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Authors: Maggie Ford
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oncoming express train.
There was scant opportunity for going home. In this she felt a little guilty. Poor Mumsy, all alone because she had been selfish enough to want to get away. Well she
had
got away, and she
would
have gone home, but a train packed to suffocation with servicemen and women could take three times as long as in peacetime, incessantly stopping and starting and then crawling along between times. Too much of a chunk out of one’s day off. Such a thing as a whole weekend off hardly existed. And after working twelve hours at a stretch, she was only too glad to ‘live in’, falling into bed utterly exhausted to sleep away her day off.
With the beautiful early summer of 1940 she spent many a free day in the corner of some field with a friend or two, dozing in the hot sunshine pouring from a cloudless sky, only too glad to think about absolutely nothing, least of all guilt at not going to see Mumsy.
That year she got home twice, the first occasion in August, the second occasion in the autumn when she ran into Matthew Ward on his way back to his unit after a week’s leave. She was amazed at the change in him. In one short year he had become more broad-shouldered, more steady-eyed. He looked taller, older, yet the ring of devilment still echoed in his voice as he greeted her.
‘Ye gods! Jenny! And every inch a nurse. You look a picture.’
‘So do you,’ she returned lightly. She wasn’t about to upbraid him for not ever writing to her again. The feeling she’d long thought dead now rose again like a bird as she regarded him.
His uniform, although still the rough khaki of rank-and-file, gave him a debonair appearance, and on his sleeve he bore the twin stripes of a corporal. He was making it there, Jenny thought with a small leap of pride in her heart for him, his own way.
‘Not yet an officer, I see,’ she said with a brave attempt at flippancy and he gave her a grin, crooked and rueful.
‘My CO suggested I put in for it. Went up before the Selection Board but got cheesed off with the stupid questions they asked. Afraid I got a bit bolshie with some silly arse of a psychiatrist there and they chucked me out. Not literally, but well, turned me down – at least for the time being.’
As he chatted, Jenny couldn’t help but notice how some of the edges of that ‘college-boy’ accent had blunted. Listening to him now, each word had a rough-and-ready tinge to it. Oddly enough, it rounded off this new Matthew to perfection – a man of action, certain of himself, a man able to fight his own fights without help from anyone. She wondered as he went on talking how his mother viewed this new person. Did it pull at her heartstrings for the boy he had once been? It didn’t pull at her own, that was certain, except to make her heart swell with pride and love for this man who stood chatting lightly, without a care in the world because he had been able to surmount each obstacle as it had come his way.
‘I expect the Selection Board will have another bash at me before long,’ he was saying. ‘The CO was damned disappointed, though God knows why. Me – I’m not sure I want to bother now. I’ve got a great crowd of mates and just now we’re too busy playing soldiers on some godforsaken Yorkshire moor for me to worry just yet about trying to become an officer.’
‘What do you do?’ she asked.
For an answer he placed a finger against his lips in a playful gesture. ‘Careless talk costs lives. Really, we just muck about out in the field with walkie-talkies, practise radio relay, get wet and tired and lost. Usually end up in the right place, eventually, then all go back to the schoolroom to learn where we went wrong. Then we all go off to the pub and forget it. It really is a load of old bull. I don’t think any of us bother to take it in except enough to keep our sergeant happy. Don’t know as I want to start seriously studying again just to be an officer. Had enough of that at college.’
He
There was scant opportunity for going home. In this she felt a little guilty. Poor Mumsy, all alone because she had been selfish enough to want to get away. Well she
had
got away, and she
would
have gone home, but a train packed to suffocation with servicemen and women could take three times as long as in peacetime, incessantly stopping and starting and then crawling along between times. Too much of a chunk out of one’s day off. Such a thing as a whole weekend off hardly existed. And after working twelve hours at a stretch, she was only too glad to ‘live in’, falling into bed utterly exhausted to sleep away her day off.
With the beautiful early summer of 1940 she spent many a free day in the corner of some field with a friend or two, dozing in the hot sunshine pouring from a cloudless sky, only too glad to think about absolutely nothing, least of all guilt at not going to see Mumsy.
That year she got home twice, the first occasion in August, the second occasion in the autumn when she ran into Matthew Ward on his way back to his unit after a week’s leave. She was amazed at the change in him. In one short year he had become more broad-shouldered, more steady-eyed. He looked taller, older, yet the ring of devilment still echoed in his voice as he greeted her.
‘Ye gods! Jenny! And every inch a nurse. You look a picture.’
‘So do you,’ she returned lightly. She wasn’t about to upbraid him for not ever writing to her again. The feeling she’d long thought dead now rose again like a bird as she regarded him.
His uniform, although still the rough khaki of rank-and-file, gave him a debonair appearance, and on his sleeve he bore the twin stripes of a corporal. He was making it there, Jenny thought with a small leap of pride in her heart for him, his own way.
‘Not yet an officer, I see,’ she said with a brave attempt at flippancy and he gave her a grin, crooked and rueful.
‘My CO suggested I put in for it. Went up before the Selection Board but got cheesed off with the stupid questions they asked. Afraid I got a bit bolshie with some silly arse of a psychiatrist there and they chucked me out. Not literally, but well, turned me down – at least for the time being.’
As he chatted, Jenny couldn’t help but notice how some of the edges of that ‘college-boy’ accent had blunted. Listening to him now, each word had a rough-and-ready tinge to it. Oddly enough, it rounded off this new Matthew to perfection – a man of action, certain of himself, a man able to fight his own fights without help from anyone. She wondered as he went on talking how his mother viewed this new person. Did it pull at her heartstrings for the boy he had once been? It didn’t pull at her own, that was certain, except to make her heart swell with pride and love for this man who stood chatting lightly, without a care in the world because he had been able to surmount each obstacle as it had come his way.
‘I expect the Selection Board will have another bash at me before long,’ he was saying. ‘The CO was damned disappointed, though God knows why. Me – I’m not sure I want to bother now. I’ve got a great crowd of mates and just now we’re too busy playing soldiers on some godforsaken Yorkshire moor for me to worry just yet about trying to become an officer.’
‘What do you do?’ she asked.
For an answer he placed a finger against his lips in a playful gesture. ‘Careless talk costs lives. Really, we just muck about out in the field with walkie-talkies, practise radio relay, get wet and tired and lost. Usually end up in the right place, eventually, then all go back to the schoolroom to learn where we went wrong. Then we all go off to the pub and forget it. It really is a load of old bull. I don’t think any of us bother to take it in except enough to keep our sergeant happy. Don’t know as I want to start seriously studying again just to be an officer. Had enough of that at college.’
He
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