Home Front Girls

furiously, determined to get to anyone who might still be alive.
    They walked on a little further and Lucy’s eyes filled with tears as she saw a bloodstained teddy bear lying in the middle of the road next to yet another bombed house.
    ‘My God, it must have been blown out through a window when the bombs struck,’ she wept. ‘Some poor child must have been holding it.’ She couldn’t help thinking about her little Mary. In fact, not a second passed when she didn’t think about her. Lucy broke down and dropped to her knees, sobbing as her small frame rocked in distress. Annabelle reached for her and held her, rubbing her back in comfort. And then at last Lucy managed to pull herself together enough to proceed and they moved on.
    When the church hall came into sight they pelted towards it, but the sight that met their eyes when they opened the door made them all stop in their tracks. Injured people were lying on the floor on blankets everywhere they looked, as the women from the WVS darted between them trying to do what they could. And then Dotty’s eyes settled on a tiny figure and she gasped. An ambulance man was leaning over it but she knew instantly that this was Mrs Cousins’s baby. She would have recognised her anywhere.
    ‘I know this child,’ she told the man breathlessly. ‘But where are her mother and her brother and sister?’
    ‘I don’t know, love,’ he breathed sadly. ‘But I do know it’s too late for this poor little mite.’ Even as he spoke he gently closed the baby’s eyes and Dotty began to cry.
    ‘What are you doing?’ she sobbed. ‘Stop it! She can’t be dead. She’s just a baby.’
    He rose wearily and patted her arm. The sights he had seen that night would stay with him forever – and the night was far from over yet.
    ‘I’m afraid she didn’t stand a chance,’ he said. ‘The terrace of houses where we found her took a direct hit.’
    Dotty’s heart sank. That could only mean that Mrs Cousins and the other two children must have been inside too. Mrs Cousins hated the shelters and made no secret of the fact that if a raid came she would rather stay put and take her chances. Now her decision had cost her dearly and Dotty also realised that her own little flat must be gone. But there was no time to worry about that for now.
    Miranda was already helping the women, carrying drinks of water to the wounded and putting temporary dressings on their wounds as the ambulance men and women gingerly walked between them trying to see who needed to get to the hospital first.
    ‘Come on, girls,’ Miranda told them. ‘It’s time to put your first aid training into practice. All the bandages and dressings are on a table over there, look. Just do what you can.’
    And so began the longest night of the girls’ lives.

Chapter Twenty-One
     
    As the night progressed, things in the church hall became even more chaotic as ARPs, ambulance men and women and Army personnel carried more injured into the hall on makeshift stretchers.
    Those who were beyond help were carried to a far corner which was curtained off, and they were covered with a blanket until they could be identified. For now, everyone’s attention must be centred on the living. Above the hall searchlights still swept the sky and people held their breath, praying that there would be no more raids that night. Even more people arrived; those who had emerged from their shelters to find their homes nothing more than a pile of rubble. White-faced and dazed, they were served tea from the large urns that had been set up at one end of the hall, and wrapped in warm blankets. Some of the luckier ones had friends and neighbours who came and took them into their own homes. The less fortunate would stay the night in the hall once all the injured had been transported to hospital, until they decided where they were going to go. And through it all the fire engines struggled to bring the flames of the various fires under control whilst the soldiers continued to dig amongst the debris for survivors.
    At one stage, Miranda paused to see what the girls were doing. She was binding a badly fractured leg and was shocked to see Annabelle cradling an old woman in her arms as she gently poured water into her mouth. Miranda’s heart melted at the sight of her normally selfish daughter showing such compassion, and her chest swelled with pride. Annabelle had enjoyed the first aid classes, and now what she had learned was being put to good use. Lucy