大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Nadine from the People's War team on behalf of May Marshall and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I volunteered to join the WAAF in 1941 when I was 21 years old, married and my husband, now in the RAF, was on his way to some years in Malta and then to Bletchley Park.

I did my initial training in Bridgnorth then, in the incredibly bitter winter of 1941/42, I was one of a company of WAAF who de-trained at Bridlington. I had never seen the effects of war 鈥� nor had the other girls 鈥� and we were very frightened. That first glimpse of life to come was always so vivid in my mind that, later, I wrote this poem 鈥淭he New Intake鈥�.

In 2001 it won the Scottish Association of Writers鈥� Scholarship and the Dorothy Dunbar Trophy for Poetry. It鈥檚 published in the book 鈥淢oment on Moment鈥� (now in its 3rd Impression) so I think it conveys the feelings we had on that night with its bomber鈥檚 moon.

The second poem was of another scene printed for ever on my mind, I think (but I鈥檓 not certain after all this time) that I saw it from Flamborough Head. By that time, after many and varied postings, I had met servicemen and women of all Services who knew too well what they faced as the norm in their lives. It鈥檚 easy to be brave at a critical moment but these ordinary people wrestled with fear day after day, night after night with little respite. It requires a mind-set that is difficult to visualise now and it moves me to this day to think of them.

I have deleted Brignorth for my main memories there are of shock and amusement and I would rather show the other side of that time as a small tribute to those who lived and died then. While we who knew them live, they are not forgotten.

The New Intake

From the station
the road lies empty, desolate,
and nothing moves here but ourselves
and the shadows that move with us.
On one side the dark gleam of the sea,
on the other the cold moon shining
through gaping windows and shattered roofs,
on houses laid waste, homes blown apart.
there is no sound but the regular
fall of our marching feet echoing
back and back from the broken walls.
The Firm beat that belies the quaking
hearts, the bitten lips of green girls
fresh from home, marching down the road
that leads to war.

Convoy

From the headland
I saw them gather, shadow after shadow
thickening out of the winter dusk,
taking station in the thin sea mist.

In the morning
they were gone: gone out over the horizon
to the green seas and jostling floes
where the endless nights flicker and burn.

Where the great bergs
loom out of the dark, pale ghosts whose killing breath
numbs mind and body, muscle and blood;
where, deep and silent, the wolf pack waits.

Time took them all
and those who stayed sleep far below the tides
of seas, of years and age. And near them,
now in perfect amity, the young wolves lie.

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