Surviving by Chance - the Roll of the Dice
My mother told me three stories about the Second World War which illustrate that during wartime those who died and those who lived was often determined by chance - by the roll of the dice - whether one was in the military or was a civilian.
In December 1940 my mother Daphne Consterdine was working in Radcliffe, Lancashire, and at night doing fire watch and first aid duty. Twice she was almost killed.
During the 1940 Christmas Blitz on Manchester Daphne and another young woman were at Radcliffe on fire duty on the roof of Woolworths store. They were supplied with water, a hose, a foot pump, and a bucket of sand. In the distance Manchester, under attack, was a red glow which if you didn't know that it was the whole city being bombed and burned would have looked beautiful. Suddenly a German bomber came overhead and an incendiary bomb fell onto the roof, causing a fire. Daphne pumped with her foot and her companion held the nozzle of the short hose to direct it onto the fire; they changed over, with Daphne holding the nozzle. Suddenly the water stopped coming out of the hose. Daphne looked behind her and right there was a quivering piece of shrapnel, like a great sword, stuck in the roof inches behind her, which had cut the hose, having fallen between the two fortunate young women. If the shrapnel had fallen a foot nearer to Daphne it would have killed her.
On another occasion Daphne was due to go on night duty at a First Aid Post. A colleague at work had been scheduled for duty on the following night, but it was a night when the colleague wanted to go out on a date. The two women agreed to swap nights, and the colleague went on duty on Daphne's night. The girl didn't come in to work next day, and that evening Daphne went to the First Aid Post to begin her duty and found just a hole in the ground - the hut had received a direct hit by a German bomb, and it would have been Daphne killed in the hut if she hadn't swapped her duty night!
After the war my mother's employer in the early 1950s, Mr Woodward Weaver, told her of his own chance escape from death. In a battle area he was driving an open-top vehicle with a man sitting beside him on his left when he stopped to talk to a soldier on foot, on his right. A German shell exploded among them. The men on each side of Mr Weaver were killed yet he was left untouched. The dice had landed his way.
