Requiem for a Wren (21 page)

The boat's crew Wrens brought Dev down to the hard each day standing proudly in the bow of the cutter; he would jump on board the LCT as they came alongside and frolic in and out among the tanks and trucks till he found Janet; then he would be all over her. She would give him biscuits and knock off for a few minutes to play with him, fondling his ears; then Viola would take him back into the boat and Janet would go on, cheered and refreshed by the short interlude with her dog.

On the morning of Saturday, June 10th, Third Officer Collins rode her bicycle from Mastodon down to the hard, her pretty young face troubled and upset. She leaned the bike against the hut and went in to the Hardmaster. 'Where's Prentice, sir?'

He pointed at an LCT loading on the hard, 'In that one, I think.'

'Could you send for her, do you think? I've got to see her, and I'd rather do it here, not in the ship.' She hesitated. 'We got a message from her mother. Her father's been killed.'

When Janet came, wondering, to the hut Miss Collins said nervously, 'Prentice, I want a word with you. Come out here.' She led the way down on to the strip of beach below Lepe House. 'I'm afraid there's been some bad news, Prentice,' she said. 'It's about your father.'

Janet said quickly, 'Has Daddy bought it?'

'Well - yes, I'm afraid that was what the message was, my dear. Somebody rang up trying to get hold of you, speaking for your mother.'

'He's killed, is he?' Janet asked directly.

'I'm afraid that's what the message said.'

Janet walked on in silence for a minute. In the back of her mind she had been ready for this, because God's judgements were just and she deserved His punishments. Ever since she had heard that motor transport ships had been beached upon the coast of Normandy on Wednesday to unload their trucks with their own derricks on to the sand, she had

known that her father was not far from the German Army. She was too tired to grieve, too dazed with work and little sleep, too much obsessed with the thought that she had left her job with the breech out of the port Oerlikon and, as like as not, without her help the rating wouldn't be able to put it together again. Daddy had bought it; when she was rested perhaps tears would come and she would want to go to church. Now it was just a matter of brushing off Third Officer Collins and getting back on to the LCT to put that breech back.

She said quietly, Thank you for telling me, ma'am. It was good of you to come down.' She stopped, turned round, and started to walk back towards the hard.

The officer said, I've arranged forty-eight hours leave for you, Prentice. I'll just see the Hardmaster; then you can come up to Mastodon and change, and go off on the 14.00 ferry. You can take my bike and go on ahead, if you like. You'll find your pass and warrant on my desk; if they're not there, ask Petty Officer Bowling for them.'

Janet said, 'I don't want to go on leave.'

The Wren officer was nonplussed. 'They said on the telephone that you're her only child in England - that's why we put it through. Of course you must go, Prentice. You must go home and see your mother.'

'I couldn't go till this flap's over,' Janet said stubbornly. 'Not unless you can get me a relief.'

'Don't you think Spikins can carry on alone, just while you go home for forty-eight? You're working independently; she can carry on without you.'

Janet said, 'It's just a question if she can carry on with me, ma'am.' She quickened her pace towards the hard. 'She's just about all in. No, honestly, I'll be all right. There aren't any reliefs. Is it true that it's all coming to an end tomorrow?'

'Tuesday, I think,' Miss Collins told her. 'There's a buzz that there'll be no more loading here after Tuesday.'

Janet said, 'Well then, I'll go home on Tuesday.'

'You'd better telephone your mother, anyway, Prentice.'

Janet hesitated. 'I would like to do that,' she said. T must go back on to that LCT now, ma'am, because I've got the

port gun dismantled; the seal was very dry and sticking down. They'll be casting off any time now. I must just get on board and see to that. Do you think I might make the call from here after I've done that?'

'I'm sure you can' the officer said. 'I'll go up to Lepe House and see if I can get a post-office line for you. Come up there directly you've finished on this ship.'

A quarter of an hour later Janet, stony-faced, dry-eyed, her hands black with ingrained grease, was speaking to her mother. 'Mummy dear,' she said, 'I don't know what to say. I just can't realise it yet. How did you hear? ... Oh, how kind of him. I know - well, I'd better not say that over the telephone. Look, Mummy, who's with you now? ... Will she be able to stay over the weekend? Mummy, I want to come home but I just can't leave here before Tuesday. It's the invasion. Mummy -I haven't been to bed for four days. We're going on day and night. I think I'll be able to come home on Tuesday ... Oh yes, I'm very well... We sleep all right but it's in little bits, you know, between the flotillas... I'll tell you when I come home. I'll try and get some long leave as soon as this is over, Mummy, but I can't come till Tuesday. Daddy wouldn't want me to. I'll tell you when we meet. On Tuesday. Look after yourself, Mummy. I'll be home on Tuesday, probably rather late. I'll ring you up again tomorrow or on Monday.'

She had been speaking from a room on the ground floor that had been the office of a captain, now vacated because Captain J3 was on the other side of the Channel. She sat for a moment, weary, after putting down the telephone. From the window she could see another LCT nosing in to the hard below, and a long line of loaded trucks and Bren carriers waiting to embark. Presently she got up stiffly and went out into the corridor. Third Officer Collins was watching for Janet from the wardroom opposite, and came out to meet her. 'You got through all right?' she asked.

Janet said, 'Yes thank you, ma'am. Thank you for letting me use that room and make the call from here. Do you think I could possibly speak to her again tomorrow?'

'Of course, Prentice -I can fix that for you. What time do you want to call her?'

'I think about teatime would be best. She's always in then.'

The officer said, 'I'll come down here at about four o'clock and see that everything's all right for you. You wouldn't like to come back to Mastodon and rest a bit?'

Td rather go on here, if you don't mind. There's another LCT just coming in.'

She went back to her job, her mind in a daze. In the roaring of engines as the trucks and carriers backed in to the LCT she started working with the ratings to get the ammunition on board. There was a short pause half an hour later while that ship backed off the hard and another one came in to load, sufficient time for her to smoke a cigarette but not to grieve. Then she went on again. That flotilla was finished by three o'clock in the afternoon and she went up to the hut and had a couple of bully sandwiches and a piece of jam tart with two cups of tea for her dinner; then she lay down to rest till she was needed again. She was too tired to think clearly, too weary and dazed to cry. She lay in unhappy suffering for a time, and presently she slept.

The Wrens were called to work upon another flotilla at about eight o'clock that evening, and they worked on till one in the morning. They had a short sleep then, but another flotilla came in with the first light of dawn, at half past four, and they went on again. They finished that one at about nine in the morning and had breakfast; by the time they had finished eating, a fresh pair of LCTs were nosing their way in to the hard, and a mixed lot of tanks and carriers and 'priests' was waiting in the lane to be embarked.

About the middle of the morning the cutter came down river with Dev standing proudly in the bow; Viola brought her alongside the LCT that lay at the west side of the hard dolphin. Janet was working on the other ship, on the east side of the dolphin. Dev, who knew his way around, jumped on to the LCT and from there to the hard, and began running round on the hard amongst the tanks and trucks looking for Janet. Presently he got under a Sherman.

Viola was still down in the cutter, and she never learned exactly how it happened. She heard a sudden shrill, agonised yelping above the roaring of the engines and the grinding of

the tank tracks on steel decks, and put her head over the side of the LCT. She saw Janet running from the ship on the east side. The Sherman moved on backwards to the ramp, probably quite unconscious of what had happened. On the hard Janet found a small, concerned group of Army NCOs and privates grouped around the dog, struggling on his forepaws with both hind legs broken, yelping in agony.

Janet cried, 'Oh Dev, darling? and dropped down on her knees beside him. He knew her and stopped screaming for a moment, and sniffed her hand, but he screamed again when she touched him. She raised her eyes from him in distress and saw a revolver belted at a knee, and looked higher; it belonged to a young Army captain. 'Please,' she said. 'Please, will you shoot him?' The young man hesitated. 'Who does he belong to?' 'He's mine,' she said. 'Please shoot him for me.' He glanced around; the hard was paved with concrete, and crowded with men and tanks and trucks. 'I can't do that here,' he said. 'We'll get a ricochet. We'll have to move him, I'm afraid.' He touched her on the shoulder and made her get up. 'Look, go up to the top of the hard and try not to listen. I'll look after this for you.'

She took one last look at my brother Bill's dog, then turned away and went up between the tanks and trucks, tears streaming down her face. She heard the agonised screaming of the dog as the soldiers moved him to the soft sand of the beach, and then two shots. With those two shots her service in the Wrens came to an end.

Years later Viola Dawson told me about that day, as we lingered over coffee in the restaurant in Earls Court after dinner. 'I couldn't wait then,' she said. 'I had to take some officers back up the river. I managed to get down to Lepe again early in the afternoon, and when we'd moored the cutter I went on the LCTs looking for Janet, but she wasn't there. I found May Spikins, and asked where Janet was.'

'She's not here,' she said. 'She's gone sort of funny, Viola -crying all the time. Look, be a dear and find her - she's somewhere about. Take her back to Mastodon with you. She'll have to report sick.'

Viola found Janet sitting at the head of the beach about a

couple of hundred yards from the hard, the tears streaming steadily and quietly down her face. She had borrowed an entrenching tool from one of the soldiers and buried the dog there in the soft sand. Viola said, 'Come on, old girl. It's no good sitting here.'

Janet sobbed, 'I ought to be working but I can't bloody well stop crying.'

'Of course you can't,' said Viola. 'I'm going to take you back up river in the cutter to the Wrennery.'

'I can't leave here. May Spikins can't do all these ships alone.' She wept again.

'Of course she can,' said Viola. They're not using any ammunition. They haven't fired a round for the last two days, and you know it. Besides, there's no more loading here after tonight.' She offered her own handkerchief, rather dirty. 'Here, take this, I'll go and see the Hardmaster and tell him.'

She found him on the hard outside the hut. 'Leading Wren Prentice seems to be a bit upset, sir' she said. 'Could she have the rest of the day off? I could take her back up river in the cutter, to the Wrennery.'

He nodded. 'I'm sorry about her dog, but it was silly of you and her, to bring it to the hard. Yes, take her back with you. She's put up a good show, and loading finishes tonight, I think.'

'It was her dog getting killed that put the lid on it,' said Viola, seven years later. 'Funny, that, wasn't it? She stood up quite well when your brother got killed and when her father got killed, but when the dog got killed it finished her. I suppose she felt responsible or something.'

'I suppose she did,' I said. 'What happened after that?'

'I took her back up to the Wrennery, and when Third Officer Collins saw her she made her report sick' she said. There weren't any naval surgeons left in Mastodon - they were all in "Overlord". There was an American Army doctor there, Lease-lend, and he sent her on sick leave'

'Was she away long?' I asked.

'She never came back' Viola told me. 'She messed about for a couple of months under a Navy doctor in Oxford. I went and saw her when I was on leave but she was sort of -

well, funny. She was still crying quite a lot, and very nervy. As a matter of fact, there'd have been nothing much for her to do in the Navy after the invasion. She went up to a board in London some time in August and they gave her her discharge, on compassionate grounds I think, to look after her mother.' Viola paused, and then she said reflectively, 'I suppose the truth is that she wasn't any good to the Navy any more.'

WHEN I went back to Oxford in 1948 I spent much of my time in trying to trace Janet Prentice. I soon discovered that her mother had died in the year 1946 and that Janet had left Oxford. The house in Crick Road had been sold and there had been a sale of furniture; everything seemed to have been' converted into ready cash. I managed to trace the agent who had sold the house but he had no address for the girl, though he told me the bank into which he had paid his cheque. I went and saw the bank manager and he confirmed what I had already learned, but the account had been closed and he had no address. The balance had not been a large one, for the house had been mortgaged and large houses in those days had sold badly. He said that he had an idea that Miss Prentice had gone abroad.