Sunday, 1 September 1940
In the early hours of the morning Ruth’s city was on fire and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She had wanted a distraction and she had got it. The Doric edifice of the Custom House, which they had become so used to seeing towering over the docks, had taken a direct bomb hit, but so far its columns had been unaffected. Ruth, volunteering nearby, had felt the shockwave as the windows on the first floor flew out, covering the street in shards of glass. They cracked under her feet as she moved closer. Only a small portion of the building, the largest in the area, was affected, but flames gutted one of the upper-storey offices. Incendiaries had paved the way for the bombs, and there were flames wherever she turned. She knew the building well, had interviewed many of the officials working in there for various articles about city life over the past few years. The fire licked the lintels of the window frames like orange climbing flowers, growing and consuming the roof of the building. If the fire spread it could take the whole building, burning away hundreds of livelihoods in the blaze.
She had been tasked with the mobile catering van, to hand out cups of tea and sandwiches to those men working to clear away the results of the blitz, but she wanted to do so much more. Why should the women be reduced to making cups of tea, when they could help too? She would have to have another word with her section commander and insist on doing something more useful. She didn’t doubt that a strong brew helped, especially in this cold, but surely it didn’t need all of them to do it? And the sandwiches were truly vile, caught at the bum end of the rationing scale. Most of the men avoided them, especially the second time.
A warden rushed past, the W on his helmet bobbing as he darted over the road, leading the firemen into position. Other volunteers stood around and gaped, but Ruth moved closer to see how she could help. Two men dragged a hosepipe with them, and she could see how heavy it was from the frowns on their faces. They looked like they were trying to win a tug of war, and just then, as if by a poor turn of fate, it caught between a lamp post and the corner of the pavement. The men almost fell as they tugged, but they were too far away now to dislodge it. She wanted to help, but was frozen in place.
The water gushed through. At first the pump was weak but after a moment full pressure took hold and the firemen struggled to aim the stream at the source of the flames. They were already working hard, sweating under the heat which must have been unbearable.
‘We need to call back the fire crews heading to Birkenhead. They’re needed here,’ one of them shouted. ‘Someone run to the incident officer and get it sorted.’
None of the firemen could be spared, so Ruth volunteered. Before she could move away there was a low thrum and one of the men in front of her dropped to the ground. Others ducked as the roar of an aircraft’s engine grew louder. Ruth hunched behind a fire engine, the scent of oil suddenly thick. Pinging rattled the other side of the vehicle and she spotted another man drop to the ground, his cry drowned out as the bomber flew overhead.
Ruth pressed her back against the engine, unsure whether it was safe to break out into the open again. This was a new threat. Not only was it bad enough that the bombers were dropping high explosives indiscriminately upon them, but they were now turning their machine guns against those tireless civil defenders. It was her first taste of what fighting might be like for those on the front line, but she was no soldier, she had no training for this. She pushed herself down again as more rattling filled the air, but this time it was the sound of the fire engine’s motor turning over and then failing to start. Whoever was in the driver’s seat tried to start it again, and it roared into life with a shudder.
Already two men were seeing to the shot fireman, turning him over to inspect his wounds. They had either decided it was safe, or they were far braver than she could ever be. From where she cowered she could see him cough bright red blood from his mouth as he fought for air. One of the men was trying to stem the bleeding, but was having no luck as his forearms, with sleeves rolled up, were covered in vital fluid. The fact that she felt she had come to know him in some small way was significant. He thrashed on the ground and then fell still.
The man who had been trying to save him rocked back on his haunches and let his arms drop by his sides. The whites of his eyes met with Ruth’s and she could see the defeat in them. If the Germans would even attack the defence volunteers on the ground, then how could they fight back? It was futile. The best they could do would be to survive, but Ruth didn’t want to simply survive, she wanted to help as many people as she could.
She reached for the camera she had secreted in her overalls, then hesitated. She had borrowed the camera from the office. Strictly speaking, no one knew she had it, but they would understand when they saw the pictures she had taken. No one else would be able to get as close to the bombing as she could, given her volunteer’s uniform. People needed to see what was happening while they were safe in the shelters, or worse refusing to shelter in anywhere but their homes. But taking a picture of that poor man seemed wrong, as if she was intruding on a private moment. What would his family think if they were to see the photograph of his dead body plastered across a newspaper sheet?
She let go of her pocket just as a warden reached down and proffered a hand coated in grime and oil. His face was similarly dirty as she looked up at him, a faint crack in the line of his lips showing white teeth. She thought it was Anthony at first, but this man was shorter, and the lines on his face suggested he was older. Why had she thought of Anthony?
‘Lucky escape,’ the warden said as she took his hand and welcomed the assistance.
Standing, she could see the damage the bullets had wrought on the fire engine that was now pulling away, and the pockmarks in the sandbags at the base of the nearest wall. She had been lucky after all. Those bullets must have passed only a few inches from her. Dusting herself down, she was thankful for the overalls, but noticed how the knees had been torn by the rough road. For a second it made her think of George and the number of times she had to repair his trousers, if he hadn’t grown out of them first.
‘How many casualties?’ she asked the warden, who shook his head.
‘Too early to tell. But there’ll be more if they keep machine-gunning us. Best keep out of the way, lass. Let these men do their work.’
He moved off without further word. The Custom House was still blazing, and the heat washed down on her as the firemen fought to keep it under control. Water shot out of the hosepipes, and a fireman frantically operated the stirrup pump, but she could tell he was flagging as the pressure dropped and the water became a deepening trickle. She moved to take over but another fireman beat her to it, pushing his colleague away and shouting at him over the cacophony to take a break. Ruth supposed she should take him a cup of tea, but instead she pulled out the camera. Placing the viewfinder to her eye she tried to take in the scene as she saw it from the ground. Depressing the shutter button with quick stabs, taking as many photographs as she could and hoping that at least a few of them would be worth using. The warden who had helped her up gave her a wary glance, but said nothing as she passed, moving around the building to get a better view.
Once she had taken as many photographs of the Custom House as she dared, she moved on. First, she took a picture of a lone steel helmet lying in the middle of the street, forgotten when they had taken away the body of the man who had been shot, then she photographed the bullet holes in the walls. She wasn’t sure how much film she had left, but she wanted to capture it all.
She passed an anti-aircraft gun, one of the ones Peter had told her about. The thought of him made her stomach rise into her throat, but the thumping of the guns soon drowned everything out and she had to cover her ears. Even still, she didn’t think the ringing would stop for days. The men worked furiously, running from the ammunition store to reload. She was supposed to take them cups of tea, but they would be no use to them now, and surely cold by the time they had finished. She wanted to lend a hand, help with one of the big crates of shells, but she would only get in their way. What was she doing here?
That was a question she had asked herself many times since she had signed up to volunteer, but she finally had an answer. She was here to document the war, show everyone what they were going through, and force the city and the government to take better care of the people. That had been her cause since she was little, and all the war had done was to focus it, give her something to shout about. She wouldn’t let her city or her people down.
She swung the camera around again, determined to use up the entire film, and looked through the viewfinder at a couple of buildings to the south of the city. The sight made her breath catch and she let the camera drop from her eye. It wasn’t just the city centre that was on fire. While the bombers had now moved on they had also hit the other side of the River Mersey, this time missing the docks completely.
The greenish glow must have been several miles away. Thankfully they had missed their targets, but there were houses in that area. Ruth wondered how many people had been hurt. It was the newspaper’s responsibility to report casualty numbers, even if they couldn’t specify where the people had lost their lives. That said, they got their official numbers from the War Office and no one could be exactly sure how accurate they were. She didn’t doubt that before this was over they would all know someone who had lost their life, and would be able to count the number of dead in their own small lives, no matter what the official numbers were supposed to be. She headed towards her home and the shelters. At least she could spend some time with George and Harriet, and maybe there was something she could do to help there.