The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

by Justine Cowan

  Conditions for the foundlings only worsened during World War II, as they did for the rest of Britain’s citizens. Before the start of war, England had produced less than a third of its food and raw materials, importing millions of tons of essential goods each year. Knowing this, the Germans used air and submarine attacks to cut off the transport of food and other supplies; in response, Britain reestablished the Ministry of Food, an agency it had dissolved shortly after the end of World War I. Under the ministry, food supplies were stockpiled and moved away from potential bombing sites, and rationing was instituted to stretch the country’s food supply in the event of war.

  Civilians received tickets for rationed items such as meat, tea, butter, eggs, margarine, and cheese, to name a few. The amounts allowed in a week varied, adjusted by the Ministry of Food depending on projections of availability. One citizen’s typical weekly ration might include an egg, an ounce or two of cheese, a few ounces of butter, margarine, and cooking fat, three pints of milk, four ounces of bacon or ham, eight ounces of sugar, and two ounces of tea, along with some soap, preserves, and sweets. Meat might be rationed by cost, the 1940 weekly allowance limited to a shilling and two pence.

  While fears of bombing raids were never far from citizens’ minds, Lord Woolton, who ran the Ministry of Food, quipped that egg rationing produced more emotion than the Blitz. Recipes abounded for dishes typically made with hard-to-get items—vinegar substituted for eggs, paraffin for cooking fat. Even the London Zoo, which had to care for the animals that remained in their care during the war, was forced to be creative, breeding their own mealworms to feed birds and animals and, when things got desperate, broadcasting a plea for acorns on the radio. Donations of acorns poured in at a rate of one ton per week, to be fed to the agoutis, squirrels, monkeys, and deer.

  With supplies of most staples limited, the Ministry of Agriculture launched a massive campaign encouraging citizens to grow their own food. Soon private yards, school playgrounds, public parks, rooftops, and even the lawns outside of the Tower of London were being tilled and turned into the small farm plots heralded as “Victory Gardens.” Following suit, the Foundling Hospital set up its crops on three acres adjacent to its playground, growing potatoes, leeks, and row upon row of carrots.

  Carrots in particular were vigorously promoted, with jingles claiming that they could improve eyesight and safety during nighttime raids:

  NIGHT SIGHT CAN MEAN LIFE OR DEATH—EAT CARROTS AND LEAFY GREEN OR YELLOW VEGETABLES . . . RICH IN VITAMIN “A,” ESSENTIAL FOR NIGHT SIGHT.

  CARROTS KEEP YOU HEALTHY AND HELP YOU TO SEE IN THE BLACKOUT.

  A CARROT A DAY KEEPS THE BLACKOUT AT BAY.

  “DIG FOR VICTORY!” government posters declared. There were special efforts to entice children to eat the vegetables—carrots on sticks sold in lieu of the ice cream that had been banned by the government as an unnecessary luxury, and a cartoon featuring Doctor Carrot (“children’s best friend”), his image appearing on recipes for carrot flan and carrot fudge. A particularly skilled British Royal Air Force bomber named John Cunningham fueled the fervor. During the German bombing raids of 1940, Cunningham, nicknamed “Cat’s Eyes,” racked up an impressive twenty kills, nineteen of them at night. Cunningham became a hero akin to a movie star, providing hope to a country beleaguered by war. How had he accomplished his seemingly miraculous feats? He ate an abundance of carrots, or so the nation was told. While it’s true that a deficiency of beta-carotene can negatively affect eyesight, gorging on carrots will do nothing to enhance eyesight, night or day, nor will it help a pilot shoot down enemy planes from the sky. But behind the public story lauding the power of carrots, the British government was hiding a secret. Their scientists had developed a technology—on-board Airborne Interception (AI) radar—that allowed pilots to home in on German bombers with unprecedented accuracy, day or night. There is no evidence that the Germans fell for it, but the ruse is largely credited for propagating the enduring myth that carrots can help a person see better in the dark.

  Dorothy didn’t know the fanciful stories of how carrots may have protected her from enemy bombers. All she knew was that once the war started, she was hungrier than before. She was not alone. Her classmates, all longing to feel full, would hoard what little food they could scrounge, scraps from dinner hidden in their knickers, food stolen from food trays, or the precious “Sunday bun” served as a treat once a week, and on Miss Wright’s birthday. They would stash the food under their pillows or in their lockers to avoid detection and, after a week or two of building their troves, would assemble well after dark on the chosen night to enjoy their magnificent feast. They greedily stuffed their mouths, not caring that the food was cold or the buns stale.

  When their secret supplies were exhausted, they went in search of food elsewhere. The perfect target was just steps from the playground. The Victory Garden was strictly off-limits to foundlings, but that didn’t stop Dorothy and her coconspirators from sneaking in unobserved through an unlocked gate and gorging on seemingly endless rows of carrots. They returned to their dormitory undetected, stomachs ready to explode. And explode they did. They hadn’t been caught in the act, but the orange vomit splattered on the lavatory floor betrayed them soon enough.

  Just as difficult as the scarcity of food was the foundlings’ growing isolation. Many of the younger staff members, who were generally less cruel than those who had been worn down by decades of life at the hospital, were off serving in the war effort. While the hospital had never been a joyful place, the war years were particularly bleak. The only exposure to the outside world came on Sundays, when the girls were allowed to leave the compound for a walk, their standard uniform topped by brown felt hats emblazoned with the school emblem—a lamb with a sprig of thyme in its mouth. The emblem was a segment of the Foundling Hospital’s crest, the full crest also depicting a young child lying naked and exposed below the lamb. The lamb was meant to symbolize innocence; the thyme, derived from the Greek thymus, “courage,” to represent strength. My mother saw something more sinister:

  What comes to mind is that the lamb seems rather appropriate. Weren’t we Foundling girls penned-up sacrificial ‘lambs,’ raised and herded around like sheep, to be sacrificed to the (slaughter)houses of the rich?

  Setting out in their brown felt hats, the foundlings would pass through the large iron gates that opened out onto Chesham Road. To the right was the town of Berkhamsted, but they rarely turned in that direction and, when they did, were never allowed to go inside shops or stop to peer into any of the shop windows. Mostly, they headed toward the sparsely populated countryside and the so-called Grumpy Man Woods, thick with brambles, where the girls were allowed to pick blueberries later used by the kitchen staff to make desserts.

  What a sight they must have been, all those virtually indistinguishable girls marching silently in crocodile formation along a country road. Yet few people ever did see them—that is, until 1942, when everything changed.

  HOW EXCITED AND frightened the girls would have felt the first time they encountered a group of soldiers milling about on the side of the road, or saw a convoy materialize out of nowhere, the gray-or olive-colored military vehicles trundling by one after the other. The vehicles were filled with Americans—but not the kind the children might have seen before. Dorothy had seen and heard cartoon versions of Americans when the hospital played Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for the foundlings in the school’s auditorium. But these were the first flesh-and-blood Americans she had ever encountered. She was fascinated by their casualness, how they leaned against doorways and lampposts and talked louder and laughed more often than the English soldiers. Sometimes they would smile and call out to the girls as they went by, and Dorothy would giggle and try to catch a word or phrase to practice later. Adult smiles, friendly words, and approving looks were nonexistent in the foundlings’ lives, and the brief encounters made an impression.

  On one of the children’s prescribed walks, an American serviceman even looked ri
ght at Dorothy and called out, “Hi, Freckles!” Though she hadn’t realized that her freckles were so obvious, she was pleased to have been singled out. Dorothy and the other girls took to chanting out greetings and pleas for treats to the convoys rolling by. Throw me some gum, chum! In response the soldiers would fling sticks of American gum into the air to the arms outstretched below.

  My mother’s account of catching gum in midair as convoys drove by was already familiar to me, one of those isolated stories she had shared with me during my childhood. It was a scene she had described more than once, although without any hint of the deep secrets that surrounded her formative years. It was common for American soldiers to hand out the gum that was included in their meal rations, I learned. Always looking to make new friends, the Americans used the gum to forge bonds with the locals. But my mother clearly felt singled out by the gesture, seen as special somehow. I remember her eyes sparkling and her mouth curving into a smile as she recounted the small kindness. It was only in her written account that I learned that, if caught chewing a piece of contraband gum, Dorothy and her fellow foundlings would have encountered reprimands for indulging in the “disgusting American habit.” The consequences were not much different in my childhood home, where gum was never to be found. On the rare occasions that a friend would give me a piece and I happened to chew it in front of my mother, she would be quick to make her displeasure known: “You look like a cow chewing its cud,” she’d say, wrinkling up her face in disgust.

  Dorothy didn’t know why the Americans were in England, that they had come in 1942 to prepare for the Allied invasion. Nor was she aware that Germany had conquered most of Europe, or that the United States had entered the war after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. She knew almost nothing about Americans, in fact, and the same could be said for the American GIs when it came to the Brits. The US War Department had attempted to school the more than two million servicemen passing through on the topic of cultural integration with a pamphlet titled Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain, some of it devoted to morale-boosting propaganda: “YOU are going to Great Britain as part of an Allied offensive—to meet Hitler and beat him on his own ground.”56 The publication was mainly focused on the practical considerations that would arise for servicemen in foreign lands, such as language barriers (a truck is a “lorry”), and advice on how to get along with the locals. One section cautioned Americans not to bring up the American Revolution. Another informed them that the reserved style of the British was not an indication of unfriendliness: “So if Britons sit in trains or busses without striking up a conversation with you, it doesn’t mean they are being haughty and unfriendly.”57 Yet another warned against showing off, urging its readers to remember that, while the British might not know how to make a decent cup of coffee, “you don’t know how to make a good cup of tea. It’s an even swap.”58

  The Americans Dorothy encountered were stationed at the US Air Force base at Bovingdon Airfield, just a few miles southeast of Berkhamsted. Once a British Royal Air Force base, the airfield had been turned over to the Americans for use as an operational training base. Soon the base developed a level of fame, housing General Eisenhower’s personal B-17 bomber and even hosting the occasional celebrity. Clark Cable came to visit, and so did Jimmy Stewart, William Holden, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bob Hope, and Glenn Miller. In September 1944 Bovingdon became the base for the European Air Transport Service, and thousands of Americans spent their last few hours on British soil at the Bovingdon air terminal before returning to the States.

  For Dorothy, even before the Allied victory, the troops’ presence was a bright spot in a long war, and that became particularly true on the day that Miss Wright made an extraordinary announcement during the daily assembly. An invitation had been received from the American officers at Bovingdon Airfield: twelve girls would attend the Christmas party at the base.

  The girls were out of their minds with excitement. But Dorothy experienced a different emotion:

  Immediately the pain of exclusion and rejection engulfed me. I knew there wasn’t a chance that I would be among those chosen to attend, naughty as I was and just an average student besides. . . . It was completely unimaginable that I would be selected.

  To her astonishment, however, she heard her name called out. For a moment she saw her captor in a new light, momentarily forgetting the power of Miss Wright’s belt or the terrors of an unlit storeroom, and for the first time thinking that there might be goodness under her forbidding exterior.

  On the evening of the party, the chosen twelve assembled in the entry hall with its tall windows, large double entry doors, and polished oak parquet floors, waiting excitedly for their hosts. Soon four military cars arrived to pick up the girls—for most of them, their first ride in a motor car of any kind.

  As the convoy glided along in the velvety wartime evening, blackout curtains ensuring total darkness, no one in Dorothy’s car uttered a sound. It was too magical for words, and anyway she was overcome with shyness in front of the uniformed American driver. The driver never spoke, which Dorothy assumed was customary when chauffeuring.

  The motorcade pulled up to a set of open double doors that led to a large, brightly lit mess hall. The room was adorned with colorful decorations and a Christmas tree, and the girls were greeted by a jovial Santa Claus. An airman approached them, offering a tall, shiny cylindrical tin filled with hard candy. Dorothy reached in at his urging, gingerly taking only a single piece. The airman laughed, telling her to grab a handful, which she did. The candy would have been an extra-special treat, as wartime sweets were strictly rationed even for regular citizens.

  The girls were divided up and seated at separate oblong tables, with about seven uniformed men to a table. For the next hour or so, a squad of American airman gave the girls their full attention, chatting them up and plying them with toys and food while cheerful music played in the background. Unaccustomed to conversing with adults or receiving any kindness at all, Dorothy found it almost impossible to talk. Every so often one of the airmen would say, “Are you sure you don’t have a big sister?” and the small crowd of men gathered around her table would burst out laughing. When they tried to draw her out with questions, she would respond with barely audible monosyllables.

  Soon a large plate of food was placed in front of Dorothy, food she had never even heard of—turkey, yams, cranberry sauce. But she was too embarrassed to eat much, being the center of attention for the first time in her life.

  Dorothy didn’t know that these men were training as bomber crews in preparation for the liberation of Europe, and that they would be instrumental in freeing those dying in concentration camps. She only knew that they were her heroes, and she later described the evening as a turning point:

  Never in my life had I been in the company of such friendly, happy, generous adults. . . . I’m sure there was no way they could possibly have known the enormity of the impact they were having on their subdued guest.

  “It remains the greatest party of my life,” she wrote. As I read my mother’s words, I thought about her lavish parties, when workmen would come in and clear our expansive living room of its furniture, filling it instead with round tables soon set with white linen cloth, fine china, and crystal glassware. Then the caterers would arrive with an overabundance of food, generating leftovers that would last for days. As the host, my mother would be the center of attention, graciously moving from table to table, welcoming each guest personally. Perhaps she was trying to recreate what she felt that day, when the attention she received gave her a first glimmer of hope about what she might find outside of the walls of the Foundling Hospital.

  Dorothy’s luck was changing. The war had brought hunger and hardship, but also kindness from strangers, and an unexpected gesture from Miss Wright. She was soon to find relief from the cruelty of another staff member, the only one who had beaten her more brutally, terrified her more, than the hospital’s headmistress—the ruthless Miss Woodward.

  It happened on
an ordinary day. Dorothy was outside in the yard with the other girls when she heard the news.

  It must have been cold; the girls were wearing their cloaks. William Hogarth, who had brought art to the halls of the Foundling Hospital, had designed the garments in the mid-1700s, and the style had remained unchanged. They were made of the same standard brown as the girls’ daily uniforms, but their lining was distinct—rich scarlet, a stark contrast to the dull colors of the girls’ usual wardrobe. I like to believe that Hogarth included the splash of color as a small gift to the outcast children destined for an achromatic life.

  As the girls played outside, the news started to spread. One girl ran over and whispered into another’s ear, and on it went until the play area was abuzz with the news.

  Miss Woodward was dead.

  There were questions, of course. How did you find out? The staff was overheard talking about it in the hallways. What did she die of? Something called leukemia.

  I’m not sure that any of us had known someone who had died and Miss Woodward’s death became a subject of serious discussion among the girls. Of course we wondered what happened to people after death. I recall some discussion about fainting and dying and the difference between them and I felt reassured that there was no chance Miss Woodward would come back.

  As more and more of the girls heard the news, and fears of her returning from the dead were quelled, the energy and excitement began to grow. Dorothy was not the only girl who had been on the receiving end of Miss Woodward’s ire—she was the most hated teacher of them all. Spontaneously, a few girls started to march defiantly around the yard. Someone else yelled, “Hurray!” One little girl flung her cloak inside out over her shoulders, revealing the deep scarlet lining. Then the next girl followed suit, and then another. They grew louder, more confident, and soon the girls were marching in a line, their scarlet cloaks ablaze in the winter sun, chanting: