In the new era, nations which had transcended their differences in the face of a common evil would later revert to suspicion and hostility. And, as we shall see, the relationship between men and women would also relapse after the war, becoming troubled and unbalanced.
In 2003 Joy Taverner’s grand-daughter-in-law asked her for her memories. It was still hard for Joy to talk about Belsen, still hard to come to terms with what she had witnessed there:
Whoever created us humans made some awful mistakes. I only hope that in the future the world will become a more peaceful and friendly place.
*
By the end of April the European war was moving with dizzying speed to its conclusion. At home, the sirens were quiet, and the public were told that they need no longer put up any form of blackout. Mussolini’s grisly end was succeeded with news that the Russian and American armies had met; Berlin was encircled. What did it all mean? Maggie Joy Blunt was appalled by the treatment meted out to the Duce and his mistress, Clara Petacci, whose corpses had been strung up and abused. ‘[I feel] shocked and depressed. Spitting on the bodies … seems childish and barbarous.’ But her low-spiritedness was short-lived. Having spent the weekend spring-cleaning her living room, she was delighted with its brilliance and beauty. Her beloved cat Dinah had had a new litter of three kittens. And on Tuesday 1 May things definitely seemed to be looking up when the office canteen served ice cream – ‘the first time for 2 or is it 3 years?’ But the overriding topic at work was: what would happen to Hitler? ‘We wait, wondering whether Hitler is raving as they say, or dying, or dead, or will commit suicide, or be captured & tried and shot, and what his henchmen are doing & feeling.’ In the office Maggie’s female colleagues were discussing what should be done to war criminals. A Jewish woman proposed having Hitler’s eyes put out with knitting needles. Next morning 1½ inch headlines on the front pages proclaimed: ‘HITLER DEAD’. The following day reports came through of the surrender of the German armies in Italy. ‘One can hardly keep pace with the news.’
As one by one the armies of Europe decelerated and inched to a halt, Britain’s sunny skies clouded over. The temperature dropped, a bitter wind started to blow, and by 1 May the country was ‘back to winter’. To make matters worse, Maggie’s ears had started to exude a repulsive discharge which defied diagnosis. In the face of a chilling, sleety blast she trudged to the doctor, who confessed himself baffled, but prescribed an ointment to be applied regularly. Maggie felt ‘like a leper’ and anticipated spending the victory holiday with her cats, in self-imposed seclusion. And thus it was that on the evening of Friday 4 May she found herself in bed, mopping her ears with cotton wool and listening to the radio news announcing that the German forces in northwestern Europe had surrendered to General Montgomery.
It was the end of the war in Europe. But, showing a curious wariness and pusillanimity, no fanfares were trumpeted or flags flown for another three days, as the public awaited their leaders’ permission for the long-awaited holiday to celebrate Victory in Europe. Announcements were withheld at the insistence of the Russian leadership, who did not want VE-day proclaimed until the Germans had also made their surrender to Marshal Zhukov. Across the land tempers were on edge, moods swinging between depression and high spirits. Everyone felt exhausted and nervous. When would it be? Sunday? Next week? June?
Maggie Joy Blunt, however, didn’t wait for the officials to negotiate the formalities. It was a cold, wet evening, and the inflammation in her ears was bad, so she went to bed and ate a modest supper off a tray: lettuce, radish and beetroot salad, brown bread with a scrape of butter and honey, a glass of milk and, that rarity, an orange. Downstairs she had the radio switched on; she could attend to her suppurating ears while listening to the historic bulletins on her bedroom speaker:
[I am] listening now to the repeat broadcast of Gen. Montgomery from Germany this afternoon. My emotions at this moment are indescribable. Enormous pride in the fact that I am British – Pride, wonder, excitement. ‘Tomorrow morning at 8am the war in Europe will be over …’ I can’t be bothered to go downstairs & turn off the radio. I shall leave it on till midnight … The war in Europe is over … This is a tremendous moment.
The war is over … I cry a little. I think of my dearest friends, my stepmother, my brother in Egypt, of those over in the fighting services I have known. And I wish I had taken a more active part; it is too late now. But it is not too late to take part in the new fight ahead.
What sort of fight did Maggie envisage? In the case of this particular educated woman, her late-night thoughts moved seamlessly to consideration of a new political landscape, which for her meant a Labour government:
I believe with the utmost optimism, faith, hope & joy that we can have our better world … yes, that we can have it if we know clearly what we want & fight for it.
But it was getting late, and the weary voice coming through the speaker penetrated her utopian musings, reminding her of the extraordinary times that she and millions more like her were living through:
Midnight news now being read – the announcer sounds tired. Pockets of German resistance still remain …
I have been down and turned off the radio. For once I waited to hear the whole of the National Anthem, moved suddenly again to tears by this historic, this incredible moment. I stood with my hand on the radio switch listening to the National Anthem and to the voices of a thousand, thousand ghosts. They came over the air into that unlit, silent room, I swear it …
It’s time I tried to sleep. One of the cats is outside my window waiting to be let in …
Tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow stretch before me. Infinitely more full of promise and interest than the war years have been. I feel that new & exciting events await me … the atmosphere is charged with a sense of release and potentiality.
And the bottom sheet, in an exceedingly frail condition from old age & much hard wear is now torn beyond hope of redemption.
I am sick to death of patching worn linen.
10 A Brave New World
A Brief Period of Rejoicing
When the news came through to her mess, Mary Angove let rip with an ear-splitting yodel: ‘YOOOO-HOOOO!!! – And I put my head round the Mess door, and I said to my Commandant, “The war with Germany’s over!” – “Well,” he said, “I thought it must be something like that.” ’
On VE-day the ATS, in common with the rest of the country, were off duty. Mary and her friends went down to the pub in Devizes for ‘a few drinkies’, followed by a greasy fry-up and an evening at the pictures.
Verily Anderson and her two little girls were staying with her parents at their Sussex village rectory, yearning for the war to end so she could start her married life with Donald again. And then suddenly, on Marian’s fourth birthday, it did end:
‘Marian,’ I said, ‘you must remember this all your life. It’s history.’
They rummaged in a drawer for paper flags and carried them up the drive to deck the trees by the road. Warm weather had returned, and the village was planning high jinks for all on the green, but at heart Verily felt she was a Londoner. ‘ “I know where I’d like to be tomorrow,” I said wistfully.’ On 8 May she resigned herself to getting the children ready for the afternoon’s festivities in ironed frocks, adorning their little heads with red, white and blue ribbons. Mrs Bruce stopped her daughter as she was gathering up her own clean clothes. ‘ “If you run,” she said, “you’ll just catch the next bus into Eastbourne, and then the train. I’ll look after the children.” ’ Verily didn’t wait to be persuaded; by three o’clock, waiting for her connection at Eastbourne, she was listening to Churchill’s victory speech relayed on the station’s loudspeakers:
The German war is therefore at an end … The evil-doers … are now prostrate before us. Our gratitude to our splendid Allies goes forth from all our hearts in this island and throughout the British Empire.
We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing … Advance, Britannia! Long live the cause
of freedom! God save the King!
London-bound, Verily gazed out at the farms and villages and, as she drew closer to the capital, the suburban terraces of England in Maytime:
There was not a house in town or country without its flag flying for the day. Rural cottages, great Victorian villas, rows of railway-side tenements, however battered they or their surroundings, all had their flags.
Verily stepped off her train into a city in holiday mood.
Looking on, Mollie Panter-Downes felt as if the population had all set forth for a huge one-off family picnic. At the heart of her description of how London spent that unforgettable day floats a beguilingly festive image: the girls. Released from their imprisoning offices, ‘the girls’ were like flocks of ‘twittering, gaily plumaged cockney birds’, dazzlingly pretty, charmingly colourful, dressed for summer, cornflowers and poppies poking from their curls.
They wore red-white-and-blue ribbons around their narrow waists. Some of them even tied ribbons around their bare ankles. Strolling with their uniformed boys, arms candidly about each other, they provided a constant, gay, simple marginal decoration to the big, solemn moments of the day.
To many eyes, this was the expression of victory. The dark days were over. Bright colours, pretty things, and femininity would replace the sombre colours of war: khaki, dinge and blackout. Frivolity, floral frocks and youthful pleasures would return to the land.
Marguerite Patten’s mother, like Verily’s, seems also to have felt that this was a day when the younger generation should experience the celebrations. Marguerite’s husband, Bob, was in the Middle East. Since 1943 she had found her niche broadcasting from the BBC’s ‘Kitchen Front’ and was now sharing a home in Barnet, north London, with her younger sister Elizabeth, her small baby and their mother.
And my mother said ‘You two girls ought to go to London to celebrate – I can look after the baby.’ So off we went. And I can’t even begin to tell you how we felt then.
Marguerite is well into her nineties. But her face still lights up at the memories:
Victory! We couldn’t, couldn’t believe it really had come. It was wonderful … The sheer joyousness of that day! I kissed more people that day than I kissed in my entire life. We danced, and we sang … and of course we all got as near to Buckingham Palace as we possibly could. You can’t exaggerate the joy of that day. And we could go home in the dark and not worry about an air raid! And people could leave their curtains undrawn! No, the feeling of joy on that day was something to remember the whole of your life.
‘A magic night’ was how another young woman, Joan Styan, remembered the celebrations years later. For her the whole day was one of impassioned emotion and exhilaration, with an overpowering sense of being free again. She and her mum fought their way through the jubilant crowds to Buckingham Palace and sang along to the Vera Lynn favourites while waiting to see the royal family appear on the balcony. Vere Hodgson recorded in her diary that she and her friend Kit had been lucky enough to get into St Paul’s Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving. They picnicked by the Thames – ‘carefree after so many years of anxiety’. Like thousands of others, factory worker Olive Cox and her boyfriend were given a day off from the production line. They took the train from Chelmsford to London and wove their way through the City bomb sites till they got to Trafalgar Square, where they joined a crocodile of revellers dancing down Whitehall. There seemed no point in going home. Big Ben chimed midnight, and they lay down on the grass in Green Park and slept till dawn.
Across the country church bells pealed, town bands played, bunting fluttered from lamp-posts. Overflowing pubs, squares and streets stopped the traffic for a nationwide holiday, gramophones were set up at street corners and radios blared out dance music. Teenager Anne Thompson stayed out till three in the morning conga-ing down the Bedford River embankment. In Oxford twenty-year-old student Nina Mabey fell into the arms of another undergraduate who had joined the crazy crowds and promptly fell in love with him. Like many others, Sheffield housewife Edie Rutherford broke open the supply of gastronomic delicacies which she had hoarded for precisely this occasion; she and her husband feasted on asparagus tips and tinned tomatoes. Muriel Green got drunk on old sherry and Pommia: ‘the strongest drink I know’.
Joan Wyndham headed for her mother’s flat in Chelsea. For lunch there was tinned fruit salad washed down with gin, then they braved the West End. Caught up in a forest of crowds, Joan found herself swayed between a troupe of Polish airmen and the mighty herd, all chanting ‘Bless ’em all, bless ’em all / The long and the short and the tall’. She lost her shoe dancing, her stockings were in ribbons. Suddenly, there was Winston Churchill on the balcony of the Ministry of Health, making the V sign, and roaring out: ‘Were we downhearted?’
And we all yelled, ‘No!’ Then we sang ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and I think we all cried – I certainly did. It was one of the most exciting moments of my life.
With the public rejoicing came private mourning, for the destruction of homes and belongings, for the theft of six years of youth, for relatives, friends and lovers who were not alive to see the peace. One young woman would never forget standing motionless amid a frenzied crowd, haunted by the thought of her brother, who remained ‘Missing in Action’. For her and her mother, the war would never truly end. Another woman learned that day that her injured husband, in hospital, would live. Late into the evening she sat on the wall in front of her bomb-damaged house, watching as the newly lit lights streamed into the street, thinking of the many lives that had been lost. At last she went back inside; her two young boys were in bed. She stood and looked at their sleeping faces: ‘[their] lives lay before them in a world at peace’.
But for those excluded from the celebrations by geography, VE-day struck a bittersweet note. Too many people were still separated from those they loved. Soldiers like Jack Clark, who in May 1945 was moving into Germany with the British Liberation Army, felt curiously removed from their own victory. ‘It may sound funny,’ he mused in a letter home, ‘but it didn’t somehow make much impression on us when we first heard the capitulation … we didn’t take much notice but just went on cleaning our Carrier!’ The fact was, that Jack’s heart was in Rishton, Lancashire, with Olive, his wife:
Whenever I think of Home now I vision you with your loving arms outstretched to hold me closely … us walking hand in hand together and your Love mirrored in your eyes when we kissed in the moonlight – the tender loveliness and glorious womanhood of your beauty and the sense of completeness which only exists when we are together … My life is built around the promise of our future together.
I’m watching the days and hours tick by.
For Jack, and for countless men like him, the promise of home was the promise of womanly consolations. Olive, for her part, wrote back to her husband, painting a picture of enchanting domesticity. Baby David, born in December 1944, was growing apace: ‘he is just like a jack-in-the-box’. On VE-day the baby clinic was closed, so Olive couldn’t get him weighed, but she and her mum treated themselves to an extra ‘cuppa’, cleaned the house and put out the coloured bunting. Somebody had just given her new pillow-slips, and she had done ‘a big wash’.
But it wasn’t just the men stationed overseas who felt fractured and incomplete when the European war came to an end. By 1945 QA Lorna Bradey had been abroad for four years. By then she was desperately homesick: ‘God how I longed to see my family. I ached to talk to them.’ Home leave was allocated by lottery, but her turn never came round: ‘I can remember the anguish and disappointment each time the names were announced. I swallowed another lump in my throat; perhaps next time.’ She was in Genoa, on the point of setting up a new hospital with her beloved medical team, when orders to go home finally materialised in June 1945:
I had always imagined the moment, the excitement, but it was not there. I panicked. These had become my people. I didn’t want to go. How could I transmit all this to the folks at home? The gap, four and a half years, had
been too long. They wouldn’t know what I was talking about, they had shared nothing of what I’d been through … I dreaded the moment of farewell and left Genoa in tears with all my friends gathered around.
A week later she set sail from Naples, ‘drained of all emotion’.
After the German withdrawal from northern Italy, Margaret Herbertson remained stationed near Siena with the SOE FANYs. All of them chafed at the excessive formality of the thanksgiving parade laid on to celebrate the 8 May victory. There was hymn-singing, to the accompaniment of a discordant piano, and the girls sweltered in their winter uniforms. ‘The ceremony did not appear particularly joyful. I heard one senior officer remark, “You’d think we’d lost the war, and not won it.” ’ Perhaps this was owing to the casualties they’d experienced at close quarters. For Margaret, the death of one of her closest colleagues soured the occasion. Captain Pat Riley had been killed only days before the end of hostilities, when his plane hit a mountain in the fog. Another friend, Francine Agazarian, had recently received news of her husband, an SOE espionage agent who had been captured in France. The Gestapo had hanged him at Flossenberg concentration camp. Margaret looked on helplessly as poor Francine, broken-hearted, trailed around the paths of their Sienese villa, her futile unhappy kicks sending the gravel flying. For too many, the victory was a hollow one.
Widowed at the age of eighteen when her young husband Don was torpedoed in the Atlantic, Cora Johnston had joined the Wrens early in 1943, working as a form-filler in the certificate office. It was a period of hard work and relative stability for her. ‘God was very good to me. He gave me a wicked sense of humour that has seen me through some terrible, terrible times. I could see the funny side of everything.’ But the shock of Don’s dreadful death was to exact a grim toll. A year later Cora broke down completely:
Millions Like Us Page 37
