‘I’ve just been told that it’s another fire-blitz, like December twenty-nine,’ said Moray, coming out of the office holding a handful of chits. There was a chorus of groans, and sighs.
‘They’re dropping mainly incendiary bombs, but interspersing them with high-explosive bombs, like meat in a sandwich. Most of Holborn is already in flames, and that’s where most of us are going. Also, there’s big fire in Guilford Road, on our own doorstep.’ He looked around, assessing those who were in the room, then held out a piece of paper. ‘Harris, you’re driving with Sadler. Powell, you’re attending Armstrong. Squire, take the Buick. I’ll go with you.’
He looked at me. ‘You’re on the phone tonight.’
‘I’d rather be on the road.’
Inwardly I was cursing Simon Levy. I felt perfectly well and hated the thought of being safe inside when London was again in flames.
Moray shrugged. ‘Next week is soon enough for that.’
He turned away to hold out a chit to Purvis. ‘You’re attending Halliday tonight. Fripp, take the Ford sedan. We’ll go in convoy. Squire and I will go first. Follow us closely. The warden will direct us once we’re there.’
Within minutes I was the only officer left in the station and seething with frustration. Outside, the raid had increased in intensity and the cup I’d placed on the desk vibrated noisily in its saucer. My ears felt heavy, as if I had dived deep underwater and was staying there with the pressure of heavy waters on me. Every few minutes now came the whistling, shrieks of high-explosive bombs ripping through the air and the crumping sound they made as they landed. The station rocked and shuddered as if London was experiencing an earthquake.
An hour into the raid I was startled when the door to the common room was flung open. Fripp ran in, tears streaming down her face and shrieking hysterically.
‘I can’t do it,’ she said, sobbing. ‘Moray knows I can’t. You go out there. You enjoy it. I know you do.’
‘Does Moray know you’re here?’
‘No.’ She sniffed and raised her chin, but didn’t meet my eyes. ‘But he knows I can’t be out in a raid as bad as this. You take the sedan. I’ll mind the phone.’
The telephone rang and when I picked it up a voice echoed into my ear.
‘Any spare vehicles?’
‘Only a sedan car at the moment. The rest are all out at the Guilford Street and Holborn fires. Has something happened?’
‘High-explosive shell hit Bank Underground Station. Bloomsbury is now on diversion to Bank. All of the central ambulance stations are on diversion to Bank.’ The voice, usually so calm, cracked as it said, ‘We’ve hundreds of casualties and we need as many cars and ambulances as we can muster. Send all your ambulances and cars there as soon as they return.’
I gave Fripp the message and ran down to where she had abandoned the Ford sedan in the middle of the garage. It had been donated to the station at the start of the war and I had driven it often during the past months. The once shiny paintwork was pitted and dull after months of service, but it was a reliable vehicle and comfortable to drive.
The engine roared into life when I pressed the starter and I slowly drove up the ramp towards the red glow in the street outside. The Guilford Street fire was burning seemingly out of control and it lit my way all along Woburn Place as I drove past the trees of Russell Square and the extravagance of the Russell Hotel.
The roar of plane engines was a constant drone above me, punctuated by the guns’ thunder, the scream of falling bombs and the sound of explosions. Gun flashes and exploding high explosives lit the sky like an aurora. It was like Guy Fawkes Night, and also nothing like it at all. In front of the car the searchlights struck out in crazy arcs and in their crossed beams a swarm of shining gnat-like planes moved slowly, with little puffs of what looked like cotton wool below them.
The planes followed a deadly pattern as waves of bombers dropped small bundles of incendiaries and flew off. They were followed by planes dropping high explosives. Then came more planes that dropped incendiaries. I was dismayed to see the red haze in the direction of the City, where I was heading. I could only hope that St Paul’s wasn’t in flames.
A swarm of incendiary bombs fell around my vehicle. The little phosphorous-filled cylinders hit the roof of the car with a clatter and bounced on to the road, erupting into white flashes as they flared up and then dozens of sizzling bluish-white flames illuminated the street. Dark figures flitted around with sand buckets and stirrup pumps and the flaring lights suddenly ceased. Choking smoke whirled around the dim beams of my masked headlights, and there were suspicious red glows behind the windows of too many buildings as I drove past.
I had just turned into Southampton Row when, over the thud of the guns and drone of planes, a more sinister noise could be discerned. A mosquito whine was growing louder and becoming closer to a shriek. It was a noise I had heard several times before. I jammed on the brakes and pulled over, glad of the blackout and the sedan’s concealing black paint, praying that the white cross that had been painted on the roof at the start of the war had faded enough or was covered by concealing dust. We had told the ambulance authorities that we’d rather be inconspicuous, but they had refused to allow us to paint out the white crosses. ‘Geneva Convention,’ had been the reply. ‘They can’t shoot ambulances.’ We knew better.
The screaming, tearing noise in the sky above me intensified. Two Messerschmitts were coming in low to power-dive the buildings ahead. The screech of their engines rose to a frightening crescendo. I crouched down by the steering wheel and flinched at the sound of thudding bullets hitting masonry and glass and then the road in front of and beside the sedan. Tar flecked my windows, but no bullets hit the car. The planes flew up and away, and in a few seconds were gone. I sat up and sucked in one deep breath and then another and in my mind I entered the bluebell glade. When I grasped the wheel a minute later my hands were steady.
I started the engine and continued my journey. The amount of debris on the road meant I couldn’t go fast and I was forced to divert into a side street every block or so because of the fires around High Holborn. Just as I reached Queen Victoria Street the sound of the bombers overhead seemed to diminish and fewer bombs seemed to be falling. And then, there was the shocking absence of aircraft noise above me. As I reached the barrier that marked the entrance to the incident, I heard the steady note of the All Clear.
Bank Underground was, I knew, a popular shelter. There would have been thousands of people in there. I steeled myself to cope with what was obviously a disaster and parked the sedan next to a group of ambulances, empty and awaiting their loads.
A mobile canteen was nearby, and I walked over to it. This one was run by the Salvation Army. Instead of Joan and Kitty, three ‘soldiers’ in their snappy uniforms were serving tea to what seemed to be a multitude of rescue workers, firemen and first-aid workers. I refused a cup of tea and asked if they knew where the Incident Officer or a warden was, or failing that if they could direct me to the mobile first-aid post.
‘The Incident Officer’s awfully busy, but the first-aid van is over there, off to the left.’ She pointed to a spot obscured by smoke and I set off.
My masked torch showed me enough of the potholes and debris to allow safe passage. The last thing I needed was Dr Simon Levy being called in to treat me for a turned ankle. It was Saturday night, though. He was probably dancing with red-lipped Kitty at the Paramount. And what if he is? I told myself sternly. It’s not your business, Celia. And then I remembered that the Paramount Dance Hall was on Tottenham Court Road, and I sent up a quick prayer that it had not been hit, because I had liked Kitty and Joan and it was horrible to think of people being killed while dancing.
Like all major incidents, this one was a hive of frenetic activity in the firelight. Men and women were running and shouting. Firemen’s hoses hissed and wriggled as they sprayed water on flames. Water trickled along the road in thin rivulets that reflected the rosy firelight and turned the smashed streets into muddy
tracks. Cranes had been brought in and were lifting large pieces of masonry, directed by shouts from heavy-rescue men. Teenaged messenger boys whizzed by on their bicycles, their eager young faces set and determined as they dodged the debris to carry messages between the wardens. A couple of stretcher-bearers passed me, carrying an unconscious man whose face was sticky with blood and whose clothing was in tatters, followed by another pair carrying a woman who was conscious and crying out in gulping sobs.
I picked my way through the water and rubble and mud, until I was brought to a halt by the scene before me. I gazed, shocked, at Bank Junction. It had been where nine busy London streets converged in front of the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange. Now it was an immense crater containing great slabs of roadway and lumps of rock enmeshed with twisted iron girders, lamp posts and the remains of a traffic island. Fiercely burning fires in the buildings around it bathed the scene in the pink of a shepherd’s delight sunset, but firelight glow could not disguise the horror of what had happened earlier that night.
‘What—?’ I turned to a man, obviously part of a heavy-rescue squad, who had paused to wipe his face with a grubby handkerchief.
‘Looks like a bomb somehow got into the station and exploded underground.’ His voice was brusque, and sounded raspy. ‘The blast lifted up the whole roadway and then it dropped back again. Problem is working out how to get through the mass of concrete lying between us and those in the tunnels.’ He looked at my uniform. ‘You want the first-aid station?’
‘I can’t seem to locate it.’
‘Behind you. They parked the van in Poultry.’
As I retraced my steps, stumbling on the rubble on the road, snatches of conversation came to me through the smoke.
‘They must have thought they was safe.’ The voice floated out from somewhere over to the side. ‘All them people. Must’ve thought it was safe as houses, sheltering down there.’
‘Just goes to show,’ said another voice. ‘If the bomb’ as yer name on it, yer a gonner. No matter what ye do, yer still a gonner.’
The mobile first-aid post was hard to miss once I knew which street it was parked in, because it was a large furniture removal van that had been turned into a travelling hospital. A doctor was inside, stitching wounds with the aid of one nurse while a second nurse sorted the patients into those needing an ambulance and those who could go in cars. She looked up as I came closer.
‘Ambulance or car?’
‘Car. I can take four.’
‘Oh, good. All of these are ready for transfer. Take your pick.’
She nodded towards a small crowd of people who were standing or sitting on makeshift chairs near the van. They were bloodied and had the dazed look of those who couldn’t quite work out what had happened to them, but knew it had been dreadful. Around each left wrist was a handwritten tag, on which was written the name, address, place of injury and a summary of the wounds. I chose four patients and we slowly walked together to the car.
There was no point taking them to hospital, because the hospitals were reserved for the severely injured. Instead I drove them through detours and roundabout routes to a first-aid post that occupied a corner of a vast underground casualty depot near the river. After I dropped them off I drove back to the horror that had been Bank Underground Station to pick up more wounded. And over the next five hours this journey was repeated over and over again, until I could have driven the route blindfolded.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I parked in what had become ‘my’ spot, next to the Salvation Army tea car, and walked to the mobile first-aid station to collect another group of sitting wounded. As I picked my way through the rubble, the fluting voice of a child cut through the dust and the smoke.
‘Hitler won’t make me cry.’ The declaration ended on what sounded suspiciously like a sob. ‘He won’t.’
A voice I knew answered. ‘Good for you. Now this may sting a little.’ Simon laughed. ‘A friend of mine says I shouldn’t say that, and I should be truthful. You’re such a brave girl that you deserve the truth. This will sting. But if Hitler won’t make you cry, I don’t think a little iodine will.’
A friend of mine?
The yelp was muted, as if emitted through gritted teeth. ‘Didn’t hurt a bit,’ she said.
When I rounded the corner Simon was sitting on a box outside the mobile first-aid station bandaging the arm of a girl who looked to be around ten years of age. Her face was bloodied but she stood calmly as he wrapped the cloth around her thin white arm. As I drew closer the smell of the iodine he had put on the wound mingled with that of the thick smoke from the burning buildings around us.
He looked up as I walked towards them, nodded to me and smiled at the child. ‘Here comes your lift to the first-aid station. Mrs Ashwin will take you there in her big black car.’
The girl swung around and looked me up and down. ‘I didn’t cry,’ she said.
‘Good for you,’ I replied and gave her a smile. ‘We’ll be off in a few minutes, once I have a couple more patients to come with us.’
‘My name is Sally,’ she said. ‘Gosh, you’re pretty.’
‘Thank you.’
‘My mum’s gone to hospital,’ she volunteered. ‘But Dr Levy says that they’ll get Aunty Patty to pick me up from the first-aid depot. I’m being very brave. Mum told me I had to be.’
‘Good girl,’ I said, exchanging glances with Simon. He gave me a slight smile and a nod, and I took it to mean that Sally’s mum would make it.
‘I thought you were supposed to be on light duties,’ Simon said to me.
‘Needs must, when the Devil drives,’ I replied, and he rolled his eyes.
Sally walked over and took my hand. She stood quietly next to me as a man in a dusty overcoat brought a thin elderly woman to Simon. Her face was powdered white with plaster dust and the elaborately curled wig she wore was askew.
‘Mrs Goldman, isn’t it?’ said Simon, ‘I’m sorry to see you’ve been hurt. Is there any pain?’
She replied in a language that sounded like German.
‘English please,’ said Simon, glancing up at the man who had accompanied her.
‘Mam, you know we speak English here,’ he said. His accent was pure East End. He said to Simon, ‘My mother hurt her shoulder. Falling masonry. It was bloody mayhem down there.’
‘Simon Levy,’ said the old woman, in a thin gasping voice. ‘Your brother died. Such a lovely boy.’
‘Mam,’ said the man impatiently. ‘Hush.’
‘He died in November,’ said Simon evenly. ‘It was very sad. Where does it hurt?’
After examining her and giving her morphine Simon wrote on the card around her wrist, and called to me, ‘She can go with you to the first-aid depot.’
He turned to the next patient, a woman in a fur coat.
With the assistance of her son, the old lady walked over to me. Sally was still grasping my hand in a hot, moist grip and shrank back a little as the woman approached. Mrs Goldman stared at me for a good minute and then said something in the German-sounding language.
Behind me, Simon gave a short bark of laughter, but Sally gazed at her wide-eyed. ‘Is that German? Are you a spy?’
‘Not German,’ said her son. ‘Yiddish.’
‘What did she say?’ I asked.
‘She thinks you are Jewish.’
‘I don’t have that honour,’ I said, bewildered.
Mrs Goldman had a dazed look that I associated with shock, so I simply smiled at her.
My fourth and last patient was a woman in her thirties, who wore a very good fur coat over a smart woollen outfit. Many shelterers wore their best clothes to the underground in case a bomb hit their home and destroyed all their possessions. The woman seemed unhurt, but she had a wide-eyed, unfocused stare that worried me, and she seemed confused.
‘I’m Mrs Whitely,’ she said. ‘I do feel queer. I think I’m going to die.’
I made the usual soothing noises. ‘Dr Levy has checked yo
u over and he thinks you’re well enough for the first-aid centre. You’re not going to die, Mrs Whitely. Now, hold hands with Sally here, and with Mrs Goldman. Mr Goldman, please take your mother’s hand. It’s rather schoolyardish, I know, but it means we’ll all keep together. The sedan is a good hundred yards from here and it’s rather dark.’
Sally’s grip on my hand increased as we groped our way through the controlled chaos of the bomb site. I used my torch to point out obstacles on the muddy ground, assisted by the light of Mr Goldman’s torch. We had walked about half the distance when Sally shrieked and pulled hard on my hand. Mrs Whitely had fallen.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ Sally’s voice held a note of hysteria. Mr Goldman came over to her, crouched down and spoke to the girl in a low, comforting tone.
I knelt by Mrs Whitely, and gave her a cursory examination by torchlight. She was conscious, but her breathing was rapid and her eyes were fluttering.
‘Oh, I do feel queer,’ she repeated, and sighed. ‘I don’t want to die.’
‘You are not going to die,’ I said, looking around. I would need to ask a rescue worker to carry her back to the van to be assessed.
Then a voice I knew came out of the darkness, a deep voice, born in the Seven Dials slums. ‘Looks like you’ve got a bit of a problem, Duchess.’ Squire knelt beside me and muttered, ‘I’ve lost blinking Armstrong. We was down there together – down in the bombed station. It’s a right mess, and he took it hard. He’s only a nipper, really.’ He smiled at Mrs Whitely. ‘Feeling poorly, love? How’s about I carry you back to the doc?’
She managed a smile. ‘Not just yet, if you don’t mind. Let me catch my breath.’
So he knelt beside her and took her head on to his lap and rubbed her hands. ‘Yer hands are cold, love. I’ll warm them for you.’ Squire looked up at me. ‘Best take your lot to the car and get them to the depot. I’ll see that she gets to Doc Levy or Doc Hamble in the van.’
I nodded, and took hold of Sally’s cold little hand. Mrs Goldman took the other and we set off. No one spoke as we trudged to the car. Beside it, the mobile canteen was like a beacon of warmth and good cheer. I said to Mr Goldman, ‘Look, I really want to check on Mrs Whitely before we go. Could you ask the tea-car ladies to give everyone a cuppa? I’ll be back in a minute.’
Ambulance Girls Under Fire Page 14
