Bluebirds by Margaret Mayhew

get them mixed up sometimes.’
    â€˜Saints preserve us! And they expect me to drill people like you!’
    He took a piece of chalk from his pocket, bent down and wrote a large white letter L on Sandra’s left shoe and an R on the other.
    â€˜
Now
p’raps you’ll remember.
If
you can read.’
    He taught them how to turn left, turn right, and about on the spot. They practised the movements many times under his jaundiced eye before, finally, he allowed them to begin marching.
    â€˜And I want you
marchin
’, not trippin’ along like you was all out shoppin’. Heads
up
, arms swingin’, shoulders back . . . Are you all ready? Listen for my commands and don’t do nothin’ ’til you ’ear them. By the left . . . 
quick march!
’
    Sandra started off on the wrong foot in spite of the chalked letters on her shoes, and kept hopping and skipping along as she tried to get in step. Blood trickled from the grazes on her knees. Enid’s arms and legs moved in stiff and jerky unison instead of as opposites, and Gloria minced along on her high heels, swinging her bottom more than her arms. Winnie, concentrating hard, forgot the cold and felt instead a sudden warm glow of pride as the small band of WAAFS moved together across the vast parade ground.
Left, right. Left, right
. She repeated the words to herself under her breath. Anne, marching at the front, was finding it easy. She had enjoyed the drill, and that had surprised her. She flung her arms out in time withher marching feet and strained her ears for the sound of the sergeant’s voice and his next command. The far side of the square was approaching rapidly and still she heard nothing. They were within yards of the edge of the asphalt when, at last, she heard his foghorn voice.
    â€˜About turn!’
    She turned smartly about to face the other way and the other girls in the front rank turned with her. Those behind them, however, had failed to hear the sergeant properly and the ranks collided in confusion and disarray. Enid was knocked to the ground like a ninepin and lay weeping in a puddle. Sandra’s grazes were now bleeding in earnest and one of Gloria’s high heels had snapped and she was hobbling about, swearing loudly.
    Sergeant Baker, a distant and furious figure, could be heard yelling hoarsely while the raucous and delighted laughter from the airmen at the barrack room windows floated to them on the wind like the cawing of crows.
    The offices of the Falcon Assurance Company overlooked Holborn. From her desk near the window, Virginia Stratton could watch the endless flow of people walking by on the pavement below. There was a new public shelter now, just across the street. She had seen them piling up a thick wall of sandbags against the building and erecting the ‘S’ sign, but so far there had been no air raids, only false alarms, and the pessimists who had said that London would be bombed to bits within weeks of the war being declared, had been made to look foolish. In spite of the sandbags and shelters, the blackout and the barrage balloons, a great many people seemed to be living their ordinary, normal lives, going to and fro from their offices and carrying on business as usual. Her mother kept saying that the war would be over by Christmas, but Virginia was not so sure. She had noticed many more uniforms in the street below the window lately – far more khaki, navy and lighter blue among the civilian clothing. And, if the war was going to end so soon, why were theparks being dug up, the statues all taken away, more and more shelters being built, like the one opposite, and all the children evacuated to the country?
    She stared out of the window. The subject of her wanting to join the Women’s Air Force had not been mentioned again. Mother probably thought she’d given up the whole idea but it had become even more firmly fixed in her mind. She found herself