built by the Americans, most of the displaced persons have gone home by this time, but you still see some lorries loaded with people going along the autobahnen. The
Displaced Persons travel under the auspices of the Military Government and there are also some Germans returning home. All the women seem to work in the fields here and you see quite small flaxen
children driving the farm carts. It all appears v quiet, but they are afraid of trouble when the men begin to return home and when the cut in the rations (which is pretty drastic) begins to be
felt. It is a queer feeling to be driving through Germany as a conquering nation. One of the prettiest things here are the red tiled roofs, which are very low and a lot of the houses have wooden
beams down the walls. We passed two cemeteries with some newly dug graves, with soldiers’ steel helmets on the top. This part of the country was taken by the Americans and the bridges they
have built are named after some of their people who were killed in action. All the Germans here appear to be completely untouched by the war and going about their harvesting. I saw someone
ploughing with a donkey yesterday and you see a horse and a cow together too drawing a cart!

She still was at times volatile and moody, pondering on what the future might bring:

June 16th 1945.

One goes through terrible moods of depression here, sometimes I think I am going crazy and wonder whether I will ever be able to get out of this racket. If I thought
I should have to stay here until I was demobbed, I think I should go mad. At the same time, I like being on the continent and should hate to think I could never get back to Brussels to see my
friends there. Of course I am in love with Joe a bit, I think of him all the time and want to be with him and yet at first I found him ridiculous – life is quite
extraordinary.

All I want now is to marry somebody with whom I am in love and have two children, then I should be happy, but I am doomed to ruin my life it seems – Joe captivates me
completely and I think of no one else.

She describes an evening excursion with her colleagues to Minden that caused her to reflect on the German national character:

We climbed up through vast beech woods (no bluebells seem to grow here) but there were huge orange coloured slugs in the ground, until we came out onto the top of
the hill overlooking the Weser river and Minden and with a magnificent view right down over the valley to Bad Eilsen. The red tiled roofs were v beautiful against the green and the wooded mountains
on the side were blue and pink and grey all at once in the evening light. On the top of the hill was a huge monument to Wilhelm die Grosse, the Kaiser’s father, standing with arm upraised
surveying the valley, the monument was built of great massive stone pillars and gave one a feeling of might and primitive passions.

For the first time I began to realise why the Germans behave as they do. This is the land of vast forests, glowering over pleasant plains, forests where the voices of the Valkyrie
can be heard still if you stop to listen, it makes you understand Wagner’s music. There is a tremendous feeling of primitive instincts hidden in the forests and the country is
untamed.

On 17 June, Buster, an American friend, no doubt met first at Bushy Park, located Anne and took her to where he was stationed, on a hill above the town of Vlotho. The American soldiers there
opened a bottle of champagne in her honour, saying that she was the first British woman in their mess for a year and a half. To her surprise, after dinner she found Joe, who had been there since
lunchtime –
was terribly thrilled . . . he flattered me by telling me I was very special and superior, with wider interests than most people and that he loved me very
much.

The following day, 14 June, her boss allowed her to go out for the day with Joe and his driver, Barnes from Tennessee, to Bad Oeynhausen.

We . . . missed the bridge over the Weser and had to go a long way until we found another bridge. Practically all the bridges there are blown, so if you miss one
you have rather had it. In the same way the bridges on the autobahn are blown and there are quite a few diversions, some of which are rather rough! . . . The roads are lined mostly with apple trees
round here and a lot of their branches have been broken off by passing convoys. Sometimes you see a knocked out tank or a burnt out car, but otherwise not many signs of war. There are masses of
women working in the fields. Joe insisted on holding my hand all the way, they are quite unselfconscious about doing this in front of their drivers, but don’t do it in a town or in front of
the British!