Ambulance Girls Under Fire

by Deborah Burrows

  Whatever was I – Lily Brennan, schoolteacher from Western Australia – doing here, crawling into the ruins of a bombed house, playing the hero, when the children were most likely already dead?

  But what could I do? Really, there was no choice.

  I had arrived with my ambulance partner, David Levy, to find a familiar scene of devastation, bleached to aquatint by the moonlight. Piles of rubble stood in the middle of what had been a row of Victorian dwellings. They towered in gaunt ruin against the sky, between shapeless wrecks of masonry that showed the signs of a direct hit. Men’s voices, brisk and business-like, emerged from the gloom, between whistles and the occasional shout. Short flashes of torchlight appeared and vanished in the darkness, as rescue workers sought doggedly for signs of life in the ruins.

  When I emerged from the ambulance, the warden had looked me up and down as if I were a prize cow at the Royal Show. As he did so, the letters on his tin helmet had stood out brightly in the moonlight: ‘ARP’. They stood for air raid precautions, and I had felt inappropriate laughter bubble up in my chest when I got a good look at him. How could this small man protect anyone from the destruction London had suffered in the past five weeks of air raids? And yet there was a quiet authority in his slow nod to me, and in the way he had then turned to throw a cryptic comment to the men standing behind him.

  ‘She’ll do; she’s thin enough.’

  Levy, who had come to stand beside me, laughed at that, saying, ‘I think she might prefer to be described as slim.’

  There had been no answering smile from the warden. Instead, he gestured at the ruins of what had been a house. ‘We’ve got two infants buried under the rubble there,’ he said. His clipped, precise voice did not at all obscure the horror of those words. ‘At least one’s alive – or was alive until a half-hour ago – because we’ve heard a baby crying. We understand they were left sheltering under a solid kitchen table before the bomb hit. Problem is, the place is just holding together. If we disturb the site too much it’ll bring the rest down on top of them. It looks like someone slim – as slim as you, miss – could squeeze through. You’d need to crawl through to the kitchen at the back, find the kids and bring them out. Think you can do that?’

  Levy knew I had a horror of tightly enclosed spaces. ‘I’ll go,’ he had said. ‘I’m good at squeezing through ruins. I’ve done it before.’

  ‘There isn’t the room. You’d never get in.’ The warden sized me up with another quick glance and challenged me with his eyes.

  I had always been small for my age. Even now, at twenty-five, I could still be mistaken for a schoolgirl. I always suspected that was because I had been born too early and never really caught up. I was so small when I was born that I really should have died, like the three tiny babies who had slipped away in my mother’s arms in the years before I arrived in the world. And that was why my mother took one look at my little wrinkled body and turned her face from me, unwilling to engage in another losing battle for a child’s life. That I survived was due to my father. He was a fighter, and he fought for me.

  A woman who had helped at my birth told him the best chance to keep me alive was to carry me next to his skin, where his strong heartbeat would teach my heart to keep beating when it forgot. So Dad fashioned a pouch for his tiny joey and for two months, until I could suckle and had grown into my skin, he carried me everywhere, pressed against his heart, just as the woman had said. I was no bigger than his hand and he fed me my mother’s milk from an eyedropper, like a little bird. When I was old enough to hear the story he told me that the moment he saw me he knew I would live, because he could see that I was a fighter too.

  Most people cannot see that in me. Because I am small and slender people often mistakenly assume that I am fragile. Not the warden.

  ‘I think you could get to the children,’ he said to me. ‘Get them out. Willing to chance it, miss?’

  I had smiled and said, ‘Of course.’ What else could I do?

  Now on my hands and knees, crawling over the rough, debris-strewn floor, I took comfort in the thought that, after five weeks of driving an ambulance in this relentless Blitz, I had learned to push fear aside when attending an incident.

  Served me right for being smug. Without any warning, my torch dimmed and failed. Darkness enfolded me. My heart thumped painfully and my chest tightened. I tried to breathe my way out of the almost overwhelming panic, but my breaths were shallow and too rapid, and my thoughts would not stay still, so that I couldn’t settle into a plan of action. Snatches of a song, a poem, memories of home came unbidden and left as quickly to resolve into one, dreadful realisation. I’m entombed. I’ll die here, alone in the darkness, far from home.

  Then there was anger at my own defeatist thoughts. I pushed them away and shook the torch violently, once, twice, and on the third shake it flickered back into life. As the beam strengthened I exulted in the simple fact of light.

  My slow crawl began again and optimism reasserted itself. I would find the children alive and I would get us all out of here. They would probably be afraid of me, with my dirty face and goggly eye shields under the steel hat, but in my three years as a country schoolteacher I had learned how to soothe frightened children. The important thing is to keep calm, speak with authority and show a sense of humour. I used the same tactics in dealing with the injured adults I transported in my ambulance.

  The air was dusty, and I sneezed. That immediately reminded me of home and I let my thoughts drift into childhood memory, anything to take my mind off this interminable crawl into darkness. It was always dusty in Kookynie, the tiny gold-mining settlement on the edge of Western Australia’s Great Victoria Desert where I grew up. It was dusty also in the Wheatbelt town of Duranillin, where I had taught in a one-room school and saved the money to make my escape to Europe. My students had been bush kids, independent, cheeky and often rambunctious. I had loved teaching them, probably because I had been just like them myself – until my mother took note of that fact and sent me to boarding school in Perth.

  ‘Lily needs to learn how to live in society. She’s thirteen and it’s time she learned how to act like a lady,’ she had said, as if Perth were some cosmopolitan centre of civilisation, and her own grandfather had not been convicted in 1850 of stealing a cow, and transported to Western Australia for ten years of penal servitude.

  My mother hated people to know of her grandfather’s convict past, but I was proud of what he went on to do with his life after such troubled beginnings. After receiving his ticket of leave, he became a government schoolmaster and a respected member of the community. His son became a bank manager and his grandson – my Uncle Charles – was a judge. Life is often ironic in Australia.

  A sharp pain in my knee brought me back to the present as I bumped into something that gave a loud crack. My entire body jerked, and I froze, heart pounding, praying I had not disturbed the precarious jumble around me.

  Silence and, except for the narrow band of my torchlight, darkness. I sneezed again and I crawled a few feet more, slowly and more carefully. I wished I were not so alone. My hands were sweaty and sticky inside the thick gloves. I stopped to stifle yet another sneeze as best I could, and I gazed at the destruction exposed by my torchlight.

  Splinters of cabinetry, shards of glass and crockery, and pieces of plaster with torn wallpaper attached. The wallpaper was a cheerful yellowy colour scattered with a design of orange berries, the sort of paper that would brighten up a kitchen. Small children would barely notice it as they drank their milk and ate their meals. It would have been there in the background in a room they had thought was as permanent as the Rock of Gibraltar, but was now a shattered mess.

  ‘Hullo? Are you there?’ I called out again, making my voice calm and firm. ‘Please tell me if you are. I’m Lily and I’m here to help you.’

  There was no reply. If the children were alive I did not blame them for hiding from a stranger who was waving a torch around in the ruins of their lives. It would be better
if I could call them by name, but I did not know their names. So I listened hard for anything that might be a sign as to their presence: a whimper, a sob, a moan. Silence pressed in, broken by creaks and groans from the settling ruins. I could not see the kitchen table they were supposed to have sheltered beneath.

  It occurred to me to recite some poetry. My students had loved Edward Lear’s poetry, which is nonsensical enough to surprise and delight small children. A frightened child might be intrigued.

  ‘Those who watch at that midnight hour,’ I declaimed, ‘From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower, Cry, as the wild light passes along,’ – and here I let the torchlight play around me – ‘“The Dong! – the Dong! The wandering Dong through the forest goes! The Dong! the Dong! The Dong with a luminous Nose!”’

  ‘That’s silly.’

  It came distinctly, the piping voice of a small child. Oh, God, please let them both be all right. Oh, God, please let them be together and unhurt.

  ‘It is silly, isn’t it?’ I said into the darkness. ‘Are you hiding? You’re doing a super job at it if you are.’

  ‘I’m waiting for Mummy. You go away you Dong.’

  ‘Your mummy sent me to get you,’ I said. ‘She’s waiting for you outside. She wants you to come with me.’

  It was a lie, and I hated to use it. They had told me the mother had gone off in another ambulance. I didn’t even know if she was still alive.

  I shone the torch in the direction of the voice and from the jumble of wood and plaster a small white face squinted into the light. It belonged to a bright-eyed little boy, about three years old, who was hugging a big torch to his chest. I supposed he had turned it off when he heard me approaching. Grey dust coated his hair and the blue striped pyjamas he was wearing; he seemed to be in a cave, until I realised that he was in fact under the kitchen table. It had saved him when the walls came down on top of it, but I wondered how much longer the table would hold with the ton of rubble it bore.

  The boy shook his head. ‘I’m looking after Emily, our baby. She’s asleep.’

  Oh, God, please let her not be dead. I had seen too many dead children in the past weeks.

  ‘It’s all right, sweetheart, I’ve come to take you both to Mummy,’ I said as I crawled across the rubble towards him.

  It wasn’t until I was almost at his sanctuary that my torchlight revealed the baby lying on her back on a blanket in front of him. She looked about nine months old and was, just as her brother had said, fast asleep. With a sense of wonder I watched the quick and regular rise and fall of her chest.

  ‘Emily cried and cried,’ he said. ‘But she’s asleep now, you mustn’t wake her up.’

  I reached out a hand to the infant and the boy immediately tried to push me away. ‘Mummy said to wait here. Go away you Dong.’

  I backed off a little. ‘How are you, old chap,’ I asked. ‘Are you hurt anywhere?’

  He shook his head and shrank back, but said nothing more as I gently felt along Emily’s body to see if there were any indications of injury. She woke as I did so, and gave a high mewling cry of surprise. Her little body was firm to the touch, but her eyes were sunken and she seemed lethargic. I assumed she was dehydrated and prayed that was the worst.

  I reached into the hiding place and picked her up, tucking the blanket around her. Her arms wrapped around my neck in a tight, trusting grip that brought hot tears to my eyes. I had thought I was hardened after seeing so much horror and I felt oddly happy to know that tears could still come.

  ‘Leave Emily alone.’

  The boy’s voice was sharp, imperative; he was close to hysteria. He was also confused and probably hungry and thirsty and certainly terrified.

  ‘You’ve been such a brave boy,’ I said. ‘And you’ve looked after Emily so well. Your mummy will be very proud of you. But it’s time for us all to go now. I’ll carry Emily. Can you crawl behind me while I carry Emily?’

  ‘Like a baby?’ He sounded unenthusiastic. I could not force him to come out, but I could not carry both of them, and neither could I leave him behind.

  ‘No. Like a—’ My mind was blank. I hugged Emily closer. She had my neck in a stranglehold, but she was too quiet and it worried me. The creaks and moans of the settling ruins above us worried me more, though. The panic I had kept at bay was threatening to engulf me again and I needed to get out. Now.

  ‘Like a train,’ I said, sparked by a sudden, ancient memory of the game I had played with my younger brother, Ben. ‘Let’s play trains. I’m the engine and Emily is the driver, but we need a coal truck. Could you be a coal truck, d’you think? Grab my ankles and we’ll set off.’

  With my right arm tight around baby Emily and gripping the torch, I cautiously turned myself around to face the way I had come. A loud sob sounded behind me. He was close to losing control; I was taking his sister and he was terrified of being alone in the dark. We’re all frightened of that, I wanted to tell him, in a war we’re all afraid of the dark.

  I shone my torch down and back towards my feet, dipping Emily as I did so. ‘Quick, grab my ankles. The train must leave on time, but it can’t run without coal.’

  Instead he switched on his own torch.

  ‘Leave your torch,’ I said, ‘and take hold of my ankles. Mummy will pick it up later.’

  He looked very uncertain.

  I raised my voice and made a train sound. ‘Woo-oo-oo. All aboard that’s going aboard. The train to Euston station is ready to go.’

  ‘You should say that it’s about to depart,’ he whispered in a mournful little voice.

  I repeated obediently, ‘The train to Euston station is about to depart. All aboard. Where’s my coal truck? Unless there’s coal for the engine we won’t get far. Is there a coal truck around here?’

  ‘I’ll be the coal truck,’ he said, and I heard the note of excitement in his voice and knew I had him.

  Small hands grabbed my ankles. I turned the torch to light our way and slowly, painfully, we began to crawl through the debris of his shattered home, puff, puff, puffing as we went.

  ‘Woo-woo,’ I said. The smell of dust and charred wood and soot was almost suffocating and I coughed.

  He sneezed.

  ‘My knees hurt,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Not much further now.’ My knees felt as if they were on fire, and baby Emily was becoming unbearably heavy in the crook of my arm, which was cramping painfully. When I tried to shift her weight a little she whimpered.

  ‘Let’s put more coal into the engine, shall we?’

  ‘Engines can’t run without coal,’ he whispered and held tighter to my ankles, a dragging weight behind me as I crawled.

  I felt my heart jump when at last I saw the circle of light ahead of me. It was not daylight yet, of course. They would have set up arc lights and erected a tarpaulin to hide them from the bombers. We crawled towards the light and now I could hear the generator. But as they pulled us out I heard a more ominous sound, the growling roar of planes overhead and the heavy thump of ack-ack guns. The raiders had returned.

  FURTHER READING

  I could not have written the novel without recourse to the work done by others. As always, I acknowledge my debt to the digitised newspapers on the National Library of Australia site, Trove.nla.gov.au. And I spent many happy hours in the Bodleian Library Upper Reading Room devouring information about the Blitz. The following books stand out as invaluable:

  Beardmore, George, Civilians at War: Journals 1938–1946, London: John Murray, 1984.

  De Courcy, Anne. 1939: The Last Season: London, Phoenix, 2003

  De Courcy, Anne. Diana Mosley: London, Chatto & Windus, 2003

  De Courcy, Anne. Debs at War 1939–1945: How Wartime Changed Their Lives. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005.

  Freedman, Jean R. Whistling in the Dark: Memory and Culture in Wartime London. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.

  Gardiner, Juliet. The Blitz: The British Under Attack. London: Harperpress, 2010.<
br />
  Harris, Jonathan Mark and Deborah Oppenheimer. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport: London, Bloomsbury, 2000

  Hodgson, Vere, Few Eggs and No Oranges: A Diary Showing How Unimportant People in London and Birmingham Lived Throughout the War Years. London, Persephone, 1999.

  Hutton, Mike. Life in 1940s London: Stroud, Amberley Publishing, 2003

  Nicholson, Harold. Diaries and Letters, London: Fontana, 1969–1971.

  Nixon, Barbara. Raiders Overhead. London: Lindsay Drummond, 1943.

  Raby, Angela, The Forgotten Service: Auxiliary Ambulance Station 39, Weymouth Mews. London. Battle of Britain International, 1999.

  Sweet, Matthew. The West End Front: The Wartime Secrets of London’s Grand Hotels. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 2011

  Ziegler, Philip. London at War 1939–1945. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks, as always, to my wonderful husband, Toby.

  Thanks also to my ever-supportive Australian agent, Sheila Drummond, and Anna Carmichael in London. And to the team at Ebury Press, especially Gillian Green, Katie Seaman and Katie Sunley. Also to Justinia Baird for the lovely cover and Justine Taylor for her sympathetic editing.

  Thanks to my dear friends in Perth and in Oxford – you know who you are. And to Lisa Fagin Davis. A special thank you to my Australian GP, Sue Rogers, who has always been willing to answer my medical questions in each of my novels. In this one she gave me insight into the effects of concussion and the treatment of wounds in the pre-penicillin age.

  Finally, I dedicate this novel to all the men and women who gave their time and sometimes their lives, to help others in the Blitz. The word agape is not enough to encompass their bravery and selflessness.

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