Possession of either the money or the wristwatches was not illegal, but it was unusual, and he would have been asked questions. Two of the customs officers stayed with them when they went through the paperwork at the terminal, and stayed with them when they went to the shabby, unpleasant restaurant for dry rolls, artificial strawberry preserves, and tea, but no coffee. The custom officials even followed them into the men’s room, leaning impatiently against cracked and dirty washbasins until they had come out of the stalls.
They took off again after an hour and fifteen minutes on the ground.
First they flew west, but then turned on a southeasterly course that would carry them over the southern tip of Ireland and then over the Atlantic on a straight course toward Lisbon.
X I ONE I Whitby House Kent, England 0400 Hours August 15, 1942
Captain the Duchess Stan field, V@TAC, was not at all surprised when wakened by the sound of a whistle, and then a cheerful voice bellowing, “Aw right, aw right, drop your cocks and pick up your socks, it’s that time, haul your ass out of the sack! ” There had been an essentially identical announcement the night before at 10:00 Pm.” shortly after she had gone to sleep on an American Army folding canvas cot in a nine-by-twenty-foot room that had been, she recalled, her downstairs housekeeper’s broom closet. Similar whistle blowing and picaresque admonitions to the guard came at midnight and at 2:00 A.M. The racket lasted about five minutes. The whistle blowing and obscenities-some clever, some simply vulgar roused the thirty-odd men of the guard relief from their cots in tents erected close behind her window.
After they were up, the guards were formed in ranks and loaded aboard two large trucks. The trucks were then driven off with loud clashes of gears and roaring whines of transmissions. Ten minutes or so later-just long enough for her to begin to fall asleep-the trucks returned with the just-relieved guard, who, following another picaresque announcement 264
N W.K.R. ariffin from the sergeant, entered the tents, exchanged colorful obscenities as they removed their boots, then slept. The difference between the British Army and the American Army, she concluded afterward, is that the British Tommy suffers the obscene exhortations of his sergeant in silence, while the American GI, to the delight of his peers, is quick to exchange obscenity for obscenity, and he apparently does it with impunity, She could scarcely imagine a British sergeant accepting a suggestion shouted from the ranks that he “knock off the fucking bullshit!”
Captain the Duchess Stan field, WRAC, whose Christian names were Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, knew by now she would probably not get back to sleep. She usually was a sound sleeper. But once woken it was hard for her to get back to sleep. This was the third time she had been awakened.
She was naked between the American Army sheets. It had either been that or sleep in her underwear. She did not like to sleep in a brassiere, and her slip was standard issue, which meant it was skimpy and abrasive. One of the supplemental benefits of her new assignment would be access to her own linen, presuming she could find it. When Whitby House had been requisitioned, the staff had of course carefully packed away all her personal things. But the staff was now gone, and she had not a notion where in the house her trunks had been stored.
And because I wasn’t able to go looking for them last night, she thought, I was forced to sleep naked in the broom closet while a young and distinctly unpleasant American major slept in my husband’s bed.
But then she came to realize that there was no reason why she could not turn her wakefulness to her own advantage. She would start looking for her things right now. In seconds she was standing on the balls of her feet on the cold, gritty stone floor and reaching for her discarded underwear. Then she decided to ignore the soiled undergarments. In five or ten minutes she would have her own fresh, clean, soft underwear. In the meantime, all she had to do was pass the officer of the guard in the adjacent room and head down the corridor to the rear stairs. It was entirely likely that he would not even come out of his little office. She slipped her bare feet into her oxfords and tucked her shirt into the waistband of her khaki skirt. She was reminded of what she thought of as the “bloody sexual injustice in women officers’ uniforms.” Despite the shortages, prewar-quality material was somehow made available to gentlemen’s tailors. Male officers had at least several uniforms of prewar quality, while officers’ uniforms of the Women’s Royal Army Corps came from the same manufacturer who made uniforms for enlisted men, and were of much lower quality and fit. It had been possible for a seamstress to tighten her uniform skirts where they bagged over her rear end, but there had not been enough material to let out her shirts and tunics to make room for her bosom. Unless she wore a tight brassiere, she strained buttons.