Miss Radford talked to the pupils about the Great War and she told the class that in his training, her brother had to stick a bayonet into a sack of straw and that he kept on having mental images of blood pouring out. One of the girls surprised Madge by almost fainting at the very thought of blood spurting from a sack, but Miss Radford calmed her down and went on to explain that the war had been a difficult time, particularly for the men who had to go off and fight. Madge looked down at her desk as she thought about her dad and wondered what he had thought about the war. She knew that he’d been to India, though all he said was that it was jolly hot.
‘This week,’ Miss Radford said, ‘I’d like you all to take part in recording your own bit of history. Please ask your fathers and write half a page about their war experience, and please bring it back next week.’
Madge looked up. She was determined to make her history project the best in the class. When school finished she rushed home and started planning her questions. Charles had barely been through the door a minute when Madge told him about the project.
His face paled and Madge knew instantly that she had made a mistake. He marched straight upstairs and wouldn’t come down for dinner. Madge knew he was furious because she could hear him telling her mother through the walls that he was going directly to the school in the morning to register a complaint.
‘That was the war to end all wars and it should never even be mentioned!’ he said to her mother. ‘There will never ever be another war like it and I don’t want her worrying about that sort of thing.’
It was the first and last time Madge raised the subject; she never wanted to see her father that worked up again.
By the time Madge was a teenager her father was suffering from more and more of his flu bouts, with nausea and very high fevers. During these episodes, he would shake so much that his bed banged violently against the bedroom wall. It was frightening for the family, who had never seen anyone quite so ill, but the doctors said he was just unusually susceptible to the illness.
At the end of November 1938, when Madge was fifteen years old, her father was struck by yet another bout of fever which worried the doctor so much he was admitted to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Dover. After a short stay there, Charles was transferred to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London, where he died just a few days later on 8 December.
Lily was determined not to let her grief at the loss of her beloved husband affect her three daughters and bravely insisted that life should continue as normal. To avoid even more emotional upset within the household she decided it would be better if Madge, Doreen and Doris didn’t attend the funeral. The girls were distraught at the loss of their father, but carried on as normally as they could, albeit with a sadness in their hearts that hadn’t been there before. Madge, still a teenager but that bit older than her sisters, was far from convinced by the doctor’s diagnosis that flu was the cause of her father’s death.
The fun-filled childhood that the three sisters had so enjoyed came to an abrupt end with the sudden loss of their father. Christmas Day 1938 should have been a time of merriment with a chorus of neighbours and friends crowded around Charles’s piano for hours on end. Instead there was just silence and sadness.
3
War is Declared
The new year came and Madge vowed that she’d help Mum and her sisters recover from Dad’s death. As the months passed they all tried to put on a brave face, but couldn’t help but notice the gap at the head of the table where Dad used to sit.
On 3 September 1939, Madge, as usual, took her sisters to Sunday school in the stark Wesleyan chapel near their home, and found herself staring out of the window as she daydreamed. She had left school that summer, aged sixteen, and had enrolled at a commercial college to learn skills that included shorthand and typing. Madge had always wanted to be a hairdresser but you had to pay a hundred pounds to serve an apprenticeship and that sort of money was out of the question. Dad hadn’t left them much and Mum was struggling to get by as it was.
She suddenly realised the rest of the Sunday school pupils had begun whispering. The teacher was usually very strict about talking in class but she wasn’t at her desk in front of the board. Instead, she was huddled around the radio along with some of the other volunteers.
‘Turn it up, I can’t hear,’ someone said.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s clipped voice echoed loud and clear around the hall.
‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room in 10 Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by
