Claudia Hammond - Emotional Rollercoaster - A Journey Through the Science of Feelings

A Journey Through the Science of Feelings

London, New York, Toronto and Sydney

For Nick and Bonnie

Cover Page

Title Page Emotional Rollercoaster A Journey Through the Science of Feelings

Dedication For Nick and Bonnie

Introduction

One Joy

Two Sadness

Three Disgust

Four Anger

Five Fear

Six Jealousy

Seven Love

Eight Guilt

Nine Hope

Afterword

Bibliography

P.S.

About the author

An Emotional Optimist Louise Tucker talks to Claudia Hammond

Life at a Glance

Favourite Books

A Day in the Life of Claudia Hammond

About the book

The Joy of Penguins by Claudia Hammond

Read on

If You Loved This You Might Like…

Find Out More

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

Reg lay down on his bunk in the German prisoner of war camp to read the longed-for letter which had finally arrived in the latest Red Cross parcel. In the officers’ camp at Eichstatt near Munich he and the other 600 prisoners slept twenty to a room. Much of the time he was both cold and hungry. It was the letters from Marjory, the stunning dancer he had met at the outbreak of the war, that kept him going. But for three months he had heard nothing.

The dapper, dark-haired army officer had first spotted her when she was one of eight dancing girls in a Max Miller show at the Holborn Empire in London. She looked like a film star with her mass of blonde hair and her long, long legs. Had he not needed to catch the last train home straight after the show, he would have waited outside the theatre in the hope of meeting her. She was gorgeous and he was besotted, but would she even have noticed him among the other stage door Johnnies? There must be some way he could get to know the lovely dancer.

He was in luck. A neighbour of his parents knew Marjory and promised to pass on a message. Might he be permitted to write to her? Yes, she would like that. And perhaps they could meet for afternoon tea? Yes, that would be very nice. Reg was overjoyed, sensing that Marjory was the girl for him. But the war was to intervene. Before that first date his territorial army regiment was suddenly dispatched to Lille in France so, determined to remain optimistic, the young subaltern arranged to meet her when he came home on leave two months later. The day of their date soon arrived but Reg did not. Marjory heard that Reg was listed as missing in action and at first feared that he had been killed. However, soon the news came through that he had been captured on 12th June 1940 at St-Valery-en-Caux, just south of Dieppe. Now he was a prisoner of war in Germany. Theirs was to be a love affair by letter.

Usually Marjory’s letters lifted Reg’s spirits but as he opened the envelope he sensed something was wrong. There was something not quite right about the handwriting; it wasn’t Marjory’s, it was her mother’s, and she was writing with bad news. With the London shows long since closed and determined to contribute to the war effort, Marjory had been working as a convoy officer with the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She lived with twenty-five other young women in a manor house in Kent and each day they set off to collect military trucks, ensured they were filled with the correct equipment and drove them off in a long line, always observing the mandatory distance between each truck, to wherever the army required them. But one morning Marjory had such bad stomach pains that she was unable to work so the other girls left without her. A couple of hours later she heard the familiar pulsating motor of a doodlebug overhead. It sounded like a small plane chugging along through the sky until the engine suddenly cut out. She waited to see where it would drop, praying that it wasn’t on her. She was used to that slow ten or eleven seconds where you were temporarily suspended between life and the possibility of imminent death until you heard the explosion some distance away and for you, at least, life continued. But this time things were different. The bomb fell directly onto the roof of the manor house, collapsing all three storeys deep down into the cellars. Marjory was left trapped under the rubble, pinned down by an oak beam which had crushed her legs. As she lay in agony amid the debris of the building she tried to scream but couldn’t. She listened in silent terror as the neighbours explained to the firemen that luckily the house was empty because all the girls were out at work. No, they couldn’t leave her here. Don’t go! As she heard the firemen’s voices become more distant, she managed to cry out in panic, but even after her screams were heard, each brick and beam had to be lifted off by hand and it was another four hours before they reached her. Realising she was pinioned by the beam with both her back and pelvis broken the emergency services decided there was only one way to get her out – and Marjory overheard their plans: ‘There’s nothing for it, we’ll have to amputate her legs.’ She refused to let them, demanding they find another way. She didn’t care how much it hurt. They did manage to extricate her but when she was finally examined in hospital the news was bad; as well as five fractures to her pelvis, her back was broken in two places resulting in paralysis from the waist down.

Reading the letter in his bunk in the prisoner of war camp Reg imagined poor Marjory trapped beneath the rubble and was reminded of the fear of his own experience of being buried alive only months before. He had been in a group digging an escape tunnel when the officer in front of him accidentally hit a live cable. The roof of the tunnel collapsed on top of them, leaving him lying face down, trapped in the earth, stones and dust that had showered on top of them. He was terrified and called out to the man in front. Then he heard voices behind him. His friends were crawling in through the debris to rescue them. He felt them grab his ankles and then the pain as they dragged him out backwards, the skin ripping off the front of his shins and knees. When he eventually reached daylight he realised that apart from his grazed legs he was uninjured, but when they hauled his friend out next, his body was limp; he had been electrocuted.

Putting the frightening memories out of his mind, Reg concentrated on what had happened to Marjory. Anger replaced his fear. The Germans could do whatever they wanted to him, but how could they drop bombs on a lovely girl like Marjory? How could they do this – leaving her paralysed when she’d done nothing wrong? He left his bunk, rushed out of the room to find some German guards and then spewed abuse at them. As a result he found himself locked in an underground cell in solitary confinement. Usually this punishment didn’t bother him. In a crowded camp with 600 officers time to himself was rare and so a spell in the underground cell held a certain peace not available elsewhere in the camp, but this time he spent the lonely hours alternating between fury with the Germans and sadness that he couldn’t even comfort poor Marjory. There was a third emotion too and that was hope. He wished more than he had ever wished for anything that she might get better.

While Marjory was in hospital, equally hopeful and determined that she would learn to walk again, Reg remained in Oflag VI.