Voices on the Wind - Assault

In her drugged sleep, she also relived that dreadful encounter with her father. He’d been at sea (of course) when she’d been accepted into the WAAF and told to report. She’d already been inducted and completed ‘square bashing’ (basic training) before her father finally had shore leave. He had agreed to meet her for tea at Selfridges, and she had arrived bursting with pride in her uniform. She’d given him her best, newly minted salute, and he’d responded with, “What are you doing in that ridiculous uniform?”

“Surely Mother told you I’d volunteered?” Candice had answered, crestfallen.

“Your mother did no such thing! We see eye-to-eye on little enough as it is without you giving us grounds for further aggravation. What on earth made you go and do something as silly as join the WAAF?”

“I left school ages ago. I don’t want to sit around doing nothing at a time like this. I want to do something useful. I mean, not just something useful, I want to fight Hitler.”

“Fighting is no business for women, much less young ladies. I thought I’d made myself clear on that point when you pestered me about letters of recommendation to join the WRNS.”

“What you said, Father, was that you weren’t going to impose on your colleagues by asking them for favours. You said it was bad for discipline to be beholden to men of lower rank and completely inappropriate for a lower-ranking officer to ask a superior for help on account of a daughter. You suggested it would damage your standing to be seen begging for letters of recommendation.”

“Quite.”

“Well, the WAAF doesn’t require letters of recommendation like the WRNS does, so I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

“You are singularly dense. It should have been perfectly obvious that I opposed this course of action no matter what uniform you think makes you look best.”

That flippant remark had hurt more than anything else he’d said because it underlined just how little her father knew her. Candice had never considered the cut of the uniform when volunteering for the services, but her attempts to explain her patriotic motives had been dismissed as ‘naïve’ and ‘foolish fantasies.’ “War,” her father insisted, “is not an adventure novel with a romantic hero who is going to rescue you whenever things get difficult.”

When she and her father parted less than an hour later, she had left determined to prove she wasn’t interested in romance or chic uniforms. She’d vowed to herself that she would make a genuine contribution to the war effort. At the time, she’d pictured dashing through drenching rain to deliver vital dispatches by motorcycle or packing parachutes for courageous bomber crews or even handling barrage balloons — all things the recruiter had mentioned as trades open to WAAF.

Yet when she received her assignment shortly after that disastrous tea with her father, she had been disheartened to discover she’d been assigned to serve as a ‘clerk, special duties.’ A clerk? She pictured typing, shorthand, filing papers and no doubt making tea for officers. None of it seemed like vital war work. It hardly sounded like war work at all. She could be a clerk at the local library or a bank. She hadn’t joined the WAAF to type and file, she objected inwardly. Yet, Candice was a well-brought-up young lady, and she reported punctually to the address given without a peep of protest or any outward sign of discontent.

Only after she had been sworn to secrecy had she learned that her application to the WAAF had attracted favourable attention because she had noted on it that she spoke fluent German. She owed her German to her maternal grandparents. Her mother’s father had studied archaeology at the University of Tuebingen and fallen in love with one of his colleagues’ sisters. The courtship had lasted three years, during which time her grandfather had obtained his PhD — and a masterful command of German. His announced intention to marry ‘a German girl’ had produced consternation and opposition from his own and his prospective bride’s families. Stubbornly the couple had weathered the storm, resisting all parental pressure to break up, until after over a year of resistance both sets of parents grudgingly capitulated. After her grandfather returned to England with his new bride, however, no one ever again wondered why the young English archaeologist had fallen for ‘that German girl:’ her looks were dazzling.

Although Candice was commonly viewed as a paler and less brilliant imitation of the original, no one doubted that Candice had taken after her gorgeous German grandmother. She had inherited her blonde hair, her vivid blue eyes and her slender but gracefully curved figure. She had also learned German easily because, as her parents became increasingly estranged, she had been shunted off to spend most of her school holidays with her maternal grandparents. Her grandparents, in turn, entertained themselves by teaching their bright-eyed, fair-haired little granddaughter German. As the tensions with Germany grew and Hitler’s policies became increasingly outrageous, Candice became ashamed of her German relatives and of speaking the language of ‘the Hun.’ After the war started, she’d avoided the hated language altogether.

The WAAF recruiters and the RAF saw things differently. When tested, her fluent and vernacular command of German had delighted the RAF linguists. She was whisked away for intense training in Morse Code. Only on completion of this course was she informed that she had been assigned to the ‘Y-Service.’ Although she’d never heard of it, she was not surprised to discover her duties entailed listening to and transcribing German voice and Morse communications.

Candice was soon working and living in freezing wooden huts on the coast of Scotland along with a half-dozen, similarly bilingual young WAAFs. In ‘watches’ they listened to enemy signals around the clock. At first the work was rather boring. Day after day, they did nothing but pick up and record routine messages from German merchant ships — until the morning of 8 April 1940. Shortly after coming on watch that fateful day, Candice picked up signals from two German destroyers engaging a British destroyer — the first evidence that German warships were off Trondheim. She was still on duty when HMS Glowworm suicidally rammed the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper — very much to the astonishment and wonder of the German witnesses. Although it was a short transmission from the Glowworm itself, not Candice’s interception of German naval chatter, that convinced the Admiralty to order reinforcements to the location, her accurate interpretation of the German signals and the fact that she had instantly grasped the significance of what she’d intercepted, won Candice the attention of her own chain-of-command. She was promoted to Flight Sergeant — and she’d learned just how important her work could be.

During the Battle of Britain, she was assigned to a Y-station on the Isle of Wight. Here she and her colleagues intercepted radio transmissions between German aircraft and their controllers. The urgency of the situation made the work extremely stressful and exhausting. Yet in October Candice was among those who intercepted signals indicating a withdrawal of German land forces; she realised at once that the invasion of England had been postponed ‘indefinitely.’ Her relief and sense of accomplishment compensated for all the bad moments that had gone before. The icing on the cake, or so it had seemed at the time, was to be recommended for The King’s Commission.

Yet officer training had proven a disappointment. At the Y-Stations, the WAAFs were a close-knit community, both working and spending their off-duty time together. The friendships made were strong and enduring. At officer training, on the other hand, she’d moved beyond the guarded and isolated environment of the Y-branch. Most WAAF officers were in “Admin,” and their work entailed managing, guiding and disciplining other WAAFs. They could talk about what they did and share experiences and seek advice. Candice could neither relate to their duties nor speak of her own. The others viewed her as stand-offish and snotty; they increasingly excluded her from their frequent socializing. She’d felt again like the unwanted, late-born daughter who had been an outsider at school.

Now, those feelings of isolation, combined with the morphine, drew her down into a recurring nightmare. She was trapped in a dark dungeon where she understood no one, and no one understood her. She did not know where she was or why, but whenever she tried to ask questions, she found herself completely mute. She mouthed words, but no sound came out. The shadows that surrounded her grew increasingly threatening. She shrank under them, dwarfed to a trembling mouse in a trap. Sometimes they badgered her with hackneyed phrases like “loose lips sink ships” and “careless talk costs lives.” At other times, they transformed themselves into caricatures of Gestapo agents out of a bad film. Rather than urging silence, they spat and slavered in pseudo-German demanding that she reveal official secrets. Again and again, she woke up drenched in sweat and panting with fear.