Daisy's Wars (22 page)

‘Pretty often,’ Edith said quietly. ‘As soon as they land the uninjured crew are taken to be debriefed by intelligence officers, though you wonder how much info they can pass
on, given the state of them. Doesn’t matter how many “stay awake” tablets they’ve swallowed, they’re usually too mentally and physically done-in to pass on anything
meaningful, but them’s the rules.’

‘So what do we do when all the planes are safely back?’ Daisy asked.

‘Well, they don’t all come safely back,’ Edith replied. ‘We know which ones are still missing from the board there with their details, so we sit up all night, listening
for any Mayday calls. Sometimes we get a call from another base to say one of our crews has emergency-landed there, but when all hope has gone we’ll be ordered to wipe the names of the lost
from the board and stand down for the night. That’s the hardest part,’ she said quietly, ‘wiping the names from the board. It’s like erasing them; actually condemning them
not to return. I don’t think you ever get used to that part, so if you find it upsetting, don’t worry, we all do, just don’t let it show.’

Whatever Daisy had thought her job might entail, however exciting she’d imagined it could be, that first session of instruction brought home to her how daunting it
would
be, and the
impact was all the more intense for the calm, ordinary manner of those already doing it. Although she would have expected that from Edith in any situation, bar being told off by her father for
swearing. There was no overdramatising up in the tower, it was a crucial job. The lives of men who had already been shot at from the ground and from the air would depend on these people doing their
jobs properly, and so the details had to be clear, calm and logical. Still, sitting in there that first night, trying to watch, learn and listen, she wondered if the world of passing forms around,
typing and filing, had been so bad after all.

Added to Daisy’s work in the tower was the ever-present threat of an air raid, as the Germans tried to destroy as many planes as they could. There were terrible tales about these raids.
Those not engaged in landing planes were supposed to head for slit trenches if the base came under attack, and, shortly before Daisy had arrived at Langar, some NAAFI workers and a sergeant pilot
had done just that, but there had been a direct hit where they were sheltering and all were killed.

Thankfully, Daisy had been in the job for a month before she experienced her first raid. The planes were returning from a mission and were being landed when the warning Red came through.
Immediately the airfield lights were doused, leaving weary bomber crews to circle aloft in the darkness.

‘It’s a lone German aircraft dropping a stick of bombs,’ said the Squadron Leader calmly; but sitting in the tower, listening as each explosion came nearer, Daisy wondered what
reassurance this could possibly be. She was convinced she was about to die, they all were, but there was no hysteria. They all just waited for the next bomb, which was so close that the tower
shook. That’s it, Daisy thought, the next one will hit us. And all the while their own aircraft, some running out of fuel, were asking what the hell was going on, and Reg was answering them
in a cool voice as Daisy logged each exchange.

‘I don’t want to die,’ said an annoyed female voice nearby. ‘I’ve only just learned Morse Code, and anyway, my parents would be really upset if I croaked,’
and the others laughed nervously.

‘What?’ the Squadron Leader demanded. ‘Since when have you known Morse Code?’

‘I told you, Sir, I’ve just learned!’ the voice responded in the dark.

‘Well don’t just sit there, you clot, send out an SOS and maybe someone will come and rescue us!’ said another voice.

Suddenly the noise stopped. The lone German had departed, and the airfield sprang back into life. The Control Officer very quickly inspected the airfield, declared it damaged but fit for
landing, and the Langar planes were rapidly and safely brought down. Afterwards, mixed in with the relief, shaking and chattering teeth, there was also a feeling of euphoria. They all sat together,
making jokes and laughing, blankets around them as they sipped hot, sweet tea and reflected that it had been frightening, but exciting, too. If she had to be bombed, Daisy decided, she’d
prefer to be on duty in the tower. There would be no slit trenches for her.

And though it looked to everyone else that Daisy got used to it, she never really did; but she did learn to cope, because there was no alternative. There were so many sad sights, and they
didn’t seem any less sad because they happened often, such as ‘the girls’ as the other WAAFs called them. At the end of every mission, with the planes that had made it safely home
standing still and silent, the anxious girls could be seen, still waiting. As dawn broke, bathing the field in first pink then golden light, their heads would turn upwards, this way and that, as
they gazed into the morning sky with worried faces and red-rimmed eyes, listening intently for the sound of engines, willing a special plane to suddenly appear on the horizon.

When they finally gave up and returned to their huts the others would try to help. Maybe the plane had landed somewhere else, or it had ditched and the boys were all safe, just waiting to be
picked up. Perhaps, at the very worst, they had been taken to POW camps and they’d hear confirmation any day … but in their hearts they knew the loss-rate was high and the chances the
boys had survived were slim.

When she stood down after a night on Ops, Daisy would watch the girls and swear it would never happen to her. They must be mad to fall for aircrew who had a less-than-even chance of surviving
till tomorrow. But as she left the tower with all hope effectively gone, she couldn’t pass them. She would stop and hug them, standing wordlessly in the dim light, the dawn chorus bursting
into life all around, intruding on the early morning silence.

There was nothing to say; all she could do was let them cry. How could you help feeling for them? They inhabited a world of their own, all these youngsters united by war, living their strange
existences on a piece of ground set in the middle of civilian territory yet apart from civilians, every soul on or off duty held together by their common responsibilities to the boys who flew off
into mortal danger, night after night, not knowing if they’d ever be seen again.

Dotty and Daisy settled into their room in the hut, seeing less of each other because of their different duties, but getting to know Edith and the other girls all over again. Violet was a
trainee mechanic and already planning her wedding to a Rhodesian gunner, inevitably named Cecil after Rhodesia’s founder.

‘So how did that happen?’ Daisy demanded. ‘To Violet of all people, and so quickly, too.’

‘Probably because you weren’t here, Daisy!’ Celia laughed. ‘You should’ve been here to make sure no Fly Boys got near us!’

‘Us?’ Daisy raised an eyebrow. ‘
Us
, Celia?’

Celia looked sheepish. ‘Well, who else is there to go out with, Daisy?’ she protested.

‘Does no one listen to a word I say?’ Daisy asked. ‘They are not to be trusted, you must not be fooled by them.’

‘But a drink isn’t actually banned, is it, Daisy?’ Celia laughed at her. ‘I mean, as long as we don’t actually fall for them.’

‘Like Violet hasn’t fallen for her Fly Boy?’ Daisy laughed back, shaking her head. ‘I can see I’ve arrived here just in time!’

Then there was Molly, the girl who was singing as Daisy fell asleep on her first night at Langar and who, she was to discover, sang all the time. Molly drove a lorry and loved every minute of
it. She was engaged to a bomb-aimer in a Pathfinder Unit in 8 Group. His job was to drop incendiaries to mark out a path to the targets for the heavy bombers coming behind. Every day she would
drive her lorry down to the Admin Block, wheels screaming, to see if her transfer to 8 Group had come through, so that she could be near her Dave. They wrote to each other every day, though there
were times when days would pass without a letter and Molly would worry, then four would arrive all at once and Molly would sing again.

While she waited for Dave, his letters and her posting, Molly sang, and though it was sure to get on someone’s nerves, Daisy understood it was Molly’s way of coping. Everyone had
their own way, she did, too, taking long, solitary walks into the countryside around the camp, sitting under a tree and letting her mind and her eyes relax, watching the waving greenery of the
crops. She would go over in her mind all that had happened in her life, trying to make as much sense of it as she could, then filing it away and closing the door on it. If only she could find a way
of closing the door on all thoughts of Frank Moran, but he was there, stubbornly there, intruding to absolutely no avail.

One fine day she might open the door and give all the other thoughts and memories a proper going over, but not now, there was no point just now, she was busy and, as everyone said, there was a
war on, you know. She was still reinventing herself to fit her present situation, sifting through Daisy Sheridan from Guildford Place and deciding what to keep, bend or discard.

By the end of 1941 Daisy was the superb RTO whose family were in New York with Aunt Clare for the duration, which explained her lack of conversation about them. Mail across the
Atlantic was far from reliable, with U-Boats waiting to have a go at any passing ship, so it was little wonder that she got very few letters. One sadness was that someone had noticed serious
Edith’s cleverness and she was sent to Special Ops at Bletchley Park, about fifty miles north of London, otherwise known as Station X, which everyone knew was involved in intelligence and
secrets, but no one ever asked more.

‘I actually want to go,’ she confided in Daisy. ‘I’m afraid you’ll confine me to quarters for this, Daisy, and I deserve it, but I’ve been seeing an
Australian.’

‘Oh dear God!’ Daisy said. ‘Not another damned Fly Boy?’

‘My father would tick you off for that sort of language, you know,’ Edith smiled. ‘He’s a Lanc navigator,’ Edith went on, ‘a really nice chap.’

‘Aren’t they all?’ Daisy sighed wearily.

‘Thing is, I’ve found it really hard to be in the tower when he’s on a mission, wondering if he’s for the chop and trying
not
to wonder in case that makes it come
true.’

Daisy was about to say she hadn’t noticed Edith having a hard time, but then Edith wouldn’t have shown it – not even-tempered, sensible Edith.

‘I think I’ll find it easier being somewhere else, not watching his kite taking off and waiting for it to return.’

‘So you’ll still be seeing him?’ Daisy asked. ‘Even though you’ll be away from the base? It’s serious, Edith?’

Edith nodded.

‘Well, all right,’ Daisy said grudgingly. ‘But let him know I’ll be watching him, that’s all, and if he as much as glances at another female he
will
be for
the chop! If the Germans don’t get him, I will!’

And so Edith left for calmer waters, but that was always happening. Friends came and went, and, if you were lucky, kept in touch and might even come back again.

These days Dotty had quietened down and didn’t attend so many parties, which pleased Daisy, who mainly spent her leaves, with or without Dotty, but mostly without, with Mar and Par in Rose
Cottage. At Langar she became known to live it up in the Big Smoke and wouldn’t stoop to entertain any of the boys at the base; she was well out of their league. She never corrected the
impression, it gave her new persona strength. There she was, a non-smoking, celibate teetotaller who was known as the definitive Good-time Gal, a tribute to her acting abilities, backed up, of
course, by the outer packaging.

‘Off to some orgy at the Dorchester?’ the girls would giggle as she left the base.

‘Why not?’ she’d smile back, ‘but if I remember correctly it’s the Savoy again,’ never once saying that she was bound for Rose Cottage. Dotty was sworn to
secrecy, but Dotty wasn’t the chatterbox she had once been. She too had changed character and her bubbly nature had been harnessed in a way no one expected when she had been made an orderly.
It suited her, it brought out abilities no one, least of all Dotty herself, had ever suspected she might have, and she had made her mind up that she wanted to train as a nurse.

‘You sit with them, Daisy,’ she would explain, ‘and they can be terribly injured. The smell of their burned flesh clings to you and you can smell it all along the corridors,
but it’s just a smell, after all, you have to get over it. All they want is someone to hold their hands and tell them they’ll make it, even if they know it’s a lie. They tell you
about their mothers or girlfriends or wives and ask you to write to them saying it’s not so bad, really, even when it is. We get them off to better-equipped hospitals if it’s possible,
but there are times when you know they won’t last that long, so you just sit there and keep them company, even if they’re unconscious.

Did you know that hearing is the very last thing to go? They can hear you even if they’re spark out and about to die, so I tell them what happened in the NAAFI the other night, which
pilots were getting engaged, drunk, or in a fight, all the usual stuff. At least then they can go calmly and peacefully, without any fear or panic because they don’t know they’re going.
Do you see what I mean? I mean, if it ever happens to Frank, I’d hope someone would do the same for him.’

Daisy didn’t reply. Something had struck her to the core about Dotty’s words, confirmation if ever she wanted it that there was something between Dotty and Frank, and she
couldn’t understand why she was so struck by it. She had wanted that, hadn’t she? His attention elsewhere? And nowhere better than on good, kind, adoring Dotty, so why did she feel
tears spring to her eyes and have to bite her lip to distract herself? Why?

It wasn’t as if he was betraying her in some way, was it? If anything he probably didn’t deserve Dotty. When Fly Boys were lost it was Dotty who always wrote to their families,
telling them what a fine young man Ted, Tom or Tim had been, how everyone liked them, and she kept up the correspondence as long as they wanted it. They were hungry to hear of the last months they
hadn’t shared with their boys, so she asked Daisy to help her with the letters, and Daisy agreed, too overcome by the change in her friend to refuse.