Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [47]
On my first visit to the Imperial War Museum I had been surprised to see that, despite its dated name, the museum’s approach to keeping alive the horror and sacrifice of the two world wars was quite modern. On the lower level of the building one could participate in a striking re-creation of what it was like to live through the London Blitz, from the warning sirens to walking through the smoky rubble after a raid. There was also a re-creation of what trench warfare was like in World War I. After seeing it I began to understand, for the first time, the horror of life in the trenches. I seldom visited London without stopping by the War Museum to pay my respects and look around.
When I reached the entrance, a museum guard pointed out the location of the exhibit I’d come to see: “Forces Sweethearts.” To get there I passed through the glass-domed hall, where Spitfires from the Battle of Britain and a Sopwith Camel from World War I hung from the ceiling like mobiles over a child’s crib. Then, after passing a huge German V-2 rocket of the kind used to pound London in 1944 and a frighteningly small one-man German submarine, I turned into an enclosed space at the back of the center hall.
Inside this softly lit room there were no weapons or terrible recreations of trench warfare. Instead a woman’s voice sang “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when …” It was the voice of Vera Lynn, the “sweetheart” of British and Allied forces during World War II. Her plaintive words drifted over the 1940s-style vanity dressing tables set with silver hairbrushes and small blue-and-silver perfume bottles of Evening in Paris. They drifted over the pictures in heart-shaped frames of young men in uniform, of wedding dresses made from parachute silk, of pin-up photos of Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable. It was like stepping onto a movie set, one built for a romantic war film starring Teresa Wright as the girl at home waiting for her GI to return.
But it was in the love letters and pictures of the laughing young men who wrote them that I found the script for this movie: Dearest, how I miss you … My darling girl, it seems so long since we held each other … Darling, do you remember the night …
I stopped before a photo of a dark-eyed young sailor with a wide grin. A British submariner, he had asked his sister to send the letter to his girlfriend, Betty, if he “should not return.” His submarine was lost in May 1941. The letter began:
18.4.41
Dearest Betty,
Betty—my darling—I think that you wouldn’t mind me calling you that for the last time, as I expect by now my sister has informed you that I have died in fighting for our country.… But I may say, looking down, that my last thoughts were of my family and you, and I will love you while there is breath in my body.
I looked again at the photo of the young sailor, imagined him hunched in his bunk under a tiny light, scratching out shaky words of love as the small submarine moved silently beneath the great weight of the ocean. How brave to face one’s own death, I thought. And how kind to write such comforting words to the one you love.
Then I imagined Betty, her face ashen beneath the rolled pompadour of her long hair, sitting at the dining-room table reading and rereading the shattering words meant to comfort her. I can see her rise and, after bracing herself against the back of a chair, walk to a desk, where she places the letter in a quilted satin box, next to other letters tied with blue ribbon.
And now, after all these years, here was the letter, in the Imperial War Museum—Betty—my darling—I think you wouldn’t mind me calling you that for the last time … Leaning forward, I touched one of the blue-and-silver perfume bottles on the table, wondering if any of the sweet, heavy fragrance