Lily's War

by Shirley Mann

  About the Author

  Shirley Mann is a Derbyshire-based journalist who spent most of her career at the BBC. She now makes short films for organisations such as the National Heritage Lottery Fund. Lily’s War is inspired by Shirley’s mother who was a WAAF and her father who was in the Eighth Army.

  Welcome to the world of Shirley Mann!

  Keep reading for more from Shirley Mann, to discover a recipe that features in this novel and to find out more about what Shirley is doing next . . .

  We’d also like to introduce you to MEMORY LANE, our special community for the very best of saga writing from authors you know and love, and new ones we simply can’t wait for you to meet. Read on and join our club!

  www.MemoryLane.club

  Hello Reader,

  I’m so thrilled to meet you! I do hope you enjoy my first novel Lily’s War, a story loosely based on my parents’ wartime romance.

  ‘Every journalist has a novel in them’ they say, but it took me until I was in my 60s to prise mine out of me. It then took a further six years of research, self-doubt and frustration at the mammoth task I had taken on to finally clip together a complete manuscript.

  My mother was a WAAF in Bomber Command and my father was a soldier in the 8th Army but as a 1950s’ baby, the war was something that the previous generation had been through; we were too busy inventing the ‘teenager’ to care very much about what the ‘oldies’ had actually done for us. It was only as my mother got older and those dramatic years kept coming back into the conversation that I started to take notes. My father had also given me snapshots of such a dramatic time as an 8th Army soldier that I finally decided I would see if I could recreate the ordinary, everyday life in extraordinary times as a novel about them both. I wanted to rediscover my parents as young people, knowing that their romance was a special story that had the same ups and downs of any modern couple with the added stress of being hundreds of miles apart – oh, and with a world war going on.

  Of course, by then I had left it all too late to ask them enough questions so I decided to use their story as the inspiration for a novel rather than make it a biographical tale. I travelled the country to interview former WAAFs in their 90s who were so kind to me and surprisingly pleased to share their own experiences with me to fictionalise. I will never forget sharing a day with some of those wonderful women striding into the WAAF Association conference with their heads held high and shoulders back. The war years had given them chances that they were not expecting. They all talked of being liberated from their mothers’ sides and being thrust into a world where they could really make a difference and it shaped the rest of their lives and ultimately, ours too. For many of them, as with my mum, the war was an exciting adventure and they lapped it up.

  My next book will be ‘Bobby’s War’, a story of an ATA pilot, one of the women who delivered more than 100 different types of planes all over the country and as part of my research, I was delighted to be able to talk to female pilot, Mary Ellis, just before she died at 101 in 2018. She was so inspiring and even to a woman of my generation, a beacon of achievement few of us could ever hope to emulate.

  I hope you enjoy Lily’s War. I want to write ‘curl up and enjoy’ books but I also want readers to actually feel what it was like to live through the war years. I have been incredibly privileged to have met the women who laid the foundations for what my generation was allowed to achieve and if I can take their stories to an appreciative audience then I will be doing justice to their legacy and maybe that of my own mother and father too.

  Best wishes,

  Shirley

  Wartime recipe

  If you want to make John Mullins’s favourite cookies, then this is the recipe for you. The government knew that carrots were plentiful so tried everything to encourage people to eat them, even going so far as to try to persuade children to eat carrots on sticks, telling them they were just as good as ice creams. They also invented ‘Dr Carrot’, who would make you feel better, and of course the wonderful orange vegetable was promoted as a food that would help you to see in the dark – a vital skill during the black outs that was already helping pilots successfully navigate to their targets. At least that’s what the Ministry of Food said – trying to disguise the fact that actually the new technology of radar was of more use to pilots than any carrot!

  Carrots were also useful as a sweetener because each person was only allowed 8 oz or 225g of sugar a week so, luckily for Lily’s dad, Ginny would have been able to re-fill that biscuit tin with a sweet treat on a regular basis.

  Carrot Cookies (makes 12 small or 6 larger)

  • 2 tablespoons of sugar

  • 1 tablespoon margarine

  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

  • 6 tablespoons of self-raising flour (if you’re using plain flour add 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder)

  • 4 tablespoons of grated raw carrot

  • 1 tablespoon of water

  Method

  1. Cream the fat and the sugar together and add the vanilla essence

  2. Mix in the grated carrot

  3. Fold in the flour – add a bit of water as it gets dry

  4. Drop spoonfuls onto a greased tray and press down a little

  5. Pre-heat oven to 200 °C

  6. Sprinkle tops of cookies with extra sugar if you have it

  7. Place in oven for 10–15 minutes

  I hope you enjoy them! And do share your baking with us on our Memory Lane Facebook page MemoryLaneClub.

  Turn the page for a first look at Shirley Mann’s next book

  Bobby’s War

  Coming 2021 . . .

  Prologue

  1942

  The cow’s huge, black eyes stared impassively from its position at the front propeller of the Tiger Moth aircraft. Roberta, Bobby for short, pulled her tongue out at it, but it carried on chewing its mouth. The plane was being rocked by the skittish movements of the twenty or so Friesian cows that had raced across the field to examine this enormous bird that had seemingly fallen out of the sky.

  ‘Hah, fallen, my foot,’ Bobby told her sceptical audience, ‘it was skilfully landed despite cross winds and the fact that this plane’s nose is high on landing.’

  She pushed her thighs together and winced. She needed to reach the hedge – and quickly – but she scanned the herd and they showed no sign of moving.

  ‘Shoo,’ she yelled at the crowd around her, but they did not react. A farmer’s daughter, she had no fear of cows, but she gave them enormous respect. She breathed in sharply and tensed her stomach. She should never have had that last cup of tea.

  Bobby glanced at her watch. Time was marching on and she was only in Lancashire. She had to get to Oxford before nightfall.

  She waved her arms frantically at the crowd of four-legged admirers and then froze mid-wave as a human face appeared in the middle of the herd. A brown-haired, freckled man in RAF uniform was gently pushing the cows out of the way. Once other uniforms appeared, the cows backed off, sensing defeat. The coast was finally clear and Roberta was able to unstrap herself to jump down to the ground.

  ‘Blimey, it’s a girl!’ the freckled young man exclaimed. ‘You’re surely not on your own, darlin’?’

  Roberta gave a very curt nod and said, ‘Excuse me one moment,’ and walked with great haste towards the far side of the hedge. She crouched down and heard guffaws of laughter from the other side of the field.

  Roberta Hollis never blushed, but there was a rosy tinge to her cheeks when she emerged from the hedge, rearranging her uniform.

  ‘Now gentlemen, I thank you for your assistance, but could I ask you to move out of the way while I take off.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ a blond-haired lad said, standing with his arms folded in front of the wing. ‘We abandoned perfectly good pints in the King’s Arms and came to check you were ok. We want an explanation.’

  ‘Have you never seen a female pilot before?’ Bobby looked in exasperation at her watch. She did
not have time for this.

  ‘It’s the ATA,’ a Scottish voice said from the back of the group.

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ the freckled one demanded.

  ‘Air Transport Auxiliary – the ‘glamour girls’. They deliver planes,’ the Scot patiently explained.

  ‘Interesting as this aviation history lesson is,’ Roberta butted in, ‘I’ve got a delivery to make and I need to get to Oxford by nightfall.

  She looked up at the fading sun and pushed past the sentry posts to her plane.

  ‘Does that mean . . . you . . . fly . . . these things on your own?’

  ‘Yes, now you have to let me leave. As you’re here, you can get me started. You can wing walk me over this rough ground.’

  ‘Good job we’ve been specially trained in this war by the RAF or we’d never have known how to do that,’ one tall man muttered as he moved to hold the wing tip, ready to walk it forward to keep it steady.

  ‘And you,’ Bobby added, pointing to another one with dark hair, ‘you can be my Starter. Watch for my thumbs up.’

  Bobby mounted the wing and climbed into the aircraft, hurriedly buckled the four straps around her and started the automatic procedure and checks. ‘Contact’ she shouted to the dark RAF man at the front. He turned the prop several times and then stepped away, shaking his head. She was too furious with herself to even notice the stroking of chins and amazed expressions she was leaving behind as she taxied down the field, scattering the cows once again.

  Tutting to herself, she swore never to drink more than one cup of anything again before she set off. That was another lesson she had learned.

  On the ground, the crowd of men stood with their mouths agape, watching the wings soar into the air, the tail kept impressively steady and the small plane with a woman at the controls disappearing into the 1942 May sunshine.

  Chapter 1

  It was almost dark when Bobby reached Bicester airfield near Oxford. She knew the route, but had only just made it in daylight. She walked from the airfield to the WAAF quarters, her heavy parachute on her shoulder. A tall girl with deep auburn hair, she cut a striking figure as she strode across the airfield but, at the age of twenty-seven, Roberta Hollis was not concerned about the looks she got or the nudges that followed her in her distinctive blue uniform. Her complete concentration was on the job in hand.

  Roberta did not have time to think about the strange path that had led her to the Air Transport Auxiliary – the distant father, the ethereal mother or the cold atmosphere of the brick farmhouse in Norfolk. There were so many problems at home she had learned to ignore over the years, knowing that one day she would have to deal with her fractured family, but today was not the day. She had a tight schedule to tackle and, once again, she needed to ignore the haunted thoughts that engulfed her every time she had a spare minute. Fortunately, the relentless timetables left her with few enough of those, and that suited Roberta Hollis just fine.

  ‘Flying Officer Hollis, signing in,’ she told the WAAF on the front desk.

  ‘No beds, I’m afraid. You’ll have to make do with a mattress on the floor,’ the WAAF said, and pointed her in the direction of a wooden hut to the right of the office.

  Bobby sighed. She had been up since six a.m. and had delivered four planes around the country. All she wanted was a quick supper and a warm bed.

  An hour later, after a very lumpy cauliflower cheese in the NAAFI, she had her wish.

  ‘You can use mine,’ said a sleepy WAAF, climbing out of her bunk. ‘I’m on duty tonight.’

  Bobby delightedly pushed the three ‘biscuit’ mattresses together and smoothed back the rough blanket to climb in. She was so tired she could have slept on a tailfin, and within ten minutes she was asleep, unaware of the constant stream of WAAFs who came in and out of the hut, either going to or returning from a shift. They ignored the lump in the bed until one of them noticed the dark blue uniform with its distinctive gold braid hanging up next to the bunk.

  ‘She’s one of those ATA pilots.’ She nudged her friend who turned around to look.

  ‘Personally, I don’t care if she’s the Queen of Sheba, I’m so tired. I’ve been on duty for more than ten hours and I didn’t even get a break.’

  Another girl handed them both cups of cocoa that had been warming on the black stove in the middle of the room for latecomers, according to custom.

  They sipped gratefully.

  ‘That’s better,’ one of them said. ‘So that’s one of the ‘glamour girls’ is it?’ She put her head on one side assessing the curled up, snoring figure in the bed. ‘She doesn’t look very glam.’

  ‘I heard they get invited to all the parties and are treated like goddesses,’ another chipped in. ‘It must be exciting, though, being up there in the sky.’

  ‘Bloody dangerous if you ask me. No radar, no radio and no gun to shoot back,’ her friend commented, shaking her head in awe.

  They finished their cocoa, got their washbags out of their gas mask holders and went to the ablutions block to get ready for bed. They could not wait to tell the crowd of girls in the washrooms that they had a real-life ATA girl in their hut, which led to a constant stream of WAAFs peering round the door to examine the snoring figure of Bobby, tucked up in bed, and pointing in amazement at her uniform hung up behind her bed.

  Oblivious to all the attention, Bobby slept like a log, waking only when the morning tannoy went off. She stretched luxuriously like her family’s farm cat, Perry, but her mind immediately switched into gear and she bounded out of bed, ready for another day of heaven knows what.

  She was into her second year as an ATA pilot and it had been a whirlwind of training, classroom lessons, trial flights and nights spent with a torch under the blanket with her instruction manuals. Each level left her breathless and exhilarated, and had endorsed her belief that flying was the only thing she wanted to do. She had raced through her training at White Waltham, gaining her class one and class two qualifications. She knew she was good, but she also knew that it would only take one unexpected storm, a barrage balloon or a mistake to add her name to the list of names of dead ATA pilots that was posted far too regularly. She also knew that to fail would not only put her life in jeopardy, but also the reputation of women pilots, which was already fragile to say the least.

  Bobby brushed her teeth furiously, using the dregs of a tin of baking powder. There was a tiny cup of water per girl and she measured out three drips into her mouth to rinse with. Nobody dawdled in the freezing cold ablutions block, so she dressed quickly, unearthed her bowl, knife, fork and spoon and metal mug from her bag and ran over to the NAAFI to grab some porridge, hesitating over the tea urn to work out her chances of finding a toilet en route. She made do with half a mug, without milk or sugar, and sat down to look at her notes, trying to second-guess her aircraft for the day. She hardly noticed the stares of the long tables of men and women in the room, concentrating on getting the piping hot porridge down her as quickly as possible. She peered out at the airfield. Bicester was an Operations Training Unit and although it was under Bomber Command, no fighters flew from there. She had heard rumours of collapsing field drains that would sometimes cause pitted holes, and she decided she would like to walk the runway, scanning the surface before she took a plane off the ground from there.

  Bobby glanced at her watch. She had to hurry and swished her porridge-smeared bowl and cutlery in the soapy water by the door, like the WAAFs around her did, before racing back to the locker room to pick up her overnight bag, her parachute and the precious bar of chocolate that kept her going on long flights. She then raced across towards the Operations Room to receive her ‘chitties’ – the list of deliveries for the day – clutching her blue Ferry Pilots Notes, the ‘Bible’ of every ATA pilot, with its comprehensive instructions on how to fly a dazzling array of planes. Bobby mentally ran through the list of possible aircraft she might face that day. She had flown nineteen different types so far. She looked up at the sky,
where the clouds were moving fast. ATA pilots were not supposed to fly above the clouds, which always caused problems in a country like Britain where the weather was so variable. She hoped she would not be assigned to a Walrus. They were so lumbering and a pain in strong wind with a mind of their own.

  Outside the office, on the side of the runway, were a line of Spitfires and Mosquitoes, used for training. The ground crews, or Erks as they were known, were all working fast to get them ready for flight.

  She recognised a blonde girl holding two small blocks of wood on a piece of string around her neck coming out towards her. The girl raised her hand in greeting.

  ‘Bobby, I didn’t know you were here.’

  ‘Daphne! You been here all night?’

  ‘Yes, arrived by transport late last night. Had to sleep on mattresses on the floor. I can tell you, my neck really hurts. Those ‘biscuits’ parted company at three this morning and left my backside on the floor.’

  Daphne was a petite girl from Lancashire whose feet sometimes failed to reach the pedals. She carried around small blocks of wood with her to attach to the pedals so she could reach them, but was an excellent pilot.

  ‘Get any sleep?’ she asked Bobby.

  ‘Yes, some kind WAAF left me her bed and it was still warm, so I was nice and toasty.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ replied Daphne. ‘I was frozen. But I suppose I was lucky to get a mattress, and staying at the Waafery does mean we save the quid for overnight accommodation, which always helps, doesn’t it? Are you back at Hamble tonight?’

  ‘Well, who knows. I suppose it’ll depend on what those darned clouds decide to do,’ Bobby replied, looking up dubiously.

  Hamble was the headquarters where many of the Air Transport Auxiliary girls were based. It had a good camaraderie on the days when there was a group of them grounded by bad weather, known as a ‘wash-out’ days, but more often than not, the pilots got held up somewhere round the country, staying in hostels, Waafery huts, inns and sometimes in train stations. It was not always a comfortable life and their timetables were relentless, so they frequently felt like ships that passed in the night.