Starshine (8 page)

‘Johnson. Polly Johnson.’

‘You are looking for work, Miss Johnson?’

‘Yes. But only war work,’ she added hurriedly.

The man chuckled. ‘That’s the only work we do ’ere, miss. Come along, then. Just follow me.’

They went through a door, down a corridor and then through another door into another universe. Polly’s jaw dropped. The room was vast – it was called a ‘shop’ she was to learn later – and seemed to stretch for hundreds of feet. It was also high, at least fifty feet, she guessed, and lined with cranes at one end that towered to the ceiling and fringed one wall. For as far as the eye could see stood ammunition shells of various sizes, perched tightly together vertically, some moving very slowly on conveyor belts and being tended by men and women wearing identical brown-coloured duster coats. She noticed that all the women had their hair tied up in turban-like scarves. It was noisy but not intrusively so and the atmosphere was one of cheerful concentration. It was the smell, however, that hit Polly. It was clinical and difficult to define. Chemical, certainly, and rather acidic.

‘War work, all right, luv,’ said the man. ‘Shells for our troops out in France.’

Polly licked her lips and wished she hadn’t worn her hat. ‘Will some of them go to Belgium – to Flanders?’ she enquired hesitantly.

‘Oh yes, lass. They’ll go there all right.’ He gave her a quizzical glance. ‘Got a special interest in Flanders, then, have we?’

‘Well yes. I have two friends fighting out there.’

‘Good for you. Well rest assured, luv, we ’ere at Kymestons are doin’ our very best to supply them. Now, come on through to the office.’

They went into a glass-panelled room, looking out over the vast factory floor, and Polly was offered a dusty seat in a chair facing a desk overflowing with charts and papers. The man sat facing her and cleared away some of the papers and put his elbows on the surface.

He had kindly eyes, and a nose and a complexion that had clearly benefited from good ale. He smiled at her. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘My name’s Miller and I’m the manager for this section here. It is true that we are looking to take on additional labour and, given the fact that so many young men are – quite rightly – volunteering for the forces, we have decided that we will take on women to do work that previously lads had done.

‘But I must say that you do look a bit young, lass, and I … er … can’t ’elp wondering whether this kind of work wouldn’t be a bit, well, hard for you. You are over eighteen, are you?’

Polly immediately reached up, removed the long pin that secured her hat to her piled-up hair and put the boater on her lap. A strand of soft brown hair escaped and fell down to her shoulders. She gave Mr Miller her best smile.

‘Oh yes. I have my birth certificate here if you would like to see it.’

Miller held out his hand. ‘I believe you, lass, but better see it, I suppose. It’s required by this new Ministry of Munitions, you see.’

He studied it perfunctorily and handed it back. ‘That’s fine. I would like to take you on, but …’ His voice tailed away as he took in her small hands and trim ankles. ‘The truth is I really don’t think
that what I could offer you would suit a nice young lady like you.’

Polly widened her eyes. ‘Oh, but Mr Miller! I do want so much to do war work. I am a good worker and can bring a good reference from my present job, I know I could. It is true that I have only worked in a draper’s shop but I am strong and very willing.’

Miller gave a wan smile. ‘I don’t suppose for a moment that you can drive a motor car, can you? No. Silly to ask. Course you can’t.’

‘No, but I can ride a bike.’

He was silent for a moment. Then: ‘Do you have a head for heights?’

‘Er … well, yes. I’ve climbed the Lickey Hills.’

His smile widened. ‘Look Miss … er … Johnson. Let me tell you what we do here. In this particular part of Kymestons we fill ammunition shells, of all shapes and sizes. That means we put in the timing devices but also the explosives that make ’em go off. We stuff ’em with a chemical called amatol. Yellow stuff. We’ve got quite a few girls doing this and we’re probably going to have to recruit more as the lads go away to the front. It’s not very pleasant because it’s long hours and smelly work. After a time the chemical gives the girls’ faces and teeth a sort of yellowish tinge, like. They get called “canaries” as a result.’ He gave an apologetic shrug.

‘Trouble is that I couldn’t offer you a job doing that because we’ve no vacancies at the moment. In fact, the only vacancy just now wouldn’t suit you at all …’

‘How do you know? What is it?’

He smiled. ‘It’s sitting in a little glass box near the ceiling of the assembly shop and driving one of the overhead cranes that lifts the completed shells in pallets and swings ’em from the line to the despatch area.’

Polly’s face dropped. ‘What, sitting up at the top there?’

‘Yes. We’ve got one lass doing it already, but it’s really a man’s job.’

Polly jumped to her feet. ‘No. No. Mr Miller, if you’ve got one girl doing it, then I can do it too. I’m good with my hands and … er … what d’you call it? Coordination. That’s it. And I don’t mind heights. Please, Mr Miller. Let me give it a try, at least.’ She gave a self-deprecatory cough. ‘I do so want to do work that will help the lads out there.’

Miller regarded her with a half smile, then slowly nodded his head. ‘All right, lass. I admire your spirit. We’ll give you a trial of a month. When can you start?’

‘I have to give a week’s notice.’

‘Right. Now you should know about the conditions. First of all, what are you earning now?’

‘Eighteen shillings a week.’

‘Well, we can start you at twenty-two bob. But it’s long hours. We are working eight-hour shifts at the moment, but the demand from the front has meant that we have to change to twelve hours, starting in a week’s time. That will be twelve hours Monday to Saturday, then, on Saturday, changing to eighteen hours. That means going on duty at six o’clock Saturday evening and working to midday Sunday, when the opposite shift would take over and work through until Monday at six a.m. when we will resume twelve-hour shifts. Bit confusing, I’m afraid, and it cuts down on the dancing, too, love. Can you do it?’

‘Of course I can.’

‘Right. Well I am prepared to give it a try if you are. To get your notice through you’d better start a week on Monday. Sharp at eight o’clock. Come on. I’ll show you the work.’

She followed him out, back once more into the huge shell assembly workshop. Miller pointed upwards to the side of the shop and
towards the far end of it, where long crane booms swung out, their long chains dangling down like fishing lines, huge steel hooks at their ends. Distant figures were threading the hooks through strong nets on which the shell pallets rested. Then the pallets were hoisted, swung delicately from left to right and deposited somewhere out of Polly’s sight.

‘There you go,’ said Miller. ‘It’s responsible work because you need to know exactly what you’re doing. Dropping a pallet could be hugely dangerous.’

Polly realised that her mouth was gaping open. ‘Golly. Would they explode?’

Miller chortled. ‘No. The fuses are not fitted here. But if they fell on someone he’d have a nasty headache.’ He pointed to the side. ‘You would have to climb that ladder to get to your cabin. It’s about forty feet or so up. Think you could do that?’

She forced a grin. ‘Oh yes. Of course.’

‘Just one suggestion, lass.’

‘Yes, Mr Miller?’

With a half-embarrassed smile, he gestured towards her long skirt. ‘It’s better not to be wearing a skirt when you climb that ladder, if you know what I mean. There are plenty of blokes on the shop floor.’

She blushed and nodded.

‘We can provide overalls but it would be best, if you’ve got trousers, to bring them to wear underneath. All right?’

‘Of course. Thank you, Mr Miller.’

‘Good. See you a week on Monday. Unless you change your mind, that is.’

Polly shook her head firmly. ‘Oh no. No question of that. I will be the best crane driver you have, Mr Miller. I’ll show you.’

He smiled, gravely shook her hand and waved her goodbye.

Outside in the street, a mizzly rain was falling again. She took a deep breath, pinned on her hat and then leant against the wall for a moment, impervious to the wetness.
An overhead crane driver!
It would mean entering a completely different world. No more genteel discussions with elderly ladies about types of knitting wool and colours. She would sit high above the world, in charge of her own piece of complicated machinery that could cause great harm if she got something wrong. She would pull and push levers and lift shells and then swing them away and gently –
so gently,
she supposed – deposit them down. Important work. Work that could help her boys in Flanders. War work!

Polly gulped and began walking towards the tram stop. There would be problems at home, she knew that. But she had always been able to get what she wanted from her gentle, hard-working father. And Mother could be overcome, if she was allowed to get used to the idea. Trousers! She must buy a pair. But most of all, she must write to Jim and Bertie and tell them. War work! The very sound of it made her feel closer to them.

Polly’s letters were given to the boys as they reached the little town of Poperinghe, some six miles behind Ypres, directly to the west. As a rail terminal it was the main supply point for men, supplies and ammunition to ‘the Salient’ as the Ypres battlefield was being called, but, now, in late 1914, it was also becoming essential as a convenient place of rest and recreation for troops down from the miseries of front line duty. The town was just in reach of the heaviest of the long-range German batteries on the ridges overlooking the Ypres basin, but, so far, it had escaped heavy bombardment.

Jim and Bertie tucked their letters into their jackets and marched to the rows of tents that marked their camp on the outskirts of ‘Pop’.

‘I’m not openin’ mine till I’ve had me bath,’ said Bertie. Neither of them had bathed properly since they had entered the line and the grime of trench warfare had imprinted itself on their faces and bodies. Worse were the vermin that infested their clothing.

‘Good idea,’ agreed Jim. ‘Sort of “be clean for her”, eh?’

Bertie nodded. ‘I’d like first, though, to get rid of these little fellers.’ He offered up his shirt where lice could be seen happily at home in the seams of the fabric. He ran his thumb along the main seam. ‘The little varmints have moved in like lodgers, so they have. Look, I can’t budge ’em and that bloody powder they gave us in the trenches doesn’t seem to do any good at all.’

‘No, but there’s supposed to be fumigating machines at the baths, I’ve heard. So we can clean up completely there.’

‘I don’t know which is best, to kill the old ones or the young ones. If you kill the old ones, the young ones might die of grief, but the young ones are easier to kill and you can get the old ones when they go to the funeral.’

‘Hmm. I’d rather rely on the fumigating thing.’

‘Right. Let’s go and get clean.’

Rain had set in on the Salient long ago and mud was just starting to be as much of an enemy as the Germans. The plain itself was low-lying, not far from the sea and soggy, even before rain fell. The farmers had cut in ditches to carry the water away but the shelling had opened them up so that they were as one with the sodden landscape, from which individual fields and woods had now virtually disappeared. The soldiers manning the trenches to which the British had retreated after repulsing narrowly the heavy German attacks of October were now cold, wet and lousy. It was a foretaste of what was to come.

The boys soaked themselves in the canvas baths, pitched under canvas and fed by large cauldrons set over field stoves. The water was hardly hot enough but it was luxury to soak and soap themselves all over. Their clothes were fumigated and then cleaned while they bathed. They picked them up, brushed their hair and, off duty, decided
to walk into town, keeping their precious letters until they could find a corner of a congenial bar.

The streets of Pop were narrow and crowded but, fortunately, there was no shortage of
estaminets
ready and happy to take their money. The Café des Allies beckoned and they entered. It was smoke-filled and crowded with British Tommies (a corporal had told them not go to ‘La Poupée’, which was reserved for officers only) but they found a tiny round table, covered with dozens of wine-stain roundels.

‘You want plonk?’ demanded a stoutly bosomed waitress.

The two looked at each other. This was the first time that they had come down from the line and their first experience of a French
estaminet
. ‘What’s plonk?’ asked Jim.

The waitress sighed. ‘It ees
vin blanc.
White wine. You Tommees call eet plonk. You want it? Ees one franc for a bottle. You want?’

‘Er … yes. I suppose so.’ Jim gave her a coin and she immediately seemed to magic from nowhere a bottle containing a yellowish liquid and two tiny glasses. She poured it and bustled away.

‘Well, old lad.’ Jim raised his glass. ‘Here’s to Polly.’

‘Ah yes. Here’s to Polly, bless her.’

They emptied their glasses in one gulp. Bertie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Not much to it, is there? I’d rather have a pint of Ansells.’

Jim replenished their glasses. ‘Doesn’t seem to taste of much, does it?’ He looked around. Everyone seemed to be drinking exactly the same wine, from bottles carrying no labels. ‘Everyone else is downing the stuff so I suppose it must be all right. Perhaps it’s what you might call an acquired taste.’

Suddenly a piano accordion struck up. It was a lilting waltz and a little wizened man playing it and wearing a beret began to sing:

Après la guerre fini,

Soldat anglais parti,

Mademoiselle in the family way,

Après la guerre fini.

Bertie leant forward. ‘What’s he singing?’

‘I think he’s being rude about British soldiers. But everyone’s laughing, so I suppose it’s all right. Shall we read our letters?’

Immediately, they both settled back in their chairs, slightly turning away from each other, and began reading.

‘Blimey!’ Jim looked up in consternation. ‘She’s going to work in a factory. Driving a bloody overhead crane.’

‘Ah.’ Bertie screwed up his face in annoyance, his slowness in reading exposed. ‘I haven’t got that far. Hang on.’ Then, ‘Strewth! She’s going to be slinging shells all over the place. Sounds dangerous. A lovely little slip of a lass like that can’t be doing that stuff, can she? It don’t seem right, does it, Jimmy boy?’

Jim sighed. ‘These are strange times, Bertie. Six months ago, who’d have thought that we would be standing in mud, trying to kill people? Put like that, I don’t suppose it’s so strange. She’s a plucky, marvellous girl, though, ain’t she?’

Bertie’s eyes lit up. ‘Ah, so she is, Jim. So she is.’ He looked down at his letter then up again at his friend. ‘Does she … er … say she loves you, then, Jimmy?’

Hickman looked embarrassed. ‘Bloody hell, no mate. She’s, well, she’s not that sort of girl. She’s not sloppy and all that.’ He paused uncertainly. ‘Why, does she say that about you, then?’

It was Bertie’s turn to show discomfort. ‘Well no. Not in so many words, anyway. But you sort of know, don’t you? I do, anyway.’

Jim did not reply but, frowning, filled their glasses again and fixed his eye on the accordion player. The two sat in awkward silence for
a moment and then, in unison, as though pulled by a marionette’s strings, they both slowly folded their letters, put them away in their tunics and lifted their glasses.

Inevitably, it was Bertie who broke the silence. ‘You know, Jimmy, this life in the trenches, when it’s a bit quiet like, with no chargin’ about with bayonets and all that stuff, wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for old Black Jack.’

Hickman slowly nodded. They had learnt that Sergeant Flanagan, seconded from a regular regiment – in his case the Connaught Rangers – with other regular NCOs to give ‘backbone’ to this territorial battalion on active service, had earned the nickname by his fierce demeanour in and out of action. It had quickly become clear that he was a bully with a sadistic bent, but also that he had taken a particular dislike to Bertie.

‘He certainly doesn’t seem to like Catholics,’ mused Jim, sipping his wine.

‘Ah sure, sure. And that’s the funny thing, so it is. Y’see, the Rangers are from the west of Ireland and they’re a Catholic lot themselves. What, then, is bloody old Black Jack, a Protestant heathen through and through, just like you, doin’ serving in a Catholic regiment, eh?’

Jim shrugged. ‘He’s also a professional soldier, through and through, and the Rangers, so I’m told, are one of the finest regiments in the British army. I suppose he just happened to be from one of the few Protestant families in Galway, or somewhere like that, and he joined up to follow the flag in a good regiment. Now he’s no longer serving with Catholics, perhaps he’s enjoying the chance of showing his prejudice.’

‘Hmm. Well, I wish the bastard would stop showing it to me.’

It was true that Flanagan seemed to take a delight in persecuting Bertie. As their platoon sergeant, he would single out the little Irishman
for fatigues and special duties whenever he could. It was difficult, in the dirt and general discomfort of the trenches, for Flanagan to take advantage of Murphy’s natural dishevelment for his persecution, but he pounced on him whenever he could. Bertie seemed to have spent more time as latrine orderly for the platoon than standing on the trench firing step. Jim had tried whenever possible to come between the two and, indeed, the sergeant seemed to be wary of the lance corporal – perhaps not least because the young Lieutenant Smith-Forbes, their platoon commander, fresh from public school and exactly the same age as Jim, had taken to the tall, quiet, obviously efficient soldier. But Flanagan chose his moments carefully and Hickman could not always protect his friend.

Jim took another sip of his wine. They were learning now to treat the pale yellow liquid with some respect and Bertie was already beginning to grin vacantly at everyone within sight. ‘Trouble is,’ he said, ‘he’s obviously a bloody good soldier. Have you seen the ribbons he wears?’

Bertie nodded.

‘Well, he’s got campaign medals from the Boer War, I can see that. But he’s got some other sort of medal which I can’t recognise. It must be for bravery. Well, what the hell. Perhaps a sniper will get him.’

The smile left Bertie’s face. ‘No hope. They only get the lovely fellers.’

They were interrupted by the bosomy waitress. ‘You boys like a little ooh la la, next door?’ she enquired, as though she was asking if they needed another bottle.

Bertie looked up at her amiably. ‘Thish ooh la la’s loverly, me darlin’. Why should we go nesht door for another one?’

The woman lifted her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Ooh la la ees not a drink, Tommy.’ She eyed Jim’s stripe and turned to him. ‘You want, or not?’

‘No thanks, missus. But we could drink another bottle, please.’

Seeing his soft brown eyes and broad shoulders, she gave him a smile and shrugged. ‘
Eh bien
,’ she said and turned away.

‘What was she on about, then, Jimmy boy?’

‘I think she was offering us a woman. There must be a brothel next door.’

Bertie blinked his blue eyes. ‘Ooh, I wouldn’t do that, Jimmy. Would you? It wouldn’t be right by Polly, now, would it?’

‘No, it wouldn’t. Now don’t get too pissed, Bertie lad, ’cos the redcaps are patrolling the town and Black Jack would just love to have you up before the colonel. Let’s see if we can buy a baggage, or whatever it is they call their bloody great sandwiches, to go with this next bottle. It will soak up the booze – and we deserve a drink or two tonight.’ He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to the lovely little crane driver back home.’

Bertie’s grin lit up his round and now very red face. He raised his glass in reply. ‘Here’s to the sweetest li’ll crane driver thad ever lived.’

A
baguette au fromage
helped to reduce the effect of the alcohol and they eventually left the
estaminet
in reasonably good order, Jim keeping a wary eye open for the red-capped military policemen who regularly patrolled the little town.

Their period of rest out of the line lasted for just three days, after which they marched back up to Ypres, the town still bustling with civilians and comparatively unaffected by the shelling which was slowly reducing the plain before it to a morass. There, they waited for night to fall and then joined the dreary and dangerous convoys struggling to the east in the dark, through the mud, to the long, curving and now less fragile line occupied by the Allied troops.

It was rumoured that the BEF had sustained more than 55,000 men killed, missing or wounded in the first battle of Ypres and the
French between 50,000 and 85,000. German losses were said to have been even heavier. It was clear that the weeks of the late autumn had to be a period of recuperation for Allies and Germans alike. There had been no real attack launched by either side since early November, although the German shelling of the front trenches and supply lines across the plain had increased and night parties still made sorties across no man’s land.

For Jim and Bertie, now manning the line some two miles to the south-east of Ypres, near Hill 60 (in fact, merely a flattish hillock only sixty metres high but looming over that ravaged plain like a wart on a whore’s cheek), the days passed in discomfort and boredom, broken only by the irregular arrivals of mortar bombs and heavier shells. The routine of trench life consisted of standing to at dawn, dodging the explosions, burying the dead, keeping look out during the day, repairing the trenches against the unremitting onslaught of rain and bombardment, cooking over open braziers, digging out the square, slime-filled latrine pits (Bertie’s speciality), and crouching to find sleep in primitive dugouts at night, unless on patrol duty in no man’s land.

The latter provided Sergeant Flanagan with an opportunity to reveal that his persecution of Bertie was something more serious than merely an idle diversion. He was selected by Black Jack to join the six-man party that was to raid the German trench opposite, in the hope of capturing a prisoner to give information about the identity of the regiment manning it. Lieutenant Smith-Forbes was to lead the party and immediately Jim volunteered to join it.

‘No,’ grunted Flanagan. ‘Too many.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Flanagan,’ said the subaltern. ‘Seven’s not too many and I’d be glad to have a junior NCO along, just in case …’ he coughed, ‘something happens to you, you know.’

Flanagan scowled but said nothing more. So Hickman joined the party, who assembled in the firing trench that night just after midnight. They wore no caps, nor greatcoats or capes, and carried only hand grenades, bayonets and revolvers. With faces blacked, they looked like a cross between pirates and burglars. They sat on the fire step as Smith-Forbes briefed them. It was clear that he was nervous, for he kept clearing his throat and licking his lips, his eyes glowing out from his face, like those of a piccaninny.

‘Right chaps. The enemy lines are about a hundred and eighty to two hundred yards to our front. It sounds as though they have a wiring party out, which is bad news but good news also. It’s … er … bad because we don’t want to blunder into them, and good because they’ll be out there, on the edge of the German trench making a bit of a noise, so that should cover us a bit.’