Some Sunny Day Page 7

  ‘Pay close attention, girls,’ said the burly army instructor at the end of the incredibly tiring session, ‘you just might learn something that will save your lives one day.’

  They were flipped onto their backs, sent crashing face first into mats, grabbed from behind and squeezed in ferocious bear hugs.

  Word quickly spread that there was a shop on board the Strathnaver and, best of all, that there was no rationing. As soon as she finished her first self-defence class, Madge was off like a shot to buy Coty face cream, Yardley shampoo, Johnson’s baby powder and a great big packet of sweets.

  The air of relaxation on board the ship turned to intense activity the following day, however, as tenders buzzed to and from the Gourock quayside to transport last-minute supplies and personnel. From grubby old freighters to elegant one-time cruise liners, there were dozens of boats waiting for the hours of darkness. As Madge watched the evening sun setting over the Scottish hills the huge guns on the foredeck of a battleship just a few hundred yards away captured her gaze. She found it hard to tear her eyes away; the guns were a stark reminder of the dangers they faced.

  That evening was the last time she would be allowed on deck without a life jacket. Miss Corsar had just issued the first warning to the VADs that jackets must be worn at all times when on deck, a rule that officers in charge of boat drill were only too keen to reiterate. Madge had heard that they’d even confined a couple of the girls to their cabins for an afternoon!

  Evening fell and the turbo generators and electric motors of the Strathnaver began to hum. After dinner, Madge retired to the girls’ cabin. Portholes had to be covered at night meaning she wouldn’t be able to see a thing once the voyage began so she put her life jacket back on and returned to the deck for a final glimpse of her homeland. I may never see Doris, Doreen and Mum again, she realised. Tears welled over and she carefully made her way through the moonless night back down to where her three cabin mates were already fast asleep.

  A few minutes later, the twin anchors rumbled and grumbled as the Strathnaver began to ease away from her mooring. The noise slowly increased and the 22,238-ton vessel began the month-long voyage to Bombay. This is it, Madge thought to herself, feeling the ship easing away from port. This is where my new life begins.

  7

  Passage to India

  Boat drill on the first day with the Strathnaver moored off Gourock had been a relaxed affair that left many of the VADs in fits of laughter and exasperated army instructors shaking their heads in despair.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Officer sir,’ a girl with a delightful West Country burr had asked, ‘but would you be so kind as to explain to us what on earth boat drill is supposed to be? I’ve not never been on a ship like this and I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  One of the junior instructors could barely conceal his mirth as he replied that it was all about launching the lifeboats and evacuating the vessel in the case of an emergency. ‘We will also be teaching you how to put on life jackets that will help you float.’

  The exercise quickly degenerated from the relaxed to the almost comical when the girls giggled away after they were told to ‘fall in’.

  ‘Is he trying to get us to jump into that freezing cold water?’ asked a voice from the ranks.

  The instructors courteously smiled through gritted teeth but the laughter stopped instantly when one of the sergeants warned that he was about to ‘select a volunteer’ and throw her over the side. The point had been made.

  Typical man, thought Madge. We’re not part of the military so why should we have a clue what he’s talking about?

  Once the Strathnaver was at sea, however, the drill took on a new seriousness. There was no joking or laughter as the instructors patiently demonstrated once again how to put on and secure the life jackets, and then jump into the sea once the lifeboats were launched. When they came back to the surface they should start swimming towards the closest lifeboat or life raft.

  Madge gradually came to enjoy the drills, and there was a lot of very enthusiastic support from the inordinate number of soldiers, who seemed to be constantly walking past. What did worry Madge was that while there were hundreds of people already on board, she was far from sure if there were enough lifeboats should they be told to abandon ship.

  The Strathnaver boasted a top speed of 23 knots an hour. If push came to shove, Captain Beck, the Strath’s wartime commander, could still order full steam ahead but few of the other boats could match that speed. KMF.33 progressed at the rate of the slowest vessel in the convoy.

  One morning, after they had been at sea for a week, a doctor who was due to give a series of lectures to the VADs about tropical diseases joined Madge for a morning stroll on deck. He was one of a small group of doctors bound for the Middle East and India who had boarded the Strathnaver at Liverpool.

  After Madge confided in him that she felt a little vulnerable out at sea, having seen the size of the guns on the battleship and being well aware that German ships would be equipped with weapons just as powerful, the doctor turned to her and said, ‘I can tell you something that will really cheer you up.’

  ‘Oh, what’s that?’ Madge asked, intrigued.

  ‘Before boarding this ship I worked in a hospital in the Wirral where lots of wounded soldiers told me the same thing – there is one reason why the German Wolfpack submarines are suffering such huge casualties and that’s all due to the tactics of Captain Frederick John Walker. This Captain Walker devised a system that actively chases the submarines instead of waiting for them to attack the convoys, a system that has proved to be hugely successful, and they are the same tactics we are employing with this convoy. So that, miss, is why I firmly believe that this ship will not be sunk.’

  ‘Well, that is a relief to hear, I must say,’ said Madge, feeling at least mildly better.

  In spite of that, the German Wolfpacks were still a threat so in addition to several destroyers, Sunderland flying boats scanned the seas to provide an extra level of security. The convoy was by now in turbulent waters heading southwest, away from the German-occupied Atlantic coast of France. Whilst the whole coast from the French border down past Spain and Portugal and round to Gibraltar was neutral the waters were still desperately dangerous.

  The weather was warming and Madge, who had enjoyed her first week at sea, spent the rest of the afternoon soaking up some sunshine. Vera and Phyl, on the other hand, began to feel seasick as the Strathnaver started to pitch in the increasingly powerful swell and they retired to the Ladies’ Lounge. Madge went back down to their cabin and used the rare bit of time on her own to have a good browse of the multi-page contract she had signed before setting off. She realised that she’d barely given the terms a cursory glance due to her excitement at being given the opportunity in the first place.

  The contract showed that she would be paid £134 pounds per annum for the duration of her service which was more than double the money she received in the early days at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. A fifty-rupee Indian Allowance was added along with a ‘free messing and servants’ assessment’ of 80 rupees. What did surprise her was the fact that the annual pay for the very senior position of VAD liaison officer was just £222 – she had heard of some factory workers who were earning more – and that of assistant liaison officer was £198. One liaison officer and two assistants were appointed to General Headquarters, New Delhi, to advise the Chief Principal Matron of the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service on problems arising from the service of VADs in India.

  Madge had been given an initial uniform allowance of £15 and was pleased to discover that she would also be entitled to an upkeep allowance of £5 after the first year of service, as well as an initial tropical outfit allowance of £10 plus an additional £5 after the same amount of time. Perhaps the week they had spent living the life of Riley in London hadn’t been their last chance to shop after all!

  Item 14 of the contract concerned travel: ‘For journeys performed at government ex
pense after acceptance, first-class railway and equivalent sea travel will be provided wherever possible and, when travelling on duty, subsistence allowance at the rates laid down for similar services in India will also be admissible.’

  Madge suddenly remembered the fifteen-hour train journey from London to Gourock and laughed out loud at the first-class railway travel clause before putting the contract back in her cabin case.

  Phyl, who had been suffering from a headache, was perking up a bit so Madge went with her and Sally up on deck where they joined a game of cards and a sing-song, before heading off to dinner. When it was time to make her way back down to the cabin, the sea had become so rough that she had to take a firm grip on the rails to steady herself. She was used to the fresh sea air that blew into Dover from the English Channel, but the warm afternoon sunshine, the heavy swell and a strong evening wind buffeting the Strathnaver worked like a sleeping pill and she fell asleep the moment she closed her eyes.

  That night, Madge dreamed she was in the air-raid shelter at the bottom of Auntie Beatrice’s garden in Dover sheltering while the Luftwaffe dropped bombs, but the sound of the explosion wasn’t quite right. Her sleep became more and more shallow, but the explosions continued.

  Madge suddenly sat up straight in the darkness. Maybe it’s another of those doodlebugs like there was in London, she thought, but the sound it made was different. It was more of a dull thump.

  ‘What’s that, do you think?’ Phyl whispered from the bottom bunk.

  ‘Well, I thought it might be a bomb, but I’m not sure it can be out this far from land.’

  Thump. Another went off to make Madge realise this wasn’t a bad dream. She was now wide awake. Then there was another. She knew it wasn’t one of the high-explosive bombs the Germans dropped on London. That noise was deafening. And surely they must be beyond the range of doodlebugs? It had to be the depth charges that they had been told about in the briefing the day after they boarded the troopship. Another dull crump, rather than an explosion, confirmed her initial suspicion and Madge just drifted back to sleep when things quietened down.

  The atmosphere at breakfast the following morning was subdued. The girl sitting next to Madge told her that apparently one of the destroyer escorts had been sunk during the night. The thought that so many sailors may have given their lives to protect the convoy had many of the nurses in tears.

  The week that followed was a quiet one as a throat infection broke out. Madge got rid of her sore throat by doing exactly what Mum had taught her as a child, which was to put two big teaspoons of salt into a glass of warm water and then gargle until it was all gone. Finally, Sunday dawned bright and beautiful as the turbulent seas of the Bay of Biscay began to calm. The enthusiasm of the young padre who led the Sunday service raised the spirits of everyone on board as he spoke about his hopes for a kinder world for all.

  The choice of the hymns during the service didn’t go unnoticed at a time when the threat of German U-boat attacks was at its highest. Madge loved hymns but struggled to stop herself from smiling at the sheer irony when two particular lines of an English classic were sung with great enthusiasm:

  Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea!

  Madge spent that afternoon basking in the warmth of the sun and stayed to watch it set on the horizon. She looked over the side of the boat to see blue-green phosphorus glowing in the water alongside the Strathnaver. It was unlike anything Madge had ever seen but she couldn’t help but be distracted by thoughts of home. The following day would be her twenty-first birthday, and the first she had spent without her family. She couldn’t bear to think about what the family was doing and whether they were all safe and sound, so she went straight to bed without dinner.

  ‘Happy birthday to you!’ a not altogether unpleasant chorus of voices sang, waking her in the morning. Lined up in the narrow cabin, Phyl, Vera and Sally sang to her. They looked like schoolgirls and Madge laughed. It wasn’t Dad on the piano or Mum, Doris and Doreen but she started the morning with a smile. The girls let Madge use the bathroom first even though it wasn’t her turn.

  Behind the door, she heard Vera whisper, ‘One way or another we’ll make sure that Monday the twenty-fourth of July 1944 is a day she will remember . . . Well, after boat drill, of course,’ and Madge wondered what on earth they could have planned.

  The girls spent drill giggling and were told off for being so distracted. Alcohol was strictly forbidden so a glass of champagne for the birthday girl and her lunchtime companions was out of the question, but that didn’t stop Vera telling everybody she came across that it was Madge’s twenty-first. An older VAD performed a funny little Charleston-style dance as she walked past smiling and sang, ‘Twenty-one today, twenty-one today, she’s got the key of the door, never been twenty-one before.’ As she turned back to wish Madge lots of luck she said, ‘I read somewhere that you had to be twenty-one before you could even apply to join the service. So you must be the youngest girl on the boat, eh?’

  No sooner had lunch finished than afternoon tea began. Vera, the centre of attention as usual, pretended to be a magician and pulled a heavily starched serviette off the top of a beautifully decorated birthday cake.

  ‘All the way from Sunderland,’ she said in her broad Geordie accent.

  Madge was stunned. ‘Vera, how did you wangle this?’ she said, as she stared at the giant Victoria sponge. How Vera had managed to carry the cake from Sunderland to London, then up to Gourock and had kept it from harm as the Strathnaver ploughed through the stormy seas of the Bay of Biscay had to be a minor miracle. It turned out that Vera’s mum and her neighbours had saved their ration coupons to club together for enough eggs, butter and sugar to bake a surprise Madge would never forget. The cake looked far too good to eat so it was decided to keep it for the party that evening.

  The girls finally had an excuse to glam up and the young officers, who got wind of what was going to happen that evening after dinner, dressed in their khaki tropical gear, and slicked on the Brylcreem. It was stated very clearly in the contract from the Military Department of the India Office that civilian dress was not to be included in luggage so, party or no party, the girls had little option but to wear their regulation navy blue suits and thick cotton stockings, which were so unbearably hot.

  As a birthday treat, before the party her cabin mates had allowed Madge the full sixty minutes of the fresh-water hour and she had opened a new packet of Coty bath cubes as well as leaving hair conditioner on for those all-important extra minutes as she enjoyed the sheer luxury of a fresh-water bath!

  The result was that her fair hair glistened and the bright red lipstick she had borrowed from Vera added extra glamour to the golden tan that had developed. When Madge strode into the Ladies’ Lounge that evening she felt wonderful, and even more so when a spontaneous round of applause broke out, followed by a rousing three cheers. The Ladies’ Lounge was festooned with multi-coloured paper decorations and Madge knew instantly who was responsible because Vera and Phyl had mysteriously disappeared for some considerable time earlier in the day. The girls were over the other side of the room admiring a colourful cartoon that one of the soldiers, an art teacher in civilian life, had drawn. It portrayed Madge’s head imposed on the body of Hollywood sex symbol Jane Russell, who was also a WW2 pin-up.

  ‘Not too sure the artist got this quite right!’ laughed Vera as Madge walked over.

  A few minutes later she was watching the fun when a certain somebody tipped off a nice-looking young man with the smoothest of voices that the birthday girl adored Bing Crosby. Moments before the cake-cutting began, he started up with ‘You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby’. It was so perfect that the girls insisted on an encore and this time they all pointed meaningfully at her when he got to the ‘cos baby look at you now’.

  A huge cheer erupted when Madge finally cut the cake and then the party really started. A gramophone burst into life and after a moment or two of almost teenage shyness the floor was heav
ing as the dancing began. No Jimmy Durante and his ‘Inka Dinka Doo’. This was more Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sisters. There were Bing Crosby classics and good old English songs like ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk’ with requests for ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ and ‘Heart of My Heart’. The VADs were outnumbered by the soldiers and were danced off their feet.

  Once they’d run out of records, it was decided that a singsong was in order. Three or four groups of officers were only too keen to lead the frivolities. They drew lots to see who would go first and three Welsh boys put on a performance that was an absolute credit to the ‘land of song’. The harmony they produced in their version of ‘Men of Harlech’ was wonderful and everybody in the room joined in when they thundered out the Welsh national anthem.

  Four lively Scots stepped up next and had the place in stitches by announcing that after travelling up to Gourock ‘on the slowest train in Britain’ they would start with ‘The Bonnie Banks O’Loch Lomond’. After two Harry Lauder classics that included ‘A wee Deoch an Doris’ they made everybody laugh by asking if the bar was still open!

  But Madge missed all of this. Once the birthday cake had been cut she had gone up on deck for a breath of fresh air. She looked out towards the back of the boat and tried to conjure up the white cliffs of Dover. She had a knot in her stomach. Phyl came up the steps.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Madge turned her back so she wouldn’t see her tears. ‘Just getting a breath of fresh air. I’m fine, really! You go back in and enjoy the fun.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’

  Madge waited until she heard the door shut behind her friend. She knew the evening had been wonderful, and she felt so grateful to the girls for making her birthday as special as possible under the circumstances, but it was never going to be a true celebration without her family there too. She suddenly felt so unbearably homesick that she went straight down to the cabin and cried herself to sleep.