Home Front Girls

had been perfect until the sirens sounded – which just went to show that you never knew what life had in store for you.
    *
     
    ‘I went into Mrs P’s Anderson shelter,’ Lucy told them the next morning at work.
    ‘And Mother and I went down into the cellar.’ Annabelle shuddered at the thought of it. She had been so confident that the raids would never reach them, but she wasn’t so cocky now. ‘It was horrible,’ she groaned. ‘And so cold. It was lucky that Mother had remembered to take blankets down there. You don’t think it will happen again, do you?’
    ‘I think we should prepare ourselves just in case,’ Lucy said quietly. Just over an hour ago the staff had been called together and told by the manager that should the sirens go off during work hours, they were all to make their way down into the basement in an orderly manner. ‘No running or panicking the customers, mind,’ he had warned them.
    ‘As if we wouldn’t panic,’ Lucy had scoffed behind her hand to the other two. ‘I reckon there’d be a right scramble, customers and staff alike.’
    Mr Bradley had posted signs around the shop telling customers where to go in case of a raid.
    ‘I don’t mind admitting I nearly wet myself when the siren went off,’ Lucy told the others. ‘I thought it was a false alarm at first until I heard the planes overhead and then I was off around to Mrs P’s like a shot from a gun.’
    Suddenly what they had all dreaded was a reality and there was no getting away from it any more.
    ‘It wouldn’t do us much good down in the basement anyway,’ Annabelle grumbled. ‘Not if the store took a direct hit. There’d be mountains of rubbish on top of us and they’d never dig us out.’
    ‘It’s amazing that no one was killed at the aerodrome,’ Dotty agreed. ‘But I do think that now they’ve been once, the German planes will come again. It said on the wireless this morning that they think they’ll target the factories next.’ They all looked at each other glumly knowing there was nothing at all anyone could do to stop it now. The Phoney War had become all too real.
     
    The next raid happened the following evening.
    Lucy and Dotty had accepted Annabelle’s invitation to go to tea, but they had barely set foot in the door after a long day at work when the sirens screamed into life.
    ‘Each of you grab some food off the table and follow me down to the cellar,’ Miranda told them as calmly as she could, and the girls quickly did as they were told. Dotty picked up a large bowl of salad and a plate of bread scraped with margarine, whilst Lucy lifted up the tray with the tea things on it and Annabelle picked up a plate of thinly sliced brawn and pickled beetroot.
    Miranda threw open the door at the far end of the kitchen and one by one they climbed down the steps into the dark cellar. The walls were damp and the place was dismal despite Miranda’s best efforts to make it comfortable.
    ‘There are only two chairs down here,’ she shouted above the screech of the sirens. ‘But there are some crates over there we can sit on. Come on, we may as well eat. There’s nothing else we can do.’
    And then they heard it, the slow buzz of the enemy aircraft approaching followed by the sound of the ack-ack guns firing into life. They all glanced up at the ceiling fearfully as the buzz became a drone and then a snarl.
    ‘They must be directly above us now,’ Miranda whispered as she made the sign of the cross on her chest. The sound slowly subsided, followed by the bang of the first explosion and they all jumped. Then there was another and another, and Annabelle panicked and clasped her hands over her ears to try and shut out the noise.
    ‘It’s all right, darling,’ her mother comforted her as she pressed her close. ‘We’ll be quite safe in here.’
    Within minutes they all realised that this was far worse than the first raid. The explosions seemed to go on forever and they sounded so close that the four women had no idea where the bombs might be falling. The food lay on an upturned crate untouched; everyone seemed to have lost their appetites although Miranda did manage to pour them all some tea and urged them to drink it. ‘It will warm you up,’ she told them and they each did as she asked.
    ‘What time do you think it is?’ Annabelle asked in a small voice after what felt like an eternity. The sounds of the enemy planes flying over them were so loud that they were sure they would crash