Jane and Glenys – and the rest of their battery – enjoyed the training and felt at the end of it that they were now capable of handling anything the service might throw at them. They learned how to spot an enemy plane from the others criss-crossing the sky above them, to manoeuvre the long arm which controlled the elevation and movements of their searchlight, to receive and relay information using a head and chest radio set, and to operate the generator. When the postings came through Jane and Glenys hugged one another, for they had both been posted to the same battery, but when Glenys took a closer look she hissed in her breath. No. 94 battery, on the outskirts of Liverpool, was to be their new home.

They had received their posting in the normal way, via the bulletin board in the Mess, and one glance was enough to show them that the whole of their training group had been posted on the same day. There was a general feeling of satisfaction. Virtually everyone in their section had been posted to the surroundings of a city south of Newcastle, so it would be quite simple to travel together. ‘It’ll seem odd going by train and not driving ourselves,’ Jane confided, when she and Glenys went to their hut to start packing. ‘Personally, I was expecting to go to London, but of course the Huns’ main objective now is to hit the ports so hard that shipping can no longer be relied upon.’ She sighed, and Glenys remembered that before the war Jane’s boyfriend Paul had sailed from Liverpool. She had quite envied Jane the affections of the tall, friendly officer, who was first lieutenant on one of the flower class corvettes. But only a matter of days earlier Jane had received a letter from him telling her that his corvette had been torpedoed. He was safe, having been picked up by a cruiser, but he thought it only fair to tell her that he had, whilst in hospital ashore, met Someone Else, a nurse named Marilyn, and they meant to marry before he put to sea again. The news had knocked Jane sideways. She told Glenys she had never dreamed that Paul might fall in love with another; all her fears had been that he might be killed in action, and now she had to face a new enemy: jealousy. She and Paul had known one another since childhood, and even to think of going out with anyone else would have seemed, to her, like infidelity. Both sets of parents were saving up so that as soon as their son and daughter got leave together they could host a grand betrothal party . . . perhaps even a wedding. Now, Jane told her friend miserably, she would have to break the news to them, for she was pretty sure that Paul would duck out of admitting what he had done for as long as possible.

‘I always knew he was beautiful but weak,’ she had confessed. ‘But I told myself he would change, grow more responsible. Well, perhaps he has – after all, being torpedoed, and wounded in action, whilst your erstwhile companions drowned, is enough to make anyone, after thanking God for their deliverance, take life a bit more seriously.’