Madge tells me that Colonel B., only fifty-four, is chafing to be employed, but nothing doing.
Barbara writes that specialists are finding that no-one in England is being ill in wartime. On the other hand, my own doctor tells me he is never finished till nine-thirty, so when the wounded do come, and there are lots of anaesthetics to be given, he will have no time to breathe. Barbara says that when rationing comes in ‘with its immense muddles’, she means to register with one butcher, and her husband with another, and the dogs with another!
We are now having Radio Paris broadcasts; they are charming, and much better mannered than ours. We heard a delightful description of Orleans in wartime the other day, speaking of streets I know and love, where the black-out seems as entire as here, by the broad, swiftly-flowing Loire.
Saturday, 28 October
North-easter, and rain. Will the Germans go through Belgium? That is the question of today.
At Blenheim Palace, where Malvern School is billeted now (at the cost of £5,000 in alterations37), the boys may not use ink, in case they spoil anything.
Monday, 30 October
Rather terrible stories filter through of muddle in Army hospitals in Woolwich, of officers lying shivering without hot water bottles, and so on, and there is a great scarcity in the Army of gum boots, which, however, the noble ARP at home are being supplied with.
No Sunlight soap in the shop today. The butcher says all fat will be taken off his meat soon by the government.
The German propaganda reports us as very hard up for food, and says potatoes will be rationed here soon.
No FANY woman has yet been sent abroad. No need, in this tremendous lull.
Travelled in the train with a woman who said that when the children in Guildford were billeted, they were all set down on the edge of the pavements, a long forlorn row, then pushed into the houses, often compulsorily. She accepted two little boys, though she had rooms booked in a hotel in Cornwall for a holiday. This she quietly gave up.
On the BBC tonight the repetition of the famous play Lost Horizon was peculiarly appropriate to our times.38 The dread that everything fragile and beautiful will be lost. I passed the Tate Gallery today, and forgot for a moment that it had been emptied of treasures. It is a close secret, jealously guarded, as to where the Blakes and the Monets lie today.39
Thursday, 2 November
Went to the Hospital League today.40 Mrs Wilmott, the mother of a local boy who went down in the Royal Oak41 came in, a large woman in black. When she had paid her subscription, and gone, my fellow worker told me that she had paid a visit of condolence to that poor mother after the dreadful news. Mrs Wilmott had said: ‘Well, if I had known he would be drowned, I would never have let him join the Navy!’
As I write, at 9.25, before the fire, Sir Ernest Swinton is talking to us on the BBC of the touchy proposition of forcing the Siegfried Line. Neither side is likely to atttack, Swinton says. Time is on our side, thank God.42
Nancy’s brother is on twenty-four hours leave from Gibraltar. He was on a sloop, one of forty, forming a convoy to protect passenger ships and trading ships of every sort. He says he was not in dry clothes once through the eight days they took to zig-zag through the German mines.
Sunday, 5 November
To tea Marna and John Hopgood, both emancipated through the war. John (aged eighteen) is quite a man now, walking about London; his lawyer’s office is in the West End. Marna is sharing a bed with a Guildford stationer’s daughter at Woking, billeted with a policeman’s wife in a bungalow. She is a Woman Terrier Clerk, and fills in forms all day long. The government pays the woman one pound each for the girls; they don’t expect tea for that, but breakfast, and midday meal and a night snack. She washes their sheets; the girls supply bath towels. Marna is cheerful: it is all new; she goes to shilling hops, dances Boomps-a-daisy with the soldiery, and is very gay. I think of her mother over in France, probably uselessly worrying over these two, who are roving free.
Monday, 6 November
A letter from Canada. Beryl writes that the country is solidly behind England, troops drilling at the top of their street, and looking very dashing. She writes: ‘They parade past our window at eight-thirty, and cause mild heart-flutters.’
I copy this out of the papers today from the advertisements, showing the need for men:
Wanted: milling setters, universal millers, vertical millers, internal and universal grinders, thread millers and borers, tool shapers, surface grinders, slotters and rate fixers.
Wednesday, 8 November
Went to Guildford to see the house taken over by the Town Council for child evacuees who could fit in nowhere else. The desolation of the place inside is unutterable, no floor covering of any kind, bare boards of a poor wood, a steep dismal staircase, of course bare, with marks of former carpets. Dreadful black-grey blankets on the camp beds, and only one sheet on each. Everything gloomy, uncared for, big windows dirty – and in short, a scandal for rich Guildford.
I planted six iris bulbs, very small, but I hope they will yield bright purple flowers. I got them for a penny a dozen at Woolworths, who are today reducing all their bulbs.
The silver birch in the front garden does look graceful and wonderful. There are high winds at night now, and everyone wonders when the Germans will begin their offensive; huge beams of searchlights ray out across our darkened heaths and lanes.
Thursday, 9 November
‘The sooner we are all dead the better,’ said poor Mrs Murray to me just now, ‘what with the world in such a state, and all our best young men likely to be killed.’ I feel very sorry for her, sitting in her tiny, pretty room feeling her bad heart.
This morning news of the bomb at Munich which nearly finished Hitler.43 ‘So Mr Nasty has had a fright,’ observed the village postmaster in a laconic British voice, as he took Harry’s air mail letter from me.
To tea with the Shrapnell-Smiths. Mrs Shrappie and I cried together over Tommy’s death, only twenty-three, in a mimic battle in the air. She has had nearly 400 letters. Tommy was very popular – lucky she has a first class photograph of him. It was sad to drive away from the fine old house with its clipped hedges and red-berried creeper high round the old windows, where we have had such hospitality, such happy tennis parties. No use to write like this. The house is up for sale.
Winston made a splendid speech yesterday. He said in a memorable sentence, ‘We shall have suffering, but we shall break their hearts.’
Friday, 10 November
It is a fine, still, thoughtful November evening, with veils of mist round the green fields of Newlands and winding about the golden woods. Everything now is governed by black-out time. The post to my sorrow is deteriorating here, as in the last war (and we only restored it about ten years after). The postman comes while it is still daylight and there is already only one delivery round Dorking. People are writing much more than they did I think, and the troops in France manage more than one letter per head per day.
Saturday, 11 November
Holland has flooded her fields, afraid of the German advance. I keep thinking of the Low Countries where I was only a year ago in June. I admired the sober, sturdy and independent-minded people and their neat, clean houses, shining windows and crimson shutters. Ada, my Dutch friend, said then that they were very much afraid of the Germans.
Sunday, 12 November
May B. to tea. She said they had spent all Friday rehearsing an air raid; so when the actual ‘I pass you the yellow warning’ came on next day on the phone at her Aldershot office, she found that her troops simply took it to be a joke, and received it as a signal for another practice about which they could go slowly. It was hard to convince them. They had the All Clear signal in about half an hour.
ATS anti-aircraft artillery spotters learn to use an identification telescope at No.7 ATS Training Centre at Stoughton near Guildford.
Photograph © IWM H14189
Monday, 13 November
I had the piano tune
d. The little tuner explained how he had lost his job in London, all his clients having gone into the country. One lady wishes him to go on tuning her grand, now in a furniture store, ‘probably lying on its side. How can I? It wouldn’t pay me.’ This war hits people like this severely.
He smiles and says he doesn’t notice any more the noise going on in his back garden. Over the wall are the barracks, and recruits firing all day, volleys and rattles and in the adjoining wood the raw buglers practising horrible blasts.
Robin is reading the White Paper on German concentration camps, ably written and painful.44
Wednesday, 15 November
Diana and I went to visit the communal kitchen and saw a pleasant scene, three happy ladies peeling potatoes (with the new patent knife), and another carrying buckets. Smart black and white lino, good stove, and so on. Pretty Mrs Coppinger in a striped overall says that her husband is very cold at Harwich now on a mine-sweeper, and also sometimes in a chilly office at Parkstone Quay. He will be glad to receive the 100 Balaclava helmets for his men which the ladies of Shere are knitting.
We went to lunch with Mrs Rayne at the Farm; a lovely room, big white chrysanthemums, huge chimneypiece, and log fire. In the farmyard was a man with a brilliant blue shirt, piling logs. ‘That is the national shirt of the Sudeten Germans,’ said our host.45 The foreigner, happy-eyed, was piling the logs with great art. Dr Benes,46 they think, is not keen that his men should join our army, and many have no jobs: lawyers and doctors. Mrs Rayne had just got permission for a young doctor to ‘observe’ in Guildford hospital, and was fighting to get a Czech boy into the technical school at Guildford, already overrun with evacuees.
Back through the leaf-strewn lanes. Diana and the Tuckwell girls at tea, all of them wondering when they will be called up.
Basil phones at five to say he will be stationed with the Royal Engineers at Codford, Salisbury Plain, and will get seven days’ leave for uniform.
Robin looks at the calm sky and the young moon and says that the Hun may easily be with us tonight.
I think more and more of compromise. That is very likely to be the end of all this war – an unsatisfactory peace!
Thursday, 16 November
My husband is a perfect war-time companion – all house repairs quietly and efficiently done. Today a ventilator carved out of some wood for a certain wall; the black-out speedy and complete.
I think generations after this will be amazed (if they ever have the inclination to read of the past) to note the extent of our precautions against air-raids. People living week after week away from home in the most annoying conditions, desperately unhappy, yet not venturing back, when everything points to their going back as the only solution to their misery.
Friday, 17 November
Basil went to town to buy uniform, and there was a great discussion re how many shirts, how many boots and so on. His overcoat tried on makes him look like a thoughtful Guardsman, so very bunchy and waisted.
Rumours in the papers and on the wireless that Germany is torn by dissension in its higher commands and councils. ‘Of course the best Germans have lost faith in Hitler and his government,’ says Robin.
Rotterdam has lost 72 per cent of its trade through the war; no wonder the Dutch long for peace.
Everybody has been sulking about the black-out trains and the long terrifying crowded journeys back from London to the suburbs. ‘Hell with the lid on,’ cries the Evening Standard tonight.
Saturday, 18 November
The papers are full of guesses why the Germans do not attack.
Woke early, and thought of Clive Modin, the timber merchant, now at Sandhurst, training to be an officer in the Royal Fusiliers, of Mickey Robinson now in the ranks of the Coldstream Guards, of Basil, off next week to Salisbury Plain.47
Sunday, 19 November
Tonight there is no more Summer Time, so we shall be in the black-out well before five.
Went to call on Mrs Barlow, in bed, knitting a Balaclava helmet. She showed me a charming letter of thanks from a mine-sweeper on the Florio, saying that four helmets (of the first Shere contingent) had been dealt out to each ship, and they were furiously competed for. ‘I was one of the lucky ones,’ said the writer, ‘and I can assure you it is very welcome. When we come off our watch we are like blocks of ice, and have few comforts.’
I read the Life of Adler by Phyllis Bottome last night. Adler’s gardener knew Hitler as a boy, and used to say Adolf would never play with the others, but would watch them from afar. Once the schoolboys made a snowman, and Adolf suddenly darted forward and placed his own hat on top, as if he had had a share in the trouble of making it. This story highly intrigued Adler.48
Monday, 20 November
Robin says he feels that there must be a big air raid on London tonight or tomorrow in the moonlight, or ‘they may never come’. As we came out of the cinema after seeing Goodbye Mr Chips, the placards said, ‘Enemy airplane over the Thames’.
Tuesday, 21 November
The days seem to slip past pretty quickly: everybody is wondering why Hitler does not start the offensive, and is not entering Holland after all. The neutral countries are in a most terrible state, their sea-borne trade is vanishing; the Danes have laid a lot of mines.
Basil will soon be gone; I dread it. It seems so far away, Codford St Peter, and the chalky Plain so wide and dreary.
Wednesday, 22 November
At dinner Basil declared: ‘I am fighting against three things in this war. One, against the War Office with its ridiculous archaic system of red tape. Two, against discomfort. Three, against Hitler!’ I told him that I had a very shrewd suspicion in the last war that Alice in Wonderland and the Dodo had got into the War Office, turned everybody else out, and were running it, with the Red Queen as their messenger; and I believed the same thing had happened again.
Thursday, 23 November
Forever to be remembered as the day Basil went into khaki; and it is Eudo’s wedding day in Shanghai.49 I did not see Basil in uniform, save for the pullover and tie, as he went up to town to try on the tunic again. The packing was at long last completed. His military cap came complete with the noble badge of the RAMC as worn by his uncle before him; the cap was too small for me, too big for Robin, tight for Basil, but immensely becoming.
After his departure, everything fell very flat, and I was grateful to my kind friends who carried me off after lunch to see the Gracie Fields film, Shipyard Sally, which swung along in very amusing fashion. Felt much more cheerful after it, driving home most cautiously through the dark roads to Shere. It is not much fun when you see a big mass looming right over you – a bus!
I was horrified to read of the Gestapo methods with the Czech student suspects in Prague. Rousing them at three a.m. and making them come off to prison (many must have been perfectly innocent) in their night clothes; pouring cold water all over them when they arrived. It is admitted, it seems, in Germany, that there were 1,700 executions of these students. What a time we live in, yet all seems so safe in this little Surrey community tonight, where supper slowly warms in the oven, and there is perfect stillness outside. Not one glimmer of light can I see in the village.
Saturday, 25 November
An extremely interesting article today in the Telegraph by one Villard, an American journalist. Some points are that the Germans are saving up for a terrible smashing of England in May, when our seaside towns will be attacked.
Well-informed Germans consider that the submarine which got into Scapa Flow and torpedoed the Royal Oak sailed boldly on the surface with its searchlight going, and deluded the British sailors into believing that is was one of their boats that was approaching and it never submerged.
Mr Villard found many German people ashamed of the Polish campaign.
This morning in the village I met Mr Dodds, who was beaming: his sailor son has come on leave from the Far East; their boat sailed in a great loop from Gibraltar right out into the Atlantic to avoid mines and U-boats. Tony has be
en away nearly two years, and looks ‘much taller and very brown, and he’s full of beans’.
Sunday, 26 November
Joy Annett to lunch. I hoped we could avoid a long and fruitless discussion on politics. I know she is very unhappy about the war. However, nothing would keep the charming, beautiful being off it and we talked gloomily till dusk began to gather and were no forrarder. Joy thinks we should not be patriotic, we should have no country, but belong to all nations.
Monday, 27 November
The papers are full of the sinking of ships. The Davidsons came back from Cyprus on the Rawalpindi, and are much distressed by her loss. So many went down with her.50 The pictures in the press are constantly of a great boat just being submerged, looking very pitiful.
Tuesday, 28 November
Basil writes that he has been continuously busy since he has been on the Plain, six or seven hundred men of the Royal Engineers in his charge, vaccinations and innoculations to tackle; also the questions of poor, overcrowded billets, scabies, etc. First sick parade is at 8.30. It sounds overwhelming.
Every night we hear of some ship mined, and we are losing count of even their names.
Wednesday, 29 November
The war seems pressing on us here, especially this week. Robin walks about pouring out floods of talk and I listen with my mind half on the widows and children of the Rawalpindi. Feel very cross and touchy, and a great longing to get away.
I try to send two guineas to Canada for my sister-in-law’s Christmas gift but it is too difficult, the thing would have to be put before judge and jury (says the post office man), who would decide whether a money order could go. ‘Besides,’ he adds gloomily, ‘you know, ma’m, with them U-boats about, it might never get over.’
Thursday, 30 November
The one o’clock news told us that Russia has invaded Finland.
Mrs Miles's Diary Page 5
