An Army of Smiles

by Grace Thompson

  ‘They were trying to repulse the Germans but were attacked while they were still unprepared.’

  ‘They were overrun?’

  The man nodded his dark head. ‘Several of the Naafi staff including his two best friends were injured. Naafi men stood beside the soldiers and helped fight their way through as they got away in front of the German invasion. He saw much of the fighting, some terrible deaths, and he’s finding it hard to forget.’

  Ethel saw Albert later and mentioned the tragedy of Norway, believing that it was better to talk about things rather than keep them burning away inside.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ she said. ‘Why should you forget? Just make sure you remember the good times as well as the tragedy at the end.’

  He told her that one of the men had been blown up as he ran in search of bread, only yards from where he himself had been standing. Ethel listened, saying very little, just trying to make him believe she understood.

  ‘It should have been me,’ he said more than once.

  She spent several hours talking to the sad, subdued man who seemed to carry such a heavy burden. She even told him about Wesley and the death of her sister, managing to extract from him the fact that he had no girlfriend. She wondered afterwards why it had been important. He was comforting, telling her to let go of the past, think positively about the future. ‘That’s especially important now,’ he reminded her. ‘To look back just distorts everything. We have to go on, accepting what happens and believing that the future will be good. Forget who you used to be, and the problems that person had to face. Think of the woman you are now, not the same, I’m sure. You’d deal with those problems differently now, wouldn’t you?’

  She had to agree about that. She was stronger, better able to cope. Although thoughts of her father in one of his rages still made her quiver.

  After a week Albert left and Ethel was sorry. She was beginning to think that if anyone could make her forget the misery of her home life, he was the one to do it. As well as sadness there was kindness in his face and his thoughtfulness had already been revealed to them. He had made sure their supply of dry kindling was topped up and had helped move the heavy tables when they were giving the place their weekly extra clean, tackling the corners and getting into awkward places with scrubbing brushes.

  Talking to Albert had helped her to open up to others and she began to accept more invitations to go to the weekly concerts and dances with Kate and Rosie. The weekly dances were popular – even those who couldn’t dance enjoyed the cheerful atmosphere. On duty or not, they all helped set up the counter ready for when the men came back. They would be selling snacks and tea and coffee, and, with everything ready, they felt able to spend an hour or two at the concert or dance. Until one day when they had arranged to go to the concert with Duggie – now minus the head bandage – and a couple of his friends. Walter arrived and told them firmly that the concerts were not for them.

  ‘You have to get the canteen ready for when it’s over,’ he said emphatically.

  ‘We’ve done all that, you miserable worm,’ Ethel protested.

  ‘There’s always cleaning to do. The cupboards could do with a scrub. I noticed spilt sugar – that will encourage mice. Cleanliness is our priority.’ The girls looked at the spotlessly clean shelves, the shining glasses and china and the well-scrubbed tables and floors, then each with one hand on a hip they looked at him with tightened lips.

  ‘And while I’m here,’ he went on, avoiding their eyes, ‘I might remind you that you aren’t getting the right number of cakes for the ingredients you’re given. There’s too much margarine going on the sandwiches too. We are rationed, remember! And we have to make a profit. It goes back into the fund for more facilities for the armed forces. You aren’t here for fun!’

  ‘I’m surprised he knows the word,’ muttered Kate.

  While laughter echoed across the field from the Friday night concert, Walter gave instructions.

  ‘Flat baking tins lined with pastry, mixed fruit soaked overnight and spread over it evenly. You’ll cut it into thirty-two pieces and sell it at twopence a slice. Right?’

  ‘Right, Walter, we’ll do that first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll do it now. The fruit has to soak overnight, you aren’t deaf as well as lazy, are you?’

  ‘What?’ Ethel said with a look of gormless innocence.

  ‘I’m going into town and I want the pastry made and the fruit in soak when I get back at ten thirty, right?’

  ‘There’s no way it’ll take three of us to do that,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ll do it. Go and enjoy the rest of the concert and tell me all about it later.’

  It was that evening Ethel began to get to know Duggie. He had kept seats for the three girls but as the time approached for the curtains to open, he’d had to give them up. He stood against the wall still hoping that the girls would appear. As the curtains opened jerkily on the first singing group, he sat near the end of a row and settled to watch the performance.

  There were still a few seats available and Kate and Ethel split up, promising to meet afterwards to walk back to their new hut together. Ethel found herself sitting next to Duggie. In her determination to live down her nickname of ice maiden, knowing he was a friend of Rosie, she talked to him as though he were a friend. They commented on the acts and she offered him one of the cigarettes she habitually carried.

  He took one and offered to light hers. She explained that she didn’t smoke, but kept some for when the airmen were broke and in need of one.

  At the end of the evening, he asked her to meet him the following week at the dance.

  ‘I don’t think I can.’ Excuses were buzzing around in her head. What would Rosie think?

  ‘Please. I don’t know a soul here, and,’ he teased, ‘I miss my sisters something chronic.’

  ‘What about Rosie?’ she asked. ‘I thought you and she were friends.’

  ‘We are. I help her when I can. But I don’t feel anything more than friendship, whereas with you that could easily change…’

  She thought of Wesley and hesitated, shook her head, but then changed her mind. A dance – learning the steps so familiar to the other girls – would be fun, and her life had certainly lacked fun.

  Wesley had left her, abandoned her to a violent father who had almost pulled her arm out of its socket, and a mother who was too weak to help her. Without an explanation he had walked away, leaving her with a father whose heart was inexplicably filled with hatred.

  Then the momentary resentment faded. She told herself she loved Wesley and he loved her. There were so many unexplained things connected with her sister’s death. Wesley’s disappearance was only one of them. She hadn’t heard from Sid up to the time she had left home. There was so much she didn’t understand. Albert had advised her to put aside the past but how could she until she knew all that had happened? There would be a good reason for Wesley leaving her without a word. She had to trust him. He would explain when they met. There was no harm in meeting Duggie and she would tell Wesley all about him.

  ‘Please come,’ Duggie pleaded. ‘It’s only a dance.’

  ‘I can’t dance.’

  ‘I’ll teach you.’

  ‘As long as Walter Phillips isn’t around I’ll try,’ she promised, knowing it was unlikely. ‘But I’ll have to be like Cinderella and run away before the end. We have to be ready for customers who come for late-night snacks. Hungry lot, you airmen.’

  Over the following days she worried about the dance. She didn’t want to go. Her enforced new courage was leaving her. She couldn’t dance and no amount of confidence would make that sorry fact go away. She would be unsure of herself, and make a fool of herself, embarrass Duggie. Going to the dance with Rosie and Kate was one thing. Watching others, enjoying the atmosphere and the music. It was different altogether to go with Duggie. It was a proper date and Wesley wouldn’t like it. And there was the need to tell Rosie, and that was something she didn’t want to do. She couldn’t go, s
he wouldn’t go, but what excuse could she invent?

  During an afternoon off when the weather was dry and pleasantly sunny, the three girls went into the fields and gathered holly and ivy and decorated the canteen as well as they could in preparation for Christmas. On another day, they went into town and bought Christmas cards. For Ethel the occasions were melancholy. Apart from Kate’s parents and Rosie’s Nan, she had no one to whom she could send a card.

  Christmas had never been fun in the Twomey household and the only happy memories were of visits to the Baileys’ farm to see the cheerful, overheated room with its great log fire and the decorative displays taken from the hedges. And to admire the tree, under which there were always gifts for herself and Glenys and Sid.

  New arrivals came fairly frequently as the losses of both men and machines meant the need for replacements. One of the first things the new recruits suffered was a medical examination and batch of injections, and sometimes they reacted badly. The girls had their first experience of this the night before the dance. That evening, a line of young men stood in front of the bar, flirting and making jokes, when without warning, as Ethel began to hand them their food, one disappeared. Then another. She jumped up and looked over the bar and saw they had fallen to the floor in a faint. Before Ethel could get around to see what was wrong, another had keeled over. Some of the ‘veterans’, who were all of twenty-two years old, explained to them that the injections they had all been given were beginning to take effect.

  The stricken airmen were helped to chairs, heads on folded arms resting on tables, hushing their apologies, trying to make them less embarrassed. Duggie stayed for a while and, in a lull, Ethel said, ‘Better forget the dance tomorrow night, you’ll need to look after this lot.’ She was relieved. There was now no need to explain to Rosie she was going on a date with her friend Duggie.

  ‘Nonsense, I’ve been looking forward to it for days,’ he said, rubbing a finger slowly down her cheek and staring into her eyes in a way that made her body respond in an alarming manner.

  She told Rosie about her date but not who she was going to meet.

  Albert came on a brief visit to check the stock and inspect the books. She was about to climb a ladder to replace a bulb and he took it from her and did the job for her. Then he relieved one of the girls of the job of moving heavy tables to wash the floor, promising to return to put them back in their places.

  ‘Decent bloke,’ she overheard one of the other assistants remark. ‘Always willing to muck in, do more than he’s paid for.’

  The dance was held in a rather primitive hall that was in serious need of repair. There was no band that night, only a young pianist who played without music, competently dealing with all requests, sometimes singing as well. The hall was hot and crowded, the people more than the heaters contributing to the heat, and the smiles on the young faces reflecting their usual determination to have fun.

  Air raids were always a regular part of their nights. It was unusual not to be woken two or three times and have to leave their beds and make their way outside, where the planes had already taken off and were going into the attack. They donned their heavy coats and tin helmets and dropped down into a slit trench and watched the air battles taking place. It was late December, as German bombers set fire to London with parachute mines followed by hundreds of incendiaries, that the first bombs fell on the airfield.

  The screaming of engines, the rattle of anti-aircraft guns and the occasional crunch of bombs exploding filled the night, and searchlights lit the scene to help the gunners. Outside, with no escape from the noise and the terrifying battle taking place above them, the girls crouched in the slit trench but were unable to resist looking up into the dark skies. A voice frequently told them to ‘Keep yer heads down unless you want shrapnel ruining yer lovely faces, girls.’ When the raiders were overhead and earth erupted in huge moving mountains around them, they didn’t need telling. They felt as vulnerable as the men in the planes once incendiaries had fallen to light the field like day. The raid was more alarming now they knew many of the pilots in the air.

  A stick of bombs fell, straddling the buildings, landing either side of the terrified girls. The sound of engines filled their ears, and they covered them in a futile attempt to deaden the sounds. The flames of several fires lit the airfield, and the madness went on and on, then seemed to die down a little. They cautiously removed their hands from their ears and heard footsteps running towards them. There was a lull as planes moved away from their vicinity. Then, as they heard the guttural sound of a plane increasing its speed, coming down and down, filling their heads with terrifying noise, to which was added the unmistakable squeal of a falling bomb, a flying figure landed on top of them just as the second of another stick of bombs fell.

  ‘What’s that?’ Rosie’s quivering voice asked. ‘Ethel, help me, I think there’s a body landed on top of us.’

  ‘Hello, ladies, what a wonderful place for an unscheduled landing. I’m George Morgan. Who are you?’

  Slowly things became quiet as the flames flickered and died and the planes disappeared from the skies. Stiffly, Rosie, Ethel and a tearful Kate emerged from the filth of the earth and rubble with which they had been half buried. The young man who had arrived so unexpectedly and who Rosie had first thought to be a dead body, stood up and helped them out of the trench. Not waiting for explanations, the three girls hurried to the canteen and began making a brew. The trolley was quickly stocked, and the canteen filled up while the newly arrived George Morgan helped Rosie manoeuvre the trolley between bombed buildings and piles of rubble as she went around the airfield providing food and drink to the men sorting out the chaos of the raid.

  Teams of men, each man knowing exactly what was expected of him, swung into action. Rosie and George Morgan went from group to group with reviving cups of tea and snacks. No money changed hands, this was an emergency – ‘and if that Walter Phillips complains, I’ll chuck him down one of the craters,’ Rosie said.

  Rosie had never seen a dead person, and the sights and sounds from the wounded, and the unnerving stillness of the bodies from which life had gone, terrified her at first. The cries of the trapped and the wounded, and the low groans of the badly injured were something she knew she would never forget.

  Bundles of what at first looked like carelessly abandoned clothing revealed themselves to be people, their positions, the angle of head and limbs, leaving her in no doubt that they were dead. She was afraid to pass the first victim they met, lying in a place where they had to step over him, manoeuvring the trolley around his inert form. It was as though turning her back on him and walking away was disrespectful as well as bringing inexplicable fear. She was shaking. Her legs threatened to let her down. When she spoke her voice was unrecognizable. Her thoughts were in turmoil. She should be helping these people but didn’t know what to do.

  What was she doing here? She had never wanted so much to wake up and find it had all been a nightmare and to see Nan waiting to soothe away her fears.

  It was George Morgan who reminded her firmly but with kindness that the sad victims were friends and were no more to be feared than they had been the hour before.

  ‘We should be helping them,’ she sobbed.

  ‘We are. We’re doing what we do best. Let the medics help them and we’ll help the medics.’

  Jokes and encouraging remarks from George Morgan helped as the large number of injured and dead became apparent, as did his strength when the trolley got stuck. He wasn’t tall but surprisingly strong, and Rosie was grateful for his assistance. He would stop sometimes to help a group of men to move an obstacle, and return to the trolley to deliver more food and drinks. They were kept so busy there wasn’t time for her to feel shy.

  They ran back and forward to the canteen replenishing the urn and the food, while others made sandwiches and even baked a few scones to help the dwindling supplies.

  George Morgan introduced himself properly as morning broke after the disasters of the n
ight.

  ‘George Morgan, ground crew,’ he said offering a hand.

  ‘George, welcome. You’re a hero.’

  George shook his head. ‘I’m no hero,’ he said, his Welsh accent strong. ‘It’s them boys have that title.’ They all looked up into the skies and wondered fearfully how many of their boys would fail to return.

  Chapter Four

  While the girls served the men, the clearing up after the bombing raid went on – the priority as always was the landing strips. As dawn broke on a cold, clear morning, fires still burned, showing the devastation of the night. The Spitfires had landed at other airfields and it was late evening before they were able to return. Ethel found herself wondering about Duggie, who had now returned to his duties and had been one of the pilots attacking the German aircraft throughout the raid.

  She stood beside Rosie as the planes landed and saw with relief that she pretended was for Rosie, that Duggie’s plane was among those safely returned. There had been losses, but already they had learnt not to comment on the numbers. In a Spitfire station as on all the others, grieving was a brief and very personal affair, there was no looking back, no time to share regrets or even dwell on the loss of good friends. Too much thinking about the dead could result in a lack of concentration and that could lead to more tragedy. The men had to push grief aside as firmly as they dealt with their fear; the fight went on.

  Walter tried to comfort Ethel and Kate as they silently grieved for those who were missing, putting an arm around each of them and allowing his hands to wander. Ethel pushed him away angrily and Kate shouted loudly so that anyone near was aware of what was happening. Furiously, Walter left them, pushing Rosie out of his way as he went.

  ‘Why won’t he take no for an answer!’ Kate shouted.

  ‘I think we’ve made an enemy there,’ Rosie said. ‘I hope he doesn’t make things difficult for us.’

  ‘How can he? He isn’t that important!’ Ethel replied.

  Replacement crews came with alarming regularity, taking the places of men who had lost their lives in the battles overhead or on the ground. Whenever there was a group of new faces, Ethel asked them if they had seen Wesley Daniels. She knew it was useless. The last she had heard of him she had been told he was serving on a ship not an airfield. She asked anyway.