“Let’s hope so. I know they’re desperate for ambulance drivers.”
“All right, listen up,” the sergeant major barked when the drilling ended. “Before you begin your driving courses, everyone must pass the gas drill.”
“This doesn’t sound good,” Eve mumbled. She had confided her fear of enclosed spaces to Audrey, her dread of being buried alive. Even donning her cumbersome gas mask made Eve feel trapped. It was the only fear Audrey had ever known her to admit.
“Everyone must suit up in her gas mask,” the commander explained. “We’ll go into that hut over there and the gas will be turned on. When the red light flashes, take off your mask and wait until it stops flashing. Then make your way to an exit door and run out.”
“Just don’t panic, Eve,” Audrey whispered as they pulled their masks from their cases and slipped them on. “Obviously, the gas won’t be lethal.”
“It’s this mask that’s terrifying!”
“Whenever I need to stay calm, I recite the Lord’s Prayer. You can do this, Eve.” The role reversal was new to both of them.
With her mask in place, Audrey crowded into the windowless hut with Eve and sat down beside her on one of the benches, noting where the two exits were. She took Eve’s hand as the lights went out and the room filled with an eerie gray fog, so thick she could barely see her hand in front of her face. Her fingers ached from Eve’s grip. Hours seemed to pass before the red light flashed, painting the fog with its glow. Eve released Audrey’s hand and ripped off her mask. Audrey did the same, fighting the urge to inhale a panic-stricken breath. The light flashed forever. Audrey feared her lungs would burst. She heard one of the other girls cry out. Several began to cough. The moment the flashing stopped, Audrey grabbed Eve’s hand and towed her through the pushing, shoving mob toward the nearest door, grateful in the pitch-darkness that she’d noted where it was. She found the latch and flung open the door. The chilly rain felt wonderful as she lifted her face to the sky and breathed.
“We passed!” Eve said with a shaky grin. But it took several minutes for the color to return to Eve’s face and for Audrey’s heart to slow down. A corporal rounded up the choking, weeping girls who’d failed the test, including the bully, Irene.
Afterwards, the corporal assigned Audrey and Eve to a squadron of twenty-five women. “For the next few weeks,” their new leader explained, “your training course will consist of vehicle driving, vehicle maintenance, first aid classes, anti-gas drills, and map-reading tests.”
“Driving will be easy for us,” Eve predicted with her usual confidence. Audrey thought so, too. But neither of them had counted on the difficult double-clutching that the lorries and ambulances required. The practice vans were mounted on blocks so students could learn to handle the transmissions without moving anywhere, and Audrey ground through a lot of gears on the vehicles before getting the hang of it.
As if the uniforms weren’t bad enough, they were issued ugly gray dungarees to wear for the vehicle maintenance classes, taught in garages so cold Audrey feared her fingers would freeze off. She and Eve learned to change tires and perform routine maintenance and repairs on their ambulances. Map reading taught them to navigate in their assigned districts without signs. They learned to travel on the worst types of roads, at night, with hooded headlamps, in the pitch-dark of the blackout. Through it all, Audrey was bullied, insulted, shamed, and—once in a while—praised.
“We’re fighting for our homes,” their instructor reminded them after a particularly discouraging day when everything went wrong. “There’s no time to cry for your mum.” Audrey risked a glance at Eve as she blinked away tears, wondering if Eve would shout that they’d both lost their mums, thanks to Hitler’s bombs. But Eve remained stoic.
After weeks of the most grueling work she’d ever accomplished, Audrey and the others faced a final test—driving their ambulances at night down an assigned route, wearing a gas mask and full gas-protection gear. Eve clearly grew increasingly nervous with each piece of equipment she donned. When she peered at Audrey through her gas mask, Eve had fear in her eyes. “You can do this,” Audrey said, though she wondered if Eve even understood her with her mask-garbled voice. They studied their maps a final time, then each drove away on their assigned routes.
Audrey’s eyes strained to the limit as she drove. She wouldn’t think about all the disaster stories she’d heard—crashing into cows or vehicles in the dark, driving off the road into swamps and fields. Seated beside her, the instructor gave no hint of how well or poorly Audrey was doing until they came to a final stop back at the training center.