Life After Life: A Long Hard War, Sep 1940 Summary & Analysis

Ursula is in Hyde Park, working with a rescue team from the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) department to help recover people from the wreckage of bombings. As bombs and fires explode around her, Ursula can smell death and decay in the air—scents which had also mixed with her hair, her skin, and her lungs.

Ursula looks around; the street is unrecognizable. She and others form a human chain to climb to the top of the piles of rubble and excavate the debris from them. The men at the top listen and look for signs of life within. It often seems hopeless, but Ursula knows that people often live and die in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Ursula’s fellow ARP wardens are “a mixed bunch”: the senior warden, Miss Woolf, is a retired hospital matron. Her deputy, Mr. Durkin, is a retired English teacher. Mr. Simms had worked for the Ministry of Supply; Mr. Palmer is a bank manager. Mr. Armitage had been an opera singer. Mr. Bullock is a competitive wrestler and a denizen of several nightclubs; Herr Zimmerman is an orchestra violinist and a refugee from Berlin.

The group had commandeered a Methodist hall to use as their post, furnished with a few camp beds, a small stove, and an assortment of chairs. They are all part-time volunteers except for Miss Woolf. They have to know the occupants of every building in their sector and where they shelter. They also patrol the streets and do first-aid exercises together.

The first serious incident the squad attended had been at a large house that had received a direct hit. The two families in the house had all survived the blast, but the main water pipe and a sewage pipe fractured, and everyone in the cellar drowned. They had almost recovered a woman who had clung to the walls of the cellar, but unable to grasp Ursula’s hand, she had disappeared beneath the water. When they finally pumped out the place, fifteen bodies (including seven children) were recovered. Ursula had vomited long before then.

In the present, Miss Woolf calls Ursula over to a hole in another mound of rubble, where someone small can wriggle through. Ursula goes in, looking around to try to see if anyone is there. She catches sight of a man, but can see that part of his head is missing. Ursula crawls out of the hole, reporting no one alive.

In the course of a few hours, Ursula splints a broken arm, bandages a head wound, and patches an eye. She labels two unconscious survivors and their injuries, and several dead, making sure to send the correct bodies to the hospital and the mortuary, respectively.

As daylight breaks, Ursula sees that the whole street is more or less gone. At a large pile of debris, she can see a woman being extricated by a rope. She is alive, but only just. Ursula also sees the man with part of his head missing from the previous night, recognizing him as a neighbor. She has lost her pen and paper so instead she uses the lipstick she has, writing his name and address on his arm in blood red lipstick.

Ursula starts to walk home and discovers Miss Woolf giving commands to people, still cheerful—even though Ursula has no idea when she last slept. She respects Miss Woolf immensely. Ursula returns to the apartment she shares with Millie in Phillimore Gardens, but realizes almost immediately that she has to go to work, where she logs the Incident Reports from the previous night.

That Saturday, Ursula goes to Fox Corner and shares a nice dinner with Pamela and Sylvie. For most of the dinner, Hugh is investigating an unexploded bomb in a neighboring field. Ursula finds Pamela drained by taking care of her four boys, as well as two evacuees. Sylvie, on the other hand, is animated by the war—growing more food than ever in the garden and even joining in a black market for different fresh goods.

Hugh returns, and he and Sylvie start to quarrel, as Sylvie asks whether Hugh still lives there because she never sees him. Ursula changes the subject by blurting out that she is dating a young man named Ralph. Ursula tells them about Ralph, and when Sylvie and Hugh leave the table to do other activities, Ursula confesses to Pamela that she likes him a great deal—though they haven’t had sex.

Later, Hugh and Ursula share a drink as they talk about the worsening conditions in London and all across Europe. He then walks her to the train station, flashlight in hand, and Ursula tells him that the rescue squads are superstitious about lights. Hugh confesses that he had a friend in the trenches who lit a match and got his head shot off by a German sniper. He tells her to “keep her head below the parapet and her light under a bushel”; he would rather she were a coward than dead.

At the station, Ursula says goodbye to Hugh, promising to take care of herself. Fred Smith offers Ursula a ride, though he only has an engine without carriages, and so she must ride on the footplate of the train. It doesn’t cross her mind that she would never see her father again. The ride back is terrifying, hot, and sooty, but Ursula makes it back in one piece.

Fred walks Ursula to the front gates of King’s Cross, and she remembers having a crush on Fred in her youth. He tells her that he’s about to start serving in the fire department in London. When he leaves her at the gates, Ursula walks home in the blackout. She bumps into a woman, and they walk together for about half a mile or so. After the woman leaves, Ursula bumps into a man, locking arms with him and walking together until Hyde Park—something she would never have done prior to the war.