Copyright Oggbashan June 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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I had just enough energy left to change into my pyjamas and climb into my lonely bed. It was 3 am on an October 1940 morning and I had to be at work at 8 am.
I am an AFS (Auxiliary Fire Service) driver and I had spent this Sunday night in London's dockland with our trailer pump, pumping water from the Thames to the other fire fighters. I had retired from work over a decade ago and had tried to join the local Defence volunteers, now the Home Guard, but had been rejected for being too old despite having been a regular officer throughout the Great War. But I had a driving licence and a Ford V8 car. The AFS had accepted me as a driver, driving my own car and towing a trailer pump. But even they would not accept me as a fire fighter, only as a driver. Throughout the night I had operated the trailer pump while the younger men used the hoses.
I am on duty for the AFS Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. The rest of the week someone else drives my car towing the trailer pump.
My former employers, whom I had left a decade earlier as a senior manager, had no problems with my advanced age. I had returned, this time as a foreman, to train women in the electronics factory which was now making radar sets instead of the domestic wirelesses we had made before the war.
I was lying in my bed, very tired but unable to sleep, as I reviewed the events of the night as the German bombs fell around us. We had lost two fire engines but no men. That was a relief. The all-clear sirens had sounded at two-thirty am and I and my crew could go home, relieved by other AFS crews.
But a lone German bomber had become lost on the way to London and arrived late. It decided to jettison its bombs over our dormitory suburb instead of braving the searchlights and anti-aircraft guns over central London. Of course, it might just have been running low on fuel and needed to drop its bombs if it was to get back across the Channel. But without warning and before an air raid siren could be sounded, it dropped its payload. One heavy bomb landed in my back garden, demolishing my house. I was blown out of bed, my pyjamas shredded, and the roof fell on me. I was slightly shielded by the mattress of my bed but I was trapped in the remains of the building which was on fire.
It took a quarter of an hour before the heavy rescue squad could get to me and haul me out, completely naked, cut, bruised and with some minor burns. The covered me with a blanket as I was before carrying me into the street on a stretcher.
But then they had a problem. Every local hospital was full of seriously injured patients. Apart from shock and superficial injuries I didn't need hospital attention. Mrs Owens, my neighbour from across the street, brought me a cup of sweetened tea. They sat me up to drink it. The blanket slipped down revealing my naked chest.
"How are you, Albert?" Mary Owens asked.
"A bit shook up, Mary," I admitted, "and annoyed. I've lost my house and all my clothes. Apart from this blanket, I have nothing, nothing at all, and it isn't even my blanket..."
The heavy rescue squad were still discussing what to do with me. Mary Owens solved their problem.
"Take him into my house and upstairs to the bedroom," she said.
"Are you sure?" she was asked.
"Yes, Albert is a friend, and a work colleague as well as a neighbour. I will look after him."
I wasn't so sure, but I was in no state to object. The delayed shock was giving me the shakes. But Mary was right. She was a friend. Her husband Joshua had been a regular sergeant in the Royal Artillery. My only son Andrew had been a corporal, acting sergeant at the time of Dunkirk. The sergeants had been the only live men firing a twenty-five pounder as they held the Dunkirk perimeter, until they were both killed by a Stuka dive bomber. When Mary had married Joshua in 1938 she had been a basic nurse, SEN qualified, working in Central London. She had resigned and taken a job at the electronics factory. She could walk to work and the pay was similar. It increased when she was made a temporary foreman at the start of 1940. She was earning far more than she would ever have earned as a nurse. She and I worked the same shifts and often walked to and from the factory together. When her husband and my son had been killed we had become closer even though she was decades younger than me. I had been able to help her with the paperwork, having dealt with the death of my wife Helen from cancer in 1937. Dealing with Joshua's death had been slightly more complex because he had been buying the house on a mortgage. Unusually the insurance on that hadn't excluded death by enemy action so Mary became the outright owner.
Even a year before Munich I had decided war was coming and had employed builders to construct a substantial air raid shelter under my sloping back garden. If the air raid siren had sounded, I would have been in that shelter and uninjured even through the bomb landed directly above it. The bomb was intended to penetrate several feet of earth before exploding, causing damage by an underground earthquake. But the large rockery on top of my shelter had prevented the bomb from penetrating. My house was the only one severely damaged. If the bomb had penetrated as it should, we would have lost half the street.
Mary spread an old sheet on top of the eiderdown on her double bed. I was moved from the stretcher to that bed. I was startled when Mary whipped off the blanket leaving me naked. She folded it up and gave it to the stretcher bearers.
"Here you are," she said, "this is yours."
The first aider doctor gave her a Government Issue pot of petroleum jelly and some wintergreen.
"The petroleum jelly goes where his skin is injured, the wintergreen where he is bruised but NOT on broken skin. That would hurt. I've written a sick note for his employers for a week. He'll probably need longer than that."
"I know wintergreen would hurt," Mary said, "I used to be a nurse."
The leader of the heavy rescue team spoke to me.
"Mr Thomas, we'll make the remains of your house safe. There won't be much left. Where will you live? Do you need temporary accommodation?"
"Probably not," I replied. If it is OK I can probably live in my air raid shelter. It's large enough, if it is undamaged."
"It is. We checked just in case someone was in it. It is more solid than almost all air raid shelters we have seen. We have locked it. Here is the key."
He put the key on the bedside table.
"There is too much in there that looters would find attractive."
His unstated comment was that I might be a hoarder.
"I equipped it in 1937," I said. "Even then, long before rationing and the declaration of war I knew I might need supplies."
"And there is much in there that people would almost kill for. The rockery on top stopped the bomb and your strong garden walls contained the blast. That wrecked your house, but all the others have very minor damage -- a few broken windows are the worst. Are you sure you can live in your air raid shelter?"
"But until he is fit he is staying with me," Mary announced definitely.
"How is the garage?" I asked.
"It seems untouched." the leader said. "Why?"
"My car and an AFS trailer pump are in there. If they are OK they will be needed tonight."
"OK. I'll send someone to check. Where are the car keys?"
"In the dashboard because I might have needed it urgently. If it is OK can you inform the AFS?"
"I'll tell the air raid warden. He'll arrange that."
The man he had sent to report on the garage returned.
"Mr Thomas, your car and trailer pump are untouched, just a bit dusty. I have locked the garage. There is too much good stuff in there."
He put the key on the bedside table.
"Thank you. The AFS have a spare key. They'll probably need the car and trailer tonight even if I can't drive."
"You won't," the first aider said. "You need to rest and recover maybe for five or six days, Mr Thomas. After all, you are no youngster."
"I'll make sure he does," Mary said. "He isn't going anywhere. He has no clothes."
That statement reminded me that I was completely naked on top of the bed. I moved my hands to cover my private parts. Mary laughed at me.
"It's a bit late for that, Albert. We've all seen everything."
"I'll get the Air Raid warden to speak to the Women's Voluntary Service," The leader said. "They have some clothes for those who have lost them and you'll get extra clothing coupons -- eventually."
"But until then he is staying in bed," Mary announced.
