1942: London, England
Evelyn stood next to the searchlight, her shoulder gently touching the thick metal. The skies were clear tonight, which meant they all had to stand to. She could make out the quiet breathing of the thirteen other khaki-clad women, the occasional snort of laughter. It was a quiet moment; not quite lazy, for they’d been trained to be always alert, but something akin to that.
They were stationed near Hemel Hempstead as part of the outer defences of London. The world was as dark as spilled ink, the sunset-to-sunrise blackout designed to hinder the navigation of Luftwaffe pilots. A nearby spot of orange, dancing up and down, showed that one of the girls was smoking; and behind her, set much further back, Evelyn saw the occasional faint glow of green from the radar equipment when one of the three women monitoring it opened the tent flap to step outside. Otherwise, nothing but tiny stars and a sliver of moon to allow the women to see the equipment they’d been trained to operate.
Evelyn had missed the first intake to the searchlight regiments. After she’d completed the trial, the ATS had assigned her to food store management and cookery for the Inglis Barracks, a position that didn’t feel as though it utilised her new skills. She was given one day and night off every week, when she took the Mill Hill East train back to Cynthia, who was happy that Evelyn’s ATS enrolment had landed her with a safe position after all. But it was on one of these trips home that Evelyn was caught in a blast.
She’d disembarked the train but was forced to stay inside the station when the air raid siren went off. The London Underground was used by many as a shelter, and she found herself part of a crowd crammed against the tiled walls, faces and hands showing marks of dirt and soot from their panicked rush there. Some played card games, using battered briefcases as a table. Children slept in the laps of their mothers, exhausted by the only life they knew. By the time the all-clear sounded, it was nearing dark and Evelyn had to hurry to make it home before the blackout made vision near impossible. The Underground station had disappeared from sight when the second air raid siren went off. She didn’t know where a nearer shelter was, if there even was one; running to the closest house, she pounded on its door with the palm of her hand. The next second, her feet had left the ground and she was flying through the air. Her back slammed against a wall and she fell, broken bricks and hundreds of printed pages from the bookstore that had been hit tumbling over the top of her.
She was lucky; her injuries were relatively minor compared to so many others. They meant she missed the first call-up of searchlight women—a full year after the successful Newark Experiment—but as soon as she’d recovered she applied for a transfer and was accepted into the newly formed all-female 93rd Searchlight Regiment.
The radio transmitter crackled, and all heads turned to the tent. The woman smoking dropped her cigarette and ground it out. Evelyn could see the ramrod-straight spine of number five, the woman wearing the head and chest set. Her eyes were closed to better listen to the rusty voice from the radar equipment tent transmitting in her ear. Evelyn stopped herself from breathing as though that way she too might be able to hear what was being said.
She needn’t have bothered; a second later the alarm sounded, letting them all know a plane had been spotted. A frisson of energy skittered through Evelyn’s veins.
As she turned to her position, she heard the Lister Twister starting up the Lister generator. The woman on the radio was asking, ‘Friendly or enemy?’
The tension of the group heightened as they all waited for the relayed answer from the Lance Corporal which would dictate their next actions.
‘Enemy,’ the number five said. Seconds later, confirmation came from the Corporal and Sergeant, the other spotters.
Evelyn’s knuckles went white on the long arm of the one-hundred-and-fifty-centimetre light. She was number four; it was her responsibility to control the elevation of the light beam. Although she moved the spotlight arm as practised, she couldn’t help feeling that she was doing it too slowly. It was like being underwater—everything a little muffled and resistant. But the strong gold beam was suddenly there, carving a line through the sky, searching the area the officer on the radio had communicated.
And there was the plane. A small shape from where they stood, like a toy a child would play with. Inside was a man, or men, looking to rain destruction on England. And he wouldn’t have come alone.
The women worked together, all moving and thinking as one to hold the plane in their light, waiting for the anti-aircraft gunners—set at a distance so any return fire directed at the light wouldn’t destroy their ammunition—to open fire. A drop of sweat ran into Evelyn’s right eye, but she dared not wipe it away. She even resisted the urge to blink in case she missed anything. The light had become an extension of her body.
The pilot tried an evasive manoeuvre, helped by another which quickly darted into their beam then away again. But the women had trained for this too, and the pilot wasn’t able to shake them.
Evelyn knew the three women at the radar equipment would be calculating the approximate speed the plane was travelling at, the distance it would cover in the few seconds it would take to radio the message to the gunners, and thus the approximate elevation and aim the anti-aircraft guns would need.
A line of dirt sprayed up in the ground before them. Return fire. Evelyn flinched, only just swallowing her cry of fear. Her steel helmet would be useless if those bullets came any closer. Instinct told her to shrink back, but she held firm, hoping the light would blind the pilot enough to keep his aim poor. Her fingers cramped with nervous energy, more tense than they’d ever been in practice.
The night sky shattered. A noise—like thunder but so much more unnatural—made Evelyn gasp, but her hands were well-trained and didn’t leave the light.
‘We got him!’ someone shouted.
Evelyn didn’t turn to see who. She was watching the tumbling mass of metal and fire in the sky, her mouth open in awe of what they had done. Her eyes wanted to follow the destroyed plane as it plummeted downwards, wanted to note the exact moment it hit the British soil it had aimed to tear up, but more instructions were coming through from the radio transmitter and there wasn’t time to think, only to respond.
They repeated the process three more times, catching a plane in their beam, waiting for the night to split with the sound of gunfire and a fireworks display of shattered enemy aircraft. Finally, when there were either no more planes, or the remainder had turned tail to retreat, jubilant shouts went skyward.
‘Fine job, girls,’ the Sergeant said, going around to pat each of them on the shoulder. Evelyn’s limbs were weak, the way they had been after the first days of training, and the Sergeant’s firm grip felt as though it might topple her. ‘Who knows how many lives we’ve saved tonight. You all did well.’
The Lister Twister, whose name was Gussie, turned the generator off. Evelyn finally let her hands slide off the grey-green metal, which was warm and slippery from her sweaty palms. She wiped them down her thighs, grinning as she joined the others at the entrance of the radar tent. They were cheering and laughing, and Evelyn herself clapped one or two on the back.
The celebration couldn’t last long—they were still on duty and had to continue manning their posts. As she was turning back to the searchlight, Evelyn saw the Lance Corporal. She stood aside from the celebration, her lips pressed into a thin, pale line that reminded Evelyn of Cynthia. She knew a look of disapproval when she saw one.
‘Aren’t you happy we succeeded in bringing the planes down, Lance Corporal?’ Evelyn asked, hoping not to sound impertinent. She couldn’t understand why the woman didn’t want to jump in the air and pump her fists, the way Evelyn had been resisting doing. This was what they’d come here for: they’d been put in the path of the enemy and not only survived without injury but had eliminated four planes, letting through only one. That was surely something to be proud of.
‘We did our job, and did it well,’ the Lance Corporal confirmed, pulling a battered packet of cigarettes out of her pocket. She lit one, and let out a long stream of smoke. ‘And yes, it is kill or be killed out here. But I’ll not celebrate causing death, no matter how needed or provoked it was. Tonight we ended the lives of at least four men whose loved ones will soon be receiving notice that they’ll never be coming back.’
It was like having an icy bucket of water thrown over her. The thrill that had been making Evelyn’s feet dance on the spot disappeared. The Lance Corporal was right. The men in those planes were the enemy, but also just men. How many widows or mothers would be crying through the night, cursing the British people who had killed their husbands or sons, never knowing a group of women had been integral to it? Had Evelyn just orphaned children with her actions?
She swallowed the rising sick feeling. She didn’t know what was more unsettling: this new understanding of what she’d done, or the realisation that she wouldn’t change her actions given the chance. The Lance Corporal had said it herself. It was kill or be killed. Those were the rules of war.