Daughter of Empire (12 page)

For several months during the war, the whole area of Southampton was closed to anyone not living or working there. Broadlands was just within the fifteen-mile exclusion zone. The build-up of
troops, vehicles and temporary camps in the area was enormous, and as the weather improved in the late spring there was an air of expectation. Suddenly, as quickly as they had arrived, the American
soldiers left Broadlands. D-Day had finally come.

8

A
s a signals rating at HMS
Tormentor,
Patricia was privy to all sorts of information regarding preparations for D-Day, as all the orders and
plans had passed through her office. But she knew that ‘Loose Tongues Cost Lives’, and so the rest of us didn’t know anything until Operation Overlord had taken place. On one of
her monthly one-night sleep-out passes, I sat listening, electrified, as she told us about the planning and the subsequent success and horror stories.

It transpired that in the final days before the Normandy invasion, there had been such a build-up of ships – astonishingly, around seven hundred – on the Hamble that Patricia said
she could have walked from the bay beyond Southampton to the Isle of Wight without getting a foot wet. Over the past year, she and her fellow Wrens had become friendly with the soldiers based on
the smaller flotillas, who had been running reconnaissance missions, so when they heard news of the impending action, they felt terribly anxious as to the fate of these young men. On 5 June they had
embarked Lord Lovat from the Hamble with his famous piper and his commandos in their landing craft. Thousands of other vessels of every kind and over seven hundred warships were waiting for the
signal to depart, but bad weather prevented action. On the clear morning of 6 June, however, when General Eisenhower gave the order, my sister watched as the boats disappeared in the direction of
Normandy, dragging hundreds of barrage balloons with them, and with squadrons of fighter planes droning overhead. As the day progressed, the sound of bombing and gunfire from across the Channel was
clearly audible and, tearfully, Patricia described her fears as she and her colleagues waited for the survivors to return. Sadly, many of the young men died in the Battle of Normandy, and as she
spoke, I realised with a start that many of the young men of the ‘Laundry Unit’ would have lost their lives too.

We all hoped that D-Day would mean the end of the war but still it dragged on, with a new type of danger now in the V-1 ‘doodlebugs’ that began to fall over England, killing hundreds
of people. When I was in our London base in Chester Street, I could hear them drone slowly through the sky, high above the house. But, as I lay in bed in the darkness, I reminded myself: you are
safe if you can hear them. It was when the engine cut out that you knew the bomb was about to drop. That was when it was really frightening. Anyway, I was finding it difficult to sleep wherever I
was since I’d received the shocking news that Hanky had died after an operation. I was told at school, and when I burst into floods of tears, the mistress said irritably, ‘But
who
is Hanky?’ I felt so angry with her for asking this, because to me Hanky was nearly
everything.
My friends were solicitous and gathered round me protectively, but for a
while I felt torn apart with grief.

As if this weren’t enough, when Bunny was next on leave, he dropped a huge bombshell – revealing that he was engaged to my Aunt Nada and late Uncle George’s niece, Gina. My
mother took the news very badly and there were times in the ensuing weeks, as she took endless dismal walks alone down the river path, when my father and my sister feared she might drown herself.
It was no good bringing up Bunny’s departure with her directly – she was never open to any conversation about relationships or feelings and had trained herself as a child to be
self-sufficient. Patricia wrote a short but heartfelt letter to our brittle and sensitive mother, however, and this seemed to do something to short-circuit the unbearable loneliness she was
feeling. Just composing this letter, thinking about how she was suffering, made Patricia feel closer to my mother than she had ever felt before. Of course, Bunny made constant – and
ultimately successful – efforts to prevent the deep friendship that existed between us from being broken. He even asked me to be a bridesmaid at his wedding. I was overjoyed as I had never
been a bridesmaid before, but my mother told me firmly, without looking in her diary, that I would be at school that day and it would not be possible. The time had come for Bunny, who was so good
with children, to start a family of his own.

There was, fortunately, an endless stream of things to be dealt with, which helped to divert my mother’s attention from her deep-felt sorrow at the break-up. In October 1944 she was
invited to the newly liberated Paris to investigate what help was needed, during which time she searched for and found Yola – alive and well, and living with Henri. To her amazement, on one
of the tours of the city, she came across the street where, before the war, she used to get her shoes made. The little atelier was intact and she rushed in to see whether Monsieur Tetreau was still
there. When the bell above the door jangled, the shoemaker looked up from the counter and a smile spread across his face. ‘Ah, Lady Louis!’ he exclaimed. ‘
Vos souliers sont
prêts!
’

Returning from France, she was offered an official posting to SEAC as a representative of the Joint War Organisation. This was a most welcome prospect for my father, who had been trying to get
her to join him for some time. After seeing in 1945 with us, my mother left and, once again, I was alone with Grandmama at her apartment in Kensington Palace.

Before returning to school that term, as I was now deemed old enough at fifteen to appreciate ‘serious’ drama, I went twice to see Laurence Olivier in the film
Henry V
and was
profoundly moved by his performance. The tale of a young king’s coming of age and an army stranded on the brink of possible disaster in the face of a long-time enemy was a perfect metaphor
for England at the time. When he spoke the words ‘You few, you happy few’ the audience held their breath, each word echoing our national pride and resolve.

My mother wrote to tell us that she had travelled north-east through India to Burma. On the ‘leave train’ from Calcutta she went third class because she wished to experience first
hand what the conditions were like. It was very crowded, but being so slight, she managed to swing herself up on to the luggage rack, where she slept surprisingly well through the night. Patricia
was also working hard, now a cipher officer in a secret underground establishment in Chatham. To her extreme embarrassment, a succession of scruffy young men kept turning up asking to see her. It
turned out they were young commandos on a training initiative test, each given ten shillings and sent off from the north of Scotland. They had to complete a number of tasks that took them all over
the country. One was to obtain a naval handkerchief from a ‘Third Officer Mountbatten, Cipher, WRNS’. No further clue was given. Several trainees seemed to find her very easily –
although how they managed to penetrate the secret tunnel leading to the establishment without being shot was a mystery. Patricia gave the first handkerchief away gladly as it was fun to be part of
such a stealthy mission, but as she had to buy further handkerchiefs with her treasured clothing coupons, it soon became less amusing.

When the news came, in April 1945, that the Russians had attacked Berlin, I felt optimistic. Then, a few days later, Mussolini was captured and hung by Italian partisans, and the situation began
to spiral. Two days later, on 30 April, Hitler killed himself in his bunker, and then the Russians succeeded in taking Berlin. On 7 May the long-awaited news finally arrived – the Germans had
surrendered. At last, for many, it was over. But not so for those of us with fathers and brothers in SEAC. On 8 May, as the streets resounded with joyous cries and all England celebrated victory in
Europe, I lay in bed and thought of my father somewhere out in Asia. I had been blissfully unaware of the dangers he faced at the beginning of the war but now, at fifteen, kept up to date by our
weekly war briefings at school, I knew much more and longed for his safe return.

I did have some good news for my father and I wrote to tell him that I had gained the highest marks in the school that year in the School Certificate examinations. His congratulatory telegram,
‘Expected nothing less’, was somewhat disappointing, as I had longed to surprise him. Still, it was good to know he had such faith in me. I would soon have to change schools, and under
the illusion that it was a finishing school that would equip me with the necessary skills for adult life, my mother opted for Hatherop Castle School in Gloucestershire, a rather beautiful old manor
house set in sumptuous grounds that had only recently been derequisitioned.

Life was still fairly contained. I studied hard, attended early-morning communion, waded loyally through my father’s SEAC dispatches and looked forward to concerts and plays during the
school holidays. I hadn’t yet been in love, much less experienced infatuation or heartbreak. I was shy, so while other girls at school were looking forward to ‘coming out’ with
great excitement, I was horrified at the thought of having to stand in a room full of hundreds of people I didn’t know, sipping cocktails and trying to make polite conversation. I
wasn’t even that familiar with the ‘coming out’ process as the war had put a stop to the parties.

While those fortunate people whose fathers and brothers had survived the war were now reunited, my family were still absent, dealing with the aftermath. My father took the surrender of the
Japanese in Singapore. His priority was the repatriation of the British troops in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. They were living in appalling conditions, many near death, and he needed someone to
assess the situation for him. The person he felt most capable of doing so was my mother, so he sent her off with an Indian officer and a First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) woman assistant. They
embarked on an incredible journey that included sleeping in the jungle, searching for unmarked camps that were rumoured to be holding many prisoners. As the British had not yet reached these camps
she had to be escorted by fully armed Japanese soldiers, but she managed to gain their respect and none disobeyed her. She flew back with the vital information my father needed and the Far East
Prisoners of War (FEPOWs) were lastingly grateful to her – and to my family – down the years – not to mention how proud my father was of the remarkable job she had done.

Patricia was at our father’s headquarters in Ceylon with the WRNS, and I was in Gloucestershire, far away from them all. The only small consolation of having them all out in SEAC was that
I had a gunboat on the River Irrawaddy in Burma named after me. Indeed, I was very impressed to be told that HMS
Pamela
(and its sister vessel HMS
Oona
, named after General
Slim’s daughter, who had just joined me at Hatherop) had even seen action in battle. Patricia’s line in a letter to our father made me laugh. ‘How young’, she wrote,
‘does a girl have to
be
exactly to have a boat named after them?’

Finally and thankfully – I was hardly able to contain my relief – everyone came home for the Allied Victory Parade and the parties and thanksgiving ceremonies. The first event took
place in the sumptuously grand Buckingham Palace, followed by a terrifying list of social engagements as my parents caught up with their old friends. I was very pleased to see Bunny and Gina and to
meet their new baby, Sasha. On the day of the parade itself, we gathered at the palace and were driven to the specially constructed saluting base in the Mall to watch the Victory Parade. We had
been told that the whole route of the procession had been lined with hoardings to hide the bomb sites, but the crowd was so thick and animated that you wouldn’t have been able to see them
anyway. My mother, Patricia and I took our seats moments before Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee arrived to a tumultuous reception from the crowd. When the King and Queen and the princesses
drew up in the state landau, the crowd went wild with cheering.