Victory for the East End Angels

by Rosie Hendry

  ‘You not staying for the main picture?’ the usherette asked as they came out blinking into the light.

  ‘No, not after watching the newsreel.’

  ‘You ain’t the only one; it’s caused quite a stir. I’ve never known people shout out and swear at a film like that before, though the Nazis deserve it. Nasty devils, thank God they never invaded us. I . . . ’ The usherette paused as the doors to the auditorium swung open and Winnie, Bella and John came out. ‘Ain’t you staying either?’

  ‘Not in the mood for a jolly Hollywood film any more.’ Winnie put her arm through Rose’s. ‘Come on. Let’s go and have some tea.’

  ‘Do you mind if we get something stronger than that?’ John asked. He looked pale and upset. ‘There must be a pub around here somewhere.’

  ‘Just down the road,’ Frankie said. ‘We can go there.’

  Settled at a table by the window a few minutes later, with stiffer drinks than tea in front of them, Frankie looked at her friends. The good humour of just a short while ago had gone, replaced by shock and deep sadness at the knowledge of the terrible atrocities that had been going on in the camps. Rose looked especially pale and hadn’t said a word since they’d left the auditorium; she just sat staring at the glass of brandy that John had bought for each of them, saying that they needed something strong. Frankie knew she must be thinking about her parents, grandparents and other family members who’d stayed behind in Austria, wondering at their fate. The thought that your family might have ended up in one of those camps, been one of those starved people, or worse in a pile of emaciated corpses, must be hideous.

  Frankie took a mouthful of her own brandy. She wasn’t keen on the taste but the heat it gave felt welcome after the chilling images they’d just seen. ‘Have a sip, Rose, it will warm you up.’ She pushed Rose’s glass closer to her, encouraging her to drink some.

  Rose looked at her and took a sip, then coughed, her blue eyes watering as the fiery liquid went down. ‘It’s strong.’

  ‘You need it.’ John took a sip of his own drink. ‘After seeing what those . . . bastards . . . Excuse me, ladies, but I think they deserve that description . . . have done. Why would you do that to another human being?’

  ‘Because of stupid beliefs, bigotry and twisted thinking,’ Winnie said. ‘The cruelty and inhumanity the Nazis have dealt out in the name of their ideals is horrific.’

  ‘It shows that we were right to fight Hitler if that’s what he’s capable of inflicting on people,’ Frankie said. ‘I hope they make those who were in charge pay for it.’

  ‘I’m sure they will, it’s all there in black and white for the world to see, they can’t hide what they did.’ Bella sighed.

  Frankie took another sip of her brandy, thinking about the haunted faces of the prisoners who had been filmed. What was their story, where had they come from and where would they go now?

  ‘At least now that our soldiers are there they can start to look after the people, help them get better and strong again,’ Bella said.

  ‘And then what?’ Frankie asked. ‘What’ll happen to them next? They need to find their families again and go home – if they still have one to go to after all the fighting.’

  Winnie sighed. ‘We thought we had it tough with all the bombing, eh?’

  Frankie shook her head. ‘We’re lucky, we’ve always been free, not like those poor people.’

  ‘Do you think my parents are in there?’ Rose suddenly said.

  Frankie looked at the others whose faces betrayed their thoughts for a moment before each of them covered them up with a neutral expression. They must have thought like her: if they had been sent there or to another camp like it, then they might not have survived.

  ‘I hope not.’ Frankie put her arm around Rose’s shoulders. ‘They might still be in Austria.’

  ‘The Red Cross will do everything it can to find people,’ Bella said, reaching across the table and taking hold of Rose’s hand. ‘You need to keep hoping they will find them safe and sound and you can be reunited.’

  Frankie caught John’s eye from where he sat on the other side of Rose. She could see from his expression that he didn’t look hopeful that Rose’s family would have survived but he forced himself to smile at his cousin. ‘It won’t be long before you hear from them again. It’s only a matter of time before the war will be over and then families can get in touch again.’

  Rose nodded and did her best to smile.

  Frankie hoped so much that when news did eventually come for her friend it would be good, and she could see her parents again. There was nothing any of them could do to help find Rose’s family, except keep waiting and hoping.

  Chapter 59

  Station Officer Violet Steele stared at the words typed onto the paper. She’d known that it had been only a matter of time before this came, but seeing it written in black ink still felt like a hammer blow. Station 75 was to close in just two weeks’ time, on the tenth of May 1945, its job done. Other ambulance stations across London had already closed since the capture of the enemy’s rocket sites, and their turn was coming. Emotion caught in her throat and she took several deep breaths to steady herself. It would be the end of an era, one that had pushed her and her crew members to the limit, had cost some of them their lives and injured others, but through the adversity had come great friendship and loyalty and she wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

  Pulling out her handkerchief, she wiped away the tears that were blurring her eyes. She was inordinately proud of all they’d achieved since they’d first arrived here in the autumn of 1939. They didn’t know what they’d be facing in the coming months and years, going out when bombs rained down during the Blitz and more recently dealing with the destruction from the doodlebugs and V2s. It was going to be hard to not be involved with all the wonderful crew any more, sharing in their ups and downs, watching them grow in confidence and ability. Her time serving as Station Officer had been one of the greatest achievements of her life, something that she was incredibly proud of and honoured to have done.

  An uncertain future stretched out in front of her, as it would for all her crew. They had all longed for peace to return and for the fighting and killing to be over, but she suspected that many of them, like her, would desperately miss the work and the close comradeship of their colleagues. Would they go back to the lives they’d had before the war? Could they? Not just because that lifestyle didn’t exist any more, more probably because they’d changed and didn’t want to live that life again.

  Telling the crew wasn’t going to be easy, she needed time to take in the news and prepare herself first. She wanted to see the station working as it normally did for one last time before she announced the news that it would soon be over. Once the closure was revealed, and everyone knew that a definite end was in sight, then it would subtly change Station 75. Time would be running out and the crew would be looking ahead to their future lives, no longer completely focused on working at the station.

  She folded the letter and put it back in its envelope, then tucked it inside her tunic pocket before leaving her office. She headed to the kitchen first where Mrs Connelly and Hooky were busy preparing the midday meal.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Connelly,’ she said. ‘Is everything in hand?’

  ‘Aye, the stew’s cooking and we’re just waiting for the vegetables from the allotment.’ Mrs Connelly’s fingers were expertly rubbing margarine into flour to make the Welsh cakes she’d planned for today. ‘I sent Winnie and Frankie down there to pick some sprouting broccoli and pull up a few turnips to go with it.’ She turned to Hooky who’d been mixing eggs and milk together. ‘Are they ready?’

  ‘Yes, shall I add these?’ Hooky picked up the pan from the scales where sugar, nutmeg and chopped dried apple had been weighed out.

  Mrs Connelly checked the appearance of the flour and margarine which her fingers had turned into a breadcrumb-like consistency. ‘Aye, tip them in.’

  Hooky was much happier in the kitc
hen than when she’d been working on the ambulances, Station Officer Steele thought, watching her helping Mrs Connelly. She worked hard preparing the meals and clearing up after the crew had finished. It wasn’t an easy job, but the young woman had, after a shaky start, embraced the role and made a success of it.

  ‘Well, I look forward to having a Welsh cake later,’ Violet said.

  Leaving the kitchen, she went over to the common room window, to her usual lookout post. She’d stood there so many times before, watching the crew at work down below in the courtyard as they tended their ambulances, making sure they were prepared to go out to an incident at a moment’s notice. From her vantage point, she could see how battered and scarred the ambulances were, most of them with pits in their roof and bodywork from being hit by flying shrapnel and falling debris while they were out in an air raid.

  An image of Winnie’s ambulance on the day that she’d narrowly missed being crushed by a falling wall flashed into her mind. The young woman had returned with her ambulance covered in a layer of pinkish-grey dust, and it was pitted with dents from falling rubble. It had been filthy both inside and out, she recalled, as the back doors had been open, and the inside had caught the full force of the cloud of pulverised bricks and mortar. She’d torn Winnie off a strip for taking such a risk, knowing full well that she’d have probably done the same herself.

  A cheerful whistling from below brought her attention back to the present. Sparky walked in through the archway, a newspaper tucked under his arm. She watched as he proceeded to spread it out on the bonnet of his and Paterson’s ambulance, as he always did, and read out the latest headlines to the working crew. She smiled. He was like some ancient oracle who spread the news, along with a good dollop of his own opinion. Sparky had played a central role at Station 75, his encyclopaedic knowledge of London from his previous work as a taxi driver had been invaluable, along with his sheer force of nature and no-nonsense attitude.

  One of the greatest things about working at Station 75 had been the eclectic mix of people who’d come to work here from such different backgrounds and jobs: debutantes mixing with East End factory girls. What they did before and who they’d been didn’t matter; everyone worked together and had gelled into a strong team. The war had brought a lot of bad things but good had come out of it too. The mixing of different aspects of society here had been one of them and she hoped it would have a long-lasting effect for all the crew, changing opinions and discriminations.

  Bella’s laugh rang out below, something Sparky said had amused her as she brushed out the inside of her ambulance cab. Watching as she parried some comment back at Sparky, Station Officer Steele thought that out of all the crew, Bella had made the most remarkable transformation during her time here. The former housemaid, who’d been bombed out on the first night of the Blitz and who she’d given a temporary home to, had, with a bit of pushing and nurturing, blossomed into a confident young woman whose writing talent she hoped would carry her forward into an interesting and fulfilling career.

  Leaving her lookout post, she went down to the courtyard. Her arrival was quickly spotted by Sparky who beckoned her over to come and look at today’s front page of the Daily Herald with its headline Berlin Encircled: Break-in From West.

  ‘See, boss, they’re nearly there. Old Hitler must be quakin’ in his boots, just wait till the Allies get hold of him and make him pay for all he’s done,’ Sparky said. ‘I’d like to be a fly on the wall when they break in and catch ’im.’

  ‘They’ll make him swing,’ Paterson called from where he was up a ladder washing the roof of his and Sparky’s ambulance.

  She nodded. ‘That man has got a lot to answer for, that’s for sure. I’m just going down to the allotment, would you mind going up to the common room, so you can answer the telephone if it rings, Sparky? I don’t think we’re likely to get any call-outs, but just in case.’ Their workload of incidents had dropped off dramatically since the capture of the V2 rocket sites, and there hadn’t been any fired at London or anywhere else in southern England since late March, when the last one had hit Hughes Mansion in Stepney.

  ‘Right you are, boss.’ Sparky gathered up his newspaper and headed upstairs.

  Walking towards the Tower of London, she thought how beautiful it looked with its mellow, sandy-coloured stone glowing warmly in the late April sunshine. It was a miracle that it had survived the bombing when so many other areas had been devastated, centuries-old buildings destroyed, and the landscape of the city irrevocably altered. It had also become important to the crew of Station 75 through their allotment in the dry moat, which had provided a good source of vegetables for their diet, especially since they’d switched to twenty-four-hour shifts and Mrs Connelly had arrived to cater for them using produce they’d grown here.

  As she drew closer, she could see Winnie and Frankie cutting the flowering heads off the sprouting broccoli for Mrs Connelly. Her arrival didn’t go unnoticed as Trixie spotted her and let out a bark of recognition and came hurrying over to her, her tail a golden blur.

  ‘Hello, Trixie.’ She bent down to stroke the little dog’s head. She would miss her as much as any of the crew, Trixie having so easily wormed her way into her affections.

  ‘Have you come to help?’ Winnie called to her, with one hand on her hip, her protruding stomach peeping out of her open tunic which no longer fastened at the front.

  ‘We’ve nearly got enough.’ Frankie put a handful of broccoli into the basket on the ground. ‘We just need to pull up some turnips.’

  ‘I’ll get them for you.’ She went over to the row of healthy-looking turnips and started to pull some up, reminding her of helping her mother in the garden at home when she was a child. ‘There’s a good crop.’

  ‘So there should be, after all the care and attention they’ve had,’ Winnie said. ‘This place has been a goldmine for the station – our meals would have been a lot less appetising if we didn’t have it. What will happen to it after the war’s over? It can’t go on much longer, can it?’

  Station Officer Steele looked over at her deputy and shook her head. ‘Sparky’s headline today is “Berlin encircled”, so there’s no escape for Hitler. It’s only a matter of time, weeks even, before the end.’ She sighed, focusing her eyes on the turnips in her hand, gently rubbing them together to wipe off the sticky London clay soil. ‘How many turnips did Mrs Connelly want?’

  ‘A dozen,’ Frankie said. ‘It always goes down well, she says.’

  They worked in silence for a while, the young women picking the broccoli while she pulled up enough turnips and arranged them in two bunches, tying them with string to make them easier to carry back.

  ‘Right, I’m going to stand by the river for a bit. I’ve left Sparky in charge in case there is a call-out, but you can take over if you want, Winnie.’ She left them and made her way down to the wall on the bank of the Thames and leaned her arms on it, watching a tugboat ploughing its way downstream against the incoming tide. She loved it down here and had often come to spend some time just watching the toing and froing of boats, and enjoying the openness across the river and the fresher air carried in from the Thames estuary further downstream.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Winnie came to stand beside her, putting one elbow on the wall and looking at her, while Trixie jumped her front paws up on her leg to greet her again.

  She patted the little dog’s head. ‘Shouldn’t you be taking the veg back to Station 75 with Frankie?’

  ‘She wouldn’t let me carry them even if I did, she can manage perfectly well on her own. I thought I’d better come and talk to you, find out what’s wrong.’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong . . . ’ she began but stopped at the sight of Winnie shaking her head at her.

  ‘I think there is, you don’t look right.’ Winnie frowned. ‘Has our turn come?’

  Station Officer Steele nodded. The two of them had talked about the closure of other ambulance stations and had debated when the end would come for Station 75
. ‘I got a letter this morning.’ She took it out of her tunic pocket and handed it to Winnie to read.

  ‘The tenth of May? But that’s only two weeks away!’ Winnie’s eyes were suddenly bright with tears.

  She put a hand on the young woman’s arm. ‘I know.’

  ‘But the war’s not over yet, the Germans might still come back and bomb us and they’ll need ambulances then. Can’t we delay it?’

  ‘I don’t think so, they’re closing stations gradually so if anything did happen, there’d still be ambulances available.’ She sighed. ‘We knew it was coming, Winnie, it was only a question of when.’

  ‘Have you told anyone yet?’

  ‘No, I needed to come down here to think for a bit first, but I will this afternoon so that people can start to prepare for what comes next.’

  Winnie nodded. ‘Do you want me to leave you in peace?’

  ‘No.’ She smiled at her. ‘Stay with me, let’s enjoy the sunshine here together for a while.’

  Station Officer Steele looked around at the crew assembled in the common room, all eager to know why she’d asked them to come here. She glanced at Winnie who’d positioned herself next to her, providing support as she was about to announce the death knell of Station 75. Winnie nodded at her and gave her an encouraging smile.

  She took a deep breath and began. ‘This morning I received a letter from our regional superintendent informing me that Station 75 is to close on the tenth of May. In recognition of your work, you will each receive a travel pass which you can use to go anywhere in the country, perhaps take a holiday if you choose.’

  Silence followed her announcement for a few moments as each crew member took in the words and registered what it would mean for them personally. Then the room erupted into talking as everyone had an opinion and thoughts on the closure. She let them talk; this news, however much they knew it would eventually come, was still a shock and they needed time to absorb and discuss what would happen.