Three miles outside Coventry, a dense cloud of oily black smoke filled the horizon, tinted with a reddish glow. The city was on fire from end to end. Their convoy halted beside a group of dazed refugees, staggering away from the stricken city as if sleepwalking. George fetched his shovel and went ahead with the vicar to help in the rescue operation, while Audrey climbed from the car to distribute food and water and blankets to the refugees. She dug out her first aid kit to bandage wounds and burns. Many survivors had cuts from broken windows, shattered by the explosions. Audrey and the other women of the WVS worked nonstop as victims with smoke-reddened eyes and sooty faces continued to come throughout the morning.
Eventually, Audrey and the others got back in their cars and drove toward the city, where the real horror began. When they could go no farther, the roads blocked by debris, she and the other women got out and walked, passing out food and water to the workers digging for survivors in the rubble. She couldn’t bear to look at the bodies lined up in rows outside the remains of their homes. Shards of glass splintered beneath her shoes as Audrey offered water and bandaged wounds, accompanied by the roar of distant flames, the clang of ambulance bells and fire engines, the cries and moans of survivors. She wanted to sit down in the dust and weep over the tragedy and destruction she was witnessing. Instead, she silently prayed for the strength to continue for as long as she was needed. And she was badly needed.
She had no idea how much time passed—hours? Days? She knelt on the ground, offering water to an elderly man, when someone called her name. Rev. Hamlin stood over her. George stood beside him, his shoulders slumped, his hands and tan, whiskery face covered with soot. “We’ve done all we can for today,” the vicar said. “It’s time to go home.” He offered his hand to help Audrey to her feet. Somehow, the other volunteers from the village made their way back to the cars, now emptied of supplies, their strength exhausted.
Audrey’s eyes burned from smoke as she drove. She would never forget this day for as long as she lived. And the war was far from over. What more would people be forced to endure? Would her nation hold firm or fall to the Nazis as so many others had? There were no answers. Only endless questions and agonizing uncertainty. God, help us, she silently prayed. Please . . . please . . . help us all!
LONDON
Eve cleared off her desk and slipped the cover over her typewriter for the night. She had just enough time to hurry home and eat before changing into her Auxiliary Fire Service uniform and reporting for night duty with the other volunteers.
She laid her hand on Iris’s typewriter in silent tribute. Iris’s desk was still unoccupied. She had never returned. When Eve last saw her, Iris was heading to an East End school with her grandmother to wait for a government bus to take them to a shelter. Eve knew from the memos she’d typed at the Ministry of Information that there’d been a mix-up. The buses never arrived at the school. While Eve had huddled in the Anderson shelter all night with Mum and the other servants, a bomb struck the school. Sixteen hundred people were injured in that nightlong raid. Four hundred and thirty had died. Eve longed to return and search for Iris and her family, but London’s East End was so utterly devastated, she knew she would never find the block of houses where Iris’s little cottage once sat.
Eve hunched her shoulders against the November wind that blew through her jacket as she left the ministry building. She hurried to the stairs to the Underground, the streets crowded with jostling people heading home after work. Life went on in London in spite of the widespread damage and destruction. The Nazis had bombed the city relentlessly every night for the past month, striking countless historic landmarks—St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Mansion House, the Law Courts, even Buckingham Palace.
The Nazis dropped incendiaries first, igniting fires to guide their bombers through the blackout. Sandbags lay piled on every street to douse the fires. Every home and business had a stirrup hand pump, and everyone in London knew how to use it.
Eve detoured around a cordoned-off street, passing an apartment building with its outer wall sheared off, leaving people’s belongings dangling on tilting floors. She shuffled down the stairs to the Underground with hundreds of others. The station platforms, the stairs, and even the rails would soon fill with people who didn’t have an Anderson shelter in their yard or a public shelter nearby. Some people had already lined up to stake claim to their nightly spot. They were supposed to stay behind the yellow lines until after the evening commute before settling down to endure another night of terror, but many ignored the rules.