The Daughter of Victory Lights

by Kerri Turner

  As it was a cloudy night, they were less likely to encounter any aircraft and the women were taking it in turns to sleep between two-hour stretches of guard duty. Earlier they’d taken out two planes, but the adrenaline of action had long since left them. The birds, which tended to crash about at the sudden light and noise, were silent once more, and Evelyn was looking forward to pulling her khakis off and falling into her cot when her shift was over.

  She weaved her way between two of the sleeping huts, careful not to trample the winter pansies Gussie had brought from home and planted to give a semblance of comfort. The flowers were a strangely feminine touch against the violence of their activities, and one which, in spring, would be joined by a herb garden to supplement their rations. Evelyn couldn’t wait. As if on cue, her stomach rumbled. She gave the softest of laughs, heedful not to split the calm air with too much noise. She had never known she could be this kind of person: living off rations, dodging bullets from aircraft, calmly patrolling while knowing every turn of a corner could be the last thing she did. Women were supposed to be too delicate for such work; that’s what they’d always been told. Evelyn didn’t feel delicate though. She felt strong. Strong, and hungry.

  Her heavy-soled boots crunched the frosted grass, and she paused, exhaling a white cloud. She hunched her shoulders so the tufts of her Teddy Bear—the thick fur jacket worn over her uniform in autumn and winter to keep her from freezing—brushed her jawline. Her lips were beginning to crack. It wouldn’t be long before she’d have to wear long johns under her trousers.

  She kept walking, behind the huts now, eyes scanning the hedgerows for any sign of movement which might not belong to bird or night animal. She crouched down, tucking her makeshift truncheon in her armpit, eyes looking left to right as she pushed the cuffs of her trousers further into her black boots. She should have put her gaiters on.

  In another fifteen minutes it would be time to crank the generator over again to keep it ready. Evelyn was just thinking of making her way over to it when the alarm sounded.

  The effect was instant. She heard feet hitting floorboards inside the huts, but was already around the corner, running to the searchlight, using her teeth to pull back the removable hoods of her mittens and uncover her fingertips so she could get a good grip on the freezing metal.

  The other guard on duty was already there, and the rest were quick to join them. They had pulled their battledress on over their winceyette blue-striped pyjamas. Gussie was the last to get to her station, jamming her steel helmet over pink hair curlers. Already the question was being asked: ‘Friendly or enemy?’

  This time, the answer was ‘friendly’.

  ‘Looks damaged. Let’s get our lad home, girls,’ the Corporal said.

  Evelyn worked her arm, elevating the beam of light. Instead of locking on to the plane’s location and relaying messages to the gunners, the women used Morse code to flash the alphabet letter the nearest aerodrome had been assigned. Then, altering the light’s position once more, they pointed the beam in the direction of that aerodrome.

  The plane turned, its distant whine making Evelyn mutter under her breath, encouraging it to stay in the air while it used their light as a flight path.

  It was impossible to tell if the plane made it safely back. Their eyes followed it as long as they could, keeping the beam straight and steady long after it had disappeared from their view. It was the best they could do.

  The women chose to believe the plane was successful in its landing, and this time both Evelyn and the Lance Corporal joined in the celebration. This time, to the best of their knowledge, they had saved a life instead of taken one.

  As sunlight began to soften the menacing shapes around them into a recognisable landscape, the women removed their steel helmets—icy to the touch—and relaxed their positions. Daylight hours were the closest to safety they ever got.

  Evelyn switched her duty boots for her off-duty brown loafers, then checked the carbon rods. It was part of her job to be able to answer how many burning hours were left in the rods at any given moment. Making a mental note, she began to methodically clean the reflector. Her fingers were stiff and she couldn’t wait to button the little hoods of her mittens back over them.

  The number five woman came over to help, wanting to look busy so she wouldn’t be roped into helping empty the latrine pans or the kitchen grease trap by the women who were rostered to do it that day. She still wore the radio set as it had to be manned at all hours, day and night.

  ‘Blimey, I’ve worked up a hunger,’ she said, rubbing her hands together and scrunching her shoulders up against the cold. ‘When’s the ration lorry coming again? We’re living on scraps here.’

  ‘Afraid it’s not today,’ Evelyn replied. ‘Maybe you can bribe something from the dispatch rider after he’s given us the latest plane-identifying markings? He sometimes hangs around for a chat.’

  The radio operator grinned. ‘Trouble is I don’t have anything worth giving in return.’

  As they finished their work on the light, the Lance Corporal came up to them, her chin tucked low into the fur of her Teddy Bear.

  ‘Either of you seen the Lister Twister?’ she asked.

  ‘Gussie? No. Why?’

  The Lance Corporal glanced both ways then moved closer. Her voice was so low that a nearby bird almost drowned it out. ‘She’s disappeared. Taken some supplies with her.’

  ‘You don’t mean …’ Evelyn whispered. The word hovered in the air, unspoken. Deserter. ‘What did she take?’

  ‘Two of the washing up pails. Nothing else that we can tell.’

  Evelyn and the radio operator exchanged looks. What would Gussie want with pails in this near-freezing weather? It hardly made sense.

  As the hours went by and Gussie didn’t reappear, it seemed likely they would need to radio out to have a ‘token man’ come to start the generator for them that night. Evelyn didn’t like to think what the ATS might do to Gussie if and when they managed to track her down. She distracted herself by tidying her already immaculate hut, then took off her uniform, hung it neatly on the two hooks provided, and crawled into bed where she tried to keep warm beneath the regulation blankets.

  An hour later, she was startled awake by a sing-song yell. ‘Come and get it, girls!’

  Evelyn’s head was groggy, but her body was trained to move on command and she leaped from her bed, reaching for her helmet. Registering that it was still light, she changed direction and instead pulled back the curtain covering her hut window. Her skin was erupting in goosebumps but she smiled when she saw Gussie, her expression triumphant, the stolen pails dangling from her mitten-clad hands.

  Evelyn exited her hut to find her regiment sisters also rubbing the sleep from their eyes and grumbling insults at Gussie, who didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Bring your mugs, girls! We’ve a feast of fresh milk right here.’

  Suddenly all were awake and crowding around Gussie, looking in the pails. There was a race to see who could be the first to dip her enamel mug in the fine layer of cream that was beginning to freeze on the top.

  When it was Evelyn’s turn, she threw her head back and gulped the milk down, rivulets running from the corners of her mouth. She caught them with her fingertips, which she licked with relish.

  ‘Where on earth did you get this?’ she asked.

  Gussie shrugged. ‘We’re surrounded by fields. Figured if I walked long enough I was bound to find some cows.’

  ‘And you just milked them yourself?’ Evelyn asked incredulously, knocking her mug on the edge of the now half-empty pail.

  ‘I’m a farmer’s daughter. Did it all the time before the war.’

  They drank enough that their stomachs swelled and pressed against their uniforms, all the while trying not to think guiltily of the person who owned those cows.

  Gussie, thrilled with the reaction she’d got, made a solemn promise to set out again soon, before the cows’ milk diminished or dried up for the winter months. Sh
e hoped she might even find a chicken or two to steal, which the Lance Corporal, Corporal and Sergeant pretended not to hear.

  More full than she’d been in weeks, Evelyn gave a contented sigh and looked at the sky. There was still at least an hour of daylight left. The smart thing would be to make the most of it. Waving to the others, she went back into her sparsely furnished hut and rinsed her cup in the shallow metal sink that had only a cold water supply. Checking her uniform was still in order, she stepped over her gasmask box to get into her hard cot.

  When she awoke, it would all start over again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1944: Portsmouth, England

  ‘Coming with us? Beeker’s got a tip on a place that’s full of ladies just waiting for us to give them stockings, cigarettes and a whirl around the dance floor.’ The voice belonged to Sanders, a sergeant in Flynn’s unit. He was running his fingers over his olive drab side cap as though to bring attention to it.

  Flynn grinned. The English ladies did love the GI uniform. He smoothed his black worsted wool tie, checking it was still neatly tucked between the buttons of his collared shirt.

  After enrolling in the army, Flynn had been sent to Fort Warren in Wyoming for training. They’d told him he was to become part of the ‘GR outfit’, but had declined an explanation of what this meant. The troops had guessed guerrilla recruits. They couldn’t have been further from the truth if they’d guessed gerbil ranchers. It had turned out they were to make up the 607th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company: cleaning up the aftermath of death instead of directly targeting the enemy. Many of the men immediately applied for transfers, all of which had been denied. Flynn didn’t bother. No one wanted this job, but someone had to do it, and the army wasn’t going to wait for volunteers that would never come.

  Training had consisted of the regular marching, drilling, handling weapons and carrying out infantry manoeuvres. But it had also involved building model cemeteries to understand the conditions of the battle terrain they’d be scouring, reading Field Manual 10-63 cover to cover, and ‘specialised conditioning training’: a sanitised name for being sent to Denver to observe an autopsy. Many of the men had vomited, and one had even fainted. Flynn had felt himself go still all over, but forced himself not to look away, knowing he would need to become used to such sights if he was going to do his job effectively.

  In 1943, America had begun sending troops into Britain. Some in preparation for the invasion they were sure was coming; others to be part of US air bases which would assist the RAF in targeted attacks on Germany and northern France. Flynn had first arrived in Oxford, a city which had so far escaped any bombing. He’d then been transferred to a base near Bristol for intense land and water training; his work had kept him so busy that he’d never ventured into the city itself. Now stationed in Slapton Sands, he’d travelled to Portsmouth for a rare night out. What he was confronted with was the wreckage of civilian lives caught up in a war none of them had asked for. Every now and then Flynn passed a gap where a building—or two or three—had once been. What must it have been like to be under barrage for all these years? Portsmouth hadn’t had it as bad as London, or so the locals said. It made him question if the inhabitants of the bigger city ever had time to clean up after a bomb hit, or if the best they could do was salvage what they could from the rubble and clear enough space for life to continue on until the next bomb blast. Were there people there whose job, like his, was to find remains and try to identify them so families weren’t left wondering? He supposed so. He supposed someone had been doing that job for years.

  He shuddered, looking forward to a drink and a dance. He badly needed both.

  Sanders led the group of eight to his ‘sure thing’—a pub with blacked-out windows. They jostled to see who could open the door and be first into the music. Sanders won the fight, but a second later he was stepping back and letting the door close on the brief burst of cigarette smoke and Cab Calloway that had greeted them.

  ‘Hey now, what’s going on?’ one of the men asked.

  Sanders gestured for them to follow him down the almost-dark street. He took them nearly a block, past a closed millinery, a row of pockmarked storefronts, and a late-night café.

  A young girl stood in the doorway of the latter, arms wrapped around a soft toy, one knee-high sock falling loose around her ankle. Flynn hesitated. Did she belong to someone inside the café? Or had she snuck out to enviously look through the windows at the food she couldn’t have?

  The rest of the men were still moving, and with one last look at the girl’s tousled blonde head, Flynn went with them.

  Sanders stopped and faced the group, brows meeting in the centre of his forehead. ‘The blacks have beat us to it. They’re in there.’

  This caused a ripple of noise to run through their small crowd. American troops operated under segregation, and rivalry was strong if somewhat one-sided. The black GIs had proved more popular with the locals, who said they were less flashy with their cash and had better manners. An uncomfortable voice in Flynn’s head told him this might be true. Hadn’t they just been talking of doling out gifts of rationed items to women in the expectation they’d dance with them in return? Still, Flynn’s group had just as much right to be in that pub.

  ‘Does it matter?’ he asked. ‘There must be room in there for everybody.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Sanders said. ‘We should have first shot at the place. What say we round them up and out so we have the joint to ourselves? I’m spoiling for a good fight.’

  Before anyone could agree or disagree, a siren sounded. As one they turned, brown loafers hitting the pavement as they raced back towards the pub.

  Flynn split from the group, headed for the little girl he’d seen. He could just make out her silhouette in the doorway, head tilted back to look at the sky, knowing that was where danger came from.

  Then he heard it: a sound like a lorry engine, but zipping through the air at an impossible speed. His feet faltered, just for a second, as he glanced up to see if the doodlebug would sail past them, or pause, that telltale signal it was about to drop from the sky.

  And then the world blew apart.

  One moment Flynn was standing, arm stretched towards the girl; the next he was face-down, a weight pressing against his back, his ears ringing with a shrill sound that took all other noise from the world. He tried to roll over, got halfway, then was stopped. His eyes seemed full of fog. He lifted hands that didn’t seem to belong to him and wiped at them. This cleared some of the grime, and he saw his fingers were scratched and bloodied. Dimly he became aware of pain radiating throughout his arms, neck, torso. He tried to say something. Tried to move again. Nothing.

  Was this dying?

  But no, he was definitely alive. The ringing in his ears was letting other sounds through now and he could hear panicked voices. He realised he was pinned to the spot by some debris. He forced a noise beyond his lips; not words, just something animal and raw to let them know he was there.

  A moment later—or perhaps a lifetime—the pressure preventing him from moving began to release.

  ‘It’s okay, I got you. Just keep still a bit longer then you’ll be free.’

  A deep voice, American accent. One of the men he’d been running with. But when strong hands gripped his shoulders and turned him onto his back, it was a black face looking down at him. He wore the olive drab cap of a GI, and Flynn realised he must have been one of the men in the bar they’d been ready to fight.

  ‘You alright? What’s your name? Can you stand up?’

  Flynn groaned and took the hand that was held out to him. With difficulty, he heaved himself to an uncomfortable seated position. He could see the knees of his trousers were torn, raw flesh peeking through.

  ‘Too many questions,’ he muttered.

  The GI chuckled. He was squatting next to Flynn, one hand on his back, his olive uniform remarkably clean compared to Flynn’s, which was now home to a layer of dust that had, only moments
ago, formed something more tangible.

  Flynn stared at an enamel dining plate under his foot. It was hard to piece thoughts together. The bomb had obviously hit a target, but what? He turned his head. His muscles were sore from the impact, but he was able to move enough to see the shattered remains of the late-night café.

  ‘The girl.’ The words stuttered out of him.

  The GI frowned, tipping his head closer. ‘Who?’

  ‘There was a little girl. Standing in front of that building.’ Flynn pointed at the rubble, his hand unsteady. He felt as though all the breath had been taken from him.

  The other man’s eyes widened. ‘In that?’ He swore. ‘Come on, let’s get to it.’

  Flynn braced himself as the other soldier slid his hands under his armpits and all but lifted him to his feet. As soon as he let go, Flynn’s knees buckled and his feet skidded out from under him. If it weren’t for the GI’s fast hands his face would have hit the rubble.

  ‘Whoa, careful there. You alright? Something hurting you?’

  He was concerned, looking from Flynn to the remains they wanted to search. A fire truck with a light mounted on it, and some lorries, had arrived on the scene. Flynn could hear someone barking orders to set the light up, another person giving instructions on where to begin digging first. None of them knew about the little girl.

  ‘Nothing except some bruising,’ he told the GI. ‘I’ll be fine now. Come on, let’s go.’

  But he wasn’t fine. Again, his legs wouldn’t hold beneath him.