Somewhere Over England

by Margaret Graham

  I’m getting real impatient to see you but it’s not over yet and there’s Japan still. I guess too that you’ll have to wait for a while for passage. We were all shocked when Roosevelt died. It seemed wrong somehow for him not to see the end of this great mess and not even to know that Hitler killed himself. I long for you, so much. I need you. You just don’t know how much I need you.

  Ed.

  On 8 May an announcement was given out on the wireless that on VE-Day all work would cease for two days and a party was held in the village when people danced and wept and could not believe that it was over.

  There had been no blackout since April and at the air base searchlights swept the sky and fireworks soared up into the air as they stood on the green and watched. GIs then came into the village, screaming their jeeps to a halt, whirling the women off their feet and kissing them.

  The Colonel shared his brandy with Helen, sitting on the benches which had been put up that afternoon, laughing and joking until she asked about Japan and then he said, nodding at the young Americans, ‘They are happy tonight but they’re scared they’ll be sent to the Pacific. I hope your Ed will be spared that.’

  Helen, Chris and Laura didn’t leave the party until dawn was breaking and then they strolled back, streamers hanging round their necks, and as Helen fell into bed she thought of Ed, of Heine, of Roger the vicar who had died in March, of Marian whose Rob was home, and it all seemed much longer than six years.

  On 6 and 9 August atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On 14 August Japan surrendered and Helen knew that Ed would never have to fight again but she also knew that those who had survived would never be the same as they were before.

  It was not until 1 March 1946 that she received notification from the United States Army that she would need to produce a British passport, two copies of her birth certificate, two copies of any police record, her original marriage certificate, three photographs on thin paper with light background, evidence showing that on arrival in the United States she would have a railroad ticket or enough money to buy one and finally two pounds or ten dollars to cover her visa fee. It told her that she would be notified any day now of her passage to the United States and would be expected to proceed to a collecting camp at Tidworth because the hotel in Bournemouth where mothers with older children normally stayed was full.

  Helen went with Laura and Chris to Norwich, thinking only of today, not thinking of the collecting camp at Tidworth, not thinking of the North Atlantic or the land it led to. She bunched her fists and blinked at the flashlight, knowing the photographer had the lighting set up badly. She withdrew ten pounds cash for America and transferred her bank account to the one Claus used in America. On the train home she looked out at England and could hardly bear it, but Ed was over there and she loved him.

  In the middle of March she and Chris received luggage labels for their ship and were asked to proceed to Tidworth for processing on 18 March. They were allowed to take one small suitcase each and one trunk which could be sent separately. She fingered the paper, folding it again and again while Chris whooped and ran down the road to tell Mary.

  All that day Helen packed, her head down, folding, wrapping, not stopping to eat because she was not hungry.

  She sat on the bed when she had finished, looking out of the window, and she cried for the country she was leaving, for Laura, for the years that had gone. She cried for Heine and for her mother, for the things that might have been, and slept then, until dawn.

  On 18 March they travelled to London to meet a special train at Waterloo which would take them to Tidworth. As the train drew out of Norwich they leaned from the window and waved and waved until they could no longer see Laura and Mary and then she held Chris because he was thirteen now and felt he shouldn’t cry but he couldn’t help it and neither could he stop. Helen talked to him of the life they would have, of Mary who would come and of Laura, and at last he was silent and together they watched the countryside pass and Helen felt her heart breaking.

  Lorries took the women and what children there were to the Wiltshire camp; it was late evening by the time they arrived. They were shown into huts which slept four to a room though Chris went to the service personnel barracks. He took his baseball mitt and ball and waved to Helen, then hid his face from her because he was crying again.

  He looked round at the trees surrounding the camp, hemming him in, and dragged his sleeve across his eyes. The wool was coarse and scratched his skin. He wanted to stay with his mother but he was almost a man.

  A GI showed him his bed and locker and asked about his girlfriend. He winked when Chris told him of Mary, pretending that he had kissed her, and now he put his shoulders back and rolled his feet like Ed as the Corporal took him back to the mess hut where a meal of pot roast and noodles was being served by German prisoners-of-war.

  His mother waved and beckoned to the seat next to hers and they talked to the women either side, one of whom was trying to spoon-feed a toddler who pushed the food on to the floor. The mother cried and Chris watched as his mother took the spoon from her, gently pushing it into the child’s mouth while a Red Cross helper led the woman from the room.

  Talking and crying filled the hut, together with the scrape of cutlery on plates as people ate food they had forgotten existed because they were under the jurisdiction of the United States. There were too many people here, Chris thought, that he did not know, and Germans, those damned Germans, brushing his shoulder as they reached past him with food. Outside were great sweeps of chalk hills and he missed his home.

  All night, in Helen’s room, the babies cried in the cots which had been constructed out of steel filing cabinet drawers, but she would not have slept anyway because her journey had begun and now there was no going back. Two of the women cried throughout the night and in the morning one left to go home to her mother.

  All day Helen was interrogated along with everyone else after she had surrendered her identity card, her ration book and her clothing coupons and she felt that they were taking the last of her country from her. She filled in a form nearly two feet long and wanted to tear it up as she was required to answer questions no one had any right to ask. Against the one asking whether she intended to overthrow ‘by force or violence’ the Government of the United States she nearly replied yes.

  She was given a medical and had to stand in line with other girls, waiting until it was her turn to have a torch shone between her legs to check for venereal disease. Like the other women she tried to ignore the American Army officers who were standing along the walls watching and laughing.

  Anger coursed through her but she said nothing because all this was for Ed. She was given a smallpox vaccination and the corpsman said that Chris would be given one too. She was finger-printed in another room, as were the others, and the smell of petrol was strong as the ink was wiped off with cotton wool pads. She was leaving with Susan, another bride who was married to a Naval Officer, when she was called back.

  ‘Please return to the interrogation room, Mrs McDonald.’

  Helen walked across the fresh spring grass, seeing the moisture on her shoes, keeping her mind clear, knowing what would be said.

  ‘We would like to ask you some questions about your first husband. It appears he was in prison over here.’

  The officer’s face was bland but his eyes were hard and Helen sat down again, not letting him see the tension she felt, but fearing that it was all going to start again and wondering if there would ever be any peace.

  For two days she was questioned and enquiries were made. Those in her hut embarked on their ships on the fourth day, but she and Chris did not and she was told that there could be no guarantee that she would ever be allowed entry to the United States.

  Helen insisted on an interview, and sat and talked reasonably for one hour to the bland-faced man but still he would not make any commitment and his voice was terse and dismissive when he spoke to her. It was then that she grew angry, standing up, banging
the desk.

  ‘My husband flew too many bloody missions. He is in Montana injured. I have a business in the States, pouring money into your Government’s coffers. Heine Weber did nothing that was dishonourable and I was cleared by the tribunal. How dare you! How bloody dare you!’

  He sat and looked at her, the colour rising in his cheeks. ‘I suggest you calm yourself down, lady.’

  ‘I suggest you pull your damn finger out. I didn’t sit in a crypt while bombs fell or pull tops off beet to sit here while you shine your backside on that chair. Get on that telephone and sort it out.’

  She stormed from the room, out into the March sun, then across to the recreation hut where the Red Cross were teaching seventeen-year-old mothers how to cope with babies they had not been alone with before. For the next three days she talked to the girls, helping them to change and feed, babysitting while they went to the movie house, listening while they talked of the men they had married and of whom they really knew nothing. She bought chocolate for Chris from the PX and he ate too much and was sick.

  She didn’t sleep because each day her clearance did not come. She hadn’t told Chris because he hated the Germans too much already. She talked to the prisoners-of-war, hearing the guttural tongue, listening to the voices of worry and defeat from these draftees who were not Nazis. No news had reached them either from that broken, devastated land.

  On Thursday when the sun was hot and long shadows sliced across the grass where Chris was playing baseball, a letter arrived from Ed, forwarded by Laura, and it was good to see his handwriting, to feel him close as she read his words.

  February 1946

  My dearest Helen,

  The winter will be over by the time you get this. Our spring is so quick you would miss it if you blinked. But you will be here for the summer, thank God. It is so hot here, you won’t believe it after little England. I had forgotten myself. It’s so dry you see. You Britishers are going to have a shock when you finally come. I’ve been sorting the room and I hope you like it, honey. Maybe next year the new house will be finished.

  Say, I’ve been hearing of this ‘flying windmill’ that’s been developed over here. It’s called a helicopter and looks quite something.

  Mom tells me we had a bit of rationing Stateside, but I guess it’s a tiny pimple, though not to her. She’s been a mite short of sugar and you’d think the world had come to an end.

  I do miss you so, your laughter, your anger, your Englishness, your soft skin. I’d better get on to something else quick, hey? How about a bit of American news? Did you know that we nearly lost our chewing gum in the war? Would we have won if we had, do you think?

  Apparently the Wrigley guy had to put forward a case that chewing gum was essential to win the war if he wanted to continue in production, and he did, saying that it relieved the tension. So he was allowed to get his chicle from South American trees and ship it back on a war effort ticket. So, what do you think of that, Chris?

  I just hope and pray you’re here soon but you must be so sad at leaving, Helen. I love you for doing it. I need you. You don’t know how much. I’m better but there are still bad times.

  Ed.

  Chris laughed when she read him the letter and so did Helen but inside she was knotted, and a headache never left the left-hand side of her forehead. Would clearance ever come through and were his dreams still bad or was it just his injuries? If so, it didn’t matter so much because those would mend.

  Helen’s clearance came through quite suddenly. The bland-faced man wouldn’t look at her as he gave it, just threw the paper on to the desk. She didn’t say thank you because she hadn’t survived a war to be grateful to people like him.

  They boarded the ship in Southampton in the evening of 27 March hearing the gulls wheeling above them and all they could smell was engine oil, not salt. Helen and Chris carried a case each and took bags for the mothers with babies. They inched up the gangplank, seeing the oily water beneath them, setting their feet above the raised slat which was placed just too far to be taken in one stride and Helen did not look back because she was afraid that if she did she would leave the ship.

  The chaplain waited on deck shaking each hand, and his smile was warm, his American accent familiar, and suddenly Helen wanted Ed, the slow smile, the arm about her. She wanted him to stand on the rail and help her leave England but there were others behind her and more in front and there was no time to think, only time to put one foot in front of the other, feeling her case dragging at her arm as she followed the other women who also did not look back.

  The Queen Elizabeth was berthed alongside, large and splendid, casting shade across their smaller liner. A steward took Chris to the men’s quarters and Helen followed a smiling Red Cross helper down the companionway into a room with thirty bunks, three high, and all were taken except for two on the top. The room was dense with the sound of nervous laughter, and stilted conversation as she unpacked, smiling at the girls around her, joining in with the ebb and flow of awkward sentences, pausing in the silences until she was shown the showers; semi-private stalls with the toilets further along the passageway. She returned in time to hear the message on the loudspeakers asking all brides to meet on the upper deck where dinner would be provided and informing them that they would sail at seven a.m. the next morning. She felt too old to be called a bride at thirty-three.

  Chris was waiting by the door, talking of the steward who knew the knuckleball throw and was going to coach him and another boy, Tom, was going to Arizona. He was only twelve, and may he sit with him? And he was off before Helen could say yes or no. She laughed, looking at a woman who was in her room and whose eyes were red from crying; her blonde hair was swept back in a bun and her fragile face was beautiful.

  They walked into the dining-room together, Helen grasped at anything to talk about while the other woman swallowed and fought her tears. She looked up at the painted ceilings evoking memories of past peacetime voyages and spoke of the history of the ship which she had read on the distributed printed sheet. She told Yvonne that when the Nicholas was a peacetime liner the passenger capacity was one hundred; when it was a troop ship it carried 2,200 and now it transported 530 brides and children.

  Yvonne smiled and queued with her but neither was able to speak when they were handed a plate full of roast pork, mashed potatoes and succotash. They carried it to a table and ate the food too quickly because it was so good and there was so much. Frozen blackberries and cake made with sugar and fat followed. It was a luxury after rationing and their stomachs would only allow them a little. Helen hoped that Chris would remember the chocolate and be cautious. She looked around but he had already gone. Then there was bread and butter, jam, mustard, pickle, strong tea or coffee or cocoa.

  Helen looked at the dark brown liquid, thinking of Laura straining the tea again and again and suddenly her tears came and now Yvonne talked to her, telling her that the trip should only take ten days or so an officer had said because the Captain would be following the shortest route. And so it went on all the night in the large room with thirty bunks full of women who doubted and wept but determined that they would go on.

  In the morning the women lined the rails to see the ship leave, but Yvonne and Helen could not watch as England faded out of sight. Instead they stood with their faces into the wind, letting their hair whip back from their eyes, at last breathing in the fresh sea air as the ship steamed towards America.

  At nine-thirty the brides were invited to a talk in the lounge about the ship and the voyage. They sat in chairs which were bolted to the floor in case of bad weather and here too the ceilings were ornate and there were gaps where chandeliers had once hung. The years of the war had soiled the walls and Helen thought of the passengers who must have sat over cocktails, listening to music, playing cards, thinking their tomorrows would be the same forever. Where were they now? Were they the parents of the troops who had sailed across throughout the war? Where were those boys?

  Seated later in the d
ining-room, looking through salt-streaked windows which showed a blue and balmy sea, they ate a lunch which Helen had dreamt of during the long years of rationing, and she wanted to be able to send some back to the village. Chris came running up to her afterwards, showing her the ball held between the thumb and first two joints of two fingers, telling her that it would not spin but turn, and that Ed would have to be sharp to hit that and then he was off again, his face red from the sun and the wind, his eyes bright.

  Yvonne talked then of her husband who had been injured in the Ardennes offensive and was now at home in the Bronx. He had told her he lived in a mansion and Helen said nothing but later heard an officer telling her friend where the Bronx was. There were no mansions.

  They were out into the Channel now and the feel of the sea was different; it moved the ship. Helen walked around the deck, unused to leisure, missing the feel of the ploughed earth beneath her feet, missing the sound of the birds and the snort of Rocket and the pony she and Chris had learned to ride in the past year in preparation for Montana.

  She leaned on the rail, rising and falling with the ship, changing her weight from one foot to another, watching the sea running up against the sides and down. The waves chopped and broke, white froth breaking from their peaks. She looked up at the sky, feeling the weak March sun through the breeze, missing Ed, wanting him, wondering if the darkness inside his head was gone.

  That evening they watched a film in the lounge after an early supper and then they slept for some of the night but girls were ill, clinging to their bunks though the sea was not rough, calling for their mothers because some were no more than seventeen and eighteen. Helen and Yvonne padded up and down, soothing, talking, bathing foreheads but the girls were still ill the next day. Sick call was extended and they were told to suck lemons. It didn’t work, and Helen alternated between the girls and the deck, and Yvonne did too. They soothed the sick and then walked, then sat in deckchairs, talking of the blitz, the rationing, their families, but not yet of the future.