Dear Sir, - I claim a record!
Meet the only monopede, amputee, one-legged, limbless - what you will, but certainly permanently crippled girl - the whole of Britain who is an A. R. P. worker!
I'd an idea that you would like to hear about me - and "see" me too - so I just jotted down a few details and did a couple of rough sketches (thanks for the lead, "M. D.") of myself.
First the bibliographical details.
Born 1922, kicking two legs strongly in mid-air. Dropped off to sleep in 1927, as above, but woke up with ghastly pain (can still feel it) just above the left knee. Uncontrollable tears greeted my vainly groping hand seeking the leg that had gone - result of painful germ activities not understood at five years of age.
I won't worry you with distasteful details of fearful series of "ops" which followed at intervals for ten years - removing constantly-growing leg bone, scraping, etc. They provided surgeons with much fun, no doubt, but were like inquisition punishment-tortures to me. I feel even now, when I "crutch-lope" past hospitals, that I would willingly have exchanged all that pain and pointless butchery for the rack, thumbscrews or lifelong chains.
But enough of the shacking pain and despair that is the early lot of every amputee - all I want is to make clear is that I can't remember being two-legged. All I can recall is being always "My daughter, er - she's a - er cripple;" or "Pegs", "Crutchy" (in retrospect; aren't schoolgirls unkind?), "Stump Sally" (when they saw my naked and unbeautiful stump one medical inspection). Or young fellows' "Hello, Sally - er - good-bye," for they never had time for a girl with whom they could never dance, or play tennis, or cycle, never even walk arm-in-arm, or whose twin crutches hindered even the good-night hug....
But I didn't give up hope - and I had a great revelation come to me when I was seventeen, a couple of years ago, and it was like this....
To cut a long story short, I got on a long distance bus one day to go to an aunt at the seaside. When I had, with my usual cumbersome difficulty, lifted my one poor overworked limb into the bus, I saw that there was but one vacant seat left - next to a pretty, youngish blonde girl in front. The bus was just starting, so I slipped myself off my crutches, dropped into the seat and propped my life-long companions up against the front window.
Imagine my embarrassed horror when I suddenly noticed resting similarly next to them another, tall, polished, black pair, in front of the blonde girl!
I naturally looked straight down at what I (again to my horror saw was one silk-clad knee and an empty flat skirt where the other one should have been.
I would have given anything not to have taken that seat at that moment. Those all too-frequent whispers started all round - you know: "Poor girls, so young, too ..."; "How terrible for a girl ... maimed for life;" "fancy two girls on crutches;" etc., etc.
I blushed furiously when I saw that the blonde's eyes had followed mine and were looking half amusedly, it seemed, at the big expanse of empty skirts in the centre of our seat.
But she only smiled, and offered me a cigarette, and she soon put me at my ease, talking frankly about our "mutual mutilation," as she laughingly called it, asking me technical surgical details (not for "London Life" readers) of my many "ops" and various amputee's more intimate details.
When I conveyed to her the length of my stump (a matter of five or six inches) she silently pressed her hand against her dress on her right lap, showing plainly that there was not a vestige of a limb left, for it had been amputated close up to her trunk. (Forgive surgical details, readers, but this means leaving a slightly raised, about half an inch, "mound" of flesh between front hip and buttock).
She told me that she had been crippled ten years and was then twenty-five years of age, and she advised me to make myself as attractive as possible, for she had found her husband after her amputation, which, by the way, had been necessitated after severe injuries in a fire.
She had found a husband (I thought), even though he knew that, as an amputee, she could never bear him children, and as a hip-amputee could not even wear an artificial leg, but was condemned to spend a life on crutches.
I was so impressed by this, and much more that she told me, that I took her advice, and to-day am engaged to an R. A. F. pilot, and work as an telephonist in an A. R. P. headquarters.
But - good heavens! - look how much I've written. I was going to tell you many other incidents of my life (like the one about the only man who tried to take advantage of my crippled state), but they'll have to wait until another time - that is, if the Editor wants them?
Meanwhile, the sketches. 1 shows me on my (only) NEVER-used "peg" leg. No. 2: going shopping on my favourite crutches. No. 3: A. R. P. in slacks and special crutches like "M. D. NO. 4: Yet another special (rarely used) type of elbow-crutch I've got.
Yours truly,
B. W.