The Bomb Girls (2 page)

Listening to the tunes on
Music While You Work
, Emily polished down the canteen tables and swept the floor to Anne Shelton's ‘Yours Till the Stars Lose Their Glory'. It was their song, the one she and Bill danced to and sang to each other at the end of every leave. Tears sprang to Emily's eyes as she thought of her sweetheart's gentle promises and tender loving words.

‘One day when all of this is over I'll make you mine for ever.'

That day couldn't come soon enough, but before then they'd got to get through this bloody war that was turning her comparatively happy world upside down!

Emily wrote out the following day's lunchtime menu on the canteen blackboard.

Potato hash, carrots and turnips

Jam tart and custard

Then, after peeling what seemed like a sackful of spuds, she stripped off her dirty overall and turban, shook out her now unrestrained auburn curls and pulled on her coat.

‘See you in the morning, Mr Greenhalgh!' she called as she skipped out of the canteen.

‘Don't forget to sign on at the Labour Exchange on your way home,' Mr Greenhalgh shouted after her.

Emily didn't answer. She'd got somebody to see before she allowed Winston Churchill to redefine the rest of her life.

She ran down the hill into the town, which was bright with bursts of yellow daffodils and spring blossom that lent a softness to the grey stone the town was built of. Not wanting to be delayed by neighbours who always stopped for a lengthy natter, Emily threaded her way through the narrow back streets desperate to find her best friend and ally, Alice. There was never a question about where Alice could be found; she was always in Tonge Moor Library, in the quiet reading room, with her nose in a book. She'd taken a temporary job in the local chemist's shop as she prepared for the French degree she was hoping to start at Manchester University in the autumn, but that didn't stop her nipping into the library whenever she had a spare minute.

Alice had always been brainy, but that didn't stop her from being a tearaway and a tomboy too. She'd attended the same local primary school as Emily and played out with her in the back streets, but after the eleven-plus examination everything suddenly changed. Alice left the school where she'd sat beside Emily through long, hot, stuffy days, raffia-weaving on the back row, swapping answers and flicking ink bombs at each other. Alice was the only kid in the street, no, the entire town (and a girl at that!) who went to grammar school.

‘A posh kids' education she'll be having,' Emily's mum said tartly as twelve-year-old Alice self-consciously hurried down the street in her brand-new school uniform.

Though Emily and several other children, including young Bill, passed the eleven-plus exam they weren't allowed to go to grammar school. Their parents were unable to afford the compulsory and very expensive school uniform, nor could they pay the bus fares and school dinner money. Alice was the rare exception courtesy of her late dad's pension plan and a generous bequest from her paternal grandmother. Her doting mother poured all of her savings into her only child. Alice was a small, delicate-framed girl with fine blonde hair, usually caught up in a blue ribbon, that brought out the paleness of her dreamy silver-grey eyes.

Their paths may have diverged but Emily and Alice remained very best friends; they shared their secrets, their cigarettes, their hopes and dreams. Spotting Alice in her usual corner, bowed over a book, making notes on a sheet of paper, Emily made a beeline for her.

‘Have you heard the news?' she yelped, shattering the silence of the library and causing several old men to look up from their newspapers.

‘What news?' Alice whispered.

‘Churchill's calling up women!'

Alice was so shocked she burst into tears.

‘It hit me just like that too,' Emily said as she handed Alice her rather grubby handkerchief.

‘Can you two bugger off and do your skriking outside?' a grouchy old man in a flat cap snapped at them.

‘Sorry,' said Alice sweetly as she gathered up her pile of books. ‘We've just had a bit of a shock.'

‘Yeah … well, life's like that,' the old man grumbled.

Outside the two friends sat at the top of the flight of municipal steps that led up to the library entrance and glumly smoked cigarette after cigarette.

‘I don't believe it!' groaned Alice. ‘After all that studying, bang goes my French degree if I'm working in a factory.'

‘We could be sent anywhere,' Emily pointed out. ‘Scotland, Wales, anywhere!'

‘We're not exactly patriotic, are we?' Alice said guiltily. ‘Moaning about conscription when there are boys younger than us on the front line.'

Emily flushed with shame. One of those boys on the front line was her fiancé, Bill, so what right had she to complain? Stubbing out her cigarette, she stood up and squared her shoulders.

‘You're right. Come on, kid, let's do our bit for King and country.'

Pendle was a small town and when Emily and Alice arrived to sign on they knew most of the women queuing at the Labour Exchange.

‘Churchill's done me a favour,' one woman in front of them said. ‘Mi dad was all for sending me off to th' army. Didn't fancy being an officer's comforter,' she said with a knowing wink. ‘So I grabbed mi chance at munitions.'

‘A word of advice, ladies,' an older woman whispered. ‘Be careful what group you sign up for.'

Emily and Alice, who had no idea what the woman was talking about, stared at her blankly.

‘What do you mean?' Alice asked.

‘We've heard that some sections are more prone to explosions than others,' she answered.

‘You mean there's a chance we could be blown up?' Alice gasped.

‘Well, we're not being conscripted to wrap toffees, are we, cock?' the older woman chuckled.

‘How do we know which sections are safer than others?' Emily asked.

The older woman burst into loud raucous laughter.

‘You'll know soon enough if you get blown up!'

As they got nearer the desk, Emily muttered to Alice, ‘Maybe working on the land would be safer?'

Alice shook her long silver-blonde hair as she indignantly replied, ‘I'm not signing up just to shovel cow shit!'

After they'd signed on at the Labour Exchange Emily and Alice returned to Emily's house with a copy of the local newspaper that they'd picked up from the paper shop.

‘They're opening up the old Phoenix Mill as a munitions factory,' Emily told her mum as she poured the girls a cup of tea.

‘That owd place on't moors,' mused Mrs Yates. ‘It's been closed for years.'

‘It'll soon be open by the looks of things,' Alice said as she gratefully took the offered tea. ‘They're moving munitions factories out of the cities, away from the bombing, and locating them in secret locations like sleepy old Pendle.'

‘It says here,' said Emily, tapping the newspaper, ‘that the government's sending girls from the London arsenal up here next month.'

‘London girls, fancy!' exclaimed Mrs Yates.

Emily's wide blue eyes peered over the top of the paper.

‘Can you believe it? There'll be living accommodation right next to the factory.'

‘They'll never get hostels built that fast,' scoffed Mrs Yates.

Emily threw down the paper and accepted her tea.

‘The Phoenix will open on time, Mam, no danger,' she said. ‘The lads working the Howitzer guns on the front line are running out of ammo. Mr Churchill urgently needs shells and bombs and he doesn't care who makes 'em!'

‘If you're right, I reckon you local lasses will be first at the Phoenix,' said Mrs Yates.

Emily and Alice looked at each other and grimaced.

‘First on the bomb line,' said Alice with a little shiver. ‘That's scary!'

A hundred and fifty miles away in Gateshead, Elsie Hogan sat riveted beside the wireless set in the cramped back kitchen where she'd just served up mashed potatoes and fried meatless sausages to her whingeing stepsisters.

‘YUK!' squawked the ungrateful girls as they stabbed at the grey sausages that had more bounce than a tennis ball.

‘Is this the best you can do?' Elsie's stepmother asked. When she got no reply she raised her voice. ‘Turn off that damn radio, girl, and listen to what I'm saying.'

Elsie jumped in fright and quickly turned off the radio.

‘Sorry, Mam,' she stammered humbly.

‘She's our mam not yours,' sneered Ivy, the elder of the two girls.

Elsie corrected herself.

‘Sorry, Mrs Hogan, I tried mi best. It's the rationing allowance, like.'

‘You'd best try harder next time,' her stepmother grumbled. ‘Your dad would have them so-called sausages on the wall if you served them up to him.'

Aye … and he'd have me in a stranglehold halfway up the wall alongside them, Elsie thought knowingly.

Nobody knew her dad's temper better than her. He never laid a hand on his new wife or her peevish girls; her stepmother would have killed him if he so much as even
thought of it. But Mr Hogan spared his only daughter nothing. If anything went wrong, from a bad day at work to bad news on the radio, she'd get a belt or kick to ease his filthy mood. He'd been bad enough when her own mam was alive but once she'd died and he'd remarried there was no hope for Elsie, who the entire household treated as their unpaid servant. Elsie longed to get away but where could she go? She had no other living relations, no money, and she was hardly allowed out apart from going to the shops to pick up their meagre war rations. Her life was a round of endless misery and fear, but the radio news she'd just heard inspired her with a rush of hope. Grabbing her shopping basket and a coat, she headed for the back door.

‘I'm just popping out to the shops before they close,' she called behind her.

‘What about the washing-up?' her stepmother yelled after her.

‘I'll only be half an hour or so,' came Elsie's breathless reply as she closed the door behind her.

Down at the local Labour Exchange, gripping her basket handle tightly, Elsie stared intently at the lady behind the desk, who felt sorry for the slip of a girl in front of her. She was barely five foot tall and a bag of bones. Lank brown hair framed a delicate heart-shaped face that would have been lovely if it hadn't been so bruised and tired.

‘I heard the news just now,' Elsie started nervously. ‘Mr Bevin asking lasses to register for war work.'

The lady behind the desk nodded and smiled.

‘What did you have in mind, pet, farm work or filling shell cases?'

‘Will I have to go away?' Elsie asked in a tight, tense voice.

‘If it's a problem, pet, I'm sure we can find work for you locally.'

‘NO!' Elsie almost shouted. ‘I want to get away from …' She blushed and stopped short as heads turned in her direction. ‘Send me as far away as possible,' she pleaded in a whisper.

‘Sign on the dotted line, pet,' the lady said as she pushed a form and a pencil across the desk. ‘There's some bonny munitions factories a wee way down south.'

Elsie's feet barely touched the ground as she walked away from the Labour Exchange.

‘I'm going away, I'm going away! Thank you, Mr Bevin; thank you, Mr Churchill; thank you, God!' she chanted under her breath as she skipped towards her front door, where she stopped dead in her tracks. Taking a deep breath she pushed open the door. Next time she walked out of here, she thought to herself, she would either be in a coffin or carrying a suitcase.

Mr Hogan got his daughter in a stranglehold and all but throttled her when she broke the news.

‘You're going bloody nowhere!' he roared. Slamming her slight frame against the kitchen wall, he hit Elsie repeatedly around the head until she saw stars.

Terrified she'd lose consciousness, Elsie cried out: ‘Dad! Dad! It's the law. Churchill wants women workers.'

Mr Hogan stopped his hand mid-punch.

‘CHURCHILL!' he bellowed. ‘What the 'ell's he to do wi' owt?'

Not daring to open her mouth, Elsie cowered on the
stone floor with blood trickling from her nose. Amazingly her stepmother had saved her from another swipe, not because she had an ounce of human kindness in her but just because she enjoyed showing off her knowledge to her slow, doltish husband.

‘Female conscription,' she announced. ‘There's not enough men left to work, apart from the likes of you,' she added with a sneer. Mr Hogan always claimed he was exempt from active service because of his miner's lungs but his wife knew he'd bribed somebody to fix his papers. ‘Lasses are being put to work; it's good money, mind, anything up to four pound a week.'

Mr Hogan's bullish eyes all but rolled out of his head.

‘That's bleedin' more than I earn!' he roared.

Elsie slipped into the wash house where, as she wiped blood off her face, she strained her ears to listen to the conversation in the next room.

‘It'd be one less mouth to feed and she can send her earnings home every week,' her stepmother said.

Elsie nodded in agreement; she might get a few more slaps and kicks before she left home but she was leaving all right, that was
the law
. As she dabbed the last of the blood away, she smiled slowly to herself. What neither her father nor her stepmother knew was that she was
never
coming back!