Peggy, May 1940
With George away with the Army and Grandad’s leg playing up, Peggy moved back to Cornwall Road to be with Nanny Day. Nanny doted on baby Gloria and Peggy didn’t mind wheeling Grandad up to the hospital to see the doctors. His old injury from the Boer War had got infected and the nurses were just lovely, doing all they could to make him more comfortable, but as the days went by he didn’t show any sign of improvement and the pain made him irritable.
Peggy lived for the letters she got from George, who was away with his regiment in France. They’d been posted near the Maginot Line to keep the Germans out, and although the letters had to pass through the official censor, she got the impression that he was kicking his heels a bit, waiting for action.
Albert had made some unkind jokes about all the soldiers he knew having a whale of a time out there with the pretty French girls in the villages. Peggy ignored him as best as she could, but in her heart of hearts, she worried about it. She couldn’t wait for Albert to get his call-up papers, come to think of it. She didn’t talk to Eva or her mum about it but she feared that behind closed doors, things between him and Kathleen were not as they should be. Her sister was looking thin, too thin, and she seemed to jump like a frightened little rabbit every time Albert raised his voice, which was quite often.
Jim, was in France, too, with the Royal Fusiliers, and Mum was beside herself with worry about him, although he wrote as often as he could. Only her little brother Frankie was safe for certain, but that was because he was behind bars, for thieving this time. Mum didn’t seem to mind as long as it kept him out of the war. She could face having one son at risk but two would kill her, she said.
The first cherry blossom was appearing on the trees in the park, bringing with it the promise of a lovely hot summer, which would be Gloria’s first. If only George were here to share it with her. She read the newspaper avidly for any crumbs of comfort. Most of the stories last week had been all good news about Belgium, with the British troops marching into towns and being welcomed like heroes, but only a couple of days ago she had read a report about the Germans breaking through into France in one area. The politicians said this had happened before in the Great War but they were calling for a national day of prayer for the troops at the end of the month.
Peggy turned on the wireless that evening to hear the first address by their new prime minister, Winston Churchill. Nanny Day bustled about in the background, making comments under her breath about all politicians being the same. Grandad agreed: ‘When you have lived as long as I have, Peg, you come to see that the boys are just cannon fodder.’
Nanny shot him a filthy glance. ‘Except George and Jim,’ he added hastily. ‘They will be just fine, you’ll see.’
Churchill’s words were stirring but they also warned of a fight for Britain which would bring the war to their doorstep, sending a shiver up Peggy’s spine. ‘There will come the battle for our islands, for all that Britain is and all that Britain means.’
Within a week, Peggy’s worst fears were confirmed, as news of fighting in the Channel ports broke. British forces were trapped in and around Dunkirk as they retreated from an advancing German Army. The only solace was the devastating losses inflicted on the German air force by British fighter pilots. She barely slept, sitting instead in Nanny Day’s rocking chair, covered by a blanket, waiting for the latest reports from the BBC announcers. Her dreams were fitful, of George and his brother Harry, fighting in the woods in France, pursued by Germans in their jackboots and grey uniforms. She wanted to switch off her imagination but she couldn’t. Every time she held Gloria, she saw George’s clear blue eyes looking back at her.
Finally, on 31 May, the BBC announcer revealed that France had fallen to German hands and a massive evacuation of troops at Dunkirk had been underway for several days. The billboards screamed the good news: ‘SAVED!’ and ‘RESCUED FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH’ as they reported that thousands of troops had been brought back to British shores, with the help of every seaworthy vessel that Britain could muster. All that day, Peggy sat in the living room staring into space.
‘Come to bed now, Peg. You must rest,’ said Nanny Day, putting her hand on Peggy’s shoulder. ‘He will come home safe, you’ll see.’
‘I won’t rest until I know it for sure,’ said Peggy. ‘And I need to go and visit George’s mother to see if she’s heard anything.’ George’s mum, Lizzie, was on her own these days, after his dad passed away, and she lived for her sons, Peggy knew that.
The next morning, Peggy made her way down to East Street and when she knocked on the door, there was no reply, so she let herself in. She found Lizzie sitting in the living room, weeping, with a crumpled letter in her hand. They looked up at each other.
Peggy rushed in and grabbed it. It was from the War Office: ‘I regret to inform you that your son, Pte Harold Harwood, of the Black Watch, 1st Battalion, is missing in action following active service in Europe. Any communication you receive from your son should be passed to the office at the above address without delay.’
‘Oh, God, no,’ she said. ‘Poor, poor Harry.’ They clung to each other, crying. ‘We have to look on the bright side. It only says missing and all the reports I have heard say that there is so much chaos, with people getting separated from their regiment and getting onto boats, he will be bound to turn up.’ They both knew that this was not likely.
‘What about George?’ said Lizzie, rubbing her eyes, which were red with crying.
Peggy swallowed hard. ‘I’m sure he’s fine and he will be round here having a cup of tea before you know it.’ She sat with her mother-in-law all day, leaving only when the neighbours promised to keep an eye on her.
Dusk was falling as she made her way back to Cornwall Road. She was just settling the baby for the night when there was a knock on the door. Nanny Day answered it and came down the hallway, her hands shaking, holding a telegram.
Peggy snatched it from her and ripped open the envelope: ‘Safely back in Blighty. Home soon on leave. Love. George.’
If she had ever doubted the existence of God, she didn’t in that moment, because her prayers had been answered.
It was a few weeks before he could make it home, but the moment she heard George knock three times on the door one Saturday afternoon, she knew it was him.
He stood on the doorstep, his uniform cap in his hand, looking thinner than she remembered, but twice as handsome.
There were no words as they embraced. People in the houses over the road came out into the street and started to cheer and clap. There were a few wolf whistles from the neighbours, all of whom knew that George had had a close scrape getting back from Dunkirk. Many of them had family and friends who had not been so lucky.
Nanny Day afforded them a few moments’ privacy before she came bustling up the hallway with baby Gloria in her arms. ‘Daddy’s here to see you!’
Gloria held her hands out to him and smiled and Peggy felt that everything in her world was complete once more.
George wouldn’t talk about what had happened at Dunkirk other than to say that there was a lot of hand-to-hand fighting in the woods and he had seen things he never wanted to tell her. During his escape, he had spent hours in the freezing water of the Channel before he was picked up and hauled over the side of one of the small ships. When he had finally got back to barracks, he had slept for twenty-four hours straight and taken about half a dozen hot baths before he wanted to put clean clothes on again. He considered himself lucky to have got out alive.
‘I just thank God that I’m here with you all now,’ he said.
As the blackout enveloped them all that night and she lay next to George, listening to him breathing, she feared that her happiness could be taken away from her again, at any moment.
The council had issued homes with either an Anderson shelter for the back garden, or a Morrison shelter, which was like a giant reinforced metal cage. Nanny Day viewed the Morrison shelter with suspicion. She put her best tablecloth on it, to make it less ugly, but it squatted in the living room, like some unwanted guest.
Grandad muttered, ‘There is no way on God’s green earth I am hiding in that thing at my stage in life. If a bomb or a bullet has my name on it, that’s that.’ Peggy didn’t share that view. She had every intention of surviving this war and had already worked out a plan to grab the baby and get her in the shelter. Mum and Eva’s landlord had dug out the garden to put in the Anderson shelter for them down in Walworth Road. It was damp and when it rained the ground water rose to ankle level. Eva wasn’t looking forward to spending the night in there, that was for sure.
George was billeted back with his regiment in Dorset and came up to visit when he could. When Peggy told him of her fears about him going off with Land Army girls at the village dances, he just laughed and kissed her. ‘Why would I bother about them, when I’ve got you waiting for me here at home?’ That made her feel better. He was such a fine-looking man and every time he had to go back to his regiment it broke her heart, but with his brother missing and presumed to be a German prisoner of war, he was more determined than ever to do his bit.
Some of the local newspapers had got pictures of lads who had been captured at Dunkirk in work camps back in Germany and Peggy had scoured those to see if any looked like Harry but to no avail. Just to know that Harry was alive, even if he was a prisoner, would be some comfort to his poor mother, who was taking his absence horribly. Peggy didn’t tell George what she was doing because she wanted his time on leave to be as happy as it could be, playing with the baby.
Sometimes Peggy would catch him sitting alone at the kitchen table, fighting back tears, and she knew in those moments he was thinking of Harry and what had become of him. He couldn’t talk about it but he would clasp her hand in his and they would sit in silence until he felt able to get on with things again. He was a proud man and she had never seen him cry or break down about it; that wasn’t his way.
The summer of 1940 was every bit as hot as Peggy had thought it would be. Right in the middle of July, poor Grandad took a turn for the worse and was taken into hospital. He became more and more confused and, in the end, he fell asleep, with Nanny Day by his side, and never woke up. All the family came to his funeral and it was sad, as funerals are, but Peggy couldn’t help feeling that it was sadder still for those who had already lost their sons and brothers fighting the enemy, at such a young age. Grandad would have agreed; he had had a good innings.
As September came around, it seemed the summer would never end; the hot days continued, one after the other, and the kids played out in the street until bedtime. Peggy had some good news, at least, from her old friend Susan, who had been released from the mental hospital and was now living back with her aunt in the East End. She wrote that she’d got herself a little job in the sugar factory and sounded positive for the first time in months. Peggy made plans to go over there and visit her in a few weeks, to see how she was getting on.
Some boys were out playing kick the can in Cornwall Road as Peggy wheeled the baby back from a little stroll up to the post box. A kid was messing about with a toy aeroplane on his doorstep, recreating the dogfights he’d seen high in the sky while he was hop-picking in Kent with his family, mimicking the drone of their engines. He was just defeating the enemy when the air-raid sirens sounded and he froze.
The war had been going on for a year and no bombs had fallen on the capital so far but the threat was now very real. ‘Get in your shelter, now!’ Peggy shouted.
Children ran pell-mell down the street and Peggy followed them, pushing the pram like a woman possessed. Grabbing the baby, she flung open the front door and found Nanny Day, open-mouthed, standing at the window. Nanny pointed skywards. There was the ack-ack of anti-aircraft guns but they seemed to do little to stop the Luftwaffe, which was gathered en masse in the skies over London.
‘Quick, take the baby!’ said Peggy, shoving the now-wailing infant into her grandmother’s arms as she yanked the pram over the threshold. They ran into the living room, crawled into the little Morrison shelter with the tablecloth still on it and waited. The sound of bombs exploding in the distance reverberated through the late afternoon air and, even more frighteningly, they heard the tap-tap of shrapnel from anti-aircraft shells ricocheting off the roof tiles. Peggy lay shielding the baby, in case a shell, or worse, a bomb, landed on the house. Her heart pounded in her chest. Minutes became hours. How had it come to this? Being attacked in their own homes? Nanny Day said Hail Marys and every prayer she could think of.
Eventually, the all-clear sounded and Peggy ran out into the street, where the neighbours were already congregating. Air-raid wardens were doing the rounds, checking everyone was all right.
She followed a little gaggle of people making their way to end of the road. The sky on the other side of the river glowed orange from the fires burning in warehouses and factories. It would have been breath-taking if it wasn’t so horrific.
An auxiliary fireman hurried past. They’d always been a bit of a joke until now. Some kids even liked to taunt them, yelling ‘Army dodgers!’ but Peggy was relieved to have them close now, more than ever.
‘Where’s been hit?’ she asked.
‘Jerry’s gone and bombed the docks and the gas works but Bermondsey has taken a pounding and the East End is well alight. Think yourself lucky to be in Lambeth tonight.’
‘What about Walworth?’ she shouted. But he had already scurried off.
News started to filter through of people trapped in their homes as fires raged through the dockers’ homes in Bermondsey, and whole streets had come down in the East End. Peggy thought of all the trade unionists she and George knew, and prayed, against hope, that they were safe. She worried about Eva and her mum and Kathleen. She needed to know they were safe but couldn’t go out and check because the sirens sounded again and everyone charged back into their houses, with the wardens checking for any chinks of light through the blackout curtains. With baby Gloria safely asleep in her arms as the next wave of bombers flew overhead, Peggy resolved to get up at first light to go down the Walworth Road to find her mum and Eva and then on to Vauxhall to see Kathleen. Nothing mattered more to her now. They were her family.
As dawn broke, she took Uncle Dennis’s old bike, a proper boneshaker, and set off. There was an eerie silence as she pedalled along towards the Elephant. She realized then that the trains weren’t running and the trams weren’t either. As she passed Manor Place, the acrid stench of smoke caught in her nose. The fire service were still there, battling to control the blazes in one of the tenement blocks, which looked to have taken a direct hit because the walls had crumbled like plaster of Paris to reveal the inside of people’s homes, their lives reduced to a pile of rubble. It was a terrible sight. Rescuers dug with their bare hands, pulling at bits of masonry to see if there were any survivors. Peggy felt sick rising in the back of her throat and clasped a handkerchief to her mouth, willing herself not to vomit. She had to be stronger than this. She thought of George, Harry and Jim and everything they had witnessed and were going through and pulled herself together.
She got back on the bike and pedalled on, as quickly as she could, down Walworth Road, She was relieved to see that her mother’s flat was still standing – unlike some of the houses in the road around the corner, which had collapsed like a pack of cards.
Eva answered the front door, with her hair in curlers. She was in a very bad mood indeed, having spent most of the night in the Anderson shelter. Kathleen was already there – she had dashed over as soon as she woke up, to check on everyone and try to make sense of it all.
‘Well, thank God that is over,’ said Eva, putting the kettle on. ‘I will swing for that Adolf for ruining my hair, having to spend the night in that bloody shelter, and that is before I get on to sharing bunk beds with the woman from downstairs, who snores like a bleeding train rattling along.’
Kathleen managed to raise a smile. Peggy didn’t say anything but she had a horrible feeling that as far as the bombing was concerned, it was just the beginning.