The FitzOsbornes at War

by Michelle Cooper

  I cried. I thought of those tens of thousands of soldiers struggling up the beaches, battling their way through land mines and machine-gun fire and who knows what else the Nazis were hurling at them. I thought of poor Kick, frantic about Billy, and all the other families anxiously waiting to hear if their men had survived the landings. I couldn’t just sit at home doing nothing, so I went out and walked about until I saw a church with its doors open. I wanted to go in and pray for the soldiers, but the vicar stopped me in the foyer and said no woman was allowed in his church without a hat. So I marched straight out again – I could pray just as well without his stupid church – and eventually made my way back to Kensington, where I spotted a lady carrying a bundle of second-hand clothes into the local Women’s Voluntary Service office. So I followed her inside and signed up to help, and it’s a good thing I did, given the pressing need for volunteers in London now.

  Because that’s the other thing making everyone sick with worry – these ghastly bombing raids, which seem so much worse than any we’ve experienced before. I don’t know if that’s because we’re all sick and tired of the war and have reached the limits of our endurance, or because there are so many bombs, at all hours of the day and night, or because the very notion of ‘pilotless planes’ is so creepy. This is the ‘secret weapon’ that Hitler’s been threatening for years to unleash upon us – little robot planes launched from France, designed to fly by themselves to London, where they run out of fuel and plummet to the ground and explode. Actually, I just heard another one go over, about five minutes ago. It’s such a sinister sound – a sort of humming, like a motorbike engine, that gets louder and louder as it approaches. I sit there thinking, Keep going! Keep going! Because if the engine noise stops above one’s head . . . well, one’s had it. It’s all over. (Of course, when I say, Keep going, I mean, Keep going until you reach a nice empty stretch of land with no one around, and then explode in that.) The worst of it is that hundreds of people have been killed already, in just one week, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that can stop the bombs. They can’t be shot down over London, because they’ll just explode wherever they land. And there are so many of them that the Warning sirens are useless. If one wants to stay (relatively) safe, the only choices are to spend all day and night in a very deep underground shelter, or else leave London. That’s what I’ve mostly been doing with the WVS, helping organise the evacuation of women, children and the elderly to the country –

  Oh, Veronica wants the light out now in the cellar. I need some sleep, anyway. Will try to write more tomorrow, and meanwhile, I must keep reminding myself how incredibly lucky I am that Rupert and Simon aren’t fighting in Normandy, and that Toby is – for the moment – out of action.

  28th August, 1944

  WONDERFUL AND HORRIBLE NEWS, all mixed up. Paris has just been liberated and vast swathes of France are now free of the hateful Nazis, who are gradually being driven back towards Germany. But thousands of our men have already sacrificed their lives, and poor Joe Kennedy Junior was one of them. I felt so desperately sorry for Kick – for all of her family, really, but especially her. She telephoned me with the news and kept choking on tears and then apologising for it, because she said Kennedys were brought up never to cry. Oh, it’s so sad! Joe was the only one of her family who’d supported her when she got married – the only one who was kind and understanding when she most needed it – and she is devastated by this. She’s flown back to the United States to be with her family, and the one good thing that might result from this awful tragedy is that her mother might now start to unbend a little about Kick’s marriage. Thank Heavens Billy has made it through all the fighting in Normandy – he’s even been promoted to Major. Hopefully the Allies will soon have defeated the Germans and then he can come home.

  I must admit, I’ve been too busy to pay more than fleeting attention to the news from France. I work twelve hours a day at a community hall, where I give out clothes to people who’ve been bombed, and then try to find emergency accommodation for them, which is basically impossible because half the houses in London are uninhabitable now – including ours. Last month, a flying bomb landed in our garden, blasted an enormous hole in the wall of Montmaray House and tore the roof off our flat. It’s lucky Veronica and I were at work at the time. We did manage to salvage quite a lot of our things, thanks to our wonderful ARP warden chasing off the looters, and now we’re staying with Julia. She’s working at the ambulance station again and Toby’s based at an aerodrome in Sussex. He’s learning how to fly some new sort of plane, but I have a horrible suspicion it’s one of the planes the RAF uses to shoot down the flying bombs over coastal areas, before the bombs reach London. Of course, Toby may have already finished his training and been posted back to an operational squadron. He is very sneaky, and he knows Julia would throw a fit if she found out he was involved in anything so dangerous.

  I also suspect Toby is plotting something with the Colonel – I overheard a snippet of a telephone conversation between them. However, I haven’t yet had the time or opportunity to investigate further . . .

  17th September, 1944

  IT DOES SEEM UNFAIR, that I should be so blissfully happy when so many others are suffering. Oh, poor Kick – first Joe, and now this. She only had five weeks with Billy before he was sent off to France, and now he’s lying dead in some muddy field in Belgium, and they didn’t even have a chance to set up a home together. I haven’t spoken with her yet – Lady Bosworth told me the news about Billy this morning – but I think Kick will be coming back to England as soon as she can arrange it. Billy’s family is very fond of her and would probably be much more sympathetic company for her than her own family. Oh, but it’s such a dreadful, dreadful thing for all of them.

  And of course, there must be thousands of women being widowed every day, on both sides of the conflict. Why don’t the Germans do the decent thing and surrender? Of course, if they were decent people, they’d never have invaded all those other countries to begin with, but the Allied forces are streaming into Germany now, so it’s simply a matter of time before we win the war. Perhaps it won’t be over by Christmas, after all . . . but please let it end very, very soon. It isn’t simply that I want all the death and destruction to end, although I do. I must confess, it’s mostly for my own, selfish reasons . . .

  No, I refuse to feel guilty about being happy! I deserve, just as much as anyone, and certainly far more than people like Hitler, to have nice things happen in my life. And this is by far the nicest, most exciting thing ever to happen to me! Oh, how I wish I could gush about it with absolutely everyone I know! But Veronica’s still in Spain and Anne has moved to Edinburgh. And how could I possibly expect Kick to feel happy about it now – about the news that I am to be married?

  How strange it seems, to be writing that in my journal for the first time! And yet, not really, because it also feels like the most natural, inevitable thing in the world. But let me set it all down in order, the way it happened.

  I hadn’t seen Rupert since the invasion of France started, which was more than three whole months of missing him. I kept writing him long letters, but had nowhere to send them, as he was constantly moving. He wrote me notes when he could, but each time he came to London, I was busy with my WVS duties, so we didn’t ever manage to meet. It was awfully frustrating, but I knew how hard he was working and that his job must be very important. Finally, he telephoned Julia one morning and left a message asking if I could attend some official work function with him. Of course, I didn’t have anything nice to wear, half my wardrobe having been shredded when our flat got bombed, but I borrowed a dress from Julia, and organised a few hours off work, and was waiting for him when he pulled up outside the house. Oh, just watching him climb out of the car made me feel so warm and happy! (How could I ever have wondered if I was in love with Simon, when I was nearly always flustered and anxious around him – and that was when I wasn’t feeling absolutely furious at him for one reason or another?) And Rupert loo
ked just as glad to see me. After quite a bit of kissing, he handed me into the car and we drove off.

  ‘So,’ I said to him, ‘at last, I get to find out what it is you do!’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said, with his lovely smile. ‘It’s not really a secret any more – not this part of my job, anyway. I think the newspaper reporters will be there this morning.’

  ‘Really? Where are we going, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t Julia tell you? It’s a medal presentation ceremony.’

  ‘Rupert! Are you being awarded a medal?’

  ‘No, no, not me. I just made the official recommendations. They were so brave and clever – well, you’ll see. Here we are.’

  And we walked into a very grand room full of RAF officers and newspaper reporters, as well as a couple of men setting up one of those big cameras they use to film newsreels. Rupert found me a place to sit, then was swallowed up almost at once by a crowd of people wanting to speak with him. The gentleman sitting next to me leaned over.

  ‘I trained him, you know,’ he said, with evident pride.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well done. Er . . . you mean, Rupert?’

  ‘No, Gustav,’ said the man. ‘Isn’t the other one named Paddy?’

  ‘Um . . .’ I said. A stout lady in a fur coat was now being ushered past me.

  ‘Mrs Alexander, wife of the First Lord of the Admiralty,’ said the man, nodding his approval. ‘They do things properly, don’t they? Ah, they must be starting.’

  For the people gathered at the front of the room had moved towards their seats, revealing a long table – upon which sat two cages.

  Pigeons. I should have guessed.

  A gentleman introduced as ‘Wing Commander Rayner, Head of the Air Ministry Pigeon Service’ then stood up and spoke about each of the two pigeons in turn. Gustav had delivered the first message from a ship off the Normandy beaches, just after the Allied troops landed on the sixth of June. Paddy had been the fastest pigeon of the whole Normandy Operation, travelling 230 miles in under five hours in his job as an RAF messenger. Each pigeon received a medal and a kiss from Mrs Alexander, to much applause and cheering. When the cameras had finished rolling, Rupert took me to meet all his colleagues, human and avian. Paddy was a bit shy, but Gustav looked rather proud of himself, puffing out his grizzled chest so I could read his little bronze medallion, which said: ‘For Gallantry. WE ALSO SERVE.’

  ‘I’ve been working with pigeons since the start of the war,’ Rupert explained afterwards. ‘At first, my job was to liaise between the pigeon breeders who donated birds, and the civil servants at the War Office, and all the various military people – smoothing ruffled feathers, so to speak. But then I moved to working mostly with the RAF. All their bombers and reconnaissance aircraft have pigeons on board, so that if they crash in occupied territory, they can send a message back with the plane’s coordinates. A lot of airmen have been rescued that way. I was in charge of the practical details – making sure the birds had comfortable lofts at the air bases, organising corn rations, even arranging for farmers along the coast to shoot down birds of prey, which was awful, but we had to make sure our pigeons wouldn’t get eaten. Then, when the planning started for the Second Front, things became even busier. The generals knew that once troops started moving over the Channel, they wouldn’t be able to send any radio messages; otherwise, the Germans would realise the invasion had started and be able to pick up Allied troop positions. So pigeons would be an ideal means of communication, but that meant training a whole lot of soldiers and sailors to use them. And then, once the invasion began, I had to make sure there weren’t any problems as the pigeons started coming in.’

  ‘Goodness, what an important job,’ I said, as we walked towards his car. ‘No wonder you’ve been so busy this year! Will your work become a bit less frantic now?’

  ‘Somewhat,’ he said. ‘But there are thousands of pigeons still in service, so I’ll be needed until the war’s over.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well . . . I did want to talk with you about that. Do you need to get back to work straight away?’

  I did, but we sat down for a minute on a piece of broken wall, overlooking a bomb crater.

  ‘The thing is,’ Rupert said, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do when the war ends. Go back to Oxford and finish my degree, or apply to a veterinary school, or else find a job somewhere . . . and I’m not sure what’s going to happen with my family, whether Charlie will ever come home, or what my father plans to do with the estate. It all depends. You see, I was thinking that whatever I do . . . well, I want to do it alongside you, Sophie. I simply can’t imagine the rest of my life without you in it.’

  ‘Oh, Rupert! I feel exactly the same way about you,’ I said, beaming at him. ‘Perhaps we ought to get married, then.’

  ‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ said Rupert, leaning over to kiss me. ‘Very clever of you to think of it,’ he added, after we’d finally come up for air.

  ‘Wait a minute, did you just get me to propose to you?’ I said, both of us starting to laugh.

  ‘I think so. I could get down on one knee and do it properly, if you like?’

  We looked at the muddy, rubble-strewn patch of ground beneath us.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ I said. ‘Oh, Rupert, I’m so glad about this! When, do you think?’

  ‘Well, tomorrow, if it were up to me, but it might be more sensible to wait till this job of mine is finished. I’m still not stationed at any one place. So that means when the war’s over.’

  ‘And I really would love to have a peacetime wedding,’ I said. ‘In the church at Milford, with no one having to wear uniform. Is that all right? Or would you prefer Astley? Or London?’

  ‘Anything you want,’ he said. ‘Oh – but I ought to have warned you before, that I haven’t got much money.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind. I don’t have any either, except for my allowance from Aunt Charlotte.’

  ‘And I don’t have a house,’ he said, ‘or anywhere to live.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said, looking at the bomb crater. ‘Hardly anyone does, these days.’ Then I rested my head on his shoulder, brimming over with happiness, knowing I was the most fortunate girl in the world.

  29th October, 1944

  WELL. WE HAVE FINALLY DISCOVERED what Toby’s been plotting. This afternoon, he convened a meeting of all the Montmaravian Privy Councillors currently in London – that is, Veronica and me.

  ‘And you, too,’ he said to Julia. ‘After all, you’re the Queen of Montmaray.’

  ‘Oh, all right, darling,’ she said, handing me the plate of scones. ‘Just let me finish pouring the tea.’

  ‘Better turn the wireless on, too,’ he said. ‘In case of hidden listening devices. And Sophie, could you draw the curtains?’

  He’d definitely been spending too much time with the Colonel. Veronica raised an eyebrow at me as she reached for the wireless.

  ‘Right,’ Toby said, after the security arrangements had been judged satisfactory and we each had a cup of tea. ‘As you know, Churchill has shown absolutely no interest in ousting the Nazis from Montmaray – even though we’ve all dedicated ourselves to the war effort for years and years, and Henry sacrificed her life for this stupid, ungrateful country. Sorry, Julia, but it is. Anyway, as the Allied commanders are pretending we don’t exist, I’ve decided we must liberate Montmaray ourselves. I have therefore devised a brilliant plan, which I am now going to explain to you in –’

  ‘Why?’ Veronica asked. ‘I mean, why do we need to do anything, if Germany’s on the verge of defeat and unconditional surrender? Why can’t we just wait for that?’

  ‘Because firstly, they’re not on the verge of defeat,’ said Toby. ‘They’re still sinking Allied ships, they’re still putting up a ferocious fight in Italy and the Netherlands – and just wait till the main battle moves to their homeland. If that assassination attempt against Hitler had actually succeeded, it might be over now
. But unfortunately, he’s still around, so the Nazis could go on fighting for months and months. And secondly, I don’t want to wait. I don’t see why we should sit around doing nothing when everyone else is fighting. Look at the Spanish Republicans, rising up against Franco now! After all they’ve been through, forced into exile in France for all those years – and they haven’t given up! They’re not sitting about waiting for the Americans to rescue them!’

  Veronica opened her mouth, no doubt to point out that the Republicans were currently being forced back across the Pyrenees by Franco’s army. But Toby cut her off before she could speak.

  ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I want to go home.’

  Veronica closed her mouth.

  ‘Now, here’s my plan,’ said Toby. He produced a large manila envelope and shook some photographs out onto the table. We leaned in.

  ‘Is that . . .?’ I said, and he nodded.

  ‘Aerial photographs of Montmaray, taken a few weeks ago,’ he said. ‘I needed up-to-date information. You can see they’ve rebuilt most of the castle – that’s where the soldiers seem to be quartered. The village looks much the same, except for a new wharf, but there aren’t any ships around at the moment, and there’s only one plane on the airstrip. In fact, it all looks pretty quiet. I don’t think they’ve ever had more than a dozen servicemen stationed on the island at any one time, and there’s probably far fewer than that now. It won’t be too difficult to land a plane there and overwhelm them.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Veronica, pointing to a silver blob on the main part of the island, not far from the reconstructed drawbridge.

  ‘Oh, probably some sort of ground-based radar.’

  ‘What’s “radar”?’ I asked.

  ‘A way of detecting distant objects. It sends radio waves into the air and if they bounce back, it means a plane’s out there. It can tell where the plane is, how fast it’s travelling, whether it’s friend or foe. That’s one of the main reasons the RAF was able to fight off the Luftwaffe so successfully from the start, because we could tell when they were coming. And of course, radar’s the only reason we pilots ever managed to shoot down anything at night.’