P.2 chapter 7. Hospital

The war began to make itself felt. Griff was stationed at Siloth on the Solway Firth flying in Blenheims on convoy patrol and he managed to arrange “digs” for us so we could go and be with him. To me it seemed a dreary place, with drab grey houses and unfriendly people. Our landlady was curt and unhelpful and as a result, I had to keep very quiet and only play with one toy at a time. My favourite toy was a Koala Bear purse given to me by a friend of Griff’s called Eric Anderson and I took it everywhere under my arm. One day in the cold tiled bakers shop, which didn’t even smell of bread and in which I never saw a cake of any description whatsoever, a Siloth inhabitant with spots, curlers and a headscarf noticed my beloved Koala Bear purse. “What you got there?” she asked sourly “A rat?” Although seething at this slur I was  trained to be polite to adults and explained. On hearing it was Australian she sniffed and ignoring me bought her bread. I suppose it could have been an example of the Siloth sense of humour but I never saw any other evidence of this all the time we were there.

We used to have breakfast at the square table which fitted into the bay of the front room. One morning I seemed to have picked up some idea of Griff’s danger, “Don’t crash will you daddy?” I said. The colour drained from my mothers face and she glared at me. “No Fleur, I wont” he said gravley. Just before lunch that very day, two airmen came to the door. My mother answered it and I heard her cry out. There was a murmur of voices and she was gone without a word to me. The landlady came in, almost unrecognisable for she was smiling. She bought in my dinner and let me play with all my toys.
It did not take a great brain to twig that something was seriously up. I would not go to bed without my mother and eventually fell asleep in the armchair. She came home very late indeed. Long afterwards she told me how it had been.

The runway at Siloth was uncomfortably short and Griff’s pilot had overshot. The plane crashed and Griff’s feet were caught and crushed. In frantic attempts to get out and free himself before the plane exploded, he had badly damaged his hand and also broken his arm. As she was driven to the airfield, Marjorie saw the huge black column of smoke and the wrecked aircraft surrounded by fire engine and ambulances which were called “blood wagons”. “I don’t want to see him if he’s dead” she said in terror, “you can take me back home if he’s dead”. On arrival they found Griff had already been taken off to Carlisle hospital in an ambulance, but he was alive so they followed. Marjories fear at Griff’s condition was not helped when she had to get to him by walking through a ward of terribly injured airmen, mostly young pilots who had been badly burned.some of them had lost nearly all the features that make a face and some had grotesque skin grafts from where their noses had been to their arm which looked like Elephants trunks. They put up a brave show at Marjories entrance, and those that could whistled and cat called as she walked through. She had been around airmen long enough to know the form and in spite of her anxiety, she smiled and said “hello boys”.

As a result of seeing these terrible injuries Griff later maintained that if he were to crash again, he would rather be killed outright than gruesomely maimed. There was no conception then of the wonders in plastic surgery that were to be achieved by Archie Mckindee and the guinea pigs. Later on as she went to and fro, Marjorie would chat to the pilots. “Is there anything I can bring you in?” she asked, “only one thing, knitting needles and as many as you can find”. Mystified she collected a good supply and bought them in. She thought perhaps it was some kind of occupational therapy in progress. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, what are they for?” she enquired seeing the joy with which they were received. “they are very good for scratching inside the plasters” came the reply. Luckily Griff had not been burned , but his foot was in very bad shape and so was one hand. He was heavily sedated, but the tears poured unceasingly down his face, although not in bad pain, he was unable to stop them. Marjorie went every day just to be with him. Very often he was unable to talk, but he could sense her presence and was glad of it.

This period although painful for my parents was great fun for me. I just saw Griff once, heavily bandaged and burst into tears of sympathy which made him feel terrible so I was kept away and practically adopted by the matron of Carlisle Hospital and her husband who I quickly came to know as Jim. I became almost entirely spoilt and dressed in a minute nurses uniform plus all the accoutrements I followed the matron on her rounds. Afterwards I had meals with them both in her sitting room. I particularly remember some delicious high-teas. They tried to teach me to speak Scots for they both came from Scotland and I learned to say ‘sconns’ instead of scones and ‘Ah dinnae ken’ instead of I don’t know. I was showered with toys and painting and drawing books to take home and on one occasion  three funny masks with which I attempted to frighten the passengers on the train from Carlisle back to Siloth. Eventually the matron and her husband became so besotted with their new toy that they did everything they could to try to make Marjorie give me up to them for adoption, a complication in her life that she did not then need!
Eventually Griff was well on the road to recovery, due, so the doctor told him to his love of beer. “Your blood is so full of hops,” he told Griff, “gangrene didn’t stand an earthly”. We went home to Red Gates and waited impatiently for his return. When he came home at last, Griff was still in plaster and the toes peeping out of it were swollen and black. He never complained about pain during the day, but in the night when he was asleep, Marjorie was kept awake by his involuntary groans, so she knew that he was suffering quite badly. Allways a good nurturer, she was in her element being nurse and made a tremendous fuss of him which he thoroughly enjoyed. It was at this time when he spent many weeks convalescing, that I got to know and appreciate him as  my friend as well as my daddy. One of my treasured memories is of joining him for breakfast in bed. My mother would prepare whatever was available  from the meagre rations. I would snuggle next to him and beg the occasional forkful. Even today, the smell of fried tomatoes smothered in pepper brings back Griff’s generous and amiable presence. “My favourite fruit,” he would say as he speared a sausage and turned it round on his fork anticipating the taste with relish, “Is the sausage, and also the apple pie”.

His hand healed well, but he had to do exercises to regain the proper use of the muscles. One exercise was to knead a small ball constantly. He set up the outhouse behind the garage as a little workshop and took up woodcarving and carpentry. There wasn’t much room since it was little more than a shed but he kept the door open and a yard or so away Marjorie kept the kitchen door open and supplied him with constant cups of tea with condensed milk. He made a set of shields for the Squadron Mess and little wooden brooches of Flying Officer Kite and Pilot Officer Prune who were cartoon characters appearing in the R.A.F magazine. For me he made a jointed Airman doll about four inches high and a girl friend to match, a beautiful dolls house to match which was a replica of Red Gates and my favourite a tiny model of a horse and cart.
I rather resented the fact that, at the time, I was forbidden to go into the outhouse. I assumed it was because they thought I might break something or cut myself on the tools. I knew that inside were models of aeroplanes to help Griff with aircraft recognition, some of which he’d modeled in perspex and more exciting, escape kits which had silk scarves with maps of germany on and tins full of Horlicks tablets, these did often come my way and were delicious. What I didn’t know was that the old Piccadilly cigarette tins were, not full of nails but bullets. After the war when an amnesty for weapons was announced Marjorie got the local bobby to come round to clear the ammunition she knew was there and he was shaken. Griff had scrounged to such good effect that he had enough stuff to hold off half an army!

As he gradually got much better and the plaster came off, Griff served the war effort by touring the aircraft factories giving “pep talks”. We have some very good publicity photographs of him at this time and you can see that he
is wearing a built up shoe and using a stick to help him walk. There was often a show put on called “wings for victory” and his talks were billed “out of the blue to talk to you”. The stick was soon discarded and because his injured leg had ended up shorter than the other one, he could have quite reasonably opted for a desk job and sat out the rest of the war. However, not only did he love flying, he felt that it was his duty, since due to fatalities, there was a chronic shortage of trained aircrew. He did all he could to get back in to the air and succeeded. I have a painful memory of the evening he broke this to Marjorie. I was playing with my toys and only half listening to the argument going on over my head. Suddenly my mother said; “Fleur, tell Daddy he mustn’t go!” “Don’t go daddy,” I repeated obediently without any urgency at all, hardly realising what it was all about. “Oh, Oh, that’s no good,” she cried in anguished tones frightening me so I began to cry. “Marjorie, that’s quite unfair”, said Griff  putting an arm around her shoulders “Fleur, go on up to bed”. I went like a shot, glad to get out of such an emotionally charged atmosphere, and as I reached the top of the stairs heard her wail “Why you, haven’t you done enough? let someone else do it!” For a long time we hardly saw anything of Griff, I went to school and played on the homesteads, hardly aware of the war at all. Sometimes, as I lay on the lawn sunbathing, or made daisy chains, an aeroplane would roar overhead and I would wave on the off-chance it was him, and at school there were new air-raid shelters that smelled of damp bricks and motar but although bombs dropped and sirens sounded I managed to take it all for granted.