Loss of
Belongings
Frances Ann Roper
Not long ago I had the experience, which has been shared by so many people, of
losing all my possessions by "enemy action."
The doctor had ordered me several months' rest after a breakdown on a war
job, and my husband and I were away for one of his leaves from the Army when we
got the news. When he joined up we
had closed and let our house, and all our furniture and nearly all my clothes
were in store in a big depository which was set on fire and partially gutted by
a stray cannon-shell. The
notification from the firm told us "total loss with hopes of slight salvage."
My husband had to return on duty and I had to deal with everything alone.
I went round to the depository at once on my return, and the sight and
smell of the mountains of burnt wreckage, dripping and sodden from the N.F.S.
hoses, will remain with me to my dying day.
The Directors of the firm, and all the employees, were kindness itself,
showing me as much attention as if I had been the only sufferer, instead of one
among three or four hundred.
I often thought I would much rather everything had been totally destroyed, for
the sight of my treasures, burnt and mangled and sodden almost beyond
recognition, yet still recognisable, seemed at the time almost more than I could
bear. All our things that we had
bought together with such pride and delight only a few years before, and all the
beautiful old Chippendale and Sheraton furniture inherited from both our
families, were charred and sodden remnants; the car rugs which had accompanied
us on so many happy outings nothing but burnt and soaking rags; my trunks of
clothes were piles of dripping shreds, many of the things a already thick with
blue mould. Every morsel had to be
gone through and one by one various odd little treasures miraculously emerged
undamaged. Of all the furniture
nothing remained but the double bed, one mirror and to my delight an old oak
chest which had been in my husband's family for generations.
It took weeks to get everything sorted out; and as I was staying with a friend
at the time, it was not too easy to get such things as our few remaining books
opened out to air. My lovely
leather-bound Kipling had survived, but twisted and mildewed, and I stood them
all out in the garage for a couple of weeks to dry, then packed then packed them
as tightly as possible into a box to flatten them out.
The firm took charge of the remaining linen and undertook to get it
cleaned; so, apart from a recollection of a stained and sodden pile, I had no
idea of what I still possessed.
I stayed on with my friend for some weeks, as my sick leave was still unexpired,
and as the shock began to wear off I began to feel a most extraordinary sense of
what I might almost call exhilaration.
It was the freedom of spirit that comes from having been stripped almost
to the bone; I felt that I had been honoured by having passed through such an
experience; that I had somehow stepped up into the ranks of the elite and could
hold up my head in the company of the many others who had lost all; and though I
am the first to admit that my experience is nothing by comparison with that of
the victims of actual bombing in. their homes, yet I feel that this has drawn me
closer to my fellows than I have ever been before.
Now I can talk with real understanding and sympathy to the old charlady
in the bus, who lost all her little home one night when she was in the shelter;
and she nods her head understandingly when I tell her how I picked bits of my
embroidered cushion covers out of the charred mess.
But beyond even this new sense of comradeship is the wonderful, exhilarating
sense of release from fear. The love
of one’s one possessions is very deep in us all, and the fear of losing them is
equally deep.
One of my friends, in writing to commiserate with us on our loss, said she
feared losing her home so terribly that she felt she could not go on living if
she lost it.
Fresh from the experience myself, I could tell her that, shattering as the
experience is, it is by no means as bad in actuality as in anticipation.
One has e strange feeling of being
scrubbed, almost new-born and naked, and it is curiously exciting and uplifting,
and unlike any other experience. I felt like a being from another world, utterly
detached and untrammelled; and could look almost with pity upon my friends
clinging so anxiously to their homes and household gods.
Of course there are many things I miss terribly – my cutting-out scissors, my
typewriter, my pet books and pictures; but I have learnt how curiously little
all these things really matter. They
are irreplaceable, but I can live without them, and soon I shall not even miss
them. The experience has been well worth it for the sense of comradeship with
others, and the freedom from fear that has been granted to me.