CHAPTER 1
The Noise of War
SEPTEMBER 17, 1940, NIGHTTIME
IN THE MID-ATLANTIC Ocean, a German war submarine has an ocean liner in its sights. The U-boat commander and his crew have been following the ship all day. They are waiting for the right moment.
The two hundred passengers on the ship have no idea a U-boat lurks beneath the water, ready to attack. One hundred of the passengers are children. Most of them are in bed, asleep in their pajamas.
A few minutes before 10 p.m., the commander of U-boat 48 gives the order: Torpedoes away—
EIGHT DAYS EARLIER
IN LONDON, THE AIR RAID SIGNAL SOUNDED. Another night of bombing. Gussie Grimmond, thirteen, and her family rushed from their house to their underground shelter. As the bombs exploded in the night sky, raining down on the city, Gussie huddled with her parents and her nine brothers and sisters. Even underground she could hear the noise of war: air raid sirens wailing; bombs exploding; terrifying bangs, whistles, and shrieks echoing through the city. The ground shook, too. The Grimmonds were safe for now, but war was all around them.
A German Heinkel He 111 bomber flies over England at the start of the Blitz, September 7, 1940. [Wikimedia Commons/Australian War Memorial]
It was September 9, 1940. On September 7, a sunny Saturday afternoon, Germans had begun bombing London, pummeling it for hours. The bombing did not stop completely until four thirty the next morning. By the end of that first day and night of bombing, more than four hundred people had died—including children. Many more children and adults were injured.
It was one year into World War II. The United States wasn’t fighting with Britain against Germany—yet. And for most of the past year, the battles had stayed away from British shores, too. But this summer the war had become real for the British people, like Gussie and her family. The Germans had started bombing them.
At first the Germans bombed only military targets, trying to destroy Royal Air Force planes, aircraft factories, and coastal radar stations. RAF pilots fought back, battling in the skies above.
Pilots from all over the world signed up to fight with Britain. These two Polish RAF pilots play with their squadron’s mascot, a puppy. [Imperial War Museum]
The Brits kept count of how many German planes were shot down, cheering on the Royal Air Force. The RAF pilots were already heroes. As Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Now the Germans were bombing not only air bases but also civilians in London, the port city of Liverpool, and other English towns. Bombs demolished office buildings, schools, playgrounds, churches, and houses. Homes. Ordinary citizens like Gussie and her sisters and brothers were in mortal danger. This was the third night in a row that the Grimmonds had to spend underground.
When would it end? How many more nights would Gussie and her family have to huddle together like this, fearing for their home and their lives?
And it would probably get worse. Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany’s dictator, threatened to invade by land. The British had every reason to believe that Hitler would follow through with this threat and send his army across the English Channel. This Blitz on London was part of his blitzkrieg, or lightning war. After taking over Austria and Czechoslovakia, Hitler had used blitzkrieg tactics to invade Poland in 1939, and German tanks had since rolled across Europe. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians already had died as Hitler seized Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France. Hitler was determined to add Britain to the list. He wanted to take over the world.
Winston Churchill refused to give in to German force. In his first speech as prime minister, just four months earlier, Churchill had vowed “to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.”
Devastation caused by Nazi air raids on Westminster, London, with the houses of Parliament and the clock tower with the famous bell, Big Ben, still standing. [Mary Evans Picture Library]
The British government insisted its citizens take safety measures. There was a universal blackout across the country every night, with shades blocking all indoor light, so that German planes would not be guided to their targets. And when the air raid siren sounded its up-and-down notes, signaling an attack about to begin, all civilians had to hurry underground to safety, as Gussie and her family had. Only air raid wardens and emergency workers were supposed to be outside during the bombing raids.
Winston Churchill speaks to his nation on BBC radio in 1940. [Mary Evans Picture Library]
The wardens instructed people to move calmly but quickly to neighborhood shelters, underground subway stations, or their basements if they couldn’t get anywhere else. To stay in your living room or bedroom was to put your life in peril. Some families, like the Grimmonds, had their own shelters, issued by the government. The Grimmonds had managed to add on to their Anderson shelter—made of corrugated steel—to make room for their large family.
All that night, as Gussie and her family stayed safely underground, London’s streets were dangerous and chaotic. Buildings toppled from the bombs. Explosions ignited fires, shooting red-orange flames into the darkness and spreading from one building to the next, destroying even more lives.
Firefighters and medics drove their fire trucks and ambulances as best they could through dark, rubble-strewn streets. Firefighters quickly unfurled hoses to douse fires. They rushed into buildings to rescue people trapped by flames and searched through rubble, hoping to save people buried under collapsed buildings. Rescuers put their own lives in danger trying to save others, and yet on they worked—men too old to fight in the war, others not yet called up; women driving ambulances and fire trucks, working as fire watchers, medics, nurses.
In the morning, when the Germans stopped bombing, the all-clear signal sounded. It was one long continuous note, a slightly off C-sharp. Everyone knew that note meant it was safe to come out. People all over London emerged from their shelters. Most went back to their homes to have breakfast and start their days. But some were not so lucky.
Firefighters hose the still-burning remains of bombed buildings in London. [Mary Evans Picture Library]
When the Grimmonds climbed out, exhausted from too little sleep, they did not see their house. What they saw instead was a pile of rubble. Everything they owned was destroyed—furniture, clothing, toys, dishes. All of it, gone. Had they stayed in their home, they would have died.
Among their destroyed belongings were five packed suitcases. Gussie and her younger sisters, Violet, ten, and Connie, nine, and two of her little brothers, Eddie, eight, and Lennie, five, were on the waiting list for a journey that would get them out of England to safety. These five Grimmond children were scheduled to go to Liverpool that very day. If they were lucky enough to get off the waiting list, Gussie and her brothers and sisters would board a ship for Canada, part of a government program called the Children’s Overseas Reception Board. The CORB program required that children be no younger than five and no older than fifteen. There was room for ninety CORB children on the ship.
Gussie’s parents, Eddie and Hannah Grimmond, looked at the pile of rubble. Hannah held her youngest, a toddler, in her arms and argued with her husband. She did not see how she could let Gussie, Violet, Connie, Eddie Jr., and Lennie go on the journey without the clothes, shoes, towels, food—everything they had been told to pack. But her husband, Eddie, was sure the people from CORB would help outfit the children if they got off the waiting list. It was worth the chance. The rest of the family had to go live in temporary housing, anyway, with nothing of their own. Why not give these five the opportunity to escape across the ocean?
Eddie Grimmond had fought in the First World War, and he knew personally the horrors of war. His best friend had died. When the war was over, he went to visit his buddy’s widow, Hannah. They married and had a family, ten children in all. They were very close, the whole large brood, but now five might be able to escape to safety. How could they not try to get them out? It was easy to see that side of the argument. They were homeless. And it clearly was not safe in London.
The Grimmonds could send Gussie, Violet, Connie, Eddie, and Lennie. Although it seemed like a great opportunity, it was very difficult for Hannah to let any of her children go the day after her home was destroyed. And of course there was danger at sea—U-boats were already torpedoing ships in the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, U-boat 48 had departed its home port of Lorient, France, two days earlier, with two minesweeper escorts. At 9:45, after guiding the submarine safely out, the escorts left, their lights flashing, wishing the crew good luck and good hunting.
Hannah didn’t know this, of course, and she didn’t know whether her children would even be allowed on the CORB ship. But she agreed it was worth the chance. Eddie would take the children to the station and put them on a train to Liverpool. In Liverpool their safety would be up to the CORB people, and fate.
As she said goodbye to her children, Hannah had no idea how long it would be until she saw them again. If they were allowed onto the ship, she might not see them until the war was over, which could be months, as people hoped, but more likely years. The previous war had lasted more than four years. For Hannah Grimmond, it would turn out to be much worse than that.
* * *
WHEN EDDIE AND his children arrived at London’s Euston Station, the platform was filled with parents sending their children away. There were promises and instructions as CORB children and parents said goodbye, hugging, kissing, crying. One of the older children leaving for Liverpool later described it as an emotionally charged opera.
The route of the SS City of Benares. [Raphael Geroni]
CORB children and their escorts on the way to New Zealand. [The National Archives UK]
But Gussie and her brothers and sisters were in a kind of stupor, drained from the long nights in the underground shelter and dazed from the shock of seeing the rubble that used to be their home. They said goodbye to their father and got on the train.
Gussie was in the middle of the family at home, but she was the oldest of these five, and she easily stepped into the role of big sister. She made sure her two sisters and two brothers all sat quietly and didn’t run around the train. They arrived in Liverpool in a couple of hours, all together and more or less ready for their trip—assuming they could get on the ship.
If there was any place to start an adventure, especially a dangerous one, it was this city. Set on the Irish Sea along the river Mersey, Liverpool had a reputation, history, and atmosphere of danger. The air was misty and foggy, the land marshy. There was even quicksand! A century earlier, the streets and alleys had teemed with ruffians and smugglers. Privateers and pirates preyed on passing ships.
Now, in 1940, the most serious danger came from German bombers above. Would the port of Liverpool—essential to the war effort—survive?
High atop a building sat two stone birds, imaginary Liver Birds. (Liver rhymes with diver.) They say the male Liver Bird faces inward, to the city, to see if pubs are open, reflecting Liverpool’s sense of humor and fun. But the female Liver Bird faces outward, toward the docks, waiting solemnly for sailors to return home safely.
Port cities are doorways to the world, but they are also vulnerable to attack. Liverpudlians say that if the Liver Birds ever fly away, Liverpool will cease to exist.
* * *
THE CORB CHILDREN did not stay near the docks, which were targets of German night bombing. Gussie and the other CORB children were taken to the Sherwood’s Lane School, a bit outside the city center, to stay for a couple of nights. At the school, the children would meet their chaperones and the other children in their groups.
When the CORB officials learned that the Grimmond house had been destroyed, they took Gussie and her sisters and brothers off the reserve list and, just as their father had hoped, gave them everything they needed. The boys, Eddie and Lennie, were put in a group of boys with a male chaperone; Gussie, Connie, and Violet in a group of girls, with a woman.
Gussie made a great impression on the adults immediately. She was quite thin, all bones and angles, and her face looked pinched and worn. But she was very strong, strong-willed, smart, funny, and quirky. Once the Grimmonds were accepted into the program, she showed she was eager to please the adults. The Sherwood’s Lane headmistress later remarked that Gussie could summon up quite a bit of Cockney bossiness to keep her sisters and brothers in line.
Back in London, Hannah and Eddie settled themselves and the rest of the family into a homeless shelter until they could find other housing. The Grimmonds were now split in half. In a few days a ship would leave Liverpool, and Gussie, Violet, Connie, Eddie, and Lennie Grimmond would be on it. If all went as planned, those five Grimmond children would live out the war in safety.
Even if all did not go as expected, there was no way now to undo the decision Hannah and Eddie had made.
CHAPTER 2
Sailing to Safety
IT HAD BEEN a hot September so far, but Thursday, September 12, 1940, was a cool day in Liverpool, where Gussie, Violet, and Connie Grimmond waited with their group at the busy docks to board the ship. Seagulls squawked overhead as waves from the river Mersey lapped against the shore. Liverpool was a gateway to the British Empire from all over the world, and a departure point to the rest of the world from England. And at this moment, it was the passage to safety for the CORB group and the other passengers waiting to begin this journey.
Mary Cornish, a forty-one-year-old music teacher from London, stood with the Grimmond sisters and twelve other girls as they waited to embark. She was their chaperone, having volunteered for the job before her school year started. The girls in her group already loved her and called her Auntie Mary.
Ninety CORB children waited to board, six groups of fifteen children, each escorted by a chaperone. Before they left the school to board the ship, each child was given one last medical examination. Anyone who was sick (with chicken pox, for example) was sent back home.
There was a head escort, plus an extra chaperone, as well as a doctor and nurse, both women. Eddie and Lennie Grimmond were with their group of boys somewhere in the crowd. The ship they were all waiting to board was the City of Benares, though the name had been covered when the ship was repainted grey to make it less noticeable to German U-boats. The goal was to keep it safe—in case the Germans were looking to torpedo specific ships. The children wouldn’t know the ship’s name until they were on board and saw it on the lifeboats.
SS City of Benares. [Imperial War Museum]
Copyright © 2019 by Deborah Heiligman
Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Lawrence Lee
