Requiem for a Wren (19 page)

Sergeant Finch took Dev to Mr McAlister's house and left him there; he did not see Janet, nor did he want to. 'I couldn't say anything about your brother' he told me. 'It was all hush, if you understand. It makes it kind of awkward when you can't say anything, and it's not as if I knew her very well. I just left the dog with the gardener like she told me in her letter, and I gave him the packet of letters and the photograph she asked for out of Bill's kit, to give to her, and then I beat it.'

Within an hour Janet had discovered him in the new kennel by the greenhouses that the Ordnance ratings had knocked up for him, and he knew her, and bounded forwards when he saw her, and licked her face. Every Wren in the place knew all about him, of course, and in the galley the cooks set aside a huge plate of scraps for Janet to give him for his supper, for she was popular and they were sorry for her. It was a very well-fed dog that settled down in his new kennel for a good night's sleep.

The Commander of HMS Mastodon, an elderly officer brought back from retirement, found him there on the third day and asked about him. The head gardener launched into a tirade in the broadest Scots complaining about the wickedness of ratings who stole flowers that should have graced the wardroom to give to their girlfriends, necessitating the presence of McAlister's own dog to check the depredations. The Commander escaped after a quarter of an hour of ear-bashing, and Dev became a part of HMS Mastodon.

He never did much watchkeeping, because he slept soundly every night. He spent most of the day with Janet in the Ordnance workshop or around the pier. Occasionally she would take him in the boat with her to visit an LCT if she knew he would be welcome, but she did not do this very often for fear that she would meet the Captain of Mastodon and be asked about him. On the few weekends that remained before the balloon went up she used to take him for a long country walk on Sunday afternoon, and once Viola went with them, over the moors in the direction of Hythe.

'She'd have been quite happy without me,' Viola said, laughing. 'The dog was company enough for her.'

The last month saw a great transformation of the countryside round Beaulieu, with intense activity in every field and copse. Road gangs were at work with bulldozers and graders ruthlessly straightening and widening the country lanes that led down to the hard at Lepe, tearing down the hedges and pushing them aside into the fields, straightening out corners. Every two or three hundred yards along each lane hard stands were made, which were parking places for tanks and vehicles. Temporary airstrips paved with hessian and steel units appeared almost overnight and crowded thickly one on top of another. The US Air Force moved in to these with Thunderbolts and B 255, and Lymington became thronged with American soldiers and American trucks. Overhead it was a common sight to see fifty of their aircraft flying in formation at one time.

Every wood and spinney in the district became a dump for stores and ammunition or a parking place for tanks and motor transport. With these came mobile anti-aircraft defence, so that at times it seemed that every hedge and thicket held a Bofors gun in camouflage. But no German aircraft ever appeared by day after the Ju 188 that Janet had shot down; our fighters saw to that. Southampton, where over a thousand landing craft were congregated, suffered a few light raids at night which were beaten off with heavy losses; already the Luftwaffe was growing impotent.

The LCTs came crowding in to the river now; at one time, Viola told me, there were over seventy of them there. Training and fitting out had been hurried, and in many cases the maintenance of ships and guns was poor in the hands of raw, unseasoned crews. The work of the shore staffs grew very heavy; as the days lengthened with the coming of the summer the girls found themselves working sixteen or seventeen hours a day, from dawn till dusk. From time to time the river emptied and the LCTs all sailed away on training exercises,-to load tanks and mobile guns and trucks and wading bulldozers at one or other of the hards. They would be gone for two or three days, away down to Slapton Sands in Devonshire perhaps, to assault the peaceful countryside

with live shells and rocket bombs, and go through all the motions of a landing on the beaches they had devastated. Then they would come back again, more numerous than ever, crowding in to Beaulieu River and every other river on the south coast of England with a host of defects and deficiencies to be put right.

Through May the sun shone and the ground grew harder after winter rains. The knowledgeable whispered together that the ground was hard enough for tanks to operate, the more knowledgeable whispered back that it wasn't, but both agreed that the balloon would go up very soon. Nobody ever spoke the word invasion, and 'Overlord' was whispered very secretly.

In the last fortnight the work massed up upon the girls to a degree that they had now no leisure time at all, and the sense of tension was so great that they had no desire for leisure. On shore the roads were jammed with tanks and 'priests' and motor transport; every lane was lined with them along one side, their crews bivouacking in the vehicles or underneath them or beside them; there were little cooking fires and khaki figures everywhere. Each new airstrip was crowded with fighters in dispersal in the fields beside it, the pilots and the crews living in tents by the strip. At sea, monstrosities of every sort floated in the Solent, long raft-like things proceeding very slowly under their own power, tall spiky things, things like a block of flats afloat upon the startled sea.

Janet spent most of her time at Lepe Hard, two miles from Mastodon, for the time for major exercises was now over and the ships were all engaged in loading, unloading, and refuelling practice on the hards. It was her duty to be there when they were doing that, because when the balloon went up she would become a part of the Hardmaster's team. Her job would be to go on board the LCTs when they came back from France to load up a fresh cargo of tanks or motor transport, to check the ammunition that had been expended and exchange the empty drums for new, full ones that she had loaded on shore, and clean the guns for the tired crews, and make good what deficiencies there might be, all in half an hour while loading and refuelling took place before the

craft backed off the hard to sail for France again. To get through all the jobs she had to do in that short time demanded practice and rehearsals, and in those last few days she went through these rehearsals with every LCT in Beaulieu River.

'The captains all knew her' Viola told me. 'They knew she'd just lost her boy, and I think they liked her because she went on with her job the same as ever.' Through all her private troubles she had gone on just the same, the competent Leading Wren explaining once again to raw, forgetful ratings the meaning of the different colours on the Oerlikon shells and the order in which they should be loaded in the drums, sitting on the deck and working with them with her sleeves rolled up and her hands in a wet mass of grease. 'They had confidence in her,' Viola said. 'I think they felt that if she didn't fold up when her boy was killed, she wouldn't fold when the balloon went up.'

Viola told me that she asked Janet once about her father. 'Is he really going to the party?'

Janet nodded. 'He's finished his training. I got a letter from him yesterday, posted at Wapping. He's got a ship, but he didn't say what her name was. I suppose he wouldn't be allowed to.'

'Good show. How old did you say he was?'

'Sixty-four. He said in the letter that the sailors are terribly ignorant about aeroplanes. He said that none of them could tell a Focke-Wulf 190 from a Thunderbolt even when he pointed out the differences in the pictures.'

Tm sure I couldn't, either,' said Viola.

'Daddy thinks it's just terrible. He telegraphed to Mummy to come up to London and bring him up his epidiascope and slides, and he rigged it all up in the ship and started giving lectures to the crew. He says they're really quite keen on identification now. He makes them identify every aircraft they see flying over.'

'He must be very keen himself.'

'It's his whole life' said Janet simply. 'He's been like this about the Observer Corps ever since he joined it at the beginning of the war. Going with the party to the other side is a sort of a reward, to him, for all the work he's done in the

Observer Corps since war began. That's how he looks at it.'

At the end of May Janet was transferred on to the Hardmaster's staff, which did not mean a move because the hard was only two miles from Mastodon; she was driven down there in a truck each morning and driven back at night. She moved freely from one base to the other in the boats, too, but now her main duty was upon the hard and she reported back to Lepe whenever she was disengaged.

On Saturday, June 3rd, all the LCTs were sailed out of the Beaulieu River and anchored by the stern with their own anchors in the Solent. That afternoon they began coming in in pairs to the hard to load up tanks and 'priests' and motor transport; in the mysterious way in which these things become known in spite of all security, everybody knew that this was it. Janet went through her drill of going on board the craft as they came in and reporting to the No 1, but she had little to do. The crews of the LCTs were all set now for battle; the time for worrying about minor stores deficiencies or rust upon the guns was over. She could have given them anything they wanted on that day without paper work or requisitions, but they wanted little from her. All day she walked from ship to ship upon the cluttered decks in the roar of the tank engines, dodging the men bowsing down securing tackles, chi-hiking sometimes with anxious soldiers uttering strained pleasantries. All day through the loaded vessels backed away in turn from the hard, and went out into the Solent to anchor in flotillas.

The cutter came down river in the middle of the afternoon with Viola Dawson at the helm and Dev standing proudly in the bow. Viola told me that she had taken to looking after the dog in the daytime since Janet was at Lepe all day; he was accustomed to boats and gave the boat's crew Wrens no trouble. Janet crossed an LCT to speak to them as they lay alongside for a few minutes while some equipment for the Hardmaster was unloaded. She climbed down into the cutter.

Viola said, This is it, isn't it?'

Janet nodded. 'Everybody seems to think so. It's different, too. Look at all the stuff they're taking with them.' The

'priest' she indicated was loaded high with ration boxes and camouflage netting. On its side was chalked the legend, 'Look out Hitler'. 'This is it, all right.'

Doris Smith looked at the massed vehicles moving by inches down to the hard, at the helmeted soldiers, and voiced all their thoughts. 'I wish one could do something more,' she said. 'One ought to be able to.'

Janet said, 'There'll be plenty to do when these start coming back for another load.' She bent and fondled Dev's ears.

She went on all that afternoon and evening visiting the LCTs as they loaded. Food came to the Hardmaster's hut from time to time, dixies of tea and thick meat sandwiches and biscuits and jam; as the evening went on Janet went and foraged for any food that happened to be going at the moment when she was free. The loading went on till seven o'clock, when it was suspended for a time by the low tide; at dead low water it was difficult for landing craft to manoeuvre in the narrow river on to that hard. It began again at half past eight and went on uninterrupted as night fell; floodlights were lit and the landing craft continued to come in to the hard, load up with tired soldiers and their vehicles, and back away again.

By midnight Janet was tired out, but there was no respite for men or Wrens. She had done enough during the day to justify her presence on the hard; she had replaced two damaged ring sights, supplied about five hundred rounds of ammunition for the Oerlikons, and a large quantity for the Sten guns. She had helped the gun crew of a 'priest' by giving them a can of grease and a great armful of cotton waste. Much of her day had been spent in futile walks from ship to ship, trying to locate the officer she had to report to and finding in the end that nothing was required.

Loading finished at about two in the morning, when the last LCT of the first assault backed off the hard and the floodlights were doused immediately to screen the hard from any German aircraft that might venture over in the night. There was no transport to Mastodon because the crowded vehicles upon the roads prevented any traffic backwards from the hard. Janet and May Spikins wrapped them-

selves in their duffel coats and lay down on a pile of camouflage nets, and slept a little. There Doris Smith found them at five in the morning, and woke them up, and took them back up river to the pier; they walked wearily to their quarters and turned in at six in the full light of day.

Janet got out of her bunk at ten o'clock, and Viola got up with her. Outside the Wrennery the sky was overcast and grey, and the wind was rising, whipping the tops of the tall elm trees. They stood at the window in pyjamas, looking at the weather in consternation. Viola said, 'It's going to be a pig of a day'. And then she dropped her voice. 'They can't go in this, surely?'

Janet asked in a low tone, 'When do they go - when is it? Do you know?'

Viola whispered, 'I think it's tomorrow morning. They're supposed to sail this evening. But half of them will be swamped if they go out in this. It must be blowing quite hard in the Channel.'

They dressed and got some breakfast; then Janet set out in her duffel coat to walk down to the hard. She got a lift in a small Army truck and reached the hard at about eleven in the morning. It was a dirty grey day with a stiff westerly wind; out in the Solent the LCTs were anchored by the stern in rows, pitching uneasily in a short, breaking sea. One or two of them had dragged and fouled each other, and were struggling to free themselves and to turn back against the wind to regain their berth. She found the Hardmaster and reported to him. 'I hope I'm not late, sir,' she said. 'You didn't say any time.'