Rose Under Fire Page 5

  There is only room for one camp bed in the Hatches’ shelter, because they built it themselves and it is tiny. The camp bed is ridiculously covered with a candlewick bedspread to make it seem cosy, and we all squeezed together on it to stay out of the mud. Fliss said to me, ‘Singing will not scare the bombs away!’

  I’d been humming nervously, without realising I was doing it. I laughed. ‘It’s a Girl Scout camp song.’

  ‘Rosie is always singing,’ Maddie pointed out. I could feel her trembling next to me, and remembered how much she hates the bombs.

  ‘Sing properly if you’re going to sing!’ commanded Mrs Hatch. ‘Then we can all join in.’

  So we sat in the underground shelter and I taught them camp songs. I sang ‘Land of the Silver Birch’ and ‘My Paddle’s Keen and Bright’ (again) and then I got bold and sang my ‘Modern Warrior’ poem to the same tune, and they beat time by clapping. And then I taught them ‘Make New Friends’. It’s easy, and we sang it as a round, again and again –

  ‘Make new friends

  But keep the old,

  One is silver

  And the other gold!’

  Kind of corny, but it seemed so appropriate.

  There we were in the mud, singing so loudly that we didn’t hear the all-clear siren when it went! And Mr Hatch came home and broke up the party, hustling us all inside and tut-tutting about his wife being so easily corrupted by modern youth.

  ‘You might have at least been singing hymns,’ he chided her.

  It was the best air raid ever.

  Back in bed I started thinking about how I like to be in a crowd – it’s not like being best friends, or even a threesome, where sometimes two of you pair up and leave the other out. There’s always someone on your side when you’re in a crowd.

  Make new friends

  But keep the old . . .

  And then I started thinking about my combination birthday/Halloween party last year at our cottage in Conewago Grove, with Polly and Alice and Sandy and Fran – we all dressed up as the characters from The Wizard of Oz, with Polly as Toto, and told ghost stories on the sleeping porch by the light of jack-o’-lanterns. And now we have all graduated or gone to war (me) or married (Polly) or whatever, and we will never again be the team that won the Jericho County Girls’ Basketball Championship, or even play together probably.

  It was the stupid candlewick bedspread’s fault! Mrs Hatch’s bedspreads feel the same as the ones Mother has out on the sleeping porch. Anyway, I had the candlewick on my bed pulled up to my chin last night and after I thought about the house party I started thinking about the sleeping porch – the thump and patter of squirrels running across the roof, the way the canvas awnings creak and flap, a trapped firefly blinking against the screen, the way the whole room shakes whenever anybody runs water in the bathroom on the other side of the wall –

  I got so homesick I began to cry. I just couldn’t stop thinking about the sleeping porch!

  It’s funny what sets you off. You miss people the most – really it is Polly and Alice and Sandy and Fran who I am lonely for – but it is the candlewick bedspread that makes me ache with longing to be home.

  September 1, 1944

  Hamble

  Paris is free! It’s been a nerve-racking couple of weeks, watching the Allied forces inching along. We have a map we stick pins in to track the front lines. During the fighting in Paris there was no radio communication coming out of the city at ALL – nothing but rumours. The papers said the city was liberated and all the church bells in London were ringing to celebrate, and the next day the papers said, ‘Whoops, not yet!’ It wasn’t long before the real news came through, but it was like being on a roller-coaster waiting for it. Now the fighting is moving across the Seine and into Belgium.

  The problem is that it’s getting harder and harder to get supplies to the front lines because the Germans are still hanging on to the ports at Calais, Le Havre, Boulogne, etc. They realise what a pain in the neck it is for the Allied forces to have to ferry fuel, food, spare parts, blood and bandages and everything else across to Normandy, and then truck it 200 miles north up this corridor between Germany and the French coast – especially with the train lines and bridges all blown up after the fighting (that is where Uncle Roger comes in, getting them to rig up temporary bridges in a hurry).

  You can’t even fly directly into France without being shot at, and you certainly can’t unload a cargo ship. Le Havre is under siege. It is being pounded. We are doing it ourselves. The harbour there is taking such a beating that it will have to be rebuilt before it’s any use to us.

  I had my lunch with Aunt Edie in the Palm Court at the Ritz yesterday. Wow. It makes the Hotel Hershey look pretty minor league, which isn’t exactly fair. Thank goodness for my uniform. I wore the same clothes I wore to Maddie’s wedding (although I wore my other tunic, because the one I wore to Maddie’s wedding is not as sharp-looking as it used to be, due to flying bombs and bus floors). But you never feel out of place or underdressed in uniform.

  Edie, of course, was very elegant. I don’t think she’s had any new clothes for a while either, but she gets everything remade by her own tailor and is always so stylish – she kissed me on both cheeks to greet me, and looked sort of slant-eyed at my hands because I wasn’t wearing gloves (they did not survive the doodlebug wedding adventure).

  We didn’t talk about French cities being liberated – Edie will not discuss bloodshed and bombing while she is presiding over white linen and silver in the Palm Court at the Ritz! I told her about my last date with Nick.

  ‘I like your Nick,’ she commented when I’d finished. ‘So terribly earnest.’

  I laughed. ‘That’s exactly the word I think of too. Did I tell you he proposed to me? He wanted to get married before he got sent off to wherever he is now. I know everyone is doing it and I hated to disappoint him, but –’

  ‘But it’s not a charm. He won’t be any better protected if you’re married to him, and if you’re really going to choose a boy yourself and you’re being sensible about what you do together, there’s no good reason to rush into marriage. You did the right thing, Rose darling.’

  ‘But I do worry about him,’ I said. ‘And if we were married, they would tell me right away if anything happened to him. They won’t do that for just friends.’

  ‘There’s something to be said for not being told right away,’ Aunt Edie mused. ‘But I prefer simply not to worry. I never worry about Roger. Do you worry about General Montgomery – or General Eisenhower? They’re just as likely to be killed as anybody, but you don’t think about it. Imagine Nick’s a general!’

  And we both laughed this time.

  ‘Of course, Roger’s just as likely to perish of a heart attack, or flu. Or some nasty disease he picks up in the field. Oh – that reminds me, Rose. He wanted to know if your jabs are up to date.’

  That drew a blank with me.

  ‘My jabs?’

  ‘Your inoculations. Tetanus and typhoid principally.’

  ‘Oh! We call them shots. Yes, I had boosters this spring, before I came to England. Why?’

  ‘Can’t say,’ Aunt Edie said coyly, folding her napkin in her lap. ‘Shall we have coffee instead of tea? I hear they have a supply of the real thing from the Americans this week.’

  ‘Oh wonderful Aunt Edie!’

  My fingers are crossed because I know they are inoculating other ferry pilots so they will be ready to fly to Europe. But I’m not holding my breath because so far none of them have been girls. And to tell the truth, I am less enthusiastic about the idea of doing ferry work in Europe than I was. Because it all looks so horribly, horribly ruined. The pictures in the papers are unbelievably awful – it looks like earthquake damage. Whole streets are knocked down and the soldiers have to pick their way over rubble to get through the towns – I think I said before that it’s we who are doing the bombing. Allied planes are dropping thousands of tons of TNT day and night on our own cities. And on German citi
es too, of course.

  I am going to confess something here that I can’t quite bring myself to confess to anyone aloud, and this is what it is. I am scared of the way the Germans are refusing to let go of anything. I am scared of the way they are clinging to the French and Belgian ports, even though they’ve been pushed out of most of the rest of France. There is something about it that spooks me. They’ve lost. They must know they’ve lost – that they’re on the run. It’s all so pointless. It shouldn’t take another year. But I bet it will.

  It’s not desperation – there is something inhuman in it. That is what I find so creepy. Five years of destruction and mayhem, lives lost everywhere, shortages of food and fuel and clothing – and the insane mind behind it just urges us all on and on to more destruction. And we all keep playing.

  September 7, 1944

  Hamble

  Now Brussels is free, but more important, Antwerp too – a port in Allied hands at last! But actually the best news as far as I’m concerned was in the Manchester Guardian yesterday, read aloud by our Guardian addict the Honourable Mrs Maddie Beaufort-Stuart while we were waiting for our delivery chits. Here’s the news: RAF pilots are reporting that they can now fly the whole way across France without running into enemy aircraft!

  It has been quieter here too. As we’ve been gaining ground in France and Belgium, the launch sites for the V-1 flying bombs are being taken out of action or pushed back – the doodlebugs can’t reach as far into England now, and also there aren’t as many of them. You really notice it here in Southampton because there just hasn’t been anything for about ten days. It’s quieter in Kent and London too. THANK GOD.

  Operations told us to look out for flying bombs launched from planes – from German bombers. We’ve had the flash cards out to familiarise ourselves with the silhouette of a Heinkel He-111, just in case. They will probably aim for Paris and Brussels, not London, but they are not licked yet.

  September 11, 1944

  Camp Los Angeles, Reims, FRANCE!

  I am in France!

  I am staying overnight with the American nurses in the Red Cross unit at one of the redeployment camps near Reims, full of GIs on their way to battle. Uncle Roger moves on to his own forces near Antwerp tomorrow. They call this place Camp LA, which is short for Camp Los Angeles – all the camps around here are named after some American metropolis, to make the boys feel at home, I guess. No one is fooled. It is an instant city, just add water! (Of which there is plenty, most of it underfoot.) Reims was liberated on 30th August and Camp LA has not been here for much more than a week, but it is huge. There is a grocery store and a cinema as well as the hospital and mess halls, all in tents.

  The store is stocked with American loot that seems miraculous to me – Quaker oats and Ivory soap and Hershey bars. Nothing makes me feel at home like Hershey’s chocolate! Back at Justice Field you get the chocolate factory lined up on your starboard wing tip when you’re coming in to land, and when the wind’s from the north-west, the whole valley smells like roasting cocoa beans.

  It doesn’t smell like cocoa here. Most of the open space in Camp LA is an ocean of mud, except the freshly surfaced runway. It’s been a beautiful clear day for once, and I had no encounters with other aircraft on our way here, although it was sobering to see the utter destruction of Caen as we crossed the coast, and the clouds of smoke rising over Le Havre in the north.

  When Uncle Roger gets things moving, he moves fast. I think that’s partly to make sure no one ever has time to say no to him. Here’s what happened this morning: I got an S chit when I went in to Operations at Hamble, which means ‘Secret’ – I’m not supposed to tell anyone who I’m ferrying or where I collected them. I won’t write down any of that. Also – this isn’t secret – I was supposed to make sure I had my US passport with me as well as my ATA authorisation card and pilot’s licence, and Operations told me to go home and change to full dress uniform with skirt (not slacks) – which usually means you will be taxiing someone important. Only in this case it just meant they didn’t know who, and I ought to be presentable in case I ran into General Patton after I arrived!

  Operations didn’t tell me I was going overnight, so I haven’t got anything like toothbrush or pyjamas with me. But it is only for one night and the other girls are having to wash their faces in their helmets, and had to sleep in their ambulances on the way here from Normandy before the tents got set up, so I guess I can spend another night in my clothes. Roger bought me a toothbrush in the grocery store along with a month’s supply of chocolate and gum. I am going to be everybody’s best friend when I get back to Southampton.

  I flew an Oxford to get here, carrying Roger and a handful of other passengers. I felt like the whole sky belonged to me. The Seine was with us all the way through France, great big loops of shining silver out the port side, and I’d already had to shout at my passengers to take turns looking because they were throwing me out of balance by crowding on one side of the plane, and then there it was ahead of me – PARIS, FRANCE.

  It was a huge gorgeous sprawl of wooded parks and broad avenues, and although we flew over some bomb damage in the suburbs, the closer we got to the middle the more and more beautiful it was, and from the air it didn’t look the least bit damaged. Everybody was glued to the tiny windows and as we got closer they stopped trying to crowd at the same side because the city was all around us. I went down to about 700 feet and it was like flying over a model railway village, with the gleaming white domes of Sacré Coeur presiding over it all and Notre Dame Cathedral like a wedding cake right in the middle. Of course it is the first time I’ve ever seen Paris, and what a way to see it for the first time, flying low over streets full of flags and red-white-and-blue bunting!

  By the time we were over Notre Dame I was singing to myself again. The cabin was so noisy I thought no one would be able to hear me. But Uncle Roger and someone else were crouched right behind me looking over my shoulders because there is a better view from the cockpit than in the back, and they heard me. And then everybody joined in.

  ‘Allons enfants de la Patrie,

  Le jour de gloire est arrivé!’

  I don’t know why I know all the words to the French national anthem. I am just like that. I never forget the words to anything! We learned it in eighth grade when we were just starting to take French.

  If Roger and the others hadn’t all joined in I’d have probably ended up in tears – overcome with emotion. As it was, everybody was too noisy and excited for me to start feeling sentimental. We were shouting as I detoured east along the Seine towards the Eiffel Tower, most of my passengers just going ‘Da Da Da DAH!’ since I was the only one who knew all the words.

  As we got closer to the Eiffel Tower, one of the wags in the back yelled, ‘Go under it!’

  I did not fly under the Eiffel Tower!

  But I bet if I’d been flying a fighter plane, something small and zippy, I’d have been tempted. Maybe tomorrow? No, I won’t be that stupid. But the thought that it’s even a possibility makes me warm and happy.

  So I didn’t fly under the Eiffel Tower, but I did fly in big lazy circles around it, while everybody pointed and cheered and somebody snapped a million pictures over my shoulder like a sightseer. At that point I’d stopped singing because I was really too low and I had to concentrate on flying.

  I’m BUZZING THE EIFFEL TOWER, I thought. JUST WAIT till I tell Daddy I’ve buzzed the Eiffel Tower!

  It is the most wonderful thing I have ever done.

  The rest of the day has brought me back to earth with a wallop because after I landed and had my camp tour and went shopping, the nurses I am staying with put me to work in an ‘outpatient’ clinic tent of the field hospital – walking wounded only, thank goodness. I was assisting, holding equipment and cutting gauze for bandages, not actually changing dressings myself. To tell the truth, I think they just grabbed the opportunity to use me as a morale booster.

  ‘From Pennsylvania! A pilot! Shouldn’t you be in schoo
l, young lady? Look at those curls!’

  It reminded me of when Maddie and Celia and Felicyta and I handed out the strawberries to the soldiers on D-Day – except these men weren’t as frightened. They’d already been to battle and it’s hardened them, or at least made them better at hiding that they’re scared. It makes my heart ache, thinking that none of these brave boys are so badly hurt they won’t be fighting again in a couple of weeks. I don’t want them to be badly hurt, but equally I don’t want them to be killed on the front lines. I have got ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ stuck in my brain. Glory glory Hallelujah!

  It is why I am up so late – I have been working on a poem in my head all day, and I want to write it down in case I forget it.

  Battle Hymn of 1944

  (by Rose Justice)

  O let them struggle wisely, these brave boys

  and girls around the watchfires; grant they should

  fight with realistic hope, not to destroy

  all the world’s wrong, but to renew its good.

  Make them victors and healers, let them be

  unsentimental and compassionate;

  spill not their generous blood abundantly

  as gifts of stockings and gum and chocolate.

  Let them be modest, knowing the irony

  of hard-fought peace, our bold united youth

  returned in strength across the migrant sea,

  rebuilding and restoring law and truth –

  then afterward, when the last prayer’s been said,

  home for the living, burial for the dead.

  *

  And now I am going to go to sleep. I have been scribbling this by flashlight under my borrowed US Army blanket. I’m not flying the Oxford back – they want to keep that here for local taxi runs, so one of the RAF pilots at the front will come pick up Roger to take him to his next stop, and I am going to swap planes and take a Spitfire back to Southampton for a new paint job (it is being modified for reconnaissance).