Month: November 2025

If there had been a corner to be turned, Gertie had turned it. Slowly, she became less melancholy and threw herself into her ATS duties, as if she really enjoyed being a ‘skivvy’. One day, just before Christmas and the first anniversary of their arrival at Inglis Barracks, Maddie asked her friend why. Why she

It was five o’clock in the morning of a very special day. Maddie’s twenty fifth birthday. It didn’t feel much like a celebration though, and no one else in the billet even knew about it. Only Gertie, who had other things on her mind, who was still swamped by sorrow. Besides, Gertie wasn’t even there.

There was nothing they could do. That’s what the doctors had said. On the fifth of September, a day that was as black outside as the depression inside the tiny room where Maddie now sat at her friend’s bedside, Gertrude Adams had lost her baby. Its tiny heart stopped beating. The elderly doctor who examined

The screaming began as soon as the telegram arrived. Gertie didn’t open it, even though it was addressed to her. That depressing task was left to Maddie, who picked it up from the floor, where her friend had flung it. People rarely got telegrams. Normal people at least. They all knew that, and a couple

He woke up gradually, his eyes half lidded, unable to focus. They felt like they’d been washed in sand. He moved his head slowly from side to side, a pain shooting through his neck. His throat was raw, and his mouth was parched, like an arid desert. His tongue felt swollen, a tight fit in

Rudi Fischer didn’t think of himself as a coward, but maybe he was. Otherwise, why would he still be sitting there in the mess hall, weighing up the options? Surely there was only one option? Speak up. Try and prevent a massacre. Even if that meant telling the camp guards what he knew: that the

It was a Sunday morning and when Maddie went into the kitchen, she found a gaggle of excited ATS girls gathered around Betty Wooten. Betty was a kind of unofficial den mother. Some of the younger girls went to her with their problems for she was much older than the others. Exactly how old was

Maddie had settled into a routine. And routine was always good to hold on to. To stop her mind lingering over the bad stuff. But mostly things were good. Decent food, which might have been strange, had they not been serving in a posh mess where the cooks sometimes gave them illicit titbits to take

‘So, what did you do wrong?’ ‘Wrong?’ asked Maddie. ‘I don’t follow.’ She looked at the young woman beside her, who was also on her knees scrubbing the barrack room floor. Déjà vu for Maddie. It didn’t seem that long ago since she’d been on her knees scrubbing another flagstone floor. ‘You and me. Like