Written 07.26.05
It was late August in 1940 and World War Two raged in mainland Europe. In ‘neutral’ Ireland, however, the disaster of the war had not yet effected the Irish people a great deal.
On a fine afternoon in rural County Wexford a pretty young girl tripped carelessly along the dirt track which led to the village of Campile from Great Island. Agnes Nolan’s glossy brown curls bounced off her slanting shoulders as she made her way along the bumpy road, dirtying her already scruffy ankle boots and torn laces further. Her cheeks were rosy and skin flawless from the healthy country air.
The basket on her right wrist containing her father Sean and brother, Billy’s , lunch- homemade butter, cheese, two glass bottles of milk and some of ‘Lemasse’s brown bread’, tugged on the cuff of her pink flower print dress, faded from wear.
Agnes was on her way to Campile to collect a letter from the post-office from her aunt Lil in London and also to deliver her father and brother, who were working in one of their many fields, their lunch.
She loved the unearthly tranquility of those parts, the emerald green blades of a slanting hill which surveyed the meeting of the ‘three sisters’. Agnes noticed the flutter of a dusky birds flight above her head but the calm disposition of the countryside was interrupted when she was passing Matty and Josie Wallace’s farm, by a rattling sound coming from the direction of Campile.
Agnes trudged on curiously and suddenly a figure on a bicycle appeared from behind a hedge of brambles- a bend in the road. Her heart nearly stopped. It was that dashing young man Dave Gleeson, from Templetown, who had asked her to dance at the parish-hall dance a few nights previously. Her heart had beat hard against her chest as she, embarrassed, accepted and danced the night away looking into his twinkling eyes and beguiling smile. At present he passed her with a nod of the head and quick flash of snow white teeth, as she observed his mop of dark hair, strong well-built figure, and smiled shyly back, her hazel-green eyes beaming through her curling eye-lashes.
That encounter now over, Agnes continued on, debating whether she should have stopped to talk to Dave. She could now see her dad’s field, beside the Shelbourne Co-operative. Once again the quiet sleepiness of the village was interrupted. But this time it was an intruder.
Agnes heard a low humming noise coming from a North-easterly direction. She tossed her head around, staring up at the clear blue sky, in search of the culprit and all of a sudden a huge, dark aircraft appeared from behind the only tumbling white cloud in the sky. She stopped, rooted to the ground. She could clearly see the machine’s markings- it was German bomber plane. She watched helplessly as the aircraft glided down onto the village and dropped three objects onto the Shelbourne Co-op as if in slow motion. There were two huge explosions which flung Agnes back into a hedge on the right side of the road. She desperately fumbled around in the bush, regained stability and peered cautiously out from behind some coarse leaves and branches. The plane circled again before dropping a fourth object, this time into the wheat field beside her father’s. Again the force of the explosion blew her backwards but she immediately jumped, threw her basket down and dashed towards the ruins of the once dominating Co-operative building. The aircraft, she observed, exited the village, flying in a south-westerly direction, towards Waterford.
Everywhere Agnes could see and hear people panicing, calling names desperately, as well as harrowing cries coming from the injured parties. She searched frantically for her father and Billy but could not see them anywhere. Hurrying, as fast as she could, to her father’s field, she found him. He, Billy and many others had layed face-down between drills of Mangolds once the plane had been sighted. Agnes was relieved her family were safe but peoples frantic cries broke her Uphoria. The two sisters, Mary Ellen and Catherine Kent, who were cousins of Dave Gleeson, as well as Kathleen Hurley, were nowhere to be found.
The extent of the explosions was devastating. The first bomb, Agnes heard from eager gossipers, had landed in the yard of the Shelbourne Co-operative but had not exploded. The second bomb exploded, destroying the center block of buildings including the cold storage plant and canteen. The third bomb had exploded close to the railway twisting the lines out of shape, as though they were soft wire and finally the fourth bomb, dropped in Jimmy Clancy’s wheat field had resulted in a massive crater. Being careful of the unexploded bomb, Agnes, along with the people of Campile and workers of the Shelbourne Co-op, who had been inside the Canteen eating their lunch five minutes prior to it being reduced to ruins, searched through the fragments of the building. They were looking for the three lost girls.
kiss the mist 