Victory for the East End Angels

by Rosie Hendry

  ‘I’m glad. I see wood from up there,’ he nodded to the sky, ‘and change of colour and think you would like.’

  ‘Very much, thank you. The parks in London are lovely but nothing beats a wood in the countryside.’

  They carried on walking, breathing in the scent of autumn, crunching on the dry dead leaves. Spotting some fallen leaves that had blown into a drift, Bella let go of his hand and kicked her way through them, enjoying the gentle rustling, then, reaching the end of the pile, turned and went back through it again.

  ‘I love doing this,’ she called to Stefan who stood there watching her, a smile on his face. ‘Come and join me.’

  He laughed and, holding her hand, they kicked through the leaves several times together until Bella was finally satisfied. ‘That was fun.’

  Stefan pulled her into his arms. ‘You extraordinary woman, Bella.’ His cornflower-blue eyes held hers. ‘You make so happy here.’ He put his hand over his heart before reaching into a chest pocket of his tunic and taking something out, holding it out to her. ‘I want to give you this.’

  Bella looked down at what he was offering her and gasped – it was the Polish version of a pilot’s wings, the same as he wore pinned on the front of his tunic, a silver eagle with drooping wings carrying what looked like a wreath. ‘I fall in love with you, Bella. I like if you wear my wings, please.’

  Tears filled her eyes as she looked into his. ‘I love you too, Stefan.’ She had never expected to fall in love again, and certainly not with a Polish pilot but Stefan had come into her life and shaken it up: he’d taken her dancing, showed her courtesy and was not afraid to demonstrate how he felt. He’d swept her away from the gloomy path that she’d been following since James had died. Stefan made her feel so alive and gloriously happy again.

  He gently touched her cheek, brushing away a tear that had escaped. ‘I so happy we find each other, Bella. Will you wear my wings?’

  She smiled at him. ‘I’d like that very much, thank you.’

  Very gently, he pinned the wings on the front of her dress just below her collarbone, and then kissed her tenderly. ‘It looks beautiful, like you.’

  The officers’ mess fell silent as Bella and Stefan walked in, everyone stopping talking to look at them.

  ‘Not often you lot are quiet,’ Stefan said. ‘Everyone, this is Bella.’

  ‘Welcome to the madhouse, Bella,’ someone called.

  A tall man, who was older than most of the others, probably in his late twenties, got up from his armchair and came over to them, bowing and clicking his heels, before taking hold of Bella’s hand and kissing it. ‘I am Tadeusz, very good to meet you. Stefan talk about you very much.’

  Bella’s cheeks grew warm. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ She’d heard about Tadeusz too, he was their leader and a very experienced pilot who the men looked up to.

  ‘Please come and sit down, lunch will be served soon.’ Tadeusz directed her to sit in the chair he’d just vacated. Stefan perched on one of the arms, putting his hand on her back to reassure her.

  ‘You’re a brave woman coming here for lunch,’ one of the British airmen, who was puffing away on a pipe, said. ‘You should have taken her out to a restaurant, Stefan.’

  ‘No, it’s fine, I’m pleased to see where Stefan works and lives,’ Bella said. ‘I’m sure it’ll be lovely.’

  ‘Stefan say you drive ambulance?’ Tadeusz asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m stationed not far from the Tower of London.’ Bella was aware that all the men in the mess were listening to her, watching her.

  ‘Is hard job, I—’ Tadeusz began but stopped when an orderly appeared and announced that lunch was ready.

  ‘Grub’s up, old chaps,’ an airman said. ‘And lady, of course.’

  Sitting at the table with a plate of stew in front of her, Bella faced more questions from the airmen.

  ‘So where did you meet Kaminski then?’ a sandy-haired airman with a magnificent moustache asked as he speared a dumpling swimming in his stew. ‘He’s a lucky fellow to have met you.’

  Bella caught Stefan’s eye and he winked at her. ‘At an incident, Stefan helped my fellow crew member and me to carry casualties to our ambulance.’ She smiled at Stefan who sat opposite her. ‘He saved us a lot of time.’

  ‘A V1 rocket?’ another airman asked from further down the table.

  Bella nodded. ‘It was a bad one, hit in the middle of the street and caused a lot of damage.’

  ‘We try, but don’t get them all,’ he said.

  ‘Londoners are grateful for what you’re doing,’ Bella said. ‘I’m sure it’s not easy to shoot them down.’

  This was an open invitation to the pilots to talk about their exploits facing the doodlebug rockets, and with a great deal of laughter and demonstrations of flying with their hands, Bella watched and listened to them as she ate. She could see the strong camaraderie between them, rather like at Station 75, with different characters making up the whole: there were the loud, boisterous ones who dominated the conversation and a few quieter ones like Stefan. All of them seemed to get on well together and despite their joshing around would support each other through thick and thin, and sometimes life and death, when they were up flying their sorties.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Stefan asked, reaching across to touch her hand when they were served their second course of jam roly-poly and custard.

  She nodded and picked up her spoon and pointed at the custard. ‘Look what we’ve got.’

  Stefan pulled a face. ‘I try to get used to it.’

  ‘It’s bigger than I thought.’ Bella touched the side of the Spitfire – she’d only seen them as small planes darting about in the sky in dogfights, never this close before.

  ‘Is best aeroplane,’ Stefan said. ‘I show you.’ He took her hand and guided her around the Spitfire, explaining what each part did, from the pointed nose cone and propellers to the tail, clearly enthralled with his plane. ‘You like?’

  Bella laughed and nodded. ‘Yes, it’s very nice.’ She caught the eye of the mechanic who was in the middle of servicing Stefan’s plane while it was here in the hangar and he grinned back at her.

  ‘It’s the best plane, miss,’ the mechanic said. ‘She’s a beauty and no mistake.’

  ‘See?’ Stefan beamed. ‘We all love Spitfire.’

  A loud bell began to ring somewhere outside and Stefan and the mechanic looked at each other and then both dashed over to the hangar door.

  ‘What is it?’ Bella hurried over to join them, but her question was answered as she saw pilots dressed in flying jackets, life jackets and heavy boots running out of the mess towards the line of waiting Spitfires standing out on the grass.

  ‘That’s Tadeusz.’ Stefan pointed to the nearest Spitfire which his friend was climbing into while his ground crew made the final preparations. He put his arm around her as she watched in fascination as the Spitfire’s engine roared into life with a burst of exhaust fumes, the propeller spinning around, and then it started to move, taxiing to take off, closely followed by the other planes, going faster and faster down the runway and lifting off as if they were feather light. The air was filled with the throaty growls of their engines which gradually faded as the planes banked to the left and flew away to deal with whatever they were being sent to fight.

  Bella suddenly felt sick. This was what Stefan did. She knew he was a pilot, of course, but seeing the others rush off and launch themselves into the air in their Spitfires, no matter how marvellous a machine it was, was terrifying because they weren’t going up there for a pleasure flight.

  ‘What happens now?’ she asked.

  ‘We wait. There is nothing to do, we wait for them to come back.’

  The mechanic nodded in agreement and went back to his work.

  ‘Come on,’ Stefan took her hand, ‘we go wait in the mess.’

  This time the mess was much quieter, just a few of the pilots remaining, sitting around reading or just listening to the wireless.

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nbsp; ‘I get us some tea,’ Stefan said after directing her to sit in one of the vacant armchairs.

  ‘Is it always like that?’ Bella asked the sandy-haired airman she’d spoken to earlier.

  He frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Rushing off like that at the sound of the bell?’

  ‘It’s what we do. What do you do when a call comes in for an ambulance?’

  ‘Rush off . . . ’ Bella paused. ‘But we’re not going to do battle, in a small aeroplane, that’s the difference.’

  He smiled at her. ‘We’re used to it. And it’s not always into battle, not really; if we’re after doodlebugs, they don’t fight back.’

  ‘When will they return?’ she asked.

  ‘When they’re done or are running low on fuel. Look, try not to fret over it, we do it mostly because we love it, being up there flying . . . it’s the best feeling there is. I’d rather be up there in my Spitfire than driving a tank or ploughing through the waves on a battleship any day.’

  Stefan returned with two cups of tea.

  ‘Thank you.’ Bella took a sip and spluttered at the unexpected taste. ‘What’s in here?’

  ‘A tot of brandy, you look like you need it.’ Stefan sat down opposite her. ‘I think you upset seeing them go out, yes?’

  She nodded. ‘It scared me, I suppose.’

  He reached out and took hold of her hand. ‘Is like when you in ambulance in middle of a raid, we do our job.’

  ‘I know. At least my ambulance stays safely on the ground.’

  ‘But squash in by streets and buildings. Up there,’ he raised his eyes upwards, ‘we have room to move, we are free. I take you flying one day, you go with me? Yes?’

  Bella considered for a moment. ‘Yes, I would, I’d like to see what it’s like up there.’

  Waiting on the platform of West Malling station later that afternoon, Bella felt as if she knew a lot more about Stefan now. She’d seen where he worked, met his colleagues, touched his beloved Spitfire, and experienced the worry of the RAF equivalent of a call-out, thankfully counting all the pilots back in again. Stefan’s world was different to hers in so many ways, but he shared with her the special bond of fellow crew members and the need to do their duty when required, and she understood that completely.

  ‘Thank you for asking me to come here.’ Bella squeezed Stefan’s hand. ‘I’ve enjoyed myself, and now I can picture where you are and what you do.’

  ‘I think of you at Station 75. I think many, many times each day, Bella. You have my heart.’ He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

  ‘You have mine too.’ Bella touched the wings he’d given her. ‘I’m going to wear this every day.’

  His intensely blue eyes held hers. ‘So part of me with you.’

  ‘I . . . ’ Bella began but paused at the whistle of the train approaching, their time together almost up. ‘When will I see you again?’

  ‘Soon, I come visit. I promise.’ Stefan hugged her tightly and Bella remained in his arms for as long as possible, eking out every precious moment with this wonderful man who had turned her world upside down.

  Chapter 45

  ‘Look! What did I tell you?’ Sparky shouted.

  Frankie looked up from where she was topping up the water in the radiator of her ambulance, to see Sparky marching through the covered archway to the garages, waving two newspapers in the air.

  ‘Aye aye! Something’s upset him.’ Paterson stopped cleaning the side of his ambulance and dropped the cleaning rag into the bucket of soapy water.

  ‘I told you they were firing more bleeding rockets at us and they’ve finally gone and admitted it.’ Sparky spread first one and then a second newspaper on the bonnet of his ambulance and the other crew members crowded round to look.

  ‘Blimey, Sparky, you’ve splashed out on two newspapers today,’ Frankie said, looking down at the large photo on the front of the Daily Mirror whose headline declared in bold type: V2 The TRUTH behind latest attack by Nazi secret weapon. At the bottom of the page was a diagram of the new weapon.

  ‘Well they both showed different things and I wanted to know everything, so I had to get both,’ Sparky explained, his breath pluming in the cold November air.

  ‘Read it out to us then,’ Paterson said. ‘We can’t all read it at once. You’ve had a bee in your bonnet about this, so go on, educate us all so we know what’s what.’ He caught Frankie’s eye and winked at her, and she smiled back, knowing that he would have heard plenty about these flying gas pipes from his crew-mate in the past few weeks because once Sparky got an idea into his head he didn’t like to let go, especially if it was about something like this when people were being kept in the dark about what was happening.

  Sparky cleared his throat and began to read: ‘“Now that Mr Churchill has broken the government’s long silence . . . ”’ He stopped for a moment. ‘It’s been bleedin’ weeks, the first one was back in September, so I heard, and only now do they decide to be honest.’

  ‘We all know that, Sparky,’ Paterson said. ‘The government only tell us what they want us to know and when. Just get on with it and read the paper out, will you.’

  ‘Just stating a fact,’ Sparky said, and then began to read again from the paper.

  Everyone listened intently as they heard how these new long-range rockets, dropped on them from sixty to seventy miles up in the air, travelled faster than sound so that there could be no siren warning or time to take shelter, and how they were designed to penetrate deeper than the doodlebugs before exploding.

  When Sparky had finished, Frankie went back to her job, trying to focus on the task again, but it was hard to forget what she’d just heard about the sinister new weapons. Just when you thought the war might be heading towards its end, something else came along. After D-Day it had been the doodlebugs, and now these V2s, which were even worse.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Bella asked, quietly. ‘Sparky’s caused quite a stir with his newspapers.’ She nodded to where most of the crew were still crowded round looking at the photos and diagrams and reading out sections of the articles themselves.

  Frankie sighed. ‘I’m fine, just sad that we’ve now got these horrible things being fired at us. Those poor little children killed by a V2 while they were at a birthday party . . . ’ She’d wanted to cry when Sparky had read out the bit about the children dying as they sat at the table watching the burning candles on the cake. ‘It’s not right that they should have been killed, it’s not fair.’

  Bella put her hand on Frankie’s arm. ‘I know, but war’s not fair, you and I have seen enough doing this job to know that. These new rockets have just upped the game, coming with no warning or chance to get away. Let’s hope our troops soon capture more of the launch sites and stop them.’

  Frankie leaned closer to her friend and whispered, ‘I hope so, I can’t help wondering if we should persuade Winnie to leave London until it’s safe again.’

  Bella looked over to where Winnie was talking to Sparky, clearly enjoying sparring with him. ‘Do you think she would go if we asked her?’

  ‘No, not really. She’ll stay at Station 75 as long as she possibly can – nothing will shift Winnie from here until she has no alternative.’

  Chapter 46

  Winnie scraped the last of the apple crumble and custard out of her bowl, ate it and then sat back in her chair feeling quite content. ‘That was absolutely delicious, Mrs Connelly, thank you.’ She smiled at the older woman who sat at the far end of the table next to Station Officer Steele.

  ‘Well, clean plates are always a good sign.’ Mrs Connelly surveyed the empty crockery that littered the large table in the common room around which the crew sat to eat their midday meal.

  ‘You always do us proud, Mrs Connelly.’ Station Officer Steele smiled at her.

  ‘It’s much better than having to bring sandwiches to work like we used to have to do,’ Sparky added. ‘There’s only so many fish paste sandwiches a man can stand.’


  The crews’ laughter filled the room but was brought to an abrupt halt by the sound of the telephone ringing in the boss’s office. Without saying a word, Station Officer Steele got up and hurried off to answer it, while everyone strained to hear what was going on, shooting glances between each other as they waited.

  Winnie got up from the table and went to stand near the open door of the office and one glance from the boss told her all she needed to know: it was a call-out. She waited until the older woman put down the telephone receiver. ‘Who do you want to go out?’

  ‘They’ve requested three ambulances, it’s out of our area, down in Deptford. I’ll explain more in a moment.’ She paused, frowning. ‘I think it’s best if you, Rose, Frankie, Bella, Sparky and Paterson take this one, it could be tricky.’

  Winnie nodded. ‘I’ll rally the troops then.’

  A few minutes later they were all gathered in the office.

  ‘I can’t tell you much, I’m afraid, only that it’s out of our area at New Cross in Deptford. Whatever it is must be bad to send crews from here, and no doubt other stations out of the usual catchment area have been called in as well,’ Station Officer Steele said.

  ‘Is it a V2 rocket?’ Winnie asked.

  ‘Probably, there’s been no air-raid warning so it’s not from bombers. As it’s out of our area, you’re going to need to check the map before you go.’ The boss nodded to the large street map of London that was pinned on her office wall.

  ‘I know where to go.’ Sparky went over to look at the map and check the route. ‘I can lead the way.’

  ‘Excellent. I know I can rely on all of you to do a good job.’ She smiled at them. ‘Right, drivers, go and get your ambulances ready while I quickly write up the chits, and good luck.’

  Winnie was glad that Sparky knew the way as they drove south across Tower Bridge and out of Station 75’s usual area. His work as a taxi driver before the war had proven invaluable so many times over the years, especially when they’d been sent out of their usual patch.