1940–1941
Nora and Sara crawled out of bed on Monday morning. ‘I’m going to school,’ Sara said. ‘I’m not missing it.’
‘We’ve been up half the night,’ Nora said. ‘They won’t mind if you’re a bit late.’
‘I’ll mind,’ Sara said.
‘Well, I’m coming with you. You finish your breakfast and I’ll just pop down to the phone box and tell Doctor Fielding I’ll be late.’
She walked to the phone box on the corner. She was numb with tiredness and fear. She looked around her at the silent houses. They all seemed to be intact, but she was still afraid. The noise of the planes and the bombs and the guns would frighten the dead. She had never believed that anything so dreadful would happen, even after Amy’s father’s house was hit. That had seemed like an accident, a stray bomb casually dropped. This was deliberate. Deliberate bombing of ordinary people’s homes. Hours and hours of dreadful, pounding fear. Sara had trembled beside her and put her fingers in her ears, but she hadn’t screamed or even cried.
Nora walked slowly back from the phone box. What would happen to Sara if her mother was killed, and her father far away? Who would look after her? She couldn’t bear to think of those children in the East End. Dare she ask? Would Amy say no? Would it just make an awkward atmosphere?
She took Sara to school. The children were to be let out early. ‘I’ll come back for you,’ she said. ‘Wait for me in the hall.’
Sara settled down to her lessons. The children trickled in through the morning. Their form mistress didn’t approve. ‘If our soldiers and sailors and airmen can stay up all night fighting for you,’ she said, ‘you can come to school on time.’
She’s right, Sara thought. She thought of her dad, away at sea, fighting. Everybody had to do their bit, even the children. Anyway, she thought, I’m nearly grown up now. She could leave school next year if she wanted to. She didn’t want to, of course. She hadn’t told the teachers that she wanted to be a doctor. Not yet. If they could just get through the war, if her dad would come home, if her mum was all right. If, if, if…
Amy had left a note when Nora arrived at the house. ‘What a night, Nora. Thank God we all survived. Charlie phoned and he’s all right too. See you later.’ Nora started on the housework and then went shopping. It was beginning to take an age to get the simplest thing – queues were everywhere, even for common things like potatoes and bread. And more things were being put on ration all the time. What was everybody supposed to eat?
Amy came home for a sandwich lunch. ‘Nora,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t it awful? Were you all right? What did you do?’
‘Slept under the stairs,’ Nora said. ‘If you can call it sleeping, with all that dreadful noise and the handle of the gas meter sticking into you. Sara insisted on going to school this morning.’
‘Good for her,’ Amy said. ‘She’s a great little girl. Reminds me of Tessa when she was that age. Dead keen.’
‘I’m going to pick her up from school this afternoon, but they’re coming out early.’ Nora hesitated but plucked up her courage. ‘I was wondering,’ she said. ‘If anything happens to me, would you look after her till her dad comes home? I can’t bear to think of her in some orphanage or having to go out to work and living God knows where. I’ve got a bit of money saved up for her keep….’
Amy took her hand. ‘Of course we would, but nothing’s going to happen to any of us. We have to believe that. We’re not going to get gloomy and frightened. That’s what the Germans want, isn’t it?’
Nora smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’
‘If anything happens to me,’ Amy said, ‘will you look after my family, keep the house going as a home until it’s all over?’
Nora brightened and nodded. ‘Of course I will.’ They shook hands. ‘It’s a pact.’
Dan went to work on the tube. According to the wireless, some of the roads were blocked and impassable. As he went into the tube station he met a stream of people coming up the other way, people who had obviously spent the night in the underground station. They looked bleary and dishevelled: children were crying, mothers distraught. When he came out at his destination he could hardly believe what he saw: shattered, collapsing buildings, fires still burning, men digging in the rubble for survivors.
He couldn’t believe that it was happening again, that once again he would be treating the brutal wounds of war. But this time it would not be the soldiers, it would be the ordinary people, including the old, women, and children. He remembered his own words to Charlie: ‘They’ll try to frighten us to death,’ he’d said. He looked at the faces around him, grim, exhausted, but extraordinarily calm. Here and there there was even a joke, some laughter. He was filled with a kind of pride, a new respect for his countrymen.
Every night they came; every night the people of London slept in their shelters or under the stairs. Or they crowded down into the tube stations, lying together in cramped rows in blankets and sleeping bags, clutching their children, suckling their babies. Or they streamed out of the cities before night fell, into the countryside villages to sleep in barns and schools and churches as the nights grew colder. Then in the morning they came back, back to their factories and offices and shops, and the children went to school, and Hitler failed in his resolve to break them. The nation waited, nerves strung out, for the invasion, for German troops to swagger around London as they had in Paris. And still the invasion didn’t come; the warning church bell didn’t ring.
Tessa came home early one morning covered in dust and spotted with blood. ‘They got the nurses’ home,’ she said. She burst into tears on her mother’s shoulder, then dragged herself up the stairs to bath and get a few hours’ sleep.
‘I’ll be glad when term starts and she goes back to Cambridge,’ Dan said.
‘She needs to do it,’ Amy said. ‘She needs to do something. She says she feels useless compared with Charlie.’
‘Her time will come,’ Dan said. ‘Her job is to qualify. We all have to do what we do and not give in. They are not going to frighten us to death.’
Sunday 15 September, was a warm fine day. The squadron was scrambled early in the morning and ordered to 20,000 feet. Charlie shivered, tired out and feeling the cold, even through his flying jacket and boots. What now, he thought. Rumours had been rocketing round – they were coming, today, tomorrow. Most people seemed to be surprised that the invasion hadn’t happened over the weekend. The German boats and landing craft were massed on the French coast, apparently ready to go. Perhaps this was the start of it. He thought of the family waiting at home, waiting for the rumble of German tanks and shouted German orders. Never, he thought. Never.
He looked down at the Dorniers that appeared below them, making steadily westwards for London. Within seconds they were in battle again with Me109s that appeared out of nowhere. He saw the Hurricanes arrive and almost at once three of the bombers went down, trailing smoke, to crash in flames on the Kent countryside. The squadron returned to base to rearm and refuel and took off again into the mêlée.
His eyes and head flicked around constantly in a sky that seemed filled with diving, spiralling aircraft. Then once again, he suddenly found himself alone, high in a clear sky. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a black speck, rapidly getting bigger, a single Dornier, trailing smoke, limping for home. Almost casually he shot it down, and then flew back to the airfield. He flew over the wrecks of bombed houses, and over the wreckage of an enemy bomber, still burning. He flew over villages where the people below turned up their faces and danced and waved.
Once again they refuelled and rearmed and waited for the next onslaught. It didn’t come. He changed and showered and went into the mess. Tim was already there with a bunch of pilots, downing a pint. They were laughing, larking about. There was a different atmosphere, a shift, a feeling that something had changed. For the first time it felt as if they had the upper hand. The enemy armies hadn’t arrived on the English beaches. Their swarming aircraft had had hell knocked out of them. It felt, Charlie thought, like the day they won an important interschool cricket match when he was a junior. A victory. Perhaps this was it, what Churchill called the Battle of Britain. It felt as if they had won it. The war wasn’t over – not by a long way – but it felt as if they had made a start. They had dented the German confidence.
Tim came over to him, bearing a pint. ‘It was a good day,’ he said. ‘I think we nettled them a bit today.’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘It was good.’
‘There’s one thing, I’m afraid,’ Tim said. ‘It’s bad. There’s no sign of Arthur.’
‘Oh God.’
‘He might be all right,’ Tim said. ‘He might have come down somewhere else and not phoned in yet.’ Neither of them really believed it.
Charlie didn’t answer. He went to bed early. If Arthur didn’t come back he would write to his parents. He thought of Arthur’s mother, her kindliness and motherliness, making her pastry. He thought of Arthur’s father, so proud of his son, expecting him to change the world. Perhaps he had.
The news was appalling: the East End devastated, and bombing in the West, a hit on Buckingham Palace; Oxford Street devastated, with bombs on DH Evans and Bourne and Hollingsworth, and John Lewis burnt out completely. And then the City of London. Nowhere was safe. Amy went into town to do some shopping. The local shops were running out of elastic, of all things. How to keep one’s knickers up? She passed a police station that had been heavily damaged. There was a sign outside. WE ARE STILL HERE, it read. BE GOOD. Despite everything, she had to smile.
Dan turned off the radio. ‘I don’t believe it.’
Amy looked up from her book. ‘What?’
‘Herr Hitler has apparently kindly consented to stop the bombing over Christmas. A couple of nights off. We’ll all celebrate the birth of Christ, peace on earth and good will to men and then he’ll start trying to kill us all again.’
Amy frowned. ‘Do you think it’s real?’
‘I wouldn’t trust him for a single moment,’ Dan said. ‘Why would he stop now? After Coventry and Plymouth and all the other cities bombed to blazes?’ He sighed. ‘It’s nearly 1941, Amy. We’ve been at it for over a year and look at us.’
‘Wouldn’t it be lovely?’ she said, wistfully. ‘Charlie could come home. We’d all be together. I asked Nora if she and Sara would like to come but she said she’d rather stay at home. Something to do with thinking about Jim.’
It seemed to be real. The country was to have two nights off. No raids. Charlie managed to get home and brought Tim with him. ‘Where shall we go?’ he said. ‘It’s Christmas Eve. I want to go dancing.’
‘I still don’t trust them,’ Dan said.
‘We won’t go far, then,’ Charlie said. ‘Let’s go to the Hammersmith Palais.’
‘Oh yes.’ Tessa did a little twirl. ‘I’ve always wanted to go there.’
‘It’ll be packed,’ Amy said.
‘Just what I want,’ Charlie said. ‘A madhouse that hasn’t got anything to do with flying. And girls.’
‘Can I borrow your silk stockings, Mum?’ Tessa asked. ‘I’ve got none left. Otherwise I’ll have to paint my legs with gravy browning or something.’
Amy laughed. ‘Yes. I’ve no doubt they’ll come back in shreds.’
‘Well, we won’t be doing old-time dancing, I hope. Maybe we’ll get some Glen Miller.’
The dance hall was seething, the band playing ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ when they went in. The crowd seemed to be swirling around the floor in a clockwise direction, ‘like a school of fish,’ Tim said. He ducked a flying arm. ‘I think I’d rather face a bunch of 109s.’
‘Come on.’ Tessa pulled him into the mêlée. In the middle of the floor two couples were madly jiving, watched by an admiring crowd. The boys were in RAF uniform. ‘I wish I could do that,’ she said. ‘Do they teach you that in the RAF?’
Tim looked at them closely. ‘They’re Yanks,’ he said, ‘from Eagle Squadron.’
‘They seem very energetic.’
‘I believe they are.’ Tim said. ‘In every way.’
She laughed. ‘I think it’s jolly good of them to come and help us. It’s not their war, after all.’
‘Not yet,’ Tim said ‘We’ve got pilots from all over the place. You should see the Poles in action. Mad devils. Shoot down more than we do.’
Across the room they could see Charlie dancing with a heavily lipsticked blonde, his arms and legs flying.
Tessa laughed. ‘Charlie’s off,’ she said. ‘He said he wanted a madhouse.’
Tim excused himself for a few minutes. ‘Nature call,’ he said. ‘Don’t go away.’
The dance ended and the band began to play ‘Beat Me Daddy, Eight To The Bar’. Tessa looked around her, smiling. One night, she thought. One night without fear, without crouching in the Anderson shelter or crawling around on some roof, watching for incendiaries. No wonder they were all jumping about like mad things.
‘Excuse me, would you like to dance?’ The accent was unmistakable. One of the Eagle Squadron.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m here with someone. He’ll be back in a minute.’
He grinned. ‘We could give him the slip. He’d never find us in this mob.’
She laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m rather attached to him.’
‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘OK honey. Happy Christmas.’
She watched him swing away through the crowd. Isn’t that odd, she thought? That’s the first time I’ve ever talked to an American.
Tim came back and put his arm around her waist. ‘Dance,’ he said. ‘With me.’
The three of them came home in the early hours. ‘It’s Christmas,’ Charlie said. ‘Happy Christmas. He stumbled. ‘I think I’m a little bit drunk.’
‘What happened to the blonde?’ Tim said.
‘What is?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
They crept into the house. ‘It doesn’t matter if they hear us,’ Charlie said. ‘They’ll think it’s Father Christmas.’
‘They might think we’ve been invaded,’ Tessa said with a grin, ‘and give us what for.’
‘I hope not,’ Tim said. ‘I wouldn’t like to be a German facing your mother.’
On 27 December the bombers came back, their cynical little holiday over. The raids started again. The year 1941 arrived and wore on in a haze of destruction, with week after week of blistering nights and days of numbing fatigue. The days and the hideous nights went by, and London was given a breathing space from time to time as the other cities suffered. Amy began to spend two nights a week in the Notting Hill Gate underground station, ready to help if she was needed. The WVS was down there too with their endless cups of cheering tea, and a few nurses set up a first-aid station. It began to feel normal, as if life had always been like this. Couples got married, babies were born, people went to the cinemas and dance halls.
‘It’s strange, Dan,’ Amy said. ‘Everyone just seems to have settled down to living like this – like moles. Have you noticed? Everyone seems to sing more and laugh more. No one even mentions giving up or surrendering.’
‘They thought they’d bomb us into submission.’ Dan said. ‘So far they’ve killed more woman and children than fighting men. But they seem to have abandoned invasion plans. I think Mr Churchill has convinced them of what they’d be in for if they did.’
‘You look lovely, darling,’ Amy said.
‘Doesn’t she just.’ Tim looked down at Tessa, his eyes glowing.
They’re in love, Amy thought. Who wouldn’t be? It was March now, and spring was coming, and a young man’s thoughts … and a young woman’s too, by the smile on Tessa’s face. Tessa was wearing an evening dress of silver grey, cross-cut and clinging, and Tim was in uniform, of course, the wings bright on his breast. They are so young, Amy thought, so beautiful, so alive.
‘Have a good time,’ Dan said, ‘and if there’s a raid get to a shelter. No good dancing on and taking risks.’
‘I’ll look after her, sir,’ Tim said.
Tessa laughed. ‘We’re going to the Café de Paris, Dad,’ she said. ‘It’s twenty feet underground. We’ll be OK there.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Dan said when they’d gone. ‘I wish they’d just stay at home. I wish she’d stay in Cambridge. They seem to be very happy about letting the students come home now and again in term-time. It wouldn’t have happened in my day. It’s the war, I suppose.’
‘It doesn’t happen very often,’ Amy said. ‘They need to get out on their own and have some fun. Tim especially, doing what he does. They need to have some normal life or they’ll all go mad.’
Dan put his arms around her and kissed her cheek. ‘I expect you’re right. It was only seeing you in Paris in the last war that kept me sane.’
The Café de Paris was crammed. Tessa and Tim were shown down the long staircase to their table. Tessa looked around her at the men in uniform or evening dress and at the women, carefully made up, glowing in their beautiful dresses and jewels. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘All hell let loose and people still like to dress up and dine and dance. Stiff upper lip and all that.’
‘I just like to be with you,’ Tim said.
They dined and then danced together. Tim held her close, his face against her hair. ‘You know I’m in love with you, don’t you?’ he said.
Tessa pulled away and laughed up at him. ‘I sincerely hope so, silly. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here throwing myself at you.’
He flushed with pleasure. ‘Will you marry me when all this is over?’
She looked up at him for several seconds, pretending to consider his proposal. Then she smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I will.’
He held her close. ‘Oh darling.’
They went back to their table. ‘I’ve still got a long way to go,’ she said. ‘I’ll be coming to London later this year to start my clinical training. I’ve got three years of that.’
‘I’ll wait,’ he said, ‘my darling girl. Or we can get married whenever you like.’
She hadn’t time to reply. Faintly they heard the sound of the sirens above, and then came an announcement that a raid had started. Very few people left. ‘We’re already underground, aren’t we?’ Tessa said. ‘We’ll be all right here.’
The band went on playing, of course. They took a pride in not being intimidated. If the dancers were prepared to go on dancing, then they would go on playing. The dancers danced, the waiters moved about with bottles of champagne, while outside and above the sirens wailed and the crump of bombs and the crashing of the guns shook the air. The band swung into a quickstep: ‘Oh Johnny’, and the girls laughed and swirled in the khaki and blue and navy arms of their young men.
The first bomb crashed through the roof but didn’t explode. The crowd scattered, the girls screaming. There was time only for Tim to pull Tessa to the floor and throw himself on top of her before the second bomb fell and exploded in front of the stage.
For a few moments Tessa was disoriented, conscious only of the devastating noise and the rolling, choking dust, and the weight of Tim’s body over hers. Then, as the noise of the explosion died away, and after a few moments of utter silence, she began to hear the sounds of panic and suffering – screams, groans, voices calling – ‘Joan, Bill, where are you?’ And one voice, quite close, ‘My God, I can’t see!’
Tim raised himself on his elbows and looked down at her. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think so.’
They struggled to their knees. There was a dim light flickering, one of the table lamps intermittently functioning, and a small, vicious fire, up by the stage. After a few seconds there were occasional small lights from torches, and the limited lights from cigarette lighters. They looked around them. The room was destroyed, covered in rubble and dust; tables were overturned, and bodies lay everywhere, some still and unmoving in death, some staggering to their feet, some moaning in pain.
Tim put his arms around her and looked about him. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘we can’t just leave them. We have to help them.’
‘That’s crazy,’ he said. ‘We can’t do anything. I’ve got to get you out of here.’
‘No,’ she said again. ‘I have to help.’ She began to tear at her underskirt and the bottom of her dress, taking off strips to use as bandages.
‘Please darling,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake let’s go. You’re the only thing I care about.’
‘No I’m not,’ she said, ‘or you wouldn’t do what you do. I have to help them.’ She looked at him, her mouth twisted. ‘It’s what I’m for, Tim. Don’t you understand?’
He helped her then, until the rescuers came, binding bleeding wounds, putting on tourniquets where limbs had been torn away. The men arrived, the Fire Service and the ARP and then, at last, the ambulances with their stretchers and harassed men, desperately trying to deal with overwhelming casualties.
Tim took off his jacket, put it around Tessa’s shoulders and helped her out of the chaos, joining the shambling stream being shepherded out of the wreckage. As he stumbled out he came across a seedy little rat of a man, rummaging through handbags and pocketing the contents. For the first time he actually saw red. His rage exploded, at the whole damn war, at the totally unnecessary destruction and death, at the filth of some men – even his own countrymen.
‘You rotten little bastard,’ he said. ‘I’ll kill you.’ He threw a punch at the man’s head, a glancing blow, and the man ran off, scattering money and jewellery. ‘Bastard,’ Tim called after him. He felt suddenly sick, empty and lost, and retched over the rubble. God, he thought. God. What’s it all for?
They emerged into the shattered street. He stopped an ARP warden. ‘Is there a telephone box round here,’ he said. ‘One that’s still working?’
‘Try the one down the road, first right,’ the man said. ‘It’s fairly clear down there.’
Tim took Tessa’s arm. ‘We’ll never get anywhere tonight,’ he said. ‘You ring your family and I’ll ring the airfield. We’ll have to get back in the morning when the tubes are running. Perhaps we can find a hotel.’
They made their way to the phone box. There was already a queue. Tessa phoned home. ‘I’m all right,’ she said, ‘don’t cry, Mummy. I’ll get back as soon as I can. Probably tomorrow.’
To Tim’s surprise the taxis were still running and he managed to flag one down. ‘Can you get us to a hotel?’ he said. ‘This lady’s been in a bombing.’
‘I can see that,’ the driver said. ‘It’ll be a bit tricky tonight.’
Tim took her hand in the taxi. ‘I’m very proud of you,’ he said. ‘You’re very brave.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘You can talk.’ She leant her head on his shoulder. ‘Tim,’ she whispered, ‘don’t leave me.’
‘Not ever.’
They tried two hotels that were full but the third had one room left. ‘We’ll take it,’ Tim said.
‘For two?’ the receptionist asked, carefully not looking at them.
‘Yes,’ Tessa said loudly. ‘For two. For my husband and myself.’
The receptionist looked at them then, a look of amused cynicism, but he caught Tim’s eye and hurriedly handed over the register.
They were shown to their room. ‘Are you sure?’ Tim put his arms around her. ‘I wouldn’t want you to get any kind of a reputation because of me. I could sleep in a tube station or something.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not to leave me.’
‘I’ll sleep on a chair then,’ he said, ‘or on the floor. Just give me a kick if I come anywhere near you.’
She leant away from him. ‘Look at us,’ she said. ‘We’ve both been blown up. We could easily have been killed. Oh Tim.’
He held her close again and kissed her, a kiss full of longing.
‘Sleep with me,’ she said. ‘Make love to me. It might be all we ever have. We could both be dead tomorrow.’
There was a washbasin in the room, and soap and towels. He helped her out of her ruined dress and helped her to wash off as much grime as they could.
‘Get into bed, my darling,’ he said. ‘I’ll clean myself up a bit.’
He slipped into bed beside her. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’
She flung her arms around him. ‘Absolutely, absolutely.’
This time his weight above her was only joy.
He took her home very early the next morning, leaving her at the door, eager to get back to the airfield before he could be regarded as AWOL.
Amy flung her arms around her. ‘Oh darling,’ she said. ‘Was it awful?’
Tessa nodded. ‘Pretty bad, but I could help them. I knew how to help. I could do something, at last.’
Amy went up to her room with her while she bathed and changed to go back to Cambridge. ‘One nice thing,’ Tessa said. ‘Tim asked me to marry him and I said yes.’ She hugged her mother. ‘I’m so happy. Tim’s coming to see you as soon as he can.’ She laughed. ‘To ask Dad’s permission. He’d better say yes.’
‘Amy,’ Dan said, ‘have you read this paper? It’s about penicillin.’
Amy looked over his shoulder. ‘What? What about it?’
‘It’s very exciting.’ he said. ‘Sad in this case, but very exciting.’
Amy took the paper. Penicillin had been at the back of the medical profession’s mind ever since Alexander Fleming discovered it in 1928, ever since it had killed the bacteria in his petri dish at St Mary’s Hospital. It had been arousing sporadic interest ever since. Now, apparently, a man called Florey in Oxford had been trying to purify it for use in humans. She glanced at Dan’s eager face.
‘Go on,’ he said, ‘read it.’
She read on. A policeman in Oxford who was dying of septicaemia had been given penicillin by injection as a trial. To everyone’s amazement he began to get better. His temperature came down and he began to eat. ‘Oh!’ she said, reading on. To everyone’s great distress they then ran out of penicillin. They extracted it from his urine to use again, but they didn’t have enough and sadly, he died.
She put the paper down. For a moment they looked at each other, stunned by the implications. ‘That’s incredible,’ she said, ‘and how awful to be so close to saving him.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was, but it’s wonderful too, isn’t it? If only they can find a way to make enough.’ He took her hand. ‘All those boys in the last war who died of infection, Amy. Not of their wounds, but of infection. Do you remember how we agonized, how we’d have given our souls for something like this?’
Tears came into Amy’s eyes. She remembered only too well: the horror and the pain, the pus-soaked bandages, the constant fight to keep the wounds clean. She remembered too the constant failure, the deaths of fine young men, not from trauma or blood loss but from the invasion of the tiny, microscopic creatures that killed them in the end. ‘How can we possibly make enough,’ she said, ‘to help us now? The war is now, today.’
‘I don’t suppose we can,’ Dan said. ‘If we could build a factory to do it, it might well get bombed and all the research lost. I hear through the grapevine that Florey is taking it to America. They’re at peace and they’ve got the money. We must hope that they can make it there. In time for our boys.’
When Sara came home from school that afternoon Amy gave her the paper to read. She had taken to talking to Sara now and again about medicine, answering her questions, explaining things from the books she borrowed. She looked at Sara’s bent head, and shining, fascinated face. It’s going to be so different, she thought, for the young ones, for Tessa, and Sara, if and when she makes it. They will have the tools we could only dream of. Medicine had taken a huge leap forward.
The raids carried on, one city after another and then back to London again. Then, in May, after one appalling night, they petered out. Amy had a dreadful sense of déjà vu, the memory of the way the First War had become years of stalemate and suffering and killing. How long, she thought, can we take this? Then, on 22 June, Hitler suddenly, and without warning, attacked Russia. Dan actually laughed, almost unbelieving. ‘Now I know he’s mad,’ he said. ‘The fool has signed his death warrant. Has he never heard of Napoleon?’