Women on the Home Front (26 page)

Part Two
June 1940

‘Is there any more news about Dunkirk?' Tilly asked Olive anxiously, having raced home from work to change into her St John Ambulance uniform, ignoring the discomfort of its heaviness in the heat of the early June afternoon. Like the rest of the country, she had far more on her mind than herself.

‘No real news, but according to Mrs Windle the troop trains are still full when they reach London, which must mean something.'

Dunkirk. How quickly the name had become familiar, so that over the space of a handful of days it was on everyone's lips, the echo of its horror and bravery the beat of everyone's heart.

Dunkirk – the beach beyond which the British Expedition Force had retreated until they could retreat no further, after the Germans had smashed through the supposedly unsmashable Maginot Line.

Dunkirk – from where not just the might of the British Establishment but the love and bravery of Britain's ordinary citizens, in their small vessels, had plucked the waiting men to safety, bearing them home across the Channel in voyage after voyage.

Olive and Tilly had seen what Dunkirk had done to once-proud fighting men. Olive manned one of the many WVS tea urns, and Tilly helped the walking wounded when they arrived at St Pancras station, one of the London stations into which troop trains came pouring to disgorge weary retreat-scarred men from the British Expeditionary Force; men who had left behind in France not only their guns and equipment but also their pride.

In three short days Tilly felt she had left her own youth behind her, just as those men had left behind them their dead comrades and their self-belief. The sight of grown men with blank expressions and eyes that constantly looked beyond her, as her St John Ambulance unit worked amongst the wounded, no longer shocked her as it had done that first day.

Men in dirty mud-spattered uniforms, rank with the dried sweat of fear, who couldn't look her in the eye; men with dirty bandages wrapped around wounds; men who broke down and wept with shame and relief when they were greeted with a hot cup of tea and a warm smile – Tilly had seen them all.

Because it was her turn to drive the WVS van, Olive said that she would take Tilly to St Pancras along with the members of her WVS unit she was due to pick up from the vicarage. Crouched in the back of the van, Tilly was filled with admiration for the way her mother drove, manoeuvring it with the new confidence the last few days had given her. Olive had even been co-opted into ferrying some of the walking wounded to various London hospitals for out-patient treatment.

The most seriously injured men and the stretcher cases had been sent to hospitals closer to the coast, Sally had told them. The London hospitals were only dealing with the more minor cases; cleaning up wounds, before the men travelled onward to take advantage of the two weeks of home leave they had all been granted.

One of Tilly's jobs had been to check with those arriving at St Pancras that they had sent off one of the postcards they had been issued with on arrival on British shores, to tell their relatives they were safe.

It was as she handed out postcards to those who, for one reason or another, had not already sent them that she had a glimpse of what was concealed behind the men's blank expressions, as though the thought of those waiting for them at home was the key that turned the lock on their emotions.

This evening the number of men filling the platforms seemed larger than ever.

Craning her neck, Tilly tried to see where the milling mass ended, as she and Agnes stood together with their bag of postcards and their instructions to send those men who looked most in need of medical attention to the St John Ambulance post behind them on the station's main waiting area, where they would be checked over and dealt with or sent on to hospital for further medical treatment.

Men were caked in a mixture of mud from the retreat across France, sand from the beaches, salt from the Channel and, in some cases, oil as well. After three days Tilly had learned enough to know that oil meant the men had been rescued from torpedoed ships.

Down at the other end of the concourse, closer to the exit, her mother, along with various other WVS groups, would be serving the men tea and biscuits, the first drink, some men told her, they had had since leaving France.

A soldier, grey-skinned and dead-eyed, standing in the line a couple of yards away from them caught Tilly's eye. He was being supported by the man next to him, who looked equally done in.

‘Grab these two,' Tilly told Agnes, the two girls stepping up to the men, and only just in time, Tilly recognised as the soldier being supported stumbled, and almost fell into her arms.

‘Sorry, miss,' his companion, hollow-cheeked with exhaustion, his face grimy with oil and dirt, apologised. ‘No offence.'

‘None taken,' Tilly assured him, gesturing to her uniform. ‘That's what we're here for. Has he got any injuries, do you know?'

She could almost see the soldier, who had been looking defensive and wary, relax a little at her words, as Tilly gently set the semi-conscious man back to his feet so that his companion could once again support him.

Tilly had learned that every soldier seemed to have a pal, a mate, someone from his unit who stood by him and for him, and who took charge of him when he was injured.

‘Shrapnel in his leg. They wanted to hospitalise him when we came ashore but he refused. He's from up north – Newcastle – and he wants to get home. His brother's bought it, see, and he wants to tell his mam and dad himself. Doesn't want them to hear from anyone else.'

Tilly nodded and swallowed back her pity, telling the soldier, ‘That's all very well but his parents won't thank him if he makes his own wounds worse. That leg needs attending to.' They both looked down at where fresh blood was seeping through the grimy bandage wrapped round the other soldier's thigh.

Tilly could see both relief and gratitude in the companion's eyes. ‘Just as well he's out of it,' he told Tilly with an attempt at a grin. ‘That's the trouble with these ruddy North-Easterners, they don't know when they're down.'

‘Got to get home,' the injured man suddenly muttered, pulling away from his friend. ‘Got to tell me mam and dad about our Tommy.'

He lurched forward and then stopped his eyes widening with shock before he looked down at his own thigh. Bright red blood was now soaking through the bandage. He put his hand on it and then removed it, staring at his own bloodstained hand.

He was haemorrhaging, Tilly guessed.

‘Quick, Agnes, go and get Mr Ogden. Tell him we've got a haemorrhage. We need to lie him down and lift his leg up.'

Almost before she had finished speaking soldiers were moving into action, clearing a space, lying their comrade down. Tilly had her first-aid kit with her, but it contained only the basics, she was reluctant to apply a makeshift tourniquet when there might be shrapnel in the wound that her actions could push in further.

The soldier had opened his eyes, and Tilly could see the panic in them.

‘It's all right,' she told him softly. ‘You're home now, and you're safe.'

‘Gotta see me mam. Don't let me die before I've seen her,' he pleaded, tears filling his eyes and running down his cheeks, making clean runnels in the dirt.

‘We won't let you die,' Tilly assured him. He had reached for her hand and she held it tightly, and kept holding it just as she held his gaze as Agnes returned with the leader of their brigade and two of the more senior members.

‘It might be a shrapnel wound,' Tilly told the brigade leader quietly. ‘He wouldn't let them hospitalise him when he came ashore. He wants to get home to tell his parents about the loss of his brother.'

The other members of the brigade were working quickly and efficiently to stem the bleeding as Tilly spoke, sliding a stretcher beneath the young soldier.

It wasn't until the soldier was being stretchered away that Tilly looked up and realised that one of the men who had assisted with him was Dulcie's brother, Rick, although she had to look twice before she could be sure that it was him. There was no sign of the good-looking charm on his face now. Even his curt nod in her direction in confirmation of his recognition of her was a world away from the easy manner she remembered. Not that she had any fondness for Dulcie's brother now. He had led her on, no doubt to boost his own ego, without thinking how she might feel about his behaviour. She had been such a naive girl then, she thought ruefully with the benefit of nearly six months of extra maturity behind her. An idiot, really, to be taken in by someone as vain as Rick, and not worth wasting her tears on. Well, she knew better now. She was a popular girl, with young men eager to take her out, but Tilly had learned her lesson in one sharp and very painful evening. She would never allow herself to be so gullible or easily hurt again. Nor would she ever be naive enough again to fall for a handsome face. In fact, she was off men, full stop, and had decided that instead of risking getting her heart broken she was going to concentrate on putting her energy into helping as much as she could with the war effort.

Her glance at Rick was cool and professional, letting him know that she wasn't the silly young girl who had quivered with delight just to be in his arms. Then she saw in his expression and bearing what she had seen in so many returning soldiers. It wasn't just the loss of friends and comrades that marked them, it was the loss of pride and confidence as well. They had been saved from potential death and imprisonment not by their own endeavours but by the endeavour of others, rescued from France's beaches like helpless children, as one soldier had already described it to her.

‘You stand there in line waiting, not knowing if you're even going to make it to the boats. Three days we were standing there waiting. It does something to you inside your head,' he had told her. ‘It takes something from you that you know you'll never get back.'

Nodding brusquely at Tilly – how could a girl like her possibly understand the hell that had been Dunkirk? – Rick still felt raw and shocked by what he had experienced. Raw and shocked and shamed by the way they'd had to turn tail and run. It didn't matter how often he'd heard older, more experienced soldiers saying, ‘He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day,' his pride, not just in himself but in his country, had been put through a firestorm from which he had emerged harder, angrier and determined to defeat the Germans . . .

Rick turned away from Tilly to rejoin the remnants of his unit. The lad who'd been stretchered away was seventeen. He'd lied about his age so that he could enlist with his older brother, the brother they'd had to leave behind in the mud with his head shot off and his brains splattered all over the road, after an aerial attack by the Luftwaffe. Rick had yelled out a warning but Tommy had been helping a young mother with her children, carrying a young boy too exhausted to walk, as they fled along with others, because the Germans were invading their country.

The mother and her children had died with Tommy, and the dozens of others the Luftwaffe had sprayed with gunfire.

Tommy's brother had insisted on burying what was left of Tommy, after he had finished throwing up. Rick suspected that the boy had half hoped to be killed himself, watching the risks he had taken afterwards.

It wasn't glorious and heroic: it was dying on the roadside with your head blown open; it was blackened arms and legs separated from rotting bodies strewn along the road to the coast like lifesize dolls' limbs; it was fear and sickness, and screams of agony, both physical and mental; it was the fury and frustration of standing in line on the beaches whilst the Luftwaffe blew you apart and the sky above you remained empty of the RAF. It was seeing grown men cry for their mothers, seeing men die slowly over the long hours they waited for rescue; it was feeling that you would die of thirst but knowing you couldn't risk losing your place in the line.

And after that, being back here in London, seeing people who were clean and not injured and safe, and knowing that they were as alien to you now as though they belonged to a separate race.

It was knowing that nothing ever could or would be the same.

Rick couldn't risk speaking to Tilly because if he did he was afraid that he would tell her these things that could not be told to anyone, least of all a young girl like her.

It was gone eight o'clock in the evening before the flood of men was reduced to a trickle, and Tilly and Agnes were free to leave their posts and make their way over to where Olive was handing over responsibility for the tea urns to a new group of WVS.

‘We saw Dulcie's brother,' Agnes announced as they headed for the parked van, ‘didn't we, Tilly?'

‘Yes. I had to look at him twice before I was sure it was him,' Tilly told her mother. ‘All the soldiers look so defeated. It really tears at your heart. It isn't their fault, after all,' she defended her countrymen fiercely. ‘Everyone said that the Maginot Line would hold Hitler back. So many of them are angry with the RAF and blame them for not doing more to hold the Luftwaffe at bay whilst they were retreating.'

‘I know,' Olive agreed. ‘I suppose it's because the Government feel they need to hold back the RAF to defend the country.'

Tilly saw the looks her mother exchanged with the other WVS members she was taking back to the church hall.

‘You mean in case Hitler tries to invade?' Tilly pressed her.

There was a brief silence and then Olive admitted tiredly, ‘Yes.'

It had to be faced after all, Olive acknowledged as she drove back to the church hall. Hitler had smashed through the defences of every country he had invaded, and now France too had fallen, something that no one had expected to happen. What was to stop them being next?

‘The Germans will target London first,' Hilda Blackett, one of the WVS, warned them all, her voice sounding prophetically through the cramped stuffiness of the back of the van, where Tilly and Agnes were sitting hunched up to occupy as little space as possible.