But there was nothing sentimental or melancholy about old Granny from Paradise Walk. When I turned to leave the refugees, there she stood, arms akimbo, surveying the heap which had once been my home. ‘Are they all gone?’ she demanded. I thought she meant Kathleen, Anne, and Cecil. I nodded, not able to speak. ‘It’s cruel bad luck after all the trouble we went to,’ she said. ‘What trouble?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘Why, going to the lawyers and all that swearing, it’ll all be wasted. Have you looked in that heap there?’ And then I realized that she was speaking of the papers which were to help prove the dates of her and her husband’s births – that was the only thing which interested her.
Later in the day I went to identify Kathleen. She looked quite peaceful with the kitten still in her arms. Someone would later have to perform on Anne’s broken body that last task which I had done for so many of my fellow citizens.
I had no clothes – nor had Richard – and clothes were rationed. I went to the Assistance Office to which the Town Hall sent me. There were long queues of draggled and desolate-looking people waiting for clothes coupons because they had been bombed-out. At the Town Hall Margerie Scott had been very sweet and had given me a slip of paper with details of the total destruction of my home and possessions. A charming man looked at me and said, ‘You’ll want new ration books and everything, won’t you?’ Margerie Scott had obviously stated in her note that I was pregnant. He gave me coupons for the expected baby too. I was wearing the dirty old camel-hair coat and a scarf was tied round my head to hide the filthy state of my hair. My legs were cut and scratched and my stockings in tatters. He looked me up and down and said with a charming smile, ‘I’d better give you some money, hadn’t I?’ and into my ungloved hand he put thirty pounds in notes. I had never been given money without having to earn it and I must have looked surprised, for he said, ‘It’s all right – it’ll come off your War Damage claim, it’s not charity.’
There was a little woman from Dovehouse Street sitting huddled on a bench awaiting her turn. Dovehouse Street had had a parachute mine on it and the Chelsea Hospital for Women had dealt with many casualties. Suddenly her control gave way and she began screaming in a frenzy of grief…‘He’s gone…He’s gone and I’m all alone and no home – nothing. No one wants me…Why didn’t I go with him, it’s cruel, it’s cruel, cruel. Why? Why?’ Her anguish was terrible.
In the appalled silence with which officialdom treats such outbursts – almost as if she had said or done something obscene – a sleek, well-dressed clergyman standing there whom I had never seen in Chelsea went up to her and told her sternly to desist – that what had happened was God’s will and that she must accept it and thank Him for her own deliverance from death. She looked at him in dazed misery as if he spoke a foreign language and began screaming again even more wildly. ‘God! There’s no God! There’s only Hitler and the Devil!’ When he began remonstrating with her again in an intolerably unctuous voice I went over to her and rocked her as one does a child in pain. Slowly she became quiet and her violence gave way to bitter sobbing. ‘She must accept it – not resent it in this bitter spirit,’ he said to me. ‘Acceptance of God’s will is part of the Christian faith.’ I looked at his well-kept hands, at his beautifully tended nails, and I thought of the Reverend Arrowsmith and his curate digging frantically with their bare hands in the rubble, of the Reverend Newsom sitting night after night on a hard bench sharing with his parishioners the perils of the Blitz, and then of the vicar of the Old Church, the Reverend Sadleir, fighting the incendiaries and looking after his fire parties so wonderfully – and now his church was gone. I thought of how Kathleen and Anne were dead – and Penty, who could never earn her own living or care for herself, was still alive – of Cecil and Larry who had volunteered to come from so far to help Britain in her need – and I said nothing. It did not seem to me that there was anything to say.
When she was quieter I took the woman to the canteen and made her drink some tea and swallow some aspirin and bromide. ‘God?’ she kept saying. ‘There’s no God! There’s no God. If there is he’s a devil!’ The anguish was giving way to a bitter resignation. Her home had been demolished as mine had been, and she would have to go to a Rest Centre until she decided what to do. This seemed to her terrible – to her a Rest Centre was a kind of Poor-House! Her husband had been killed – he had been her life, her all. She had loved him. ‘He was no beauty,’ she kept telling me, ‘but he suited me all right – and he never hurt a creature in his life. Why should he be blown to pieces?’ Why indeed? Why? Hers was the question to which there is no answer except perhaps that of the well-meaning clergyman.
It was difficult to leave the little woman, who asked pathetically if she could not come with me out of London, but I did not dare to take her, as the relatives who had agreed to receive us for a few days had not been very pleased at the prospect of having us. I left her with the WVS, who said they would get her fixed up somewhere and would help her to get some clothes.
Suzanne came with me to buy the necessities we both urgently needed and then Richard and I were driven out of London. It was not easy to drive anywhere – the streets were blocked by great mounds of fallen masonry, glass, and debris. All along the Embankment the firemen’s hoses lay across the wide street and houses sprawled with the vitals and bones spread out. The Old Lombard Restaurant had been almost demolished and men were digging on it as we passed. The top stories of Cheyne Hospital appeared to have been badly damaged, but as we came to the Old Church we stopped appalled, and got out of the car. I had heard about the horror of the night there – but its reality surpassed imagination. One great mound of dust was all that was left of the lovely little church – and men were digging all over it! The sun shone on the gap where Petyt Place had been – removed as if with giant tongs. The vicar was safe – but the entire fire-watching party, including seventeen-year-old schoolboy Michael Hodge, home for the holidays, had all perished with the exception of one member.
All up Old Church Street there were smoking ruins and masses of glass and debris sprawled everywhere. A heavy acrid smell lingered in the air in spite of the breeze from the river – the smell we had come to identify with Blitz.
We had heard that Dr Castillo had again done heroic work during the night, and amongst his casualties in Old Church Street had been a sixteen-year-old girl, Emma Chandler, trapped in the ruins of her home, with whom he had stayed for hours giving her morphia and talking to her until she was freed – to die soon afterwards, as the old woman in the straw hat had done.
I could not bear to leave Chelsea even for the few nights which the doctors insisted were necessary if I wanted my baby to be born safely; and to leave her thus with gaping wounds, smouldering burns, and her mortuaries crowded made it more poignant. The dust was still rising from the great mounds of rubble – it looked like smoke – and through its film the daffodils in More’s little garden which had surrounded the church were dancing gaily.
Kathleen, Anne, and Cecil were buried with full military honours by the Canadian authorities in a joint grave in Kensal Green Cemetery. It was a most moving ceremony, and many of Cecil’s unit of the Canadian Army Service Corps were present – including all his officers. There are other graves with the simple stone and the maple leaf on it, round them – the Canadians who died in the 1914-18 war – but for civilians to be honoured by the maple leaf and the ‘Pro Patria’ is unique. The authorities had intended Cecil to be buried with Larry at Woking with the Canadian casualties of the current war, but Kathleen’s relatives wanted the family together, and after some trouble this was arranged. On the stone Cecil’s name and military number are followed by these words, ‘Also his wife, Anne, and her mother, Kathleen Marshman, were killed by enemy action at the same time. Pro Patria.’
It seemed to me right that they should all be honoured in this way – it symbolized for me all those men and women, many of them civilians, who were taking part in the battle of London and linked them with the Army.
As soo
n as I was allowed I began helping Kathleen’s sister-in-law, May Sargent, in salvaging what we could for the benefit of the only remaining member of the family, Penty, still in the country with the friends in whose guardianship she had been left. There was little to salvage – and the search through the filthy, evil-smelling, dusty mess of salvage from the various sites was heart-rending. All the objects, garments, and remnants of once valued household goods which had been found by the demolition men had been stored in requisitioned houses by the borough. Strangely enough, although the Marshman’s flat had been above ours, and had completely vanished in the explosion, we did find a few small things which Kathleen had loved. We arrived one day at the desolate mound of rubble to find the diggers having their mid-morning tea on the pavement. They were sitting on a beautiful Persian rug and drinking their tea from an old silver tea-pot which Kathleen had used every afternoon. May asked them rather sarcastically when they would be finished with the tea-pot as she wanted to claim it but, unabashed, they replied that it made such good tea that they had got quite accustomed to it! Together she and I visited the dreary rooms set aside for housing salvaged goods. Incredibly filthy, smelling of explosives and the strange smell which can be only described as ‘Blitz’, it was a sordid and melancholy task. There was absolutely nothing found which was usable from our home – the only small things salvaged had been got out the day after the bombing by young Paul Fitzgerald who, unknown to anyone, and in spite of the appalling danger, had crawled in and retrieved a few toilet articles of mine from the damaged dressing-table.
There were many stories of the night of April 16th – already known as ‘the Wednesday’. The German parachutist had actually landed almost on the church and had given himself up to the wardens, who were at first at a loss to know what to do with him. There had been parachute mines on Cheyne Walk, Cranmer Court, the Old Church, and our one on Cheyne Place, as well as the Royal Hospital Infirmary, Dovehouse Street, and Sutton Dwellings, and high-explosive bombs on the Elms Garage, Post E in Cale Street, Chelsea Square, and many off the Embankment, as well as hundreds of incendiaries. There had been a very large number of casualties and terrible damage. Several firemen had been killed and many wardens injured, and Roger Crewdson had been killed at his post.
Maurice, not knowing what to do with the thirteen dead from the badly damaged Infirmary, had laid them in the Chapel, whereupon it had been suggested to him that the Chapel had been desecrated and would have to be reconsecrated. He had immediately got in touch with the highest Church authority on this point and he was delighted with the reply – that there was no precedent for this as no record existed of its having been done in the case of Thomas a Becket!
Mr Graham Kerr had spent the most dangerous night of the Blitz guarding a tree which had been hurled across the Embankment road by an explosion – later he was joined by an oil bomb! In spite of this he stuck the whole appalling night out in the open there, holding a red lantern for the ARP Services for which Nonie Iredale-Smith was doing an equally dangerous task by trying to keep the thoroughfare clear. George Evans had had to rope off our part of the Royal Hospital Road because of the devastation and had some trouble with a Naval officer who had been badly shocked and had all the lights of his car full on. When another car approached with a Naval officer in it George was ready and, still smarting from his recent encounter, he said, ‘You can b— well get to the other side of that barrier – that’s what it’s there for!’ The Naval officer, a short sturdy man with rows of ribbons and much gold braid, obeyed immediately and got back into the car. He drove straight to the Town Hall, and complimented them on their wardens – and left £5 as a gift for Post K. The Naval officer was Evans of the Broke, Regional Commissioner for London!
All over London there were similar stories of ‘the Wednesday’ and the savage and indiscriminate bombing of that night was being boasted of by the Germans.
The war news at this time seemed particularly depressing to me, probably because I was suffering from the loss of so many friends. Richard was extremely busy at the Ministry, and away frequently on tour. Relatives and friends deprived of any help in the home and many of them engaged on war work were very kind but I began hunting at once for a house.
Our troops were withdrawing from Greece and the Germans had occupied Larissa, Thermopylae, and Thebes and were rapidly advancing on Athens, the Greek army having capitulated in Epirus and Macedonia. Fighting was still violent at Tobruk where we had repulsed the Germans, and the RAF were bombing Cologne, Hamburg, Kiel, and Wilhelmshaven heavily. Plymouth was still being heavily attacked by the Luftwaffe, my mother wrote me. In the evacuation of our troops from Greece we had lost several vessels, including HMS Diamond and Wryneck. All the time I was hunting vainly for some kind of home the news from Greece was bad – until finally the Germans entered Athens and completed their occupation of the Greek mainland.
On May 4th Hitler addressed the Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House. Again he tried to shift the guilt for the war on to England. ‘All my attempts to make an understanding for a lasting friendly collaboration with England failed,’ he said, ‘owing to a small clique which refused every German offer and wanted war by all means.’ He ranted on in his usual vein about Jewish capitalists and England’s guilt and concluded with the statement that ‘In this Jewish capitalist age, the National Socialist State stands out as a solid monument to common sense. It will survive for a thousand years.’
I read this in the Manchester Guardian and wondered just why he should have chosen a thousand years – why not two thousand? Or why not settle it for eternity while he was about it? To listen to his ravings, as I often did, was to receive the very proof that he, at any rate, could not last, such maniacal outpourings proclaiming his own doom. Nevertheless, it was depressing to listen to the thunderous applause with which his every utterance was greeted. How different was a speech by Mr Churchill on May 7th, giving the position of affairs in the Middle East and the distribution of our forces there. Again he repeated, ‘I have never promised you anything but blood, tears, toil, and sweat to which I will now add our fair share of mistakes, shortcomings, and disappointments, and also that this may go on for a very long time, at the end of which I believe that there will be complete, absolute, and final victory.’ He went on to give us a grave warning about the Battle of the Atlantic not being over.
It was strange but the British seemed to flower on ‘the blood, tears, toil, and sweat’ while the Germans only bloomed in the sun of Hitler’s extravagant utterances. I had seen my friends in the height of the Blitz battling amongst those four things promised by Mr Churchill, and in my much-travelled life I have never been more thrilled and amazed by their heroism. The quietest and most unexpected people seemed endowed with the courage of lions and the endurance of steel. Tireless and undaunted, they knew no thought of self as they faced fearful odds in the battle to save their fellow-men and their borough from the destruction from the skies.
Chelsea’s last heavy raid of the eight months’ Blitz came on May 10/11th. There had been bad incidents on the Saturday following ‘the Wednesday’, but it was on May 11th, when the Houses of Parliament were hit, that Chelsea suffered most. The Red Cross and St John’s did magnificent work on both these occasions and were warmly praised, with the whole ARP Services. On May 11th a heavy bomb fell through the operating theatre of St Luke’s Hospital, killing two doctors and several nurses and wrecking two wards, the radiography and kitchen departments, and most of the reception halls as well as the doctors’ quarters. The hospital had to be closed for the simple reason that it could no longer be run.
Dr Richard Symes Thompson was one of the doctors killed by the bomb. The death of this unusual and brilliant young man was a personal as well as a public loss. He had taken great interest in the refugees and had been a real friend. He had shown great skill in new methods of treating burns, of which we had many in the Blitz. It was he who had been so kind over David, Madeleine, and little Raymond.
Thousands of incen
diaries were showered on Chelsea during the raid of May 11th and many high-explosive bombs fell in the river. Work was hampered by a blazing barge loaded with paper outside Phillips Mills and the air was thick with little pieces of black charred paper like a black snowstorm. The acrid smell of burning paper was quite overpowering and suffocating to the firemen and wardens fighting the blaze. The shower of charred paper like a flickering curtain silhouetted against the flames was an eerie and unforgettable spectacle.
The closing of St Luke’s Hospital, combined with the loss of more friends both in the RAF and at sea, was for me another landmark in the war, but although we did not know it at the time, May 11th was to mark the end of the eight months’ Blitz on London. Three years were to elapse before Chelsea’s foundations were to be shaken by an ‘incident’ (February 23rd, 1944), the magnitude of which was to make all the preceding ones seem small. Incident No 757 in the Control Room file became known as a classic and was called the ‘Guinness’ one. As with all other incidents, the triumph for the wardens, especially Post C, after eight days, tracing of its seventy-five dead and many more injured who were to succumb later, lay in the last words on the Control file: ‘Untraced, Nil.’
A Chelsea Concerto Page 29
