Churchill's S.O.C.K.s: Special Operations Cadet Kids

Prologue

G ranny Ivy! Granny Ivy! There’s a secret tunnel in your garden, and we found it!

The woman sitting beside the wood stove lowered her newspaper as her little granddaughter skidded through the doorway, her face flushed and her chubby little hands black with soil.

A tunnel, you say? the woman asked, removing her reading spectacles with interest. Whereabouts in the garden?

The little girl took a deep breath, then plunged into her explanation: It’s behind the chicken shed, beside the rose trellis. We were playing hide-and-seek, and I saw it first and told the others and Dan threw a pebble down it and it just kept going and going all the way to the middle of the whole earth, or maybe China! We heard it hit the bottom!

Her grandmother suppressed a smile. I see. And what’s happened to your hands?

"We tried to dig all around the tunnel so we could see where it went to, but then Danny’s shovel hit something hard under the ground, and I told him he shouldn’t dig anymore, because what if it was the middle of the earth, and he said that was silly, but I said it wasn’t and I was going to tell."

Though Granny Ivy’s curly hair was grey with age, she stood with a youthful spring. I’m glad you did, Lila. I’d like to see this secret tunnel for myself!

Lila took her grandmother’s hand in one of her smudged ones and led her to the door, where they both pulled on pairs of wellies. Granny snatched down a camping lantern from a hook before stepping out into the sunlit garden.

Behind the henhouse, an older girl sat on her heels, digging up dirt with a chicken feed bucket and dumping it in a heap, while the oldest of the three—a boy of thirteen or so—went at the hole with a shovel. When he saw his little sister returning victorious with Granny Ivy in tow, he stopped, awkwardly holding the shovel behind his back. The older girl dropped her bucket and bit her lip.

Granny Ivy placed her fists squarely on her hips. You’ve done quite a job here, the three of you.

The boy diverted his eyes to his soil-covered shoes. We should’ve asked first before we dug up your garden. Sorry, Granny Ivy.

Well, I’m sorry too, Danny. She paused, and two oldest children exchanged an anxious glance. "Sorry you’ve wasted so much time and effort digging up that hole in this hot sun when there’s a much easier way into that tunnel!"

The three children looked at one another, astonished. The corner of Granny Ivy’s mouth turned up in a mischievous grin. Yes, I know all about it. It’s a secret I’ve kept for many, many years now, since I was a girl growing up in this house. But as you’ve discovered it, I think it only fair I show you the entrance.

The middle girl looked dubiously over at the pipe coming out of the ground beneath the rose trellis.

Oh no, not that, Sue. Granny Ivy chuckled. "That’s what you call a dead letter drop. I’ll tell you all about that presently. The real tunnel is all underground, beneath this hard surface you’ve hit on, and the best way to it is through the henhouse. Of course, we’ll have to brave the chickens and probably a lot of old spiders’ webs to get to it. Still care to see?"

The children nodded, all the more eager for the challenges in store.

Good. Granny Ivy nodded once with the air of a sergeant. Then follow me, troops.

Lila held tightly to her brother’s hand as Granny Ivy forged a pathway through the flustered, squawking chickens, right to the very back of the long, dark henhouse. The children shot uncertain glances at one another as she brushed away heavy cobwebs and placed her palms against the back wall, feeling the boards up and down.

Presently, they heard her say, Ah, that should do it, with just a little bit of elbow grease… She wedged her old but nimble fingers into the cracks between the boards and gave a yank.

To the children’s amazement, the plank lifted right off the wall, revealing a small room hidden behind. The only thing inside was a wooden bench with a hole in the middle of it.

Danny peered in, then quickly pulled back again. Wait a minute. Is this some kind of outside toilet?

A privy is what we called it. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen one?

The children responded with a look of distaste.

You mean people used to have to go to the loo in the henhouse? Lila asked.

Not usually in the henhouse, no. But everyone who lived in the country had to go outside to get to the loo in those days, unless they were very rich, like the family up at Ashbury Park. But this particular privy is a special one.

Erm, Granny Ivy... Danny had a deeply concerned look in his eye. The entrance to the secret tunnel isn't through the loo… is it?

No… Granny’s eyes twinkled, and yes. She turned to face the privy bench so they couldn’t see her private smile. She was enjoying every moment of her grandchildren’s horrified suspense. Now just you watch.

She reached up, took hold of a metal hook on the back wall, and gave it a twist to the left. Lila gave a little gasp as something hidden in the wall went click.

Granny turned to Danny. Now then, my strapping young man, just get a grip under the lip of that bench and give it a good shove upwards. It’s likely to be a bit sticky after all these years, so don’t hold back. Yes, that’s it. Now hoist!

Danny pushed with all his might, his cheeks blown out and his face going purple, until at last, the whole bench began to lift slowly upwards with a wonderful, mechanical sound of squeaky ropes and pulleys.

Now you can let go and stand back, Granny instructed. The bench had nearly risen right up to the privy ceiling.

The four of them stood back, Danny panting and the girls gawking as if their brother had just cracked open a loaded treasure chest. Where the bench had been was now a square hole in the floor with a ladder descending into the dense, musty darkness below ground.

Lila tugged at Granny’s trouser pocket, her eyes wide. Do the chickens know they’ve got a secret tunnel in their house?

Granny clucked. Well if they ever suspected it, they never told a soul. Chickens are many things, but tell-tales is not one of them. Now, I think I had better go first down the hatch and give you the ‘all clear’ before you follow. She clicked on the lantern she’d brought along and set it down to one side of the hole before reaching right out over the empty space to grab the top of the ladder.

Careful, Granny! Dan put a hand out to steady her, but she stepped down onto the top rung with the ease of an acrobat.

Never you worry, my dears. I’ve been going up and down this ladder in my dreams for the past fifty-odd years. It’s eight steps down, if my memory is true.

Granny’s fluffy grey hair disappeared into darkness, and for a moment, the children held their breath, hearing only strange shuffling noises. Then, at last, came Granny’s voice with a cavernous echo.

Just pass me down that lantern, would you, Danny?

He did, and after a moment’s inspection, she gave the ‘all clear’ for the children to follow her down the ladder while she held up the lantern for them. Once they’d all reached the rock-hard floor below, they stood gazing at one another's up-lit faces, their breath hanging in visible puffs from the heavy atmosphere. Both Lila and Susan clung on to Granny’s arms. It was shockingly musty and humid underground after they’d all been soaking in the clear summer sunshine just minutes before.

Granny held the lantern aloft, casting its light from wall to wall, which were made of thick cinder blocks and wiggly sheets of rusted metal that domed over their heads like a train tunnel.

Why, bless my soul. It’s hardly changed! Except for a few extra resident spiders, of course.

It’s enormous down here! It’s at least as big as the whole henhouse, Susan exclaimed, striking up enough bravery to venture several steps away from Granny. And look, there’s a table over here, and some benches hanging from chains in the wall! And a rusty old kettle… and some candles! Granny, did someone live down here?

"Well, not exactly live, though we spent enough time down here for a season."

"Who’s we?" Susan asked.

But before Granny could answer, Dan—who had come to inspect the table for himself—called out, There’s another door behind this table!

Ah, well spotted! Granny approached, moved the kettle and candles to the floor, then pocketed some old sweets wrappers littering the table top. That Kenny. She shook her head. He always did love his pineapple creams. Once the table was cleared, she folded it and benches against the wall. The room we’re in now is called the Map Room, but the most important room is in here. She turned another metal hook sticking out above the second door, then pushed the whole thing open. This is the Radio Room.

They all piled into the much smaller room.

But where’s the radio? Lila asked.

Granny shone the lantern light on a niche in the stone wall. "It’s not here anymore, but it used to be just there. The wires for the signal went up that hole there, then right up a great big chestnut tree which used to stand just behind the henhouse, so we could send our transmissions for miles.

And this hole down here— Granny shone the light on a square opening at the bottom of the wall with chicken mesh over half of it, forming a kind of built-in basket. Inside it was a tennis ball. "This is part of the dead letter drop I mentioned to you up above. Do you remember that pipe under the rose trellis? The children nodded. Well, that’s where someone would drop the ball, then it would come out down here, where the radio operator would pick it up. She reached into the opening for the buff-coloured tennis ball. Then, she gave it a squeeze so an invisible slit opened like a mouth. Inside the ball would be the day’s messages on special edible paper, just in case the messenger got caught and needed a quick way to get rid of the evidence."

Lila stuck her tongue out in disgust. Granny smiled and continued. The radio operator would take them out, code them up, then transmit them over the radio.

Dan, who had studied a fair bit of history at school, was beginning to put two and two together. "But Granny Ivy, why do you have a secret bunker with radios and secret message pipes in your garden? Were you some sort of spy?"

Granny made a face of pretend alarm. Now why would you say a thing like that? She winked.

Look! There’s a big dusty book over here! Lila pointed excitedly to a notebook resting on a stool in the back corner. Only, you pick it up, Granny. I’m afraid of spiders.

They all crowded around the stool. Granny took a handkerchief from her pocket and gently wiped it across the book’s cover, uncovering big block letters across the front.

Lila, who had recently learned to read, traced each letter with her chubby finger. S-O-C-K-S. Socks. Huh? A book about socks? She scrunched up her little nose and turned to Granny with a lost expression.

That’s right. S.O.C.K.s. Special Operations Cadet Kids. Granny tapped each letter of the acronym as she said the word it stood for. Below it, a date was scribbled: Summer 1940.

That’s during the Second World War! Dan exclaimed. We just studied about it last term. He gave a little gasp as something dawned on him. So… this is a war bunker?

You’re getting warmer, Dan. Granny’s eyes twinkled in the lantern light.

Feeling hot on the trail of some discovery, Danny egged on his grandmother. "But you said kids. There weren’t kids in the war, were there? I mean, surely grownups did all the important, dangerous things." He said it as a statement, but there was a hopeful uncertainty about his tone.

As a matter of fact, Granny answered, it was everybody’s war. Grownups and children alike. After all, none of us wanted Hitler taking over our country… our homes. We all had our part to play.

What was it like, Granny Ivy? What was your part? Susan asked in an awed whisper, as if they spoke of sacred things.

A soft smile formed on Granny’s lips. It crinkled the corners of her eyes, which seemed to be looking not into the darkness of the room, but far, far away—into another time and place. It was a wonderful time for us children. The adults were all too occupied to notice much what we did, so we ran completely free—waging our own war, fighting make-believe battles with the Huns, collecting shells and shrapnel from the fields, watching the Spitfires’ acrobatics in the sky above... The war opened the world up to us. Not one of us was ever the same after that first summer.

She paused and took a deep breath, as if returning to the present moment from her distant journey to the past. The faces of her grandchildren were solemn, their eyes bright and hungry for more.

What I am about to tell you, Granny began in a most confidential tone, I have never told a soul in all my life, and only a very few people living today know anything about it. But I think it’s a tale that deserves telling, and I hope you will remember it all your lives. But, she eyed them pointedly, you must first take the S.O.C.K.s oath, just as I did when I was a girl. Do you agree to it?

The children all nodded, and Susan gulped loudly.

Good. Raise your right hands and place your left over your hearts. Your other left hand, Lila dear. There you are. Now repeat after me. Gingerly, Granny peeled open the notebook’s cover. The pages, brittle as dried autumn leaves, crackled at her touch. She found a page titled ‘S.O.C.K.s OATH’ and read it out—line-for-line—pausing after each so the children could repeat it:

Once done, she nodded. Well then, troops, it’s a long story to tell, and I fancy telling it in the light of day with a glass of lemonade at hand. What do you say? Up and out!

1

A Not-So-Happy Birthday

2 September 1939

B ut it isn’t fair! How come Ivy gets to stay up with the grown-ups? She’s just a kid.

Ivy resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at her little brother. That was childish behaviour, and she was no longer a child.

Mother knelt down to wipe the birthday cake sugar from Kenny’s top lip. It is fair, and you’ll think so too when you turn thirteen and are allowed to stay up for the nine o’clock news. Now up to bed. Esme, you too. And tell your father goodnight.

Ivy watched the two youngest Briscoes—‘the Imps’, as she called them—hug their father in turn before moping up the stairs to bed, Esme dragging her tatty old stuffed dog behind her. How strange it felt not to join them in the bedtime procession as she had done for the past twelve years.

It had always been a Briscoe family tradition that once a child turned thirteen, he or she incurred the distinguished privilege of sitting up with the ‘grown-ups’ for the nine o’clock news. This elite club of grown-ups included Father and Mother and the two eldest Briscoe children. Ivy’s eldest brother Ernie was ‘eighteen going on forty’, as Father liked to boast, and Vera was in the blossom of sweet sixteen-hood.

Ivy had looked forward to her initiation as one of the grown-ups for yonks, but now she felt strangely shy as she took her seat on the settee beside the wireless. Her father offered her a ‘nightcap’—a tiny glass of sherry, just enough to taste and no more. She looked at Vera beside her, absently twirling a lock of her perfect, honey-coloured hair whilst flipping through the pages of Women’s Illustrated. Ivy wrinkled her nose up at the pictures of doe-eyed fashion models. She averted her eyes to Ernie, who sat across from her with a newspaper draped elegantly across his knee, sipping his sherry with poise. She tried to sip likewise, feeling suddenly very out of place, as if she’d snuck into a private club with its own secret code of behaviour she didn’t know. Right on cue, Ernie looked up from his paper and gave her a wink as he lifted his glass.

Cheers, little sis. Ernie always knew how to make her laugh at her own awkwardness.

Once their mother returned from putting the little ones to bed, Dr. Briscoe clicked on the wireless and took his seat in the big armchair beside the hearth. There were some silly adverts, a song or two, and then at last the newscaster’s voice broke through, fast and furious. One word repeatedly struck against Ivy’s ear like iron on an anvil: Hitler, Hitler, Hitler.

That name had been on every newspaper headline and every broadcast, poisoning conversations in the streets, shops, and church. Now here it was again. Like a bad omen, it cast a shadow wherever it was uttered. As the broadcaster announced that Hitler had positioned the German army to invade Poland, that eerie shadow stole into the room until all the fun of the evening—the birthday cake, Ivy’s new riding boots, Kenny’s jokes and all the laughter—seemed a million miles away. Ivy felt a truly deep sense of sympathy for the Polish now that Hitler had not only threatened to invade their country, but had also gone and spoiled her thirteenth birthday.

When, at last, the sombre voice on the radio gave way to a jingle about Velvex toilet paper, Mrs. Briscoe stood up and angrily clicked it off. Lord help us, I should be glad never to hear that odious man’s name mentioned again for as long as I live. Her Irish accent always became more sing-songy when she was flustered.

I’m afraid, my dear, Dr. Briscoe replied in his soft, steady tone, that we are only just beginning to hear mention of that name. He sipped his sherry and nodded to himself. It’s come to it now. Great Britain is on the brink.

On the brink of what? Ivy wanted to ask. But everybody had gone so solemn, she held her tongue, not wanting to sound the ignorant baby. Instead, she lay awake that night, tossing and turning in bed as her mind roved over the enigmatic words of the newsreader.

The next day was Sunday. As Dr. Briscoe had to visit several of his patients that afternoon, the Briscoe family rose early and walked up to the Ferny Hill parish church for the early communion service. Back home, the family sat silently around the dining table, eating their scrambled eggs and thick brown bread with butter. A stiffness like a freshly starched school shirt fell over the room. It affected all of them; even jovial Kenny sat silently, swinging his legs and looking from parent to parent.

Ivy could not place where it came from. Was it the solemn words of the vicar who had warned them of trying times ahead? Or was it her father, intently reading the Sunday paper whilst smoke rings chugged from his pipe like a blustering steam engine? Or perhaps it was her mother, who gazed in a far-off way out the window and fiddled with the claddagh charm at her collarbone.

Only when the mantle clock chimed the hour, eleven o’clock, did Dr. Briscoe look up from his paper. Have you finished, children? He addressed the younger ones. Shall we all move into the parlour?

Ivy took her usual seat on the settee and hugged her knees close to her chest. Kenny and Esme wrestled with Spud, the family’s Jack Russell terrier, on the hearth rug while Vera showed Mother a dress pattern she just had to have from her magazine. Ernie set the dial on the wireless, then took his seat in his usual armchair.

At last, radio gibberish gave way to the eleven fifteen news. All ears zeroed in as Prime Minister Chamberlain’s dulcet voice came slowly and reluctantly through the speaker. The words he spoke buzzed like electricity, but Ivy couldn’t quite take them in. They sounded too unreal.

"This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no