On the exposed hilltop where the Calais Convoy was encamped temperatures dropped to below zero every night and in the morning all the cars were frozen up and impossible to start. Lilian Franklin came to the conclusion that there was only one solution: every car must be started once every hour, right through the night. A rota was set up and for the FANYs who were on duty each night there was very little sleep. Victoria stumbled off to bed at dawn after a night of cranking recalcitrant motors, hoping that there would not be an emergency that would require all the available ambulances. It seemed that she had scarcely closed her eyes before there was a knock on her door and Wilks looked in. ‘Sorry, old thing. Something’s come up and Boss wants you, on the double.’ Victoria dragged on her boots and her overcoat and plodded across the compound to Franklin’s office, her drowsy brain registering two facts: one, that all the ambulances except her own were absent, so presumably a barge or a hospital train had come in, and two, it was beginning to snow.
