Rose Under Fire

It doesn’t smell like cocoa here. Most of the open space in Camp LA is an ocean of mud, except the freshly surfaced runway. It’s been a beautiful clear day for once, and I had no encounters with other aircraft on our way here, although it was sobering to see the utter destruction of Caen as we crossed the coast, and the clouds of smoke rising over Le Havre in the north.

When Uncle Roger gets things moving, he moves fast. I think that’s partly to make sure no one ever has time to say no to him. Here’s what happened this morning: I got an S chit when I went in to Operations at Hamble, which means ‘Secret’ – I’m not supposed to tell anyone who I’m ferrying or where I collected them. I won’t write down any of that. Also – this isn’t secret – I was supposed to make sure I had my US passport with me as well as my ATA authorisation card and pilot’s licence, and Operations told me to go home and change to full dress uniform with skirt (not slacks) – which usually means you will be taxiing someone important. Only in this case it just meant they didn’t know who, and I ought to be presentable in case I ran into General Patton after I arrived!

Operations didn’t tell me I was going overnight, so I haven’t got anything like toothbrush or pyjamas with me. But it is only for one night and the other girls are having to wash their faces in their helmets, and had to sleep in their ambulances on the way here from Normandy before the tents got set up, so I guess I can spend another night in my clothes. Roger bought me a toothbrush in the grocery store along with a month’s supply of chocolate and gum. I am going to be everybody’s best friend when I get back to Southampton.

I flew an Oxford to get here, carrying Roger and a handful of other passengers. I felt like the whole sky belonged to me. The Seine was with us all the way through France, great big loops of shining silver out the port side, and I’d already had to shout at my passengers to take turns looking because they were throwing me out of balance by crowding on one side of the plane, and then there it was ahead of me – PARIS, FRANCE.

It was a huge gorgeous sprawl of wooded parks and broad avenues, and although we flew over some bomb damage in the suburbs, the closer we got to the middle the more and more beautiful it was, and from the air it didn’t look the least bit damaged. Everybody was glued to the tiny windows and as we got closer they stopped trying to crowd at the same side because the city was all around us. I went down to about 700 feet and it was like flying over a model railway village, with the gleaming white domes of Sacré Coeur presiding over it all and Notre Dame Cathedral like a wedding cake right in the middle. Of course it is the first time I’ve ever seen Paris, and what a way to see it for the first time, flying low over streets full of flags and red-white-and-blue bunting!

By the time we were over Notre Dame I was singing to myself again. The cabin was so noisy I thought no one would be able to hear me. But Uncle Roger and someone else were crouched right behind me looking over my shoulders because there is a better view from the cockpit than in the back, and they heard me. And then everybody joined in.

‘Allons enfants de la Patrie,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!’

I don’t know why I know all the words to the French national anthem. I am just like that. I never forget the words to anything! We learned it in eighth grade when we were just starting to take French.

If Roger and the others hadn’t all joined in I’d have probably ended up in tears – overcome with emotion. As it was, everybody was too noisy and excited for me to start feeling sentimental. We were shouting as I detoured east along the Seine towards the Eiffel Tower, most of my passengers just going ‘Da Da Da DAH!’ since I was the only one who knew all the words.

As we got closer to the Eiffel Tower, one of the wags in the back yelled, ‘Go under it!’

I did not fly under the Eiffel Tower!

But I bet if I’d been flying a fighter plane, something small and zippy, I’d have been tempted. Maybe tomorrow? No, I won’t be that stupid. But the thought that it’s even a possibility makes me warm and happy.

So I didn’t fly under the Eiffel Tower, but I did fly in big lazy circles around it, while everybody pointed and cheered and somebody snapped a million pictures over my shoulder like a sightseer. At that point I’d stopped singing because I was really too low and I had to concentrate on flying.

I’m BUZZING THE EIFFEL TOWER, I thought. JUST WAIT till I tell Daddy I’ve buzzed the Eiffel Tower!

It is the most wonderful thing I have ever done.

The rest of the day has brought me back to earth with a wallop because after I landed and had my camp tour and went shopping, the nurses I am staying with put me to work in an ‘outpatient’ clinic tent of the field hospital – walking wounded only, thank goodness. I was assisting, holding equipment and cutting gauze for bandages, not actually changing dressings myself. To tell the truth, I think they just grabbed the opportunity to use me as a morale booster.

‘From Pennsylvania! A pilot! Shouldn’t you be in school, young lady? Look at those curls!’

It reminded me of when Maddie and Celia and Felicyta and I handed out the strawberries to the soldiers on D-Day – except these men weren’t as frightened. They’d already been to battle and it’s hardened them, or at least made them better at hiding that they’re scared. It makes my heart ache, thinking that none of these brave boys are so badly hurt they won’t be fighting again in a couple of weeks. I don’t want them to be badly hurt, but equally I don’t want them to be killed on the front lines. I have got ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ stuck in my brain. Glory glory Hallelujah!

It is why I am up so late – I have been working on a poem in my head all day, and I want to write it down in case I forget it.

Battle Hymn of 1944

(by Rose Justice)

O let them struggle wisely, these brave boys

and girls around the watchfires; grant they should

fight with realistic hope, not to destroy

all the world’s wrong, but to renew its good.

Make them victors and healers, let them be

unsentimental and compassionate;

spill not their generous blood abundantly

as gifts of stockings and gum and chocolate.

Let them be modest, knowing the irony

of hard-fought peace, our bold united youth

returned in strength across the migrant sea,

rebuilding and restoring law and truth –

then afterward, when the last prayer’s been said,

home for the living, burial for the dead.

*

And now I am going to go to sleep. I have been scribbling this by flashlight under my borrowed US Army blanket. I’m not flying the Oxford back – they want to keep that here for local taxi runs, so one of the RAF pilots at the front will come pick up Roger to take him to his next stop, and I am going to swap planes and take a Spitfire back to Southampton for a new paint job (it is being modified for reconnaissance).

Now that I want to go to sleep I can’t put my notebook and flashlight down on the ground because it’s just an ocean of mud, and I don’t want to get out of bed and wake everybody up hunting for a place to put them. So I guess I’ll shove everything down at my feet and hope I don’t kick it out of bed. I’d put the notebook under my pillow except I haven’t got one! I hope I don’t forget it tomorrow morning.

‘Chiltern Edge’

1 Thames View

Medmenham, nr Marlow

Bucks

4 October 1944

Dear Mrs Beaufort-Stuart,

Thank you for all your thoughtful effort over the past three weeks. I wish I had some good news, or even some small shred of hopeful news, to pass to you and your fellow pilots. But there isn’t anything – not a single thing. As time moves on and so many others are also lost, it seems selfish to keep badgering for an investigation into one more missing aircraft, especially as it wasn’t entirely above board for Rose to be in France in the first place. My husband Roger feels keenly that if he makes a fuss about losing Rose, none of the rest of you young ladies will ever be allowed to fly in Europe.

I do not want to give up hope, but I do not think we are ever going to hear anything now. Roger says her family won’t even get a military pension. I suppose you know that, being a civilian pilot yourself. But it does seem dreadfully unfair.

Perhaps you would like to write to her parents. I think they would appreciate hearing from one of Rose’s friends. Sometimes I think I will send them the poem you copied out for me from her notebook, the ‘Battle Hymn’. ‘Home for the living, burial for the dead.’ And then I think I won’t, as poor Rose will have neither.

I shall leave it up to you.

Thank you again for all your past kindness, to me and to my missing niece.

Yours sincerely,

Edith Justice

Justice Airfield

Mt Jericho, PA

23 November 1944

Thanksgiving Day

Dear First Officer Beaufort-Stuart,

I want to thank you myself for the effort you’ve made on our daughter’s behalf. You say in your letter that you don’t feel you’ve done enough, but in every telegram from Roger and in all Edie’s letters they always mention you. I know how many times you’ve telephoned Edie to check for news – that you supplied your husband’s squadron in Europe with Rose’s picture so they will know who to look for – that you took over the sad task of sorting through Rose’s things and packed them up for Edie to send us. She also sent us the newspaper clipping you gave her about the shot-down gunner who spent three months hiding in France. But I think it is better for us to face the worst than to hold out for good news that will never come.

Even if there is no way for you to turn back time or find out what really happened that morning in September, it means a great deal to all of us to know that Rose had such a devoted friend so far from home.

Thank you also for the photograph from your wedding. It is the last picture we have got of Rose. You all look so excited and happy, and the ivy-covered church nestled in the heather is an idyllic setting for a wartime marriage – my boys noticed your husband has got a football tucked under his arm! It is hard to believe you were only temporarily ‘between bombs’.

I never imagined – never could have imagined – even flying over the hell of no man’s land myself in the last war – that less than thirty years later, another war would cost me a daughter.

On behalf of myself and Rose’s mother Grace Mae, and Rose’s young brothers Karl and Kurt, thank you for being Rose’s friend.

Yours sincerely,

Jack Justice

Krefeld, Germany

10 March 1945

My bonny Maddie-lass,

I am flying Hudsons now, transport and parachutists – dropping madmen deep into Germany on God knows what missions. I only fly one night in four. Mostly I sit around all day smoking or go on schnapps hunts with other idle airmen.

I look for your Rose everywhere I go. I think I am really looking for our Julie, who I know is dead. If I could just win one damned personal victory, you know? We are into Germany, but still not across the Rhine, and all I feel is grief and horror. I cannot describe to you the horror of this war, Maddie. I do not want to. I think the biggest surprise is that I don’t have more friends and big brothers and little sisters who are dead. The destruction we are heaping upon the German cities is unimaginable – it is shameful. It makes me feel ashamed to be one of the victors. And then we come across a row of railway wagons abandoned on a siding under the snow and packed with hundreds of frozen, emaciated bodies – hundreds of them, unexplained, some of them children – and I know that we must be the victors. Whatever the shame – whatever the cost.