For Thine is the Kingdom,
The Power and the Glory,
For ever and ever, Amen.
Thank God, she’d finished her stupid chanting. Enough to get on anyone’s nerves. The noise outside was worse than ever. The eerie whistling sound of yet another bomb falling culminated in an ear-splitting explosion that seemed to burst right inside her head. A blast of hot air gusted through the shelter entrance like a blow and knocked them all sideways so that she found herself lying with her head in the cook’s lap. The slamming to her body and the searing heat and stench of high explosive left her gasping for breath. The cook was cursing that her bucket had been knocked over and was flailing about with her arms. There were more terrifying whistles and a series of thudding explosions that shook them in violent succession. In all the appalling row going on up above, she could distinguish the scream of one fighter’s engine going flat out. She shut her eyes. Please God, let Michal be all right.
That bloody girl had started all over again with her maddening chanting.
Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name . . .
Anne felt like throttling her. Her feet were soaking from the overturned bucket and her eyes smarting from the dust and dirt that had blown into the dugout. The cook had dropped her knife and was groping about, trying to find it in the semi-darkness. It was her best knife, apparently. As though it mattered when any second they were all probably going to get blown to kingdom come. God, that ghastly screeching sounded exactly like an express train coming . . . She braced herself.
At the other end of the shelter, Winnie was trying to comfort Enid. The racket going on was too loud for any words so she put her arm round Enid’s shaking shoulders. She wondered if she ought to change places with her because she was at the very end of the bench, nearest to all the dirt blasting in, but it was hard to get up and move with the shaking going on. The only thing to do really was to sit tight and pray – like that girl was doing up the other end. Only to herself. Not making a song and dance of it, like she was. It was worse, far worse, this than anything she had imagined during the practices. She felt battered by the noise and every explosion made her flinch however much she tried not to because of Enid. It sounded as though everything was being blown to smithereens outside. She shut her eyes tightly as there was yet another screeching whistle overhead, and then the shelter seemed to blow apart round her and the world went dark.
The plotting table was shaking so much that the markers kept sliding out of place. With every bomb explosion a shower of white dust fell from the concrete ceiling and Virginia had to keep blinking it out of her eyes. She pressed her earphones closer to her head to shut out the noise as she listened to the plots. Nobody in the Ops Room had panicked. Nobody had done so much as wince, so far as she could tell. The faces round the table registered only grim concentration. Pamela was looking as though enemy raids were beneath her notice, disdainfully pushing her rake to and fro. There was another violent bang, like a tremendous clap of thunder, and another deluge of dust. The warrant officer standing near winked at her and she hoped he had not seen her shoulders cringe. She looked away from him and, as she did so, the ceiling suddenly seemed to disintegrate. A blast of hot air hit her like a blow and, at the same time, someone grabbed hold of her in a sort of flying rugger tackle that propelled her clean under the plotting table. She lay there, gasping, her helmet askew, a man’s heavy weight across her back. The warrant officer who had put her there said apologetically in her ear: ‘Beg pardon, miss, but we’d better stay like this ’til the All Clear.’
The bombers had gone, leaving behind them a scene of devastation. Felicity peered out of the shelter at the smoking rubble, the gaping craters, the mangled metal and broken glass, and at the cloud of dust that hung over it all. There was a rotten egg stench of high explosive and a strong smell of leaking gas. Close to the trench a burst water pipe spouted a jet high into the air where the droplets sparkled prettily in the sunlight, like an ornamental fountain. She turned her head towards the WAAF ablutions hut and saw that nothing of it remained but a mound of bricks and broken concrete with a lavatory perched upside down on the top.
The RAF corporal beside her said: ‘You all right, ma’am?’
‘Yes, quite all right, thank you.’
‘Sorry we were a bit rough with you, ma’am. Had to get you down in here as quick as we could.’
‘I’m very grateful.’
She could feel blood running down the side of her face and found a handkerchief to wipe it away. ACW Riddle was crouched inside the shelter, still clasping her hands to her ears. An airman had put an arm round her shoulders and was telling her cheerily that it was all over now. She seemed unhurt.
Felicity emerged unsteadily. Other people were coming out of other shelters, clambering over debris and gazing about them. The raid had lasted barely ten minutes but the damage was enormous. Two of the hangars had been destroyed and almost every building seemed to have been hit. Several were on fire – the station armoury dramatically ablaze. As Felicity picked her way through the ruins two of the returning Spitfires flew overhead.
She found Corporal White supervising some airwomen who were filing out of a shelter.
‘Anyone injured, Corporal?’
‘No, not here, thank heavens, ma’am. Are you all right? There’s blood on your face.’
‘I’m fine. It’s a cut or something. I’ll see to it later. Keep them all together here, Corporal. There may be unexploded bombs and we’ll have a roll call as soon as we can.’
She hurried on in search of other airwomen, skirting rubble and craters, climbing over a fallen girder. Hot shrapnel and broken glass carpeted the ground. She passed a chain of airmen dousing a fire with buckets of water passed from hand to hand. A party of stretcher bearers came towards her, at the double; one of the bearers called back over his shoulder.
‘The shelter by the WAAF cookhouse has been hit, ma’am. They’re trying to dig them out.’
She started to run in that direction, stumbling over obstacles in her path. A huge mound of earth marked the site of the shelter. Both entrances had vanished and airmen were digging frantically with shovels; others were tearing at the soil with their bare hands. She started to do the same. There seemed no hope that any of the WAAFS inside could be alive.
‘I think it would be better if you left this to the men, Section Officer.’
She turned to see Group Captain Palmer behind her. ‘I’d rather help, sir.’
‘They’ll get them out as quickly as they can.’
‘All the same, sir.’
‘You’ve been injured . . .’
With people dead and dying it seemed absurd to have been asked no less than three times already about a silly scratch. She wiped the blood away again with her handkerchief.
‘It’s nothing, sir.’
‘It doesn’t look like nothing. Get it seen to as soon as you can. That’s an order, Section Officer.’
‘Yes, sir.’
To her relief he turned away to talk to one of the airmen. She had noticed vaguely that he was wearing a Mae West over his uniform, so he must have been up with the squadrons. It would have been a case of all hands to the pumps. She went on scraping at the mound of earth, heaving cupped handfuls of it away. The erk digging hard beside her gave a grin.
‘Soon ’ave them out, ma’am.’
The warrant officer helped Virginia to crawl out from under the plotting table.
‘Easy does it, now. Mind how you go. It’s a bit of a mess.’
That was an understatement. The Ops Room roof had been blown open to the sky. Slabs of concrete had crashed down over the table and floor, bringing lights and wiring too in a broken tangle. Incredibly, faint squawking voice sounds were coming from one of the headsets trailing from its jack. The warrant officer extended a hand.
‘Careful not to touch any wires. They could be live.’
Her legs felt wobbly and she dung to the firm hand that guide
d her through the wreckage. There was a buzzing sound in her head and a strange, dream-like feeling about it all. She could not quite comprehend what had happened. The gallery, she noticed dazedly, was still intact and the Controller was up there, together with Ops B and the rest of them. They were mopping themselves down but seemed unhurt. Everyone and everything, she saw, was covered in a thick coating of the white dust, as though bags of cement powder had been thrown around.
A huge piece of roofing had smashed through the edge of the plotting table on the other side. She stepped past carefully and then saw the bottom part of a pair of legs protruding from underneath. She stared at them. They were stockinged legs with black WAAF shoes and the puddle of bright red blood oozing slowly from beneath them was mingling with the dust on the floor. The legs were covered with dust too, and bent at an odd angle, but even so she had no difficulty in recognizing the fine Kayser Bondor stockings that Pamela always wore, or in spotting the deep scratch on the right toe cap that she had tried so hard to polish out.
The warrant officer tugged at her hand gently. ‘Come along now, lass. You’ll be much better out in the fresh air. Don’t you worry, we’ll see to all this. Just leave it to us.’
Anne, lying in pitch darkness, could hear the sounds of the rescuers working above – the chink of spades and shovels, the thudding of earth, the faint sound of voices. She could feel space around her, air to breathe, and her groping hand contacted a section of shelter wall still standing firm. She groped further, sweeping from one side to the other, and came across the upturned potato bucket and then something small and sharp – the cook’s knife. She could hear the cook groaning and cursing somewhere close in her Liverpool accent, and sounding very much alive. Now, other sounds came out of the blackness – more groans, more curses, some sobs and even a nervous giggle, which was very probably Sandra. Somebody called out heartily, as though on the hockey pitch.
‘I say, is everybody all right?’
‘I’m bloody well not,’ another voice replied sourly. ‘I think both my legs are broken.’
Whoever she was, she sounded very calm about it.
‘Whatever happened?’ a breathy voice squeaked. Even in this situation, Sandra was asking her questions.
‘A bomb dropped on us, you silly fool,’ the owner of the broken legs told her tersely. ‘What the hell do you think happened? The shelter’s collapsed on us.’
‘They’re certainly taking their time getting us out. However much longer are they going to be?’
Anne smiled. That was Maureen, grumbling as usual. Just as well Gloria wasn’t here too or they’d have been fighting like cats.
She called out: ‘It won’t be long. I can hear them at this end. They’re almost through, I think.’
‘Oh, Anne!’ Sandra gasped. ‘It’s you! Thank goodness! I’m so awfully glad!’
Winnie could hear them all calling to each other at the far end of the shelter, but the voices were muffled and distant. Part of the roof must have fallen in, between them and her, she guessed. There was no way of telling properly because, apart from the darkness, she couldn’t move. At least, she found she could move her upper body, but the lower half was buried deep in earth. It wasn’t painful, or even specially uncomfortable, but she couldn’t get up from where she was lying. All she could do was feel about with her hands, which she had been doing for quite a while, trying to find Enid. There was nothing around her but earth and stones. She kept calling her name but there was no answer. After a bit she gave up and lay quietly, suspended in a tranquil limbo. Nothing seemed to matter very much – except that she could not find Enid. If she waited here patiently, they would come and rescue her soon. She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again she saw a small round hole of daylight above her. She watched as it grew bigger and bigger until a face appeared in it, squinting and blinking down at her. She smiled at it.
‘Blimey! There’s one alive down ’ere. Looks OK . . .’
The face disappeared for a moment and she could hear some kind of discussion going on. Then another face appeared and did more squinting at her. It grinned.
‘Soon ’ave you out of there, love. Just ’ang on a bit longer. We’re goin’ to ’ave to go a bit careful, so’s we don’t shift anythin’. You just stay there nice and quiet and don’t move.’
She smiled again at that. It was funny when she couldn’t anyway.
The hole grew steadily larger and presently she could see a big bit of blue sky. It was a surprise to see the sun shining quite normally and white clouds going past. From time to time the men spoke to her, asking her name, where she lived, how many brothers and sisters she had, making all sorts of jokes . . . And they kept on telling her to be sure to lie still. They seemed to be digging from the side now.
‘Not long now, Winnie, love. ’ave you out of there in two ticks . . .’
There was more digging, the feeling of a great weight gradually lifting from her body and legs, hands reaching her and holding her, moving her gently, lifting her up and out into the bright daylight and fresh air. She looked up from a stretcher at a circle of smiling faces. Two of them she recognized – Section Officer Newman who tucked the blanket round her and wiped her face, and Taffy Jones who was the only one not smiling. He was gripping her hand and swearing under his breath. He looked angry, not pleased. She could see a murderous fury in his strange eyes.
She said to him: ‘Enid? Where’s Enid? She was with me. Have they got her out too?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They’ve got her out.’
She searched his face. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she? I know she is.’
He nodded. ‘Sorry, Winnie. Her and another one in there. We did our best . . . It’s a miracle it wasn’t more . . . the whole blooming lot of you.’
She squeezed her eyes shut and, turning away from him, began, quite silently, to cry.
There was no need to open the door to the WAAF hut: it had been blown clean off its hinges. Felicity. stood in the doorway and stared at the devastation inside.
Machine-gun bullets had ripped down both rows of beds, tearing through the piles of bedding and scattering them like washing blown from a line. A neat line of bullet-holes punctured one of the locker doors and others, blasted wide open, had spewed forth their contents. Window glass lay in sharp and glittering fragments at her feet and, raising her head, she saw the sky through a gaping hole in the roof. She stooped slowly to pick up a snapshot half buried in the glass – a picture of a young sailor in able seaman’s uniform, hands behind his back, squinting into the sun.
By early evening Palmer had a full report of the death toll and damage. Thirty service personnel had been killed, and two civilians. Among those thirty were three WAAFS – two who had been in the shelter and one in the Ops Block when a five hundred pound bomb had gone through the roof. At least fifty more personnel, airmen and airwomen, had received injuries ranging from serious to trivial. The damage to the station had been extensive. All gas, water and electricity supplies had been cut, as well as telephone lines – though, mercifully, not all of those. Two hangars had been totally destroyed and a third severely damaged by fire. Many buildings had been reduced to rubble and those left standing had lost windows, doors and roof tiles. Six Blenheims, four Spitfires, a Hurricane and a Magister had been destroyed on the ground, together with nearly forty motor vehicles. Four more Spitfires had been lost in the air, three of them with their pilots. The runways were a mass of craters.
He immediately set about organizing the necessary repair work. All able-bodied personnel were to help fill in the bomb craters and that included, most especially included, so far as Palmer was concerned, the captured crews from the enemy aircraft brought down who were languishing in the guardroom. He took considerable satisfaction in seeing the Germans being marched briskly past his glassless window for this purpose. Some time later, he witnessed a detachment of WAAFS also marching past in the same direction, carrying heavy shovels for the same purpose. They were perfectly in s
tep, shoulders back, heads held high. A group of airmen took their caps off to them and raised a mighty cheer.
Later, he sent for Section Officer Newman. When she came into the office he saw that there was a dressing now over her left temple. She looked pale, he thought, but calm. He told her to sit down.
He cleared his throat. ‘I want you to know, Section Officer, that I sent a signal to Fighter Command HQ today, informing them of the exemplary and outstandingly brave conduct of all the WAAF on this station under heavy enemy bombardment.’
A startled blush appeared beneath her pallor. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘And I received this signal back just now. I’d like you to read it.’
He handed the piece of paper over and watched the blush deepen as she read the words.
The C-in-C has heard with pride and satisfaction the manner in which WAAF at RAF Colston conducted themselves under fire today. They have abundantly justified his confidence in them.
She looked up and returned the signal to him. She said quietly: ‘Thank you, sir.’
Her eyes, meeting his, were very bright. He thought she was on the point of tears. He looked away.
‘I want to add my own congratulations to Air Chief Marshal Dowding’s. All WAAF personnel stood to their posts today in a magnificent way. And you yourself, Section Officer, set a very fine example. I understand you put yourself at considerable risk during the raid bringing one of your young airwomen to safety . . . I imagine that’s how you got that injury. I’m glad to see you’ve had it dressed. Nothing too serious. I hope.’
‘No, sir. The MO stitched it for me.’
‘Good, good.’ He went on, determined to do full penance. ‘As I know you are well aware, I was not, initially, at all keen on the idea of women serving on this station . . .’ She was looking at some point on the wall over his shoulder now, as she so often did. He pressed on doggedly. ‘I have to say that I still have some reservations – in certain areas, at least. I dare say I’m old-fashioned, but I find it very hard to accept the idea of women being so closely involved in active military affairs. I deplore the death of those three airwomen. It seems utterly wrong to me. Goes quite against the grain.’
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