Asta Lange had a friend who simply drank herself stupid every night with brandy, of which she had got in a wonderful stock. One night she fell down the whole flight of stairs when a heavy bomb fell, but she simply lay at the bottom dead to the world and quite unharmed. Asta was worried as to whether the brandy would last out the Blitz and whether her friend would have developed such a taste for oblivion in it that she would not be able to live without it.
There were other kinds of escape. Music was one for me. After I had first had to fit together the pieces of flesh which had been my Chelsea fellow citizens I had put on a record of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique and revelled in its self-pity and yearning. Perhaps it was its unanswered question of Why? Why? Why? which seemed to fit in with the inevitable query which must have troubled all those who did these tasks. For the violence and its grim aftermath, like the symphony, urged one terrible question only… Why?
Mr Churchill had said that he promised us nothing but ‘blood, tears, toil, and sweat’. The Blitz was certainly bringing the blood, tears, and the toil, and it seemed to be bringing a great deal of dirt to some of us. When I stopped to think of the disgusting and revolting chores which the war was meaning for me I often rebelled violently, and wondered if a Florence Nightingale role really appealed to me – I loved fun and was considered frivolous by my family. There were days when I felt I didn’t want to do one more thing for one more refugee or one more bombed-out person, although they compelled my compassion. I didn’t want to enter one more hospital or smell the stench of one more shelter. And there were times when Richard was away – and they were all too frequent – when I was afraid. When I had to go out sometimes during a heavy raid in answer to a call from a family or from the FAP or the Control Centre, I felt that I just couldn’t go. And I would look out of the window and see the wardens and the AFS men and women cycling or running to their posts and I would think of Dr Castillo or Dr Phillips out with the Mobile Unit and I would put on my tin hat and scrub my hands in anticipation of more dirt and go – with a sigh for the rapidly fading memories of the lovely travels which I enjoyed before Hitler had upset the world.
I wondered if the wardens felt as I did, and I asked some of them. ‘Lord, yes,’ replied one whose courage had been proved a dozen times already, ‘some nights I’m so bloody scared that I have to make myself go on the bloody beat,’ and another one, a woman whose coolness in danger I envied and admired, said, ‘There have been times when literally I’ve had to drag myself from railing to railing to reach the end of my beat.’ No one would have dreamed that she felt like that and I admired her even more for her candour. I could never detect the slightest sign of fear in Richard. He was always completely cool and whimsical about the incidents in which he and Mr Rock Carling were frequently involved on their dangerous tours of the bombed provincial cities and the coastal towns. On the nights we were not on duty he would count bombs dropping and he would sleep absolutely soundly.
We had never yet slept in a shelter – I had had to do short spells of duty in several to relieve shelter nurses, but never for the whole night. We felt much safer in our own home. There were often unpleasant incidents in the shelters and men who were drunk would interfere with the habitual shelterers who wanted to sleep. Fights would break out sometimes. Diminutive Connie Oades, when shelter warden, was quite capable of dealing with huge tough drunks but sometimes other wardens were not so successful and the police had to be called. The drunks liked to sing – and so did the majority of the shelterers – but not all night. One shelter warden in the Knightsbridge Underground told me that he felt for all the world like the housemaster at a large mixed school for adults when he was obliged to try and keep order, mollify those insulted, pacify those who were frightened, and settle quarrels over the allotment of places. ‘The only thing I lack – and could use,’ he finished wryly, ‘is the traditional cane.’
There had been several odd nights without raids now but it still seemed too dangerous for Carla to come to us for Christmas. She kept on writing. Would she have to stay at school – all alone with the nuns? Surely she could come just for a few days? Besides, she wanted some new clothes – she had grown! Her skirts could not be let down any more. I was worried about Carla. In every letter she assumed that I was going to adopt her. She never mentioned her mother, never asked me how Ruth was. It was no use telling her that the war might go on for years and that even then if her mother was still mentally ill there would be her father to consider. She had replied to this without any preamble. ‘I hope he is dead by now – killed by a bomb or in a battle – he helped to kill all Mother’s relatives. As to my brothers I do not acknowledge them as brothers. They are all Hitler Youth fanatics and they call Mother dirty names.’ After this it seemed wiser to let her think that we would adopt her if it were ever possible, and to reassure her that at any rate I would always look after her. She was a brilliantly clever child, the nuns told me, and had a straight, realistic approach to everything. She appeared to have no relatives in Europe except the father and brothers in Germany, but occasionally mentioned an aunt of whom she had been fond who was now in Brazil. After much trouble I found an address which might possibly find this woman, and I wrote her about Ruth’s breakdown and Carla’s plight.
Early in October Chelsea mothers and young children under school age were evacuated to the West of England. This involved a fresh spate of work for the WVS, the Red Cross, and St. John’s Ambulance. I was glad to see them go. Several times during the Blitz I had seen perambulators with a toddler leaning out, left outside houses, or a child playing unconcerned in a sand-pit during an Alert. They were a headache to the overworked wardens. Not all of them went, many women would not leave their husbands, although the Government had stated their intention of providing mobile communal centres to feed the grass widowers.
October proved a bad month for bombs in Chelsea – almost as bad as September had been. On the night of the 14th we had one of the worst fire attacks we had as yet had. Thousands of incendiaries rained down – and were put out by the householders, fire parties, and Fire Services. The following night St. Stephen’s Hospital was badly damaged and some of the nurses and Sister Skinner were killed, and there was a spectacular crater in the Fulham Road which we all went to see. All the mains were severed, gas, electricity, and water. The raid, in brilliant moonlight, lasted six hours and was very noisy. The severing of gas and water mains was one of the worst results of heavy explosives – and one which did not appear to have been foreseen. The speed with which temporary repairs were effected with the help of the Royal Engineers was amazing.
The Royal Hospital seemed singled out for attention by the Luftwaffe, just as it had been in the 1914-18 war. Bomb after bomb – some unexploded, some delayed action – were dropped on the buildings and grounds. The Pensioners insisted that Hitler knew that the place was under the administration of the War Office, and that it was bombed with intention. Its position on the Thames between two bridges was the obvious reason for its constant bombardment, but the old men preferred theirs. They were soldiers still, as they proudly pointed out – and it was right that they should be considered a target. What they did not accept was the fact that the three bombs that had been dropped on their infirmary had injured their nurses. After these bombings the place would be set to rights and put into some sort of order in an amazingly short time. All around Chelsea the piles of debris and rubble were growing as houses in succeeding streets and squares were destroyed, but in the Royal Hospital all rubble was cleared away at once, gaps in roofs tarpaulined by the War Office, and every brick and tile of the historic and much-loved place was preserved for use in the eventual repairs.
I would go to Suzanne after a bad night and find all the family down in the huge basement kitchen which was always warmed by a wonderful old kitchen range. After the sleepless nights we always felt cold the next day, and they would offer me some hot porridge, coffee, or tea – whatever was going – and we would sit there talking of the night’s events. M
aurice, whose work at this time seemed as endless as was his responsibility for the welfare of the old men, would be grey-faced but cheerful, his delicious wit unimpaired by the horrors of the nights. He and Captain Townsend seemed absolutely indefatigable!
During a heavy raid on the Fulham area the big cemetery in the Old Brompton Road received an HE bomb, and we were telephoned by friends to come and see the Resurrection there! I did not find it resembled Stanley Spencer’s idea of this event at all. It was very horrible indeed. The historic little churchyard in the Royal Hospital also had its ancient tombstones heaved up unceremoniously by the blast of a bomb. More gruesome still was the incident in Lower Sloane Street. A house there was badly damaged and the wardens found a number of corpses in the basement. They reported their presence and asked for the usual vans to remove them. They stated, however, that the corpses appeared to have no injuries, and to look extraordinarily peaceful; in fact they did not present the appearance associated with bomb or blast casualties. After medical inspection and inquiries, the bodies were found to be embalmed subjects of an undertaker, whose business premises having been destroyed, was using the basement of his private residence to store those waiting to be taken long distances for burial – a long wait now that transport by sea and air was almost impossible.
The October days were bright and sunny and the parks and the grounds of the Royal Hospital were unusually lovely in their autumn colours, but the nights were violent and not made for sleep. All kinds of horrors could occur while people were in shelters – as on the 16th when seven bombs fell on Chelsea, severing a water main and flooding all the basements between Milmans Street and Seaton Street, so that when the poor shelterers emerged in the early hours of the morning they were met by wardens and police whose job it was to evacuate them all from their flooded homes to Rest Centres. It was now a common sight to encounter a little procession in the early mornings – the sleepy, bewildered family, preceded and followed by laden wardens carrying bundles, suitcases, babies, pets, pots and pans, and all the paraphernalia which the displaced would not or could not do without. Grumbled at and cursed at for so long in the phoney war, the wardens, men and women, were now welcomed when a bomb had fallen or gunfire at night was at its height and most frightening. The noise of the heavy guns was shattering, having a reverberation which was in itself a threat, and many people were more disturbed by them than by the planes and falling bombs. Riley Street was completely demolished at this time, but as everyone had been evacuated from it the bomb was really a blessing, for this street had long been an eyesore and a terrible slum. I had once lived in a small cottage in Apollo Place, into which Riley Street runs, and had been astounded at the cleanliness of the children after having been shown the homes from which they came.
In Seaton Street there were many casualties and eleven dead, while the damage was widespread and grim. One casualty was never found and the place where she was known to have been was hallowed in a small religious ceremony. Fred Purver, a warden from Post Don, had been killed in the wardens’ hut in the Paultons Square incident, and Robert John Hanson, warden from Post F, was killed at Pelham Court on the 13th. Civil Defence was a dangerous job for those out on duty in the raids, and the Government’s statement a few weeks after this, that injured Civil Defence workers would receive thirteen weeks’ full pay instead of the two weeks’ hitherto granted, and that a grant of £7 10s would be made towards the funeral expenses of volunteers killed on duty, was poor comfort. When the raids were at their height, and we had to be out, we would console one another with the Government’s promise of a £7 10s funeral! None of us thought that flowers would be included!
Bernard Newman came to Chelsea and gave us a very exciting lecture in the middle of October. He spoke about Hitler’s secret weapon, about which we were all talking and wondering. In the broadcasts from Germany there had been much talk of this secret weapon which was to destroy us all! Bernard Newman told us that Hitler could have no worse weapon than panic. He had seen its effects in Poland and Belgium and France. ‘Those battles were not lost by the soldiers but by the civilians. Panic comes from rumour!’ He went on to say that the French ran away from rumour, their morale was undermined months before the German advance, and the same thing had no chance of succeeding in Britain. Morale was so magnificent in Britain that he was confident of the outcome.
There was no need to emphasize the danger of panic to us in Chelsea, where we had its evidence before us every day in our many refugees. I thought of Catherine’s story of the long trail of people hampering the troops, and being bombed and machine-gunned but forming up again on their trek to the coast. The lecture was thrilling, and was called ‘Spies, in Fact and Fiction’. We enjoyed it immensely, and afterwards went about in the FAP feigning suspicion of one another as a guard against such possibilities as those of which he had spoken. There was no need of warnings about morale in London. In the heaviest Blitz I had seen people strolling about as if nothing was happening and when chivvied by a warden they did not run. It was not done to run! Nor to show any sign of fear! The Civil Defence – especially the AFS personnel themselves – behaved with the greatest nonchalance in the most appalling danger, and showed no signs of what they were feeling. Two of our stretcher-bearers at FAP5, Desmond and Michael, would stroll about waiting for the ambulances as if they were merely waiting for a bus or train while bombs were whistling down near them. When the ambulance arrived they would load the injured as stolidly and deliberately as if it were a taxi into which they were handing their guests after an evening out! I don’t know if they or the wardens felt as cool as they looked, but the thing was to affect a joking ‘don’t care’ nonchalance everywhere. A sort of Kismet theory was the fashion. ‘If your number’s on a bomb it’ll get you,’ was Mrs Freeth’s way of putting it. ‘Can’t do nothing about it, if it’s going to get you it’ll get you,’ was old Granny’s.
October had been a bad month for raids in other places besides London. At the end of the month the Ministry of Home Security announced that during October there were 6,334 killed and 8,695 injured and detained in hospital from the air raids.
I think it was about this time that I had the absolute conviction that my number would be on one of the bombs. Richard’s assurance that the chances were one in a million made no difference. I just knew it. On the 9th Mr Churchill asked in his review of the war, what had happened to the promised German invasion? There had been rumours of an invasion at the time of Dunkirk, and several times since. But we had not been told of this and were being constantly reminded to mistrust rumours and not to spread them, so if we got letters from friends near the coast who had seen or heard anything suspicious we took no notice and told no one – except our best friends or colleagues at work!
Now the Prime Minister had openly mentioned the word invasion, and what is more had asked what had happened to it, where was it?
Mr Churchill’s reviews of the war, just as his naval reviews had been when he was First Lord of the Admiralty, were a delight and inspiration to all except a few of his most bitter critics. He told us now how he had himself visited every possible scene of bomb damage and his comment was: ‘In all my life I have never been treated with so much kindness as by the people who have suffered the most. One would think one had brought some great benefit to them instead of the blood and tears, the toil and sweat which is all I have ever promised. On every side there is the cry “We can take it,” but with it there is also the cry, “Give it them back!” He went on to assure the nation that we were battering them continuously with all our forces.
Coming so soon after the King’s broadcast praising the ARP, this speech by Mr Churchill was a tonic to the fainthearted, the weary, and the pessimistic, as were all his speeches. They did something for me which is indescribable. The reports from neutral papers at this time that the evacuation of school-children from Berlin had already begun did much to strengthen the statement that we were battering the Germans. The children were being sent to Austria and East Prussia
.
Reports about the Blitz by Lord Haw Haw were extraordinarily revealing in their mistaken assessment of the British mentality. For some reason or other this misguided man frequently chose to address himself to the people of Leeds. He would announce that they were going to be bombed that night – that their town-hall clock hands stood at some certain time, making it appear as if the Germans had some spies amongst Leeds’ citizens and some way of communicating with them. Manchester was another town to which he addressed his tirades. He sounded to me extremely like some of the followers of Mosley – only they were neither so comic nor so imaginative.
The German News Agency reported at this time that Hamburg had suffered terribly from the RAF raids, a whole working-class district having been wiped out, and told of the continuous bombing of Hamm, Cologne, Hamburg, Dortmund, and Berlin. It helped to bolster up people in their nightly endurance of the Luftwaffe, but there must have been many aged, sick, and frail people in Germany enduring the nightly bombing as there were children. From some of the casualties we attended I found that they thought of this too – not all of them gloated over our reprisals. ‘The wrong people suffer,’ said one old woman to me when we had finished bandaging her after she had been dug out of the ruins of her home. ‘That Hitler now, why isn’t he at the Front with his men? He made the war. My sons have both had to go – they’re in safe billets in the country far from bombs – it’s old Mother who has had it.’
A cousin of mine who was a Brigadier-General had been sent to Northern Ireland. His wife was in Richmond and taking very little notice of the nightly raids. When he came home on leave he was horrified when the sirens went and the bombs began to fall. The indifference of his wife to the Blitz amazed him. He had never heard a siren or a bomb until he came home on leave.
A Chelsea Concerto Page 15
