Roland Moore - Land Girls - The Homecoming - A moving and heartwarming wartime saga

“What business is it of yours?” the mother asked Connie.

“Connie …” Joyce warned, about to tell her friend to pipe down.

But Connie wouldn’t let this lie. Maybe it was hard to let go when she saw something of herself in the haunted eyes of this youngster.

“It’s just that she seems –” Connie was about to say ‘sad’, but she would never finished the sentence.

BANNGGGGGGG!

There was a deafening bang from the front of the train, accompanied by the ear-splitting wrenching of metal. Everyone was jolted off their seats, the world folding in on itself. The businessman’s newspaper flew into Connie’s face as she fell forwards. And then there was a loud crunching noise from behind and the sound of twisting metal. Slowly, the compartment shook and rolled, tossing over and over. Bodies bounced around the carriage as the floor became the ceiling and back again. Connie felt herself sliding across the floor. Joyce’s elbow hit Connie hard in the neck as Joyce rolled on top of her. Connie could hear muffled screams. All the sounds were somehow distant, as if they had been muffled by cotton wool.

Connie thrust out a hand and grabbed the metal frame that secured the seats to the floor. With the other hand, she grabbed onto Joyce to try to stop them being tossed around the tumbling carriage.

The windows of the compartment shattered and there was a squeal of brakes. The outer door flung open and the young soldier was thrown into the air, rolling on the ceiling and then the floor, over Connie and Joyce, and finally spewing out of the opening to the outside world.

The businessman flew across the floor and hit the open door frame with a thud. Arms and legs and bodies intertwined as screams filled the air and the carriage tumbled.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Finally the nightmare seemed to end and the carriage came to juddering rest. It was almost the right way up again. The sounds suddenly became clearer. Screams. Connie slowly let go of the seat support and slid to the new floor. The first thing she focused on was the businessman’s pipe. It was inches from her nose, resting in a sea of diamond-like fragments of broken glass. The businessman himself was behind Connie, sitting in a heap of Saville Row tailoring and blood; shocked and confused, but probably all right.

The little girl was crying, her leg wedged under the seat. A seat that had been mangled almost flat in the crash. Her mother was face down on the floor, knocked unconscious.

Connie could hear her own heart thumping in her chest.

The taste of blood was in her mouth.

“What-?” She struggled to talk, but her words didn’t seem to come together; drunken sounds in her head.

Dust settled. Joyce looked up, her face bruised and slightly cut; her tight-permed-hair messed in all directions.

“Are you all right?” Connie finally managed to ask.

Joyce stared at her, as if she wasn’t hearing the words. She’d gone into shock.

“What happened?” Connie asked. “Joyce?”

Again, Joyce had no answers. Or even acknowledgement that her friend was talking to her.

Connie knew she wouldn’t get anything from her. She glanced towards the exterior door. Outside was grass. They had rolled down a bank and come to rest at the bottom of the incline. Connie got shakily to her feet, her balance slightly wobbly. She rubbed her neck and glanced quickly to check that Joyce wasn’t badly injured. She guided her shocked friend towards the exit, their boots crunching on the broken glass as if they were walking on fresh snow. With Connie’s help, Joyce jumped down onto the grass. It was a long drop without a platform. For some inexplicable reason, Connie saw an image of the guard back at Brinford station sweeping the platform. Or concourse, or whatever he called it.

“Flaming vandals,” he muttered in Connie’s head.

Joyce staggered a few feet across the grass, before falling softly onto her bottom. A soldier came over from another carriage to check she was okay and they sat together.

Still inside the carriage, Connie poked her head out and looked along the length of the carriage. Many passengers were dropping from their compartments onto the grass, where they struggled to come to terms with what had happened. Three-quarters of the train had been derailed and had tumbled down the bank, a wrecked and hissing snake in the long grass.

Connie put her head back into her compartment and turned her attention to the injured. The businessman was groggily coming round. He’d bitten through his lip in the crash. Connie reassured him that his injury wasn’t as bad as it looked. He might need a new shirt, though.

She helped him to the door and he jumped down onto the grass.

Next Connie found the mother. She was unconscious. Connie got close and listened to the woman. She was breathing. She was alive.

“Help me!” the little girl said, her leg trapped under the twisted seat.

“I’ll just get your mother first,” Connie replied, as she flung the woman’s arm around her shoulders and edged her towards the door. The dead weight was difficult to shift and Connie found herself buckling under the woman. Finally she managed to wedge her into the door opening and cry for help.

“I need some help! Someone come and help!”

Suddenly, behind her, a strange rustling noise attracted Connie’s attention.

She turned to the source of the noise. It sounded oddly familiar.

“Fire!” the little girl shouted. “Help me! It’s on fire!”

The whole corridor of the carriage outside their compartment was ablaze; thick black smoke billowing behind the glass. It wouldn’t be long before it broke through the door and engulfed the compartment itself.

The girl was struggling to free her leg from the metal of the seat. But it wouldn’t budge.

Connie tried to move the unconscious woman, who was wedged in the door. She realised she didn’t have time for any more niceties.

“Sorry, love.”

She put her boot behind the mother’s bottom and gave her a hefty shove through the door. The woman fell out of the door, landing unceremoniously on the grass with a dull thud.

Connie raced back over to the girl and pulled at the frame. It started to bend and yield, but still the leg was trapped.

Knowing that it wouldn’t help things if the girl panicked, Connie looked the girl in the eye.

“You’ve gotta move it as I try and pull the seat. Got it?”

The girl realised it was the only way. Connie smiled encouragingly.

The fire in the corridor behind Connie’s shoulder was getting more intense. She could feel the heat as the flames danced hungrily behind the glass partition.

“One, two, three,” Connie counted, and with all her strength she pulled at the metal frame at the same time the girl wiggled her ankle. With a jolt, the leg came free. Connie hauled the little girl to her feet. The leg seemed unable to support her weight. It may have been broken or just bruised – Connie didn’t have time to check but ran with the girl’s arm around her towards the salvation of the open door.

The corridor door behind them suddenly exploded as the fire broke the glass.

Invigorated by the fresh air of the compartment, smoke and flames exploded into the space. Connie didn’t have time to hang around. She pushed the girl through the opening to the outside.

And a moment later, framed by an inferno, cloaked in thick black smoke, Connie stood in the opening herself.

The little girl looked up at the woman who’d saved her. She called for her to jump. But the smoke, billowing from the carriage suddenly covered Connie, obscuring her from view. The flames were raging in the carriage, pumping out more and more dark smoke. The little girl squinted.

She couldn’t see if Connie Carter had made it.