Chapter 4. Friends from Across the Sea
The next morning, I arrived around 9:30. It was sunny and dry, so I went to Dolly's room to take her back out to the summer house. She seemed a little subdued, but I put this down to the medication she'd received the previous afternoon.
Once installed in her preferred spot, a glass of whisky in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, Dolly brightened up. I started the recording and, for continuity, I summarised where we'd got to: she was in the Air Transport Auxiliary and had been in a short-lived relationship with Ivy. Her face took on a wistful expression, and then she resumed her story:
TRANSCRIPT 4:
I had several brief liaisons over the next few months - typically aircrew and ground crew at the various stations I visited. Unfortunately, I wasn't keeping any records in those days. They were fun, but always short-lived and hurried. I'd be at an airfield for a day or two, and then I'd fly off and maybe wouldn't return there for months, if ever.
After I'd been flying for maybe a year - it must've been late 1943 by then - the powers that be decided that they wanted me to train some new pilots, so they promoted me to Pilot Officer and based me at Blackbushe in Hampshire. I'd hoped they would return me to Manston so I could resume my affair with Ivy, but it was not to be.
Anyway, just up the road in Aldershot, a large group of American GIs had arrived. I frequented a pub with a couple of WAAFs I was training, which was in Yateley, a village close to the airfield. We'd become regulars, and Harry, the landlord, looked after us. He was a big man. He'd been an agricultural labourer when he was younger and was built, as an Australian I knew quaintly put it, 'like a brick shit-house'. An aunt of his who'd married well had died childless a few years earlier and left Harry some money, and he decided that he'd like to run a pub. It was a job that suited him, and we liked his manner. Other pubs were less than welcoming to unaccompanied women, but Harry took the view that, as we were in uniform, we were doing our bit and as good as our male counterparts.
"My Connie, she's in the WRNS," he told us one evening, "And she was almost killed in the Portsmouth bombings. She's got as much guts as any of the men around her, and she'd go to sea if they'd let her. You girls do a dangerous job, ferrying them aircraft around when there's Jerries on the prowl, so respect to you. You're welcome in my pub any time."
Anyway, after we'd been at Blackbushe for around six months, half a dozen black servicemen came in. We were all fascinated. We'd never seen black men before, and these were all very smart, tall, well-built and handsome. Or, at least, I thought so. Peggy, one of my students, said she didn't like the idea of 'darkies' touching her, but Emily, who'd had a couple of drinks by then, said she'd be very happy for them to touch her - anywhere they wanted. I chuckled; at twenty-one I was a mature woman of the world compared to these two nineteen-year-old ingenues, but I could see my younger self in my young student.
Then two of the men came over to us and offered to buy us drinks. Peggy refused, but Emily and I were only too happy for some exotic male company. We chatted for a while, and they were so polite and friendly that I think even Peggy was won over. There was one called Aaron who seemed to focus on me. I thought he was very handsome, with lovely smooth skin the colour of mahogany. He had the whitest teeth I'd ever seen, and big, dark expressive eyes. We talked about where they were from - Louisiana and Georgia, it seemed, places that seemed unbelievably exotic to we girls. We had, of course, watched 'Gone With the Wind', which painted a very sparse and rose-tinted image of the lot of the black men and women in those states. Aaron and his friends were quite tight-lipped about conditions there, but were clearly happy to be in a pub, owned by a white man, talking with white women, with nobody objecting.
That is, until about a week later. We'd agreed to meet the boys in the same pub and were chatting amiably. Aaron had provided, with no thought of a trade, the usual barter goods; cigarettes and chocolate. He said it was no hardship for him; he didn't smoke, and he didn't like the taste of chocolate, so he was happy to pass on his ration to his friends. We'd told him about the rationing regime that we were under, and he was appalled and promised to find us some other goodies.
And then the door opened and five white GIs came in, talking loudly. As they were headed to the bar, they caught sight of our little group. Their expressions changed, and they came across to our table.
"What you doin' here, boy?" an unattractive, red-faced corporal virtually bellowed at Aaron. "You know the rules. Git out, now!"
[Dolly did a very passable impression of a Southern US accent]
"Excuse me, corporal, but my friend here has as much right to be in this pub as you do. We happen to be having a civilised conversation. Kindly get yourself a drink and leave us alone."
The corporal gave me a look of disdain. "So, nigger, you got yourself a white whore have you?" he sneered at Aaron. "Well, it's offending decent people. Git outta here before things get rough."
Aaron was about to respond when I touched his arm. I was incensed. I said "Corporal, what's your name? I'm a Pilot Officer, and outrank you by quite a long way. I want to know who you are so I can report you to your superior officer."
"I don't take no orders from no nigger-loving whore," he replied with an evil leer. "You and your nigger friends need to get out of here right now. You're offending decent folk."
"If by decent folk, you're talking about yourselves, I think you've got that wrong," Harry said from behind the group. "This is my pub, and I decide who's decent and who ain't, and who's allowed in and who ain't. You lot need to get out right now and not come back 'til you've learned some manners. You've just insulted a very good friend of mine and a group of brave men who are serving their country. Me, I don't take that lightly. If you want to argue about it, I suggest we do so outside." I noticed he was holding a cricket bat, his preferred weapon.
"Hey, we have every right to be here, which is more than you can say for these niggers," he spat back. I looked at his crooked teeth and his nasty leer and realised that his face would look even nastier with those teeth knocked down his throat. I got up.
"You've been asked nicely by the proprietor of this establishment to leave. You've been ordered to identify yourself by a superior officer and have refused to obey an order. Our next move will be to call the Military Police. You can comply, or you can leave and never return. What's it to be?"
He grinned and glanced over at his evil-looking pals. "I see five against one. That ain't great odds where I come from."
"But you're not where you come from," said a British squaddie at the next table. "And I'd count five against, oh..." He looked around as a bunch of men in uniform started to stand up. "That looks like five against twenty to me. That ain't great odds where we come from. Which is here."
Harry was patting the cricket bat against his leg. The corporal looked around with another of his nasty leers. Then he turned and spat on me. Aaron jumped up, but I was there first. Seconds later, the corporal was on the floor, blood streaming from his nose, clutching his groin and breathing heavily. His friends looked on aghast that their NCO had been put on the floor by a mere broad.
"Boys," I said to the group of men in uniform who were now standing around, would you please open up the corporal's shirt and tell me the name on his dog tags, as I don't want to soil my hands on that piece of shit any more than I've already done." I think the men were surprised at a woman using bad language - if only they knew what I was prepared to say in the bedroom - but they cheered. They did as I asked, then threw him and his friends outside. Several of the burlier squaddies waited until the GIs departed up the road before returning. Harry gave me a cloth to wipe the spittle off my uniform.
