Annie Groves - When the Lights Go On Again

Taking a deep breath she told Gerry quietly, as she released her, ‘I do understand how you feel and, well, I think I’d feel the same, but we can’t always just think of ourselves, Gerry.’

The other girl was looking at her now.

‘You are all your parents have left, Gerry. You are the future of your family. You and the children you will have, not just for yourself but for your brothers as well. Sometimes it takes more courage to live than it does to die. Your brothers were incredibly brave and I know that you can be just as brave.’

For a moment Katie thought she had done the wrong thing. Tears were pouring silently down Gerry’s face, but then Gerry flung herself into Katie’s arms.

‘I just don’t deserve a friend as good as you, Katie,’ she wept. ‘You’re right. The boys would be furious with me for being such a coward. From now on things are going to change. I am going to change.’

They hugged again, Katie close to tears herself.

Later on, as she stood in her own room, her hands wrapped round the comforting warmth of her mug of cocoa, Kate reflected sadly on the effect that the war was having on the emotions of young women, herself included. Some, like Gerry, sought escape from its harsh realities in drink and ‘having fun’; others, like Katie herself, avoided anything other than friendship with young men, for fear of the emotional pain of losing them, whilst women like Peggy Groves, engaged or married, prayed every night that their men would return home safely. If she and Luke Campion had still been engaged, she too would have been one of those waiting and praying and hoping against hope.

But she was not still engaged to Luke, Katie reminded herself. That was over and in the past, just like the despair she had suffered when Luke had first broken off their engagement. But ending it had been the right thing for both of them. As much as she had loved Luke – and she had – she had found his dark moods and jealousy difficult to cope with. The turbulence of her parents’ marriage had left her yearning for the calm of a love based more on the comfort provided by friendship than passion, Katie admitted, but she had not known herself well enough then to be able to see that. She had not known herself and she had not really known Luke either; they had never properly discussed themselves with one another. No, she no longer wept for their broken engagement or her own broken heart.

‘What do you reckon, Corp? Think we’re going to make it?’ Andy asked Luke as they kept their heads down, waiting for the landing craft they were on to get close enough to Salerno’s beachhead for them to disembark.

Luke and Andy had joined up virtually together, trained together, and fought together in the desert, and now here they were about to disembark onto Italian soil.

Their unit, along with the remnants of other British units, were now being deployed in Italy under the command of General Mark Clark, of the American Fifth Army, the aim, to break through the German defences and push all the way to Rome.

Right now, though, Luke reflected, as he tried not to let the screams and moans from a landing craft that had just been hit by a German shell, get through the protective wall that every soldier learned to draw around himself, for some odd reason it was Katie who was at the forefront of his mind. Determinedly he pushed her image away to focus on his men and his responsibility to them.

On the beach ahead of them men from the advanced landing craft had started up a smoke screen to protect the landing of the infantry and the equipment.

The sergeant in charge of their troop was giving the command for the men to make for the beach. Wading through churning water, Luke chivvied his own men on, ignoring the sight of a corpse floating in the sea next to them.

All along the landing area men were coming ashore, amid the cacophony of noise and the acrid smell and taste of smoke, and the enemy shells falling around them, to get their equipment safely beached, before starting to push inland, alongside 146th Field Regiment RA, which was now attached to the 7th Armoured Division.

‘Fighting this ruddy war certainly doesn’t get any easier,’ Andy found time to mutter, in an aside to Luke, as the men fell in and started to push forward. The first rule of any beach landing was that you got off the beach as fast as you could, and as far as the enemy would let you.

This time that distance wasn’t very far, a mile or so Luke reckoned, before all hell broke loose and they were under attack from the Germans.

She had done it. Lou felt like whooping with joy as she taxied her plane neatly to a standstill, after her tenth cross-country flight. This one had been the hardest of all: from Thame to the Castle Bromwich aircraft factory – the largest Spitfire factory in the country – surrounded on three sides by barrage balloons to protect it. Lou had not had to land on the airstrip there this time to avoid clogging it up when it was needed for the removal of Spits to the maintenance units. Instead she had been instructed to drop down almost to a landing height and then lift off again. As the barrage balloons stretched to the western side of the airstrip, all landings had to be made to the west and all take-offs had to be made to the east. Today, even with good visibility and a lightly buffeting wind, Lou had been aware of what a challenge it must be to perform those manoeuvres when weather conditions were unfavourable.

Lou had been glad she had listened to the advice of her instructor, Margery, who had told her to return via the maintenance units of Little Rissington, Kemble and Aston Down, where ultimately she would be expected to deliver the new Spitfires for their mechanical fitting out, and then Number 6 Ferry Pool at Ratcliffe before returning to Thame. Since the Fosse Way passed the boundary to Ratcliffe’s airstrip, once she had the road in her view, Lou had stuck with it, holding her breath when they had run into some unexpectedly low cloud.

Technically she was not allowed to fly above it but if she dropped down too low to get under it she could end up dangerously close to the ground. In the end she decided to keep to a steady course and fly through it in the hope that it was only an odd patch. To her relief her guess had been right, and they were soon out of the cloud. Even better, she had been able to maintain a steady course.

It was her longest and most complex cross-country so far, and she was thrilled when, once they were both outside the aircraft, Margery told her approvingly, ‘Very nice, Campion. Well done.’

Just seeing those gleaming Spitfires all lined up awaiting transportation had filled Lou with excitement. It had been a wonderful day, she acknowledged happily to herself, removing her flying helmet and shaking her head to free her tangled curls.

She had allowed June to persuade her into going to a dance this evening at a nearby American bomber base. A whole crowd of them were going, thanks to an invitation passed on to them via a male American ATA pilot. Several American male pilots had joined ATA in its early days, before America had joined the war.

Although ATA had now opened its doors to girls from ordinary backgrounds, the ethos put in place by the original eight pilots, all young women from privileged and well-to-do backgrounds, still prevailed. ATA pilots were not subject to any of the rules and regulations imposed by the Armed Forces: there was no parading, no drill, no hierarchy, no jankers, no rules about wearing uniform instead of civvies. Instead what there was were a set of unspoken ‘rules’ accepted and adhered to as a matter of principle and honour.

These included such practical aspects of their work as upholding the reputation of ATA for delivering planes to their destinations safely and efficiently; but, equally importantly, unwritten rules such as always presenting a feminine appearance, wearing lipstick, and nail polish, not getting out of one’s plane at an RAF base until one had removed the ugly flying helmet and replaced it with a pretty silk scarf.