Twelve women … but there were ‘millions like us’.
1 We’re at War
Ready for the Fray
In August 1939 sixteen-year-old Joan Wyndham started to keep a diary. Spending that summer at her grandmother’s palatial house in Wiltshire, she recorded her teenage crush on the butler, point-to-points, charades in the drawing room and cream teas with Daddy in Marlborough. And also the weather:
22nd August
It’s the hottest summer I can remember for years. There’s thunder in the air which gives me a headache. I wish the rain would come to cool everything down.
August slid into September. Flies buzzed, fruit ripened; the still heat of late summer held fears in suspension. ‘Nobody talks about Hitler,’ wrote Joan.
Denial gripped the nation. Few of Britain’s teenagers were readers of newspapers. Many of them barely knew where Germany, Poland or Czechoslovakia were. Margaret Perry from Nottingham was surely a typical seventeen-year-old. She had been taught in the schoolroom that the British Empire was coloured a lovely red across the globe. She also knew that Europe was ‘full of foreigners who couldn’t speak English’, while ‘tea came from India, and Africa was full of little black pygmies’:
War didn’t happen in England; any fighting that might occur would take place over the channel – in France. I had no idea what had been happening in Europe during the last six years … Why my mother was getting so upset I couldn’t imagine. I did recall she’d mentioned something about Zepperlins [sic] whatever they were, flying over England, and Uncle Harry loosing [sic] a leg in the trenches. Yes I’d heard a lot about trenches but they were in France weren’t they?
Another bewildered young working-class woman was Mary Hewins from Stratford-upon-Avon:
I couldn’t understand the war, really. You know, what it was really for.
Debutante Susan Meyrick was also oblivious, preoccupied by her coming-out commitments: ‘I had no idea of the world situation. None. I had no idea the war was so close.’ Sixteen at the time, Mary Angove down in the West Country recalls, ‘Nobody knew what was coming. We were living in a Fools’ Paradise. We all thought Germans were 6 foot tall and blond. People saw Hitler as some kind of comedian – he looked so like Charlie Chaplin, jumping up and down and screaming.’
A sex divide that allocated home-making to women and world affairs to men left Margaret, Mary, Susan and many like them across Britain clueless about the reality. With international tension mounting, and reduced to guessing about their future, such young women looked to the comfortingly familiar. They turned to their mothers. And their mothers, who remembered how the First World War had affected them, had words of reassuring wisdom: ‘I can remember my mum saying we must stock up on sugar and tea,’ remembers Flo Mahony, now in her late eighties. Other prescient advice included: ‘get a little extra soap darling, because soap rationing may well come in’ and ‘buy up hairpins, Kirby grips and elastic for knickers’.
Minds conditioned by decades of domesticity reached out for domestic solutions to the enemy’s menace, and women prepared themselves in the way they knew best: by shopping. Dolly Scannell’s baby was born in July 1939; the way things were going, little Susan was off to a rocky start in life, but her provident mother had seen things coming and purchased enough baby food to last a year. Kathleen Hale’s husband had been prophesying war for years, telling her that England would be blockaded and that they would probably be reduced to eating rats. Kathleen bought a large supply of curry powder and tomato sauce, ‘to make the rats more palatable’. Virginia Graham ordered two entire cases of Bronco lavatory paper (it turned out to be far more than needed and she gave it away as Christmas presents for years afterwards), and her best friend, Joyce Grenfell, cautiously purchased six pairs of silk stockings: not enough, it turned out. Young Edna Hughes from Liverpool filled up a tea-chest with necessities for her family. It was early 1939, and soon they were ready to withstand a siege, stocked with tins of corned beef, tea, cocoa and sugar. Months passed. Every so often Edna’s mother would find there was nothing for tea and suggest raiding the chest – ‘Come on, Ed, let’s open another tin of salmon.’ And, alas, when war finally came the tea-chest was empty.
Before the Munich agreement trenches had been dug in the parks, gas-masks had been fitted and issued, sandbags filled. Then Chamberlain returned and delivered his ‘Peace for our Time’ speech. There would be no war. The gas-masks had been dumped on rubbish heaps and the sandbags left leaking out their contents where they were abandoned. But by summer 1939 even the most resolutely withdrawn and unobservant members of the population could hardly fail to notice the build-up.
*
In 1939 the women’s auxiliary services started to muster, though as yet there was no formal recruiting drive. Any woman with an urge to serve her country could choose from the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service), the WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service, commonly known as the Wrens), the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), the Women’s Land Army, the FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) or various other nursing services. With the exception of the ATS, all of these services had played their part in the First World War, so it was simply a question of reviving their numbers and bringing them up to speed. Publicity made the services sound benign and appealing, like a glorified Girl Guide camp:
Some are learning to be cooks, others are doing orderly and clerical work … The Woman’s Army is a very human institution – the use of powder is allowed, and even a touch of natural lipstick … Not an easy life, perhaps, but a healthy, friendly one. And a grand Army …
though, reading between the lines, there is little to distinguish these female soldiers from militarised maidservants or secretaries. Not surprisingly, a popular perception of the ATS was that its members did nothing but peel potatoes.
Recruits were volunteers. At this stage a girl joining up was likely to be met with mixed reactions; the public was by no means ready for female soldiers. Parents were reluctant to let their daughters join the ATS. Its existence upset many preconceived ideas. It was barely ten years since women under thirty had had the vote, and now here they were, belted and booted, square-bashing like the men. At this stage only a minority were working-class. The underprivileged had more pressing concerns, like having enough to eat, while better-off girls responded to the hint of glamour and adventure in the promotional material.
Some of these, with time on their hands – like Patience Chadwyck-Healey – enrolled in the FANYs. Patience admits that the fact that no qualifications were required helped: ‘You just had to be able to drive.’ Twenty-four-year-old Verily Bruce, the daughter of a Sussex rector, had been a debutante in 1934. She too joined the FANYs ‘in a burst of mixed patriotism and fear soon after Munich’. Verily went off once a week to train, ‘learning to change wheels of army vehicles, [and] do a bit of “left-right, left-right” ’. Others joined, perhaps, with a wary eye on the probable alternative (work in munitions factories or making aircraft). By the time Hitler invaded Poland, there were 20,000 female auxiliaries in this country ready to play their part.
From the Women’s Institute to the Townswomen’s Guild, the Council of Voluntary Welfare Workers to the Blue Cross, women across the land were putting their organisations on to a wartime footing. The Citizens’ Advice Bureaux set up in 1938 to coordinate information and inquiries were largely staffed by women. You could take your pick, and certainly the more prescient and experienced took what training was on offer.
*
Frances Faviell,* thirty-seven, educated, independent and artistically talented, had been living in a spacious studio flat at 33 Cheyne Place, Chelsea, through most of the 1930s. She loved the borough, with all its bohemianism and raffish social life, and, after many travels and upheavals – to Europe, India and the Far East – had become engaged to a strong, intelligent man named Richard Parker.
In 1939 Frances was one of those who decided that learning to administer first aid was a good idea and early that year she attended a course. The tr
ainees were told how to care for air-raid casualties. ‘You must be prepared for anything,’ they were told by the lecturer. There would be no sterile bandages or boiled water at hand. ‘Anything’ included filth, blood, torn tissue – and spilled guts.
They smell, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll have to get used to that. If you come across a casualty with half his stomach laid open and his guts hanging out, thrust your hands unhesitatingly into the wound and pack them back, hold your fists there to keep them in position if you have nothing else. The mess and smell may revolt you, but that man needs his guts – keep them in for him till medical help arrives.
The lecturer’s words, emphatic as they were, seemed detached from any reality Frances had ever known.
Later, there were trial runs for the blackout and rehearsals for air raids. On a lovely June morning in 1939 Frances and her upstairs neighbour Kathleen Marshman joined other members of their borough in a grand-scale Civil Defence exercise. At 12 noon the traffic was stopped for the duration of fifteen minutes. Air-raid wardens told everyone what to do, but – perhaps because of their ridiculous appearance, dressed in regulation brown overalls so ill-fitting that the pants seats were between their knees – nobody took them seriously. Everybody was joking at the absurdity of the role-playing expected of them. Frances and Kathleen were told to be casualties. Mrs Freeth, her housekeeper, cradling Frances’s dachshund in her arms, was told to ‘take shelter’ in an area of pavement marked out with white paint. There was some disagreement as to whether dogs were allowed in this ‘shelter’, but, as Mrs Freeth pointed out, the shelter was entirely imaginary so the dog was coming ‘inside’ whether she was permitted or not.
At midday the siren wailed. Mrs Freeth and the dog took up their places; the ‘casualties’ were given their instructions. Frances lay flat on the pavement in her allotted spot and awaited the arrival of the giggling first aid party who enthusiastically and with much chaffing bandaged up her imaginary wounds, then loaded her on to a stretcher to be taken to an imaginary ambulance. Seeing her mistress being assaulted, the dachshund went frantic; it was all Mrs Freeth could do to hold her still. The exercise proceeded: ‘a flurry of violent activity in the deathless silence of the trafficless streets’. Many of the participants were contemptuous:
‘Lot of tommy-rot, won’t be no air raids here. All this silly play-acting!’ I heard fellow casualties grumbling. Those in the imaginary shelters echoed their comments … There would be no air raids on England! It was unthinkable … At last the continuous flute-like voice of the All-Clear sirens sounded. The exercise was over! With relief and more grumbling we could all go home.
Frances tried to imagine what it would be like if the exercise had been real. Vivid pictures came to her mind: guns, crashing buildings, droning bombers above. ‘It was horrible.’ She shook herself back to reality. It was a beautiful June day; down by the Embankment the river glittered in the sunshine; in the nearby Physic Garden the trees were full of chirping birds. Crowds thronged Royal Hospital Road. Kathleen invited Frances upstairs for a restorative drink, and they had a good laugh at the absurdity of the proceedings. From below, Mrs Freeth called, ‘Come and have your lunch.’
*
In Liverpool that summer twenty-year-old Helen Forrester was also aware of the preparations for war. The city would be hit, there was no doubt about that: it was the most important western port in the country.
Now the family’s gas-masks had arrived and been tried on. Innumerable leaflets had landed on the doormat – what to do in the event of an air raid or a gas attack, how to handle food shortages and petrol rationing. The air-raid warden came round and told Helen’s mother to arrange for the house to be blacked out.
Young Helen’s life was already so wretched that death held few terrors. But the thought of dying did frighten her. The prospect of lying trapped, suffering, beneath the rubble of their home was a dreadful prospect, and the atmosphere of tension that August only added to her woes. ‘To say that in the summer of 1939 we were scared would have been an understatement. Almost everybody in Liverpool was obsessed by a dread of the unknown.’ Mother was drained and exhausted. ‘There she sat, drinking tea and popping aspirins into her mouth, while Poland was decimated and we waited for our turn.’
Heaven Help Us
Back in London at the end of August Joan Wyndham was busy with her drama school colleagues rehearsing Hedda Gabler. At sixteen she was stage-struck, artistic and living in Chelsea. Dick Wyndham, her father, was a wealthy demi-mondain and aspiring artist, now separated from her devoutly religious mother. Joan lived in Redcliffe Gardens with ‘Mummy’ and her eccentric female companion Sidonie – ‘Sid’. Despite (or because of) her unconventional upbringing, Joan’s appetite for life and eager embrace of what Chelsea’s bohemia had to offer make her published diaries delectably entertaining – even with doom impending. By this time parents were being advised to have their children evacuated from the cities:
Friday 1st September
The posters say HITLER INVADES POLAND. Everywhere children are waiting in expectant noisy herds, but the mothers are quiet, grey, and some of them are crying … Mummy and Sid went to church so I sat in my room and got completely drunk for the first time in my life – on rum. It was a very nice experience indeed. I no longer cared a damn what happened to anybody.
I rang up Dorothea: ‘I’m completely drunk.’
‘That’s right, so are we.’
‘Goodbye and good luck.’
‘Goodbye, darling.’ Everything now is goodbye and good luck.
The world seemed to be shutting down. On Saturday 2 September Joan was panic-stricken to hear that ‘they are planning to close the theatres!’ It was her last chance to see Edith Evans in The Importance of Being Earnest. Mummy and Sid disapproved, but Joan’s desire to seize at pleasures was not so much frivolous as a fear that everything she enjoyed was coming to an end.
Another woman recollected the final days before the declaration of war as being a time of heightened impressions, when to ‘look your last on all things lovely’ was an imperative of the greatest urgency. With the awful conviction that everything beloved and ordinary was under threat, the familiar became beautiful. Images were indelibly printed on people’s minds with the clarity of a photograph: the sun shining on a pane of glass, swans on the Thames, barrage balloons glittering in the evening sunlight. ‘We believed that everything we had known was going to be wiped out.’
All that Saturday the BBC Home Service interrupted its schedule of gramophone records with gloomy announcements. Helen Vlasto, on holiday with her family on the Essex coast, recalled that the bulletins served only to undermine morale, already low. It was a day ‘full of foreboding’. That evening a terrific storm hit areas of northern England. Rain came down in sheets, and continuous thunder crashed overhead; in Derby lightning struck five barrage balloons, which burst dramatically into flame and came down over the town. ‘Nature is providing the finishing touches to these poignant, horrible days,’ wrote another young woman, unable to sleep as the elements raged above her. ‘This storm makes one feel that perhaps God is wishful of reminding us that our little wars are as nothing compared with His awful power.’
Sunday morning dawned crystal clear. Shortly before 11 o’clock Helen Vlasto dropped by the kitchen to check that her grandmother’s servants were going to be listening in at 11.15 to the expected broadcast from Number 10 Downing Street. The staff looked grim and white-faced, though Ella, the family cook, continued to prepare vegetables for dinner. ‘Oh, Miss Helen dear, what is to become of us?’ As the maids awaited the news below stairs, she made her way to the drawing room. There, the family were gathered in front of the wireless to listen to the Prime Minister:
This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such und
ertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.
As she listened to Chamberlain’s announcement, Helen Vlasto told herself: ‘This is the most poignant moment of your life to date, and you will never forget it.’ The time and place remained engraved on her memory – the sun streaming through the latticed panes, dappling the swathes of lavender left out to dry on the broad window-seats, the scent of Turkish tobacco and rose petals in great bowls. There was silence.
But out in the garden nothing had changed. The September sun still shone thoughtlessly down, unmindful of the new and monstrous turn of events. The bees continued to bumble amongst the roses, and the butterflies to weave their erratic and inconsequential course towards the early Michaelmas daisies and the Buddleias.
My tiny erect grandmother watched grimly as her family made its urgent plans to scatter, and prayed that we might all be spared to meet again. How were we to find our way, and how should we come to know how best to use this emergency constructively and fruitfully?
*
Eighty years ago Sunday was a day when all the bustle of the week came to a stop. Shops closed, workers and traders downed tools for a lie-in. There was church, roast lunch, a day’s dozing in the parlour over cups of tea. The country was suspended, hushed and stilled. The impact of Chamberlain’s declaration would penetrate every home in the land.
Sixteen-year-old Pip Beck was exhilarated: ‘ “Well, at least we know where we stand now!” I said.’ But her parents were silent. Phyllis Noble was ‘very scared … I’m afraid I’m not of the stuff that heroes are made of.’ Some wept. ‘I get emotional remembering it. Old age I suppose,’ says Mary Davis (née Angove). Mary was a trainee nursing assistant. ‘It was a beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. I went out on the verandah of our lodging, and I just stood there, trying to make my mind think: “War – we’re at War.” It was unreal.’
Millions Like Us Page 3
