by Anne Bennett
‘I feel as if I have a heavy burden between my shoulder blades,’ Chris said. ‘And I need to speak to Carmel.’
Lois didn’t ask why. She knew she would know soon enough and so, when Carmel came down, she used more of their precious tea ration and Chris ushered the two girls into the sitting room.
He waited until Carmel had the tea in her hand before saying, ‘I was with Paul to the very end. I want you to know that. He was the greatest mate a man could ever have and there will never be another like him. I could weep now at the thought that I’ll never see him again and I can only imagine your pain.’
Carmel noted Chris’s glittering eyes, and though the tears were seeping from her own she was glad that Chris spoke about Paul so easily.
‘Thank you for that, Chris,’ she said through her tears. ‘I know what good friends you were. You say you were with him till the end?’
Chris nodded. ‘I could tell you about it, if it would help.’
‘I don’t know if it would help or not,’ Carmel said. ‘But I want to know it all.’
‘We were in a little place between Lille and Wormhout,’ Chris said, ‘working in a field hospital together. Everyone was trying to make for Dunkirk, for the word was there was some sort of rescue operation being attempted from there and most of the wounded had been sent on. But Paul had four who were too ill to move and he was hanging on to the last minute, until the Germans were almost in sight, to leave them, believing then they would be taken care of.
‘In the end, we had to go and we hadn’t gone very far into this little wooded area when we heard German voices. We knew it was a scouting party going ahead of the main convoys and we were thanking ourselves for our lucky escape. Paul was saying that at least now the wounded would be cared for when we heard the machine-gun fire. Paul looked stricken for he knew that the Germans had shot the wounded men.
‘He seemed to go a little mad then and he set off at a run back the way we had come. I went after him but when I reached him and tried to stop him he shook me off. His eyes were wild and I know he wasn’t thinking straight. Neither of us had slept for days and hadn’t eaten either for hours. What I mean is that he wasn’t himself when he burst out of the shelter of the trees yelling that they were all murdering bastards. A single rifle shot brought him down and he sort of folded at the knees and then they shot him again and he slumped to the ground. I heard the Germans laugh as they kicked him into a ditch.’
Carmel was crying in earnest and Lois had her arms around her, but she was still glad that she had listened to Chris. Since Carmel had recovered from her collapse, she had harboured the idea that maybe Paul wasn’t dead. The telegram had said missing, presumed dead. What if he was in hospital or a POW camp somewhere and he had lost his memory?
Now that theory was knocked flat. His best friend had seen Paul killed. She had to face that. It was no good hiding under dreams and fantasies. Paul was dead and gone and she had to face life without him for the sake of little Beth, who would depend on her. Lois too was upset, both by the story of the tragic death of Paul and also by the thought that in just a couple of days time, Chris had to rejoin his unit and could be in the thick of it once more.
All through the summer, the battle for supremacy of the skies raged on. The German airforce knew they had to annihilate the RAF before German landing craft could cross the Channel in safety.
The results of these attacks would be reported in the newspapers the next day. ‘The Germans lost 217 planes to Fighter Command’s 96’ the papers would boast. Carmel wondered if it were true, or just written to raise morale, though it did nothing for hers. In fact she found it distasteful, as if the war was a kind of game. Yet every plane lost represented someone’s life.
On 9 August a lone bomber attacked an Erdington suburb. What unnerved Carmel was the fact that everyone was so taken by surprise because no sirens sounded. The first people knew about it was when three bombs exploded. A number of houses were destroyed but it was amazing that only one person was killed. The victim was only eighteen years old and on leave from the army. Carmel knew nothing about the air raid until the next day, the rumbles far enough away for her to think it was thunder.
Birmingham was attacked again on 13 August, though it was a fairly localised assault on the aircraft factory at Castle Bromwich. After that the sirens sounded nearly every night but the attacks were light and sporadic, and concentrated mainly on the east side of the city. Although there were deaths and people injured and buildings destroyed, they were nothing like the blanket bombing the civilians had been half expecting.
Carmel and Lois had decided early on that they would sit out any raid that was close enough in the cellar, the garden being taken over with the motorbikes, which had been shrouded in tarpaulin and put aside for the duration, leaving no room for an Anderson shelter. People who had got shelters told Lois they flooded with just the slightest bit of rain, and Carmel thought them damp and dreary places to sit in hour after hour.
Paul had agreed with her, but had the man from the Ministry check the cellar out to ensure it was safe, before he enlisted.
‘Perfect!’ the man had declared. ‘Some of these cellars need reinforcement to be of any use, but this now is very solidly built. You should be as safe as houses in there if Erdington is attacked in any big way.’
The girls, in cleaning out the rubbish in readiness, had unearthed the old paraffin stove. It still stank to high heaven when they lit it, but as Lois said, ‘What is a smell compared to freezing to death?’ Carmel just hoped she never had to put it to the test.
For a few days, it seemed as if she wouldn’t have to, for the raids were too far away for the girls to seek shelter, but when the sirens did blare out a warning on the evening of 24 August, Carmel used the cellar, for the raid was more widespread.
Lois and George were both on duty so Ruby came into Carmel’s cellar so that they could keep each other company. George had managed to pick up a flask from somewhere and Ruby had filled it with hot sweet tea before she came in. Carmel produced a packet of biscuits and, for a time, their refuge took on the air of a picnic.
However, the raid lasted seven and a half hours, and by the time the all clear sounded, both woman were worn out. Carmel’s arms felt like lead from holding the sleeping Beth as there was nowhere to lay her down.
‘We’ll have to get organised,’ Ruby said, ‘get this place cosier, like, if we are to spend any time in here. I’ve got a couple of palliasses in one of the attic rooms, left over from when our lads were in the Boy Scouts. I’ll get George to bring one round here when he has had a bit of a lie-in. Good job it’s Sunday, eh?’
‘I’ll say,’ Carmel said. ‘I just hope her ladyship here lets me have at least a few hours. I feel I could sleep on a clothes line, I’m that jiggered.’
That evening when the sirens sounded again, Carmel groaned—and groaned even louder when she realised that the sound had woken the baby. She went upstairs and lifted her from the cot. She hadn’t put up the blackouts and so she didn’t put on the lights—the night was light enough anyway—and she took the baby to the window, rocking her while she patted her back rhythmically.
Lois tapped on the bedroom door before opening it and whispered, ‘I’m off to work now. You all right?’
‘Fine.’
‘Are you going down to the cellar?’
Carmel shook her head. ‘I will if it gets closer.’
It didn’t get closer, but she couldn’t sleep in case it did, and when she heard the sound of the back door opening and Ruby’s voice shouting, ‘It’s only me,’ she wasn’t surprised.
She went on to the landing with the drowsy baby still held against her. ‘Up here,’ she said softly.
‘George is away for a pint,’ Ruby said as she laboured up the stairs. ‘I came to see if you were all right.’
‘Yes I am,’ Carmel said. ‘It is too far away to worry about it as yet, anyway. It is just that the siren woke Beth.’
‘Looks like she’s
well away again now,’ Ruby said. She looked out of the window. Darkness had fully descended now, although there was a strange crimson glow on the horizon. ‘Some poor sods are getting a pounding, anyway.’
Ruby was right, for they could hear muffled thumps and crashes.
‘I bet it’s the city centre getting it this time,’ she said.
‘God, I hope not,’ Carmel said. ‘That’s where Lois is heading.’
‘Put the babby in the cot and let’s go up the attics and see if we can see owt?’ Ruby suggested. They did that, and saw the pall of thick black smoke before they saw the flames licking orange and red into the dark sky. They also saw the arc of the searchlights seeking the planes, and heard the tattoo of the ack-ack guns and, moments later, the ringing bells of the emergency services.
‘Ain’t it stupid?’ Ruby said. ‘Here they are worried about a chink of light showing and then the bloody German drop incendiaries before the other buggers and light the place up like bleeding daylight.’
‘I know, and I just hope it wasn’t the General Hospital they were targeting tonight.’
It wasn’t the hospital, but it was the city centre, mainly the Bull Ring. Carmel had to wait until Lois came home to find out.
‘Loads of us went for a dekko after work,’ she told Carmel. ‘We were getting the injured in all the time, see, and some of them were telling us bits while we patched them up, so we went to see for ourselves. The Bull Ring is just a mess,’ she added sadly. ‘The whole roof is off the Market Hall. Only the walls are standing, and they don’t look too healthy. Someone said a man went back into the burning place and released all the animals from their cages.’
‘That’s good,’ Carmel said. ‘I did think about the animals. They might not have much chance on the street, but it has to be better than been burned alive.’
‘I’ll say,’ Lois agreed with feeling. ‘And everything else is gone. Even that magnificent clock, just cinders.’ She gave a rueful laugh and commented, ‘Huh, maybe there is some truth in the rumour of bad luck after all.’
‘No,’ Carmel said almost fiercely, ‘it’s not that. Our bad luck is that Hitler was born at all and then allowed to grow up.’
‘You think he should have been drowned at birth?’
‘Let’s say it might have solved a lot of the world’s problems if he had been.’
The raid the following night began just after midnight. Lois, who was not on duty, tapped on Carmel’s door. She was awake, for she had been roused by the sirens, though she noted thankfully the baby slumbered on.
‘Are you going down to the cellar?’ Lois asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Carmel said. ‘I am worn out and loath to disturb Beth. She looks so peaceful and is the very devil to settle afterwards sometimes. Anyway, the raid might be too far away to bother about. I think I will wait and see.’
After a few minutes, when the drone of planes did not get any louder, Carmel said, ‘I’ll hardly sleep, though, because they could change direction in a few minutes.’ She threw back the covers and said, ‘Come here and keep me company.’
Lois slipped into bed beside Carmel, but they were too tired to talk much, though Lois did tell Carmel some of the gossip from the hospital, the life that she had once been a part of and that Lois knew she missed, much as she loved the baby.
Exhaustion had actually claimed the girls when the droning planes alerted Carmel again in the early hours. Lois was still fast asleep and Carmel left her, knowing she had to be up anyway in a few hours, but she lay and listened. The planes came no nearer and she snuggled down again, glad of the comfort of any other body next to hers. As dawn grew ever nearer, she eventually slept.
Carmel heard the report on the raid from Jeff, who called around later that day. Since Paul’s death, he called to see Carmel at least twice a week and always gave her money to put inside the weekly letter she wrote to her mother.
Then, as soon as he judged Carmel was ready, he told her about the allowance that he and Paul had set up for her as soon as he had enlisted, payable if anything happened to him.
‘It’s money that would have been his anyway after my death,’ Jeff said. ‘I agreed to release the money now and set up a fund for you.’
‘Oh,’ Carmel said, taken aback. ‘He was always adamant he would stand on his own feet.’
‘And that was fine while he was alive and well,’ Jeff said, taking hold of one of Carmel’s hands as he spoke. ‘But I know now, and will swear on anything you like, that Paul’s dearest wish was for you and the child to be provided for. It was the one thing he was so worried about.’
What could Carmel say to that? Could she go against something her dead husband wanted so?
‘You should still apply for widows’ allowance, like,’ Ruby said when she heard.
Carmel shook her head. ‘I have no need of it. Let those not so well provided for have the benefit. I cannot spend all I am given now, or nowhere near it. There aren’t the things in the shops to buy and whatever you get you have to have the ration for. Money alone is not enough.’
That was true. Ruby said nothing further and, every week, Jeff would call around with her allowance. She was always pleased to see him and the day after this latest air raid was no exception. Jeff immediately noticed the bags beneath her eyes.
‘Well, no, I didn’t sleep well,’ Carmel said in answer to his enquiry. ‘Who can really?’
‘It was the city centre again last night.’
‘We guessed as much,’ Carmel said ‘D’you know if there was much damage?’
‘Hell of a lot,’ Jeff said. ‘From Snow Hill Station, down Livery and Newhall Street as far St Paul’s church and the start of the Jewellery Quarter there was a sea of fire, so I heard.’
‘That’s terrible,’ Carmel cried. ‘Aren’t there a lot of wooden structures in the Jewellery Quarter?’
‘I suppose that was part of the problem,’ Jeff said. ‘The way I heard it, the heat was so intense the roadway melted and tar was running like liquid fire, setting fire to more and more in its path.’
‘Oh God,’ Carmel said. ‘Were there many hurt?’
Jeff shrugged. ‘Bound to be some. Probably they were taken to the General, seeing as it is closest.’
‘It’s awful, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Jeff said grimly. ‘And set to get worse before it gets better.’
However, while Birmingham was suffering nightly raids, so far London had got by virtually unscathed except for a few little skirmishes. But everyone, including Londoners, knew that their turn too would come. And then on, Saturday, 7 September, there was a report on the wireless.
‘An armada of bombers protected by many fighters have been seen approaching the Kent coast.’
Carmel glanced at the clock. It was four o’clock and she shivered for those in London. There seemed little doubt where this large contingent was heading.
The Sunday papers that Carmel bought on her way home from Mass the following day told the whole, horrifying story. The bombers had been making for the London docks. As the sirens wailed, the people ran for cover and the docks were ablaze in minutes. By the morning, the estimated death toll was five hundred and the injured were well over a thousand. It made grim and harrowing reading. Carmel was well aware that a similar fate might be awaiting Birmingham and there wasn’t a thing anyone could do about it.
The raids in London and Birmingham and many other cities continued, though Carmel sought the shelter of the cellar only twice, when the raids over nearby Pype Hayes she thought too close for comfort. Most of the them were over in two to four hours, although there was one in mid-September that lasted nine hours and the lack of sleep and disturbance was playing havoc with Carmel’s nerves, especially when there were reports of barges and landing craft massing across the channel.
‘Hitler has put back his invasion plans until 27 September,’ Jeff said when he was visiting one Saturday afternoon.
‘How do you know these things?’
Jeff
put his finger to the side of his nose and then wagged it at Carmel. ‘Ask no questions and you will be told no lies. But trust me. And if Hitler is going to invade then, which will be the last time really before the autumn storms, then he has to give the order by the seventeenth, ten days before.’
‘But it’s the fourteenth, now,’ Lois said.
‘Right, and the RAF is still there, so someday soon the Luftwaffe and the RAF are going to face one another in one hell of a showdown.’
Carmel shivered. She had no idea how and where Jeff got his information from, but wherever it was it usually turned out to be very accurate.
The following day was Sunday. Lois went on duty at lunchtime and Carmel turned on the wireless for company, only to hear of the major onslaught, the one Jeff had told them to expect, had begun that morning. Ruby came in later, after George had gone to the warden post, to find Carmel glued to the wireless.
‘This is it, d’you think?’ Ruby asked.
‘Jeff said that if Hitler intends to invade this year, the order has to be in by the seventeenth.’
‘Ooh,’ Ruby said and shivered. ‘Proper gives you the collywobbles, don’t it?’
‘I’ll say,’ Carmel said, and went on, ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea. That’s always good for steadying the nerves.’
‘God,’ said Ruby, ‘I think I need summat stronger than tea today. Still, a cuppa will do for now.’
When it was obvious that the RAF were victorious, Carmel felt almost light-headed with relief.
Ruby remarked, ‘When old Churchill went on about “so much owed by so many to so few” back in August, he was right, weren’t he? God, them lads must have nerves of bloody steel. I’ll tell you summat else as well,’ she went on. ‘I’m telling George that we need a wireless. Plum daft it is these days to do without.’
Carmel didn’t blame her and neither did Jeff when he called round later to find George and Ruby keeping Carmel company—only he went one step further. ‘Let me buy it for you?’
