Chapter 3. To London

By break of dawn we had eaten breakfast—K Rations, of course.  Nutritious, compact:  crackers and canned meat (Spam), raisins—packed in a cardboard box about the size of the Episcopal Bible typically found in the church pew.  Then, we arrived at Victoria Station.

There we Red Cross Five separated from the military staff of our 95^th General Hospital to taxi into the middle of London to Grosvenor Square and the famous old Grosvenor Hotel.  Delighted with our lodging 3 or the 5 of us sprang into action in our comfortable room, having longed for days to rinse the sea salt from our itching bodies and cardboard hair to launder our underwear.  Aah--

Where to hang the wet clothes?  We managed—travel pins and clotheslines in our ditty bags, as specified by the Washington Red Cross, but THEN, how to move around in the room?  Couldn’t.  Just sleep of course.

Startled by the phone call from the desk in early afternoon our lives plunged into disaster—we had to repack and appear at the lobby with all our belongings within minutes.  We had to move to different lodging.  MOVE?  It was the first we learned that in the European Theatre of Operations, the ETO, transient lodging had been set up for each class and rank of the military but none for Red Cross employees.  So we always had to chance having military personnel show up for whatever US-arranged room we might have been assigned, or had to book into a commercial hotel.  The entire Grosvenor Hotel was part of the pre-arranged military lodging.

SO in our action-ready dress as in our railroad walk to the Aquitania, complete with boots and gas masks and helmets over still wet hair, each of us somehow managed to clutch her heavy load of still wet laundry and appear at the Hotel entrance.  The military transport was not in front, so we had to walk a couple blocks, thus burdened, to find Jeeps in the back.  Off we went we knew not where, away across miles of London it seemed, until we found our next abode.

It was a 5-story oversized white shingled substantial but ancient “lodging and meals looking place.”  Our rooms were in the attic, 5 flights up the impressive old stairway.  Probably we hung our laundry up first, but before going to our rooms we were charged by the woman manager to remember exactly what to do if the bomb sirens went off.  “Descend immediately, warmly dressed; wait at the front door for the warden who will lead you to the shelter under the subway a block or so away.”

Our bedroom was spacious, but SO cold.  There was no hot water and no heat (or minimal heat) in our room.  The English gave up those comforts during the War, we found.  That night, without much discussion we each decided to sleep fully clothed—every outerwear garment we had with us over our outing flannel pjs—except for our shoes.

           Sure enough, off the sirens went in the middle of the night.  From the 5 floors of occupants, guess who was the first one to greet the warden at the door?  I was, 5 flights notwithstanding.  For the hour or two in the shelter we occupants found a space to rest our backs against a concrete wall as we tried to sleep sitting on the cold concrete.  In silence except for an occasional child’s lament that first night in England was the only time I went into a shelter.  Not the only time I was in the bombings though.