Farming, Fighting and Family

by Miranda McCormick

  Never before, could Emily recall having been the target for such wrath.

  ‘Nurse Mason!’ Sister Matthews’ voice seemed to reverberate round the entire ward. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  Emily was on her feet now, trembling. ‘I … I’m sorry, Sister.’

  ‘Sorry is not enough for such a total breach of discipline. Come to my office at once.’

  There, Emily was subjected to a tirade which lasted twenty minutes. The woman seemed to be almost crazed with anger. Two splashes of heightened colour appeared on each cheek-bone. Her small dark eyes glittered. She charged Emily with having brought disgrace on the whole nursing profession, of being guilty of indecent behaviour, of deception and falling down on her trust.

  Pamela’s novel goes on to recount how this conversation was overheard by the entire ward, staff and patients alike, and how afterwards when Emily returned, fighting back tears, many a sympathetic glance was cast her way. The episode concludes that: ‘Middle-aged, unmarried and power-conscious, they [the Sisters] one and all possessed the diabolical ability to terrify almost every young nurse who came under their authority.’

  Matters were coming to a head. It is no great surprise to read in Pamela’s diary for 18 October: ‘Matron sent for me. Went to the doctors … Something about rest.’ On 21 October, after the Matron at Tower House had received Pamela’s medical report from the doctor, she records: ‘Miss Best rang up. She won’t have me back because of all this business until Dr A says I’m all right. It is a curse. I’m awfully cross – there’s nothing really the matter with me. Oh dear. It’s exactly what they’d expect of me …’

  Pamela was not to know how long she would remain on sick leave; in the event she did not return to Tower House until the beginning of 1941. In the interim her conscience gave her little peace; unable to pull her weight in the war effort, she also felt guilty that she was living in a place of such comparative safety, as her entry for 23 October illustrates: ‘Under orders stayed in bed nearly all the day … Heather E went to London yesterday and says it’s awful … It’s terribly sad but somehow one just doesn’t realise it enough … Down here we just worry about how many silk stockings we’ve got …’

  Being back at home rather than in the confines of the hospital enabled Pamela to keep a closer eye on the progress of the war. By now Hitler, having failed to defeat the RAF in time for the intended invasion of England, had instead turned his attention eastwards towards an increasingly belligerent Russia. The war was at this stage being fought on many fronts, including the North African desert – of vital strategic importance for the dominance of the Mediterranean. Snippets of war news are now regularly recorded in Pamela’s diary:

  October 29th … Greece has now been invaded by the Italians and the whole boiling over there … oh it’s a funny world we’re making history in …

  October 30th … The Balkans are getting it now and all the Ozzies are over there …

  November 2nd … Greece is fighting hard & we’re helping them now. It’ll be so awful if it turns out like all the rest …

  This last diary entry continues with a rare flash of personal good news: ‘The Field has accepted Gone Away [the poem Pamela had written almost a year earlier about the demise of hunting at the onset of the war]. Terrific after all this time.’

  One beneficial result of Pamela’s weeks of sick leave was that she was now free to meet David when he was able to get away from Larkhill. Pamela kept all of David’s wartime letters, both those written before and after he was posted abroad. The early ones – dating from September 1940 – are short, formal notes about arrangements to meet, addressing her as ‘Dear’ or ‘My dear Pamela’ and ending ‘yours ever’, but they become increasingly affectionate in tone as the months go by. Because of the unpredictability of their respective periods of leave (Pamela’s in particular were subject to alteration at the last moment), they were constantly frustrated in their attempts to get together. For example, as early as 24 September Pamela wrote:

  They changed my day suddenly – just like that to tomorrow – I took my courage in both hands & asked Matron if I needn’t. Then when I had it doesn’t really matter about David and lunch and all those sort of things – not when the world’s going up in smoke. Yesterday 83 children were drowned evacuating to America.* It’s difficult to get things in proportion but you’ve got to go out I s’pose.

  Whilst Pamela’s period of sick leave made it easier for her to accommodate David’s spells off duty, during the latter part of 1940 David was finding it increasingly difficult to take time off owing to pressure of work. His letters to his parents during his period of training at Larkhill provide many insights into the life he now found himself leading.

  It appears that at the beginning, in late August–early September, the young officer cadets had a relatively easy time and made the most of their leisure hours. On 21 September David wrote to his parents: ‘I have been to Salisbury nearly every day last week & am rather tired after a dance last night. If we don’t have a reasonably good time here it is not our fault. We certainly try hard enough.’ Matters were soon to change. The following week David told his parents: ‘Now unfortunately the time of reckoning fast approaches, exams brew in the close future, & I find myself with hours of work to catch up. It is just as well as I have used up all September’s petrol coupons & half October’s [David had by then acquired a car, a small Morris].’ In the same letter he complains that it was ‘getting unpleasantly cold here’ and in a postscript to his next letter, dated 30 September, he asks whether there might be an old eiderdown that they could spare. In due course the eiderdown arrived, and on 13 October he wrote: ‘My eiderdown has got here … and makes a great difference. Everyone is very jealous of it but think me very bold to have it here.’

  As regards his actual training, the following week’s letter home paints this rather gloomy picture:

  We have a very depressing week ahead. We are platoon on duty which means that we have to get up at 5 every day & stand about for an hour or two for the next seven days. We also have to do this in the evening & are confined to barracks. Not only that, but we have our first gunnery exam at the end of the week & another exam … I spent most of the week swotting up the guts of cars for an exam we had on Friday. We seem to be always having exams …

  David was the only member of his platoon to pass all his exams on first sitting, and wrote of his disappointment when his friends were put down a course or more and made to do the previous month’s work again. Finally he told his parents that he would be ‘passing out’ around Christmas time, and had ordered his uniform, ‘which is apt to lull one into a false sense of security’.

  Despite the restrictions of David’s training course (23 Course, 122 OCTR Larkhill), he and Pamela still managed to meet at some stage almost every week. On 26 October, by now on sick leave but evidently sufficiently rested, Pamela wrote:

  Went to Bath with David, John Ashlee, Simon Fleming. Great fun. We went to the flics and dinner & then met a party for dancing at the Assembly Rooms – it was terrific and I did enjoy it only I wish I hadn’t been the only girl except for the dance. Mummy was v. worried because of night driving.

  However a month or so later Pamela’s diary reveals that she was having some doubts about the burgeoning relationship: ‘David & I went to the flics and there was a siren and a lot of bombs during the night. He is very nice but terribly spoilt – even more than Robin* was.’ Similarly on 20 November she wrote: ‘David came to dinner. There was an air-raid s[iren]. and we went to the flics. He is very spoilt – so am I. We don’t get anywhere and he wastes money.’

  Pamela’s comment about David being ‘spoilt’ is perhaps not altogether surprising, since he came from a rather different background to her own. His parents lived in a large house in Weybridge. His father Edward – a scion of the wealthy American McCormick International Harvester family – had been sent over from Chicago, together with his two brothers, to be educated at Eton. Whilst there, h
e befriended Francis Samuelson, the son of a Yorkshire baronet, who invited him back to his family home, Breckenbrough Hall near Thirsk in Yorkshire, where evidently a romance between Edward and Francis’s sister Phyllis was kindled. After her marriage, the strong-minded Phyllis had no intention of returning to the USA with her new husband, so,having lived for a while in London, she and Edward eventually set up home on St George’s Hill, Weybridge. Quite apart from the obvious attractions of its thriving social life, centred round its tennis and golf clubs (Edward and Phyllis were keen players of both sports), this choice of location pandered to Edward’s passion for early motorcars and aviation; the now legendary Brooklands motor-racing circuit and aerodrome were only a few miles away (and indeed this was where David had learnt to drive a few years earlier). A major centre of military aircraft production was also located nearby in the form of the Brooklands Vickers and Hawker factories; once the Blitz began, it became an obvious target. The McCormicks’ home, Shaws, was therefore in the direct firing line, and did indeed sustain some minor bomb damage; this was why, at this stage of the war, Edward and Phyllis decided it would be prudent for them to decamp to the latter’s family home in Yorkshire for the duration.

  * * *

  Whilst his daughter was absorbed by her problems with wartime work and her new admirer, Arthur Street was as occupied as ever with farming, writing and broadcasting. In addition he was heavily involved in his own war work, frequently being asked to lecture to the troops; he continued to take his Home Guard duties very seriously, having now been promoted to platoon commander. His book Hitler’s Whistle, published in 1943, consists largely of extracts from articles in Farmers’ Weekly, The Listener and Chamber’s Magazine. Together they form a chronological narrative of how the war was affecting the countryside. It appears that the morale of the Wiltshire country folk remained as upbeat as ever. On 20 October 1940 Arthur reported a conversation between two old farmhands – both members of the Home Guard – as follows:

  In between gathering mushrooms, snaring rabbits, listening to lectures on the art of war, and doing their regular observation duty at dusk and dawn, the rural members of the Home Guard keep their weather eyes open for Jerry during their farm work. At least the two in this story did.

  They were working in a field close to the hill buildings, with aeroplanes buzzing overhead every few minutes. Suddenly a different engine noise caused one of them to look up.

  ‘Tom, look at ‘ee. ‘Ee doan’ zim exactly,’ he said to his companion.

  ‘Thee bist right, Bill. Thic be a Jerry,’ came the reply.

  ‘Zo ’tis, Tom. Look at yer, thee bist the best zhot. Thee get the gun, I’ll get me prong.’

  What chance has Hitler against a spirit like that?

  A few pages on, Arthur describes the uneasy alliance between the farming community and the soldiery in the use of farmland for training exercises, advocating a policy of consideration and tolerance on both sides. The following paragraph illustrates the problem:

  Neither renting nor owning land gives a man full dominion over it during total war. As one old farmer put it to me the other day, ‘You can’t walk across your own fields without asking permission from the soldiers. When they first came, they asked for my identity card about three times a day. Now they know me, they don’t bother, but call me Dad instead.’ Which of course, is much more pleasant for everybody concerned.

  Military imagery was beginning to creep into Arthur’s prose. In the following example, he uses it both deliberately and lyrically:

  Over and around the ploughman’s head wheel the November birds. Aircraft of all types, occasionally some which were made in Germany. Peewits by the hundreds, twisting and twirling in concerted formation against a watery sun. Black battalions of rooks, flying steadily and purposefully in search of newly-sown wheat fields. Platoons of white and grey seagulls alternately hovering and settling just in front and just behind the plough. Whole armies of starlings marching drunkenly but importantly over the newly turned furrows in search of worms and grubs; and a few wary wood pigeons, that disappear swiftly, the moment the plough is stopped for some needed adjustment. All are typical November companions of the ploughman, save those alien mechanical birds from overseas.

  By now cities other than London were also experiencing the full force of the Blitz, as Pamela recorded:

  November 15th There’s been a terribly bad raid on Coventry. Bombed all night.

  November 24th All the Southampton people are here because of terrible air-raid. Unregisterable.

  November 25th Couldn’t go to Wales because Bristol has been bombed [Pamela had earlier received an invitation from a friend to stay at her home near Newport]. The world is rushing down the hill like the Gadarine [sic] swine and we’re all going with it and no one can think straight … Mummy is very tired and everyone is on edge …

  December 3rd Southampton from all reports is nearly flat. It’s just awful and you can’t realise it’s so close and here we are just carrying on and thinking of going to dances …

  Vera Street had always been a keen gardener. On 16 December the distaff side of the Street family evidently staged a minor rebellion against the wartime restrictions, albeit with pangs of conscience, as Pamela’s diary reports: ‘Mummy and I were awfully naughty. Took the car and went to Winchester because Mummy wanted some plants. It seemed a very unwarlike sort of thing to do and all very wrong.’ The following day Pamela finally received the all clear to return to work, albeit on a part-time basis: ‘Saw Matron and am going back for 3 days a week – something of nothing.’

  Pamela did not return to the hospital immediately, however. Christmas was now approaching. Pamela’s diary records that on 19 December David called with a present for the Streets. Pamela had evidently got over her previous misgivings about him, for her diary entry paints him in a far more favourable light:

  David came. I have a most awful cold but he was terribly sweet and has got his commission and is going to Egypt … He brought us a bottle of sherry for being so kind to him which I think was frightfully nice of him. He has got ideas about things but I’m afraid he will become just a memory like the others …

  A bottle of sherry might not sound particularly generous by modern standards, but at the time alcohol was in short supply – hence the fashion for tea-dances – and very expensive. War notwithstanding, in those days Christmas presents were much more modest than in today’s consumer-driven society, and seldom purchased until a day or so beforehand. Pamela’s diary for Christmas Eve 1940 illustrates how wartime privations made even such customary small luxuries extremely difficult to come by: ‘Tried to do everything one should on Christmas Eve but shopping is terrible now and there are heaps of things you just can’t get. Sweets and chocolates are a rarity.’

  Pamela’s diary for the remainder of the Christmas period chronicles a succession of family gatherings. On 29 December she records that ‘Pop went into the Guildhall & entertained the troops’. Then on 29 December her diary finds her experiencing a conflict of loyalties:

  David rang from Yorkshire [he had gone to spend Christmas with his parents at his grandfather’s home Breckenbrough Hall] – wanted me to go to London to the Grosvenor & celebrate New Year’s Eve with him. Well. I couldn’t. Mummy was quite decided. I suppose it was rather a tall order what with the Blitz and inappropriate etc., but oh Lord if it wasn’t for a war …

  To make matters worse, the following day she records collecting a certificate from the doctor enabling her to return to work. Her final diary entry for 1940 reveals her concerns at having to miss a potential landmark moment in her life – a last chance to meet David prior to his embarkation for Egypt, possibly receiving a proposal of marriage – because her conscience obliged her to report back for wartime duty:

  December 31st It’s over – the year – I wonder where we’ll all be next year this time. Gosh what a lot has happened in one sense. Somehow it seems to go on round you & it’s all so extraordinary you don’t take it in. Well I’ve
sent my cert to Matron and David will come & I shan’t be here when I might have been. I don’t know what’s the matter with me – in one way I’d give a lot to be and yet I just went and did it. I don’t know. I think I’m going crackers but whenever anything nearly happens it doesn’t – never. I’ve been terribly lucky but always just miss it – everything – well this time I had it in my own hands …

  Whilst his daughter’s final written record for 1940 was full of intensely personal concerns, Arthur Street’s last published article for that year found him once again assuming his role as one of the main champions of rural Britain. At the end of this article, dated 30 December 1940 and reproduced in Hitler’s Whistle, Arthur muses on how comparatively unchanged the countryside continued to be despite the war, and how successful it had been in fulfilling its wartime obligations:

  Only those who really belong to the countryside know just how much of it has been on active service ever since the war began. Amongst a hundred-and-one things that the countryside was asked to provide were four main essentials – a safe refuge for women and children from bombed cities, greatly increased food production as a safeguard against famine, accommodation for a huge army in training, and a useful local defence force in every village. Being a farmer I naturally consider number two to be the most important; but, even so, I know that all four were necessary, and what is more that all four have been accomplished …