How the Girl Guides Won the War. Janie Hampton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ ‘After a night sleeping on the beach at St Malo, we boarded an overladen ferry, all ready to use our Life-Saving Guide Badge. Back in London I struggled into my Guider’s uniform to hand in my resignation at Guide HQ. Then I changed my mind and put on my FANY uniform, feeling that khaki would be more dramatic for the romantic novelists.’

      The 1st Eynsham Brownie Pack also went on holiday in August 1939 — to Swanage in Dorset. ‘We went down on the shore and we dug. We ate some ices,’ wrote Sheila Harris in their Pack Holiday Log Book. She practised semaphore with Sonia Horwood for their Golden Hand Badge, while Brown Owl, a teacher called Miss Mary Oakley, held a skipping rope for their friends Joan and Audrey to jump over for their Athlete’s Badge, their uniforms tucked into their knickers. ‘Then we had our tea and played on the hill and went to bed.’ The Brownies were accompanied by Mrs Perkins, Miss Gibbons and Miss Betterton, who wore their coats on the beach as they watched the girls swimming in their knitted woollen costumes.

      On Monday, 28 August, Gwyneth Batts of the Gnome Six wrote: ‘We went in the sea. It was nice and wet and we tried to swim. We went to the top of a long hill to see a monument. It was a very long way and we became very hot.’

      On Tuesday, 29 August, Patsy Harling of the Fairy Six wrote: ‘We went to buy our presents. I got a vase for mummy, a shaving stick for daddy and a stick of rock for grandpa. When we got back we had Diana to tea. We met her on the beach in the morning. We did not like her much. She did not say thank you for her tea.’

      On Wednesday, 30 August, Joan Brookes of the Gnome Six wrote: ‘It was a nasty morning and the sea was so rough we could not bathe. We found a lot of seaweed. We saw two funny poodles.’ Doreen Bray of the Fairy Six wrote: ‘After dinner we got ready to go down to the beach. We had a sandcastle competition which was won by Sylvia. We had a lovely bathe because it was so rough. It was fun jumping the waves. We played hide and seek and we sang God Save are [sic] King.’

      On Thursday, 31 August, Joyce Betterton of the Elf Six wrote: ‘The sea was calm and we went on a boat. We had sausages for dinner and apple and custard. Then we did handstands.’ Sonia Horwood of the Sprite Six added: ‘The boat rocked. We picked some blackberries to eat. We sang in the boat coming home.’ Joan Winterbourne of the Sprite Six was the last Brownie to write, on Friday, 1 September: ‘While we were having our breakfast Brown Owl told us we were going home. We packed all our clothes and emptied all our beds.’

      The Brownies spent the four-hour bus journey home singing songs such as ‘Rolling Down to Rio’ and ‘The Jolly Waggoner’. ‘We arrived back in Eynsham late on Saturday night,’ Brown Owl wrote in the log book. ‘Everyone was very glad to see us and we were only sorry we had missed one day of such a lovely holiday. The next day war broke out.’ Even so, some of the mothers complained that by coming home a day early, their daughters did not get their full fifteen shillings’ worth of holiday.

      During the last week of August the 1st Kennington Girl Guide Company in Oxfordshire were looking forward to camping in the New Forest. ‘Our Captain, Miss Gandy, was excited too,’ said Sylvia Rivers, then aged thirteen. ‘She had cooked a ham for our first meal.’ However, just as they were about to set off Miss Gandy received a telegram advising them not to go because of the possibility of war: ‘She was almost in tears.’ Instead, the Guides took their packed lunches to nearby Bagley Wood and practised tracking. Then they set up camp in a field next to the Captain’s house in Kennington.

      On Friday, 1 September, Germany invaded Poland, and it appeared inevitable that Britain would declare war on Germany. ‘By the Friday,’ said Sylvia, ‘as things were beginning to look dark in the Country, we were asked if some of us would go to Abingdon to help run messages to people preparing to take in evacuees.’ She and her patrol cycled the five miles to help prepare for children being evacuated to Abingdon from London: ‘We delivered notes to the families who were to care for the children.’ On the night of 2 September, trains travelled with no lights in the carriages, and families with relations in the country began to leave the capital. The following morning Britons sat by their radios waiting to hear Chamberlain’s broadcast on the BBC Home Service at 11.15 a.m.

      Mary Yates was a Guide, a leader of her local Brownie pack and a choirgirl in a village in Oxfordshire. The vicar asked her to sit in his rectory and listen to the wireless. ‘I then had to hurry to church and hand to the vicar one or other order of service, depending on the news.’ Mary heard the tired voice of Chamberlain speaking to Britain: ‘This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’

      ‘I hurried down the church drive,’ remembered Mary. ‘As I moved from the vestry into the church I felt the atmosphere — the congregation seemed to be holding their breath waiting for the vicar’s words — “The Country is at War.”’

      Edna Gertrude Cole was a sixteen-year-old Guide living in Davenport, ten miles south of Manchester. ‘We were in the process of building an air-raid shelter in the garden when we went indoors to hear the broadcast. War had been declared. Then we went out and got on with digging the shelter. It was a hole, propped up with railway sleepers. As fast as we dug, it filled with water.’

      ‘On the Sunday morning,’ said Sylvia Rivers, ‘my Patrol Leader and I cycled to Abingdon again and helped until afternoon. When we arrived back at camp there was no one there, an empty space. War had been declared. Captain had struck camp straight away. She had already lived through the First World War and had lost her brother.’

      That evening, BBC radio announcer Bruce Belfrage read the nine o’clock news: ‘The following advice is given: to keep off the streets as much as possible; to carry a gas mask always; to make sure all members of the household have on them their name and address clearly written; to sew a label on children’s clothing so that they cannot pull it off…’ Up until then, all newsreaders had been anonymous, but now they were told to announce their names so that listeners would learn their voices and be able to tell if they were being impersonated by the enemy and giving false information. Guides invented a new game — who could name the newsreader quickest before he identified himself?

      Iris O’Dell was shopping with her mother and her brothers in Hitchin when the announcement of war was made. ‘Mum was wearing a dark green coat with a fur collar and a green velvet hat when she went into Timothy White’s to buy a jar of cod-liver oil and malt. We were outside minding Bob in the brown pram. When she popped the big jar under the pram cover, she whispered, “We are at war.” That night I laid awake straining my ears to hear the tramp of Germans marching up our lane.’

      Many adults also believed that war would begin immediately, and there were rumours that the Germans would launch gas attacks from the air. Guides all over Great Britain rushed to find their gas masks and to help other people get theirs together. They knew from the news that in Poland aerial bombing had rained down explosives on small wooden villages and beautiful towns, and thousands of people had been killed or wounded. On the first day of the war, Guides all over Britain braced themselves against the feeling of panic that was in the air. They were determined that whatever lay ahead they were going to think of others, remain cheerful and set a good example of courage to other people. As Baden-Powell said, ‘Look up and not down, look forward and not back. Look out, not in — and lend a hand.’

      Operation Pied Piper was set in motion. A poster produced by the Ministry of Health Evacuation Scheme depicted a boy and girl looking miserable, and the words: ‘Mothers — let them go — give them a chance of greater safety and health.’ Every city railway station was soon crowded with children, some with their parents, some from homes and orphanages. There was plenty for Guides to do. Those in cities helped children leave, and those in safe areas СКАЧАТЬ