Chapter 8. Outside the 95th

Soldiers unexpectedly sometimes developed problems which required Red Cross help in getting back home.  Many times the serious problem occurred with their family in the States.  In such cases, facilitated by the military, our Social Worker was a life saver.  Because financial help often was needed to help alleviate such problems, each week one of the 5 of us got off half a day to do the necessary banking in Ringwood which was 2 or 4 miles away.  One of my delights was to be asked by the Social Worker to carry out that task.

No Jeep from the hospital motor pool was tapped for this transport.  I rode in the open air beside a rustic little old Englishman pony driver.  Sitting side by side in his tiny box of a pony cart we would clip-clop to the most rustic little ivy-covered bank you ever saw. It was a branch of one of the biggest banks of England.  All the way there and all the way back!

Another foray happened that placed us isolates back into the real world.  That was an occasionally night out in the big resort hotel in Bournemouth. Their lounge, like all bars in England, closed at 10pm.  The only thing we could order was gin and orange juice, warm, which none of us liked.

My most vivid memory is a one-time date I had with one of our psychiatrist doctors.  Just before l0 o’clock, without asking the rest of us, he almost covered the table by ordering extra post-10 drinks.  We were all furious!  Humiliated, I tried not to see or feel the glares from the well-dressed local English around us.  All that “Ugly American” for warm gin and orange!  (Incidentally my brother Neill, a doctor with the military hospital in Bristol, much later told me that their psychiatric department had deported the man.  I guess he wasn’t so dumb—did things like that in order to get discharged.)

Back to Bournemouth, that large city was included in the culture tours that England maintained all during WWII to try to maintain morale of its citizens.  So for the first time ever I got to see ballet, some of the best in the world either in Bournemouth or in London.  It was the Ballet Russe, with Lynn Fontaine, one of the most famous of all ballerinas in the world.  

Another contact with the outer world was the Red Cross of England truck driver who regularly came down from London to replenish our supplies for patients.  We loved learning the complete news from a live person.  The radio was such a great help, but because of the need for secrecy, of course, critical information often was censored out.

In mid-summer l944 I was shocked to see the driver descend looking so exhausted, pale and weary that I said “What’s the matter?”  He said, “A new kind of bomb, many of them come every night and they make no noise.  We never know how close we are to being hit.  No one can sleep—they are much worse than the buzz bombs.”  This was the first we heard of the V bombs.

That news scared me because I had been made the head recreation worker by then and occasionally went to the London Red Cross office on business.  I usually stayed in a big hotel for a night or two—and the only available room was always above the last floor thought to be fairly safe by the hotel, usually the 11^th floor.

One afternoon I had just walked into the room with my ditty bag during an air raid warning.  As recommended I went immediately to open the window (to avoid glass breakage in case of pressure from a nearby explosion).  Instantly a bomb went off a block or two away. Out the window soared my only Red Cross summer hat.

That summer I once or twice biked out in the woods where a Canadian outfit was stationed and they invited me to join them in their daily break for a cup of tea.  This excursion seemed like an adventure, as did socializing with the officers and nurses in our 95^th Officer’s Club.

This concrete rectangle was two or three hundred yards down a gravel road and well worth walking to for a break away from our 12-hour workdays.  I seldom went to enjoy the club but for a night-time party I made a special effort.  At such a gathering in the long summer English twilight one evening the air raid siren went off.  No more party.  We hastened out to go back to our barracks.  Just as we approached a swampy area on our left we realized an enemy plane was coming our way.  Our fast stroll whipped into a run when we heard the whistle of an old-fashioned bomb dropping overhead.  Wham!  We hit the gravel flat on our stomachs.

Seconds later we were covered with mud.  The bomb had landed in a deep marshy mud pond and exploded about 25 yards to our left.  We were safe.