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Or tragedy.
She sat in a school classroom, drinking sweet English tea out of a cup with no saucer. She wore a steel helmet and rubber boots. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and she was still weary from the night before.
She was part of the Aldgate district Air Raid Precautions sector. Theoretically she worked an eight-hour shift followed by eight hours on standby and eight hours off duty. In practise she worked as long as the air raid continued and there were wounded people to be driven to the hospital.
London was bombed every single night of October 1940.
Daisy always worked with one other woman, the driver's attendant, and four men, forming a first-aid party. Their headquarters was in a school, and now they were sitting at the children's desks, waiting for the planes to come and the sirens to wail and the bombs to fall.
The ambulance she drove was a converted American Buick. They also had a normal car and driver to transport what they called sitting cases--injured people who could nevertheless sit upright without assistance while being transported to hospital.
Her attendant was Naomi Avery, an attractive blond cockney who liked men and enjoyed the camaraderie of the team. Now she bantered with the post warden, Nobby Clarke, a retired policeman. "The chief warden is a man," she said. "The district warden is a man. You're a man."
"I hope so," Nobby said, and the others chuckled.
"Th
ere are plenty of women in ARP," Naomi went on. "How come none of them are officials?"
The men laughed. A bald man with a big nose called Gorgeous George said: "Here we go, women's rights again." He had a misogynist streak.
Daisy joined in. "You don't really think all you men are smarter than all of us women, do you?"
Nobby said: "Matter of fact, there are some women senior wardens."
"I've never met one," said Naomi.
"It's tradition, isn't it," Nobby said. "Women have always been homemakers."
"Like Catherine the Great of Russia," Daisy said sarcastically.
Naomi put in: "Or Queen Elizabeth of England."
"Amelia Earhart."
"Jane Austen."
"Marie Curie, the only scientist ever to win the Nobel Prize twice."
"Catherine the Great?" said Gorgeous George. "Isn't there a story about her and her horse?"
"Now, now, ladies present," said Nobby in a tone of reproof. "Anyway, I can answer Daisy's question," he went on.
Daisy, willing to be his foil, said: "Go on, then."
"I grant you that some women may be just as clever as a man," he said with the air of one who makes a remarkably generous concession. "But there is one very good reason why almost all ARP officials are men, nevertheless."
"And what would that reason be, Nobby?"
"It's very simple. Men won't take orders from a woman." He sat back with a triumphant expression, confident that he had won the argument.
The irony was that when the bombs were falling, and they were digging through the rubble to rescue the injured, they were equals. There was no hierarchy then. If Daisy shouted at Nobby to pick up the other end of a roof beam he would do it without demur.
Daisy loved these men, even George. They would give their lives for her, and she for them.
She heard a low hooting sound outside. Slowly it rose in pitch until it became the tiresomely familiar siren of an air raid warning. Seconds later there was the boom of a distant explosion. The warning was often late; sometimes it sounded after the first bombs had fallen.
The phone rang and Nobby picked it up.
