Once in the column the medical types again congregated, as if for mutual support, regulars, reserves and volunteers alike. One young woman in uniform and topcoat bravely approached Frank. ‘You must be Captain Jenkins?’
Frank stood a bit straighter. ‘Only a Fyrd volunteer – feel something of a fraud – but, yes, that’s me.’
‘My name’s Verity Bliss. They put me in charge of this lot.’ She indicated a group of shy-looking women behind her. Verity looked mid-twenties, with a sturdy, sensible face, and short-cut brown hair. ‘And that chap over there,’ she pointed to an MP, ‘tells me that you’re in command of us, at least until we get off the train.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you know – the train to where, sir?’
He grinned. ‘I didn’t even know we were taking the train. VADs, are you?’ The VADs, for Voluntary Aid Detachments, were unpaid nursing volunteers recruited through the War Office and the Red Cross.
‘That’s it, sir.’
‘Good for you. But, look – the “sir” doesn’t fit comfortably. How about it’s “Frank” and “Verity” until we’re off the train, eh?’
She grinned back, but said, ‘Not in front of the MPs, sir.’
The column, gathered inside the park rail, was almost lined up now. A senior officer – a Brigadier-General perhaps, Frank was too far away to see his rank, but he looked old enough to have served in the Crimea, let alone the First Martian War – climbed on a box and called out in a ringing voice, ‘Well, it’s your time, men – and women. I know you’re mostly reserve and Fyrd, but you’ve units of the Guard with you, and you are honoured to fight alongside such men. Now give me a British cheer, and have a good go!’
Well, they all cheered, of course.
And then Frank and Verity and the other doctors and the nurses and the VADs all marched with the rest across the park. Now it was Frank’s turn to have flags waved at him by schoolboys, and kisses blown by a few girls, and to have ribald comments bellowed: ‘Don’t forget to turn over when them Martians put you on the griddle, laddies!’ Frank was in his thirty-eighth year. What he had seen of war personally had horrified him, and like most intelligent British folk he had a healthy cynicism of Marvin and his war-mongering, and the militarisation of society. But he had a feeling he would remember this as one of the proudest moments of his life.
At Baker Street station they joined in an elaborate game of queuing up and filtering through entrances and turnstiles meant for a comparative trickle commuting clerks. The station itself was a box of noise, the ringing and clanging of shunting engines, the shriek of whistles, thousands of excited voices echoing like a gull colony – but above it all there was a sense of organisation. In some ways, Frank would say to me, he thought the efficiency and order of the railways, including the underground, was one of the finest expressions of our civilisation. During the first Martian attack the railways had kept functioning even after the government itself had effectively collapsed, and here they were now, an essential part of the defence of the nation.
As they waited, he got to know Verity Bliss and her friends a little better. They all knew each other; they had been ‘munitionettes’ working at the Woolwich Arsenal, where they had picked up their first aid training, before signing up as VADs together under the prompting of the government’s public exhortations.
A military bakery van worked its way through the crowd, handing out free sandwiches, cakes, hot sausages, bottles of lemonade and water. Frank even managed to nab a paper cup of coffee. ‘Make the most of it,’ a regular told them, when some of the VADs were reluctant to take the food. ‘You sleep when you can, eat all you can get, for you never know when the Army will trouble to feed you again. And if you don’t want that sausage sandwich, love, I’ve got a good home for it…’
It was mid-afternoon, and Frank was already tired from all the standing around, when at last they were bundled onto a train. It was a Metropolitan Line commuter special that was standing room only before it finally pulled away. Frank and his VADs, among the last aboard, found themselves close to a door through which they could see something of the stations they passed through. The mood remained cheerful enough, though the MPs assigned to each compartment kept a watchful eye. In Frank’s compartment a tommy accompanied bawdy songs with a mouth organ, and at times he heard the skirl of bagpipes coming from a carriage further up the train.
Soon they were beyond Hampstead and out in the country, passing through Wembley and Harrow. They did not stop at intermediate stations, but the train did slow, and local people came out to clap and wave flags, passing up food and apples and even postcards. Frank saw troopers leaning out of the windows, trying to grab bottles of beer. And, once out of the city, Frank saw columns of troops marching, and howitzers and field guns drawn by motor and by horses. He wondered if the farmers and publicans were having their horses requisitioned, as he had lost his car: war always demanded a great number of horses.
The general flow was away from London, towards the northwest, towards Middlesex and Buckinghamshire, a pattern that did not go unnoticed by the more experienced soldiers on the train, who spoke in a variety of accents, mostly from the rich linguistic pot of London:
‘I reck’n someone knows where they’re coming down this time.’
‘Yeah, some ast – ast – rologer.’
‘Last time they came dahn in Surrey, din’t they? Trying sumfin diff’rent this time, looks like,’ said an older, scarred man.
‘So what? Big guns would’ve knocked ’em flat las’ time, and it will this time if’n we get the chance.’
‘Won’t be like las’ time. Coming down somewhere else, in’t they? If that’s diff’rent, the rest will be. Stands to reason they’ll try something new. They lost, din’t they? They’ll learn.’
‘Huh. We don’t always learn.’
Laughter at that, and ribald comments about the failings of various commanding officers.
But the scarred man did not laugh. ‘If’n they’re smart, they’ll learn. Look at the Germans. They flattened the French in 1870, and they hit ’em even harder in ’14, and they won again.’
Nobody had a reply to that.
13
APPROACHING UXBRIDGE
The train stopped at Ickenham, and they were disembarked. This, Frank knew, was short of the terminus of the line, at Uxbridge. Here personnel were formed up and marched away, and equipment was hauled off along the roads by horses or trucks – all generally heading further to the north-west, towards the town.
Frank and Verity, herding their little flock of MOs, nurses and VADs, saw little of the village of Ickenham before they were marched out into the country. They heard mention of units of troops from all over the country: the 4th Battalion, 5th Fusiliers; the 2nd Battalion, King’s Liverpool Regiment; the 1st King’s Own Shropshire Light Infantry. There were divisional troops too, specialists with their equipment, the artillery batteries there were Royal Engineers, the sappers. There was wireless gear and cables for the field telegraphs, such mundane gear as a field bakery, and more exotic items such as sections of pontoon bridges and the envelopes of spotting balloons.
Verity touched Frank’s arm and pointed at troops on motorcycles heading up the roads and across country, off to the north-west. ‘Scouts,’ she said.
‘Heading where they expect the battle to be joined.’
‘I imagine so.’ She shivered, and Frank imagined she was thinking that those forward units might be among the first casualties of any action – though somehow that prospect still seemed unreal.