“Well, son, when I left home my dear old dad said to me: ‘He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.’ But one day I was high-tailing it back to my trench when a hunk of shrapnel nailed me right where your finger is.”
“I don’t know why you tell them such bunkum,” Mother always interjected at this point. “Your father was running toward the enemy when he was hit. He was so far ahead of the other men that a German shell fell behind him.”
“That’s what she thinks,” Dad always whispered and rolled his eyes, putting a finger to his lips. We would laugh delightedly.
Now the town policeman Fergus Lumby launched into his annual ritual, singing “In Flanders Fields” in his deep baritone. I caught sight of my brother standing at the other side of the cenotaph with his friends, a look of intense concentration in his bright blue eyes. I knew he was praying the war would last long enough for him to get into it.
Back home the kitchen was warm and welcoming, the kettle hissing gently on the wood stove. I set the table for dinner while Mother mixed up a batch of baking powder biscuits. When I went to fetch a jar of pickled beets from the pantry, she joined me in the doorway and for a few minutes we admired our handiwork. Over the summer we had picked hundreds of pounds of berries and vegetables, boiling and bottling far into the night. The pantry dazzled like a jewellery store: pickled onions, dills, and carrots; raspberry and strawberry and chokecherry jam; rosehip and Saskatoon jelly.
“You don’t think we’ll get rationing here, do you, Mother?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not taking any chances.” She sighed and I knew she was thinking of England. I wished we could go on rations. I was itching to endure some hardship, make some sacrifice to show solidarity with the English, even if it meant starving myself.
From the living room came the sound of a plummy British accent: “This is the BBC World Service.” I ran into the room and fiddled with the dial on the cabinet radio, trying to get better reception. “Listen, Mother!” I called. “It’s Queen Elizabeth!”
The high-pitched feminine voice, speaking in the cultured accent I admired so much, came crackling through the airwaves.
“I know that you would wish me to voice, in the name of the women of the British Empire, our deep and abiding sympathy with those on whom the first cruel and shattering blows have fallen: the women of Poland. Nor do we forget the gallant womanhood of France, who are called on to share with us again the hardships and sorrows of war.”
I dropped to my knees on the worn carpet.
“War has at all times called for the fortitude of women, even in other days when it was an affair of the fighting forces only. Wives and mothers at home suffered constant anxiety for their dear ones, and, too often, the misery of bereavement.
“Now all this has changed. For we, no less than men, have real and vital work to do. To us also is given the proud privilege of serving our country in her hour of need. The call has come, and from my heart, I thank you, the women of our great Empire, for the way in which you have answered it. We have all a part to play, and I know you will not fail in yours.”
We have all a part to play. Across the ocean, thousands of girls even younger than me were marching shoulder to shoulder with their fathers and brothers in the fight for freedom.
Tears of frustration sprang into my eyes while the orchestra played “God Save the King.” What is my part?
4
“Victory, my royal keester!” MacTavish shouted. “The Brits have been chased home with their tails between their legs and now we’re supposed to call it a miracle!”
I studied the map on our office wall and trembled for England, the size of a pink thumbprint. The Germans had driven the Allies into frantic retreat and conquered the entire continent. The enemy was now only twenty-five miles away from Britain’s shores: spitting distance, by our standards. The barbarians were indeed at the gates.
“It was a miracle that all those men escaped with their lives, Mr. MacTavish!” I was deeply moved by the way hundreds of civilians had used their sailboats, yachts, and lifeboats to help the British Navy evacuate three hundred and forty thousand troops from Dunkirk.
“Yeah, a bloody miracle that the Huns didn’t massacre them when they had the chance!” MacTavish chewed his snuff so vigorously that he gagged. “They left behind their weapons, for the love of God! And don’t forget forty thousand men were taken prisoner!”
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to call it a defeat in the newspaper.” I held my breath.
“I’m bloody well not going to call it a triumph! We had enough of that cockamamie in the last war! Our readers deserve to know the bald facts!”
“Mr. MacTavish!” I ripped the cover off my typewriter, wishing it were his scalp. “How do you expect to win the war if you’re going to take that attitude?”
“Do you really think people believe all this twaddle about victory?”
“Yes,” I said, then hesitated. “Well, they want to believe it! They rely on the newspapers and the radio to buck them up! How can any mother’s son go off to fight if he thinks he isn’t coming back? And how can any mother bear to let him go? The way you talk, you’d like everybody to roll over and surrender!”
MacTavish’s voice was gloomy. “I don’t think we should give up the ghost, don’t get me wrong. But this cursed propaganda sticks in my craw!”
“It’s not all lies. There are lots of stories about heroism and human sacrifice that are the honest truth.”
“And just as many in the German papers, I expect.”
I was running out of arguments. “Don’t you feel one spark of loyalty to the king, Mr. MacTavish?”
“Why should we swear allegiance to that stammering idiot? The royal family is nothing but a bunch of Krauts in disguise, anyway. Queen Victoria and that so-called consort of hers spoke German when they got between the sheets!”
“Please, Mr. MacTavish,” I said faintly. I didn’t want to imagine anyone between the sheets, let alone the crowned heads of Europe.
“All right, Miss Limey-Lover, I’ve had my say. I’ve never heard of winning a war by running away, but from now on I’ll keep my opinions to the editorial page. You can spoon-feed the ignorant masses. I don’t have the stomach for it.”
“Thank you, Mr. MacTavish!” I tried to keep the crow of satisfaction out of my voice.
He swivelled his oak chair and bent over his desk. “Have you heard what they’re calling the British Expeditionary Force now?”
“No, Mr. MacTavish.”
“Back Every Friday.” He chuckled. I let him have the last word.
With the fall of the continent, enlistment soared. Farms and families no longer kept the men from joining up, and the women didn’t even try to talk them out of it. I had seen the same thing happen at hockey games. If there was a fight, every guy in the arena wanted to jump over the boards onto the ice, get right into the thick of it.
And it wasn’t only the men. A group of local girls calling themselves the Touchwood Women’s Militia began to meet regularly in the high school gymnasium to drill, to learn engine repair and to read maps.
I went down to the school one evening to take their photograph. “Do you think they’ll ever let women enlist?” I asked their leader, Monica Fisher, a pig farmer’s daughter.
“It’ll be a rotten shame if they don’t.” She