What of the poor little country? What of Norway, what of Sweden? What shall we do? Will Germany ally itself with Russia, and shall we automatically be at war with Russia too? What of India? What will the neutrals do? How insolent are the Russians, never pausing to reply to America’s offer to intervene before taking action.
Friday, 1 December
Soon we will have had three months’ war, and I will have my journal bound up for this period. I hope it has been worth keeping. I hear 12 per cent of the printing trade is out of work, alas, and not likely to get it.
Madge says she is bored to death with the war. But there is a huge amount of local bridge going on. Everybody is knitting, and wool is difficult to get.
Barbara says Miss J., ruler of the Children’s Hour on the BBC, returns her engaging story of a mouse air warden who dealt with bats (and spoke in rhyme all the time), saying that she hopes that children don’t know anything about air raids. ‘I suppose their gas masks are to keep fairies in!’ cries the irritated author.
Monday, 4 December
Down to Hampshire by bus. Most exciting; my first journey to stay with anybody since the war started.
It gave me a queer feeling, coming down the hill into Winchester, to see an aeroplane immediately above the grey ancestral tower of the cathedral. Shall I live to see our cathedrals bombed from the air?
Arrived to find my sisters-in-law’s main preoccupation the six or seven red setter dogs. The stables are almost empty, and the business of letting horses out to people who want to ride in the New Forest has vanished. Molly was up in London being interviewed by the Admiralty. They offered her small pay to be a dispatch rider in the WRNS. Molly, aged forty, declined.51
Tuesday, 5 December
Muriel Andrews called for me.
The school at Picket Post has gained pupils through this war, and the house is full of jolly, well-mannered little boys. This year, owing to the black-out there can be no performance of the usual Gilbert and Sullivan as parents could not do the journey. So all will be taken to The Lion Has Wings, the propaganda film, instead.
I heard of Peter in France (whose scarlet mess kit hung in the wardrobe of the spare room); he has been digging trenches with his men. Every morning the cordial French landlady at his billet puts a dash of rum into his coffee.
Friday, 8 December
Left with great regret as always. At Southampton it was pouring with rain, but men were digging away manfully at underground shelters in the park.
Robin, surveying the shelters from the bus with critical eye, considered their structure was faulty and that they would ‘fall in’ by and by.
Sunday, 10 December
May B. came in the afternoon in khaki straight from Aldershot. She described the work she is doing with the FANYs and told us many stories of girl recruits, and of many well-to-do married women, who after a time come to her weeping that they are being ‘wasted’; jibbing at the menial work they have to do to begin with.
May told one rebellious maiden that she must regard herself as merely ‘a cog in a machine’. Later on wrathful letters arrived from Pa, saying his girl possessed ‘originality and personality’ and that she was certainly no cog. The CO laughed heartily with May over this.
It’s interesting to hear May’s idea of the war. She thinks this is Armageddon. Before we have finished she believes that the whole world will be ablaze. She thinks the Arabs will rise and the Russians pour into Asia.
Tuesday, 12 December
I am writing at eight o’clock and the German wireless is giving over marching songs sung with great élan. They don’t seem in the least depressed! Fine young men are obviously shouting them.
Yet all is not well. I read in the Readers Digest that the health bulletin of Germany, taken from Germany’s own statistics, shows that rickets is prevalent, and diptheria more common. In 1935 and ’36 only 75 per cent of the men called up were found fit for active service. By last year only 55 per cent were acceptable. Dysentery has increased 300 per cent under Hitler. Heart trouble and tuberculosis are increasing, and so on . . .
Every now and then one feels the greatest pity and love for Germany, so strained, so chivvied, so much afraid, and so mechanical.52
Heard from Mickey, a private in the Coldstream Guards. He says that two very nice chaps deserted from his squad on Friday night. They just couldn’t stand the roughness of the life.
Wednesday, 13 December
From the news of the Assembly at Geneva today53, it is clear that the neutrals are by no means sure that we shall be the victors. They fear to offend Russia and, behind her, Germany. Would not Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Holland help poor Finland if they could do as they longed to do? Obviously they are not certain that Germany and the Soviet would not crumple them up and never get out, while we possibly made a compromise to suit ourselves, and left them in the lurch.
Thursday, 14 December
I am sitting by the fire; the tenants below are dressing for a dinner party at High House with bridge to follow. This is very delightful: the Davidsons are refusing to be depressed by the war.
Shere has achieved its 100 Balaclava helmets for the minesweepers. Glorious!
Friday, 15 December
So the year creeps to its close – the days still shortening, the north wind bitter, Christmas a burden. I got a magazine with a first instalment of a serial [written] by me, and I wondered if the war would permit the serial to be finished.
Tonight the German broadcast is one long boast as usual. They shot – they say – ten out of twenty of our aeroplanes over Borkum. Our Admiralty says we lost three. Will the Graf Spee sail out of Montevideo harbour or stay in it, interned? The Germans are very silent about that tonight.54
Went to The Lion Has Wings, a perfectly amazing film about our air force. A triumph indeed. It mut be a new creation, this modern airman. Clouds and guns, brains and nerve – utterly astonishing to one of my age.
Sunday, 17 December
I note various prophecies. The American Saturday Evening Post says Germany will eventually be (a) starved for fuel and (b) starved for materials. German artillery and aeroplanes top the Allied strength, but these are not of much use after ammunitions and petrol give out – and these will give out, says the US Department of Commerce, in two years. Denmark already lies helpless before Germany, and it is likely that Hitler will seize it; also Holland for its air bases, agriculture and shipping; Sweden for its indispensable iron fields, and Rumania for its oil.
And what of Finland, where in the Baltic north the few hours of light flit like a phantom? Some of the Russians, they say, have perished in the snow.
Ten p.m. Now the Graf Spee has moved from her moorings, and all the world waits and wonders.
Monday, 18 December
Everybody pleased, and most of us surprised that the Graf Spee is scuttled. ‘I cannot get down the chimney this year,’ says the German Father Christmas. ‘Why not?’ cry out the little Hitler Youth. ‘Because there is a scuttle in the way!’ Idiotic, but the joke of the moment.
A Shere man has been killed in the black-out in the lane outside, and I knew the girl driving the car, cool and capable Joyce Stevens. He got right in front, apparently.
Tuesday, 19 December
The Eusti came to lunch.55 Shoulder of lamb, lots of delicious onion sauce, browned potatoes, suet pudding with hot black treacle poured over it, and a few mince-pies from Guildford. A good deal of story-telling and laughter – I think we were all very happy to meet again.
Bert turned out an ARP warden, and at any moment may be called on the telephone to be told to distribute to various centres the words: ‘Red Warning’.56
It was noble of them to come, with their last petrol ration, and to bring me a plum pudding and a Christmas cake.
It is well worth taking the News Chronicle as well as the Daily Mail and The Times. Today Vernon Bartlett is back from Geneva, and tells in an article what the neutrals were talking about. It amounts to this:
1. The overwhelming mass of Germans are sick and tired of this Hitler regime.
2. But, there will be no revolt – there’s not enough vitality left, except possibly in the higher ranks of the army.
Harry has been down a tin mine at Kuala Lumpur. The air mail this time has taken only eleven days.
Wednesday, 20 December
So grim and dreadful a day, foggy, icy, that I got Robin to stay in bed with his cold. Felt very bad myself, writing in a fireless room.
A woman choosing bacon from the very slender stock at the Forrest Stores cried that she wanted collar. The man serving, amazed at her obstinacy, and her lack of realisation as to the conditions of the bacon trade, just threw up his hands and said: ‘Oh gosh!’
Sunday, 24 December
This will be rather a brief week’s journal, as one’s mind is completely weary with the effort of organising Christmas without any help from any other brain. The menfolk are entirely uninterested, but drop brown paper on the floor and sit down joyously to nice hot meals.
Joy and Otto came in: he is an Austrian refugee from Vienna, a very learned art critic. It is not known if he will be allowed to work here permanently, but since the Aliens Tribunal57 it is easier, and one hopes that such a specialist will be used over here.
Wretchedly cold, so cold that in every room practically of our little flat fires burn all the time.
Christmas Day
Church, and cheerful carols.
Madge’s turkeys failed to appear from Aberdeenshire. Our little local station, Gomshall, had heard nothing of the band of three noble twenty-five-pounders, travelling south.
The King’s speech was painfully delivered, but he got through it better at the end than the beginning. I wonder if his speech specialist, Mr Logue, was by his side.58
Boxing Day
The speech tonight by Georg Gripenberg, the Finnish Minister in London, was the most moving of any I have listened to on the wireless since Hitler’s War began. He drew a swift graphic picture of his little country with its brave modern towns, enlightened ideas, care of the poor, absence of unemployment. Now they are hoplessly outnumbered, and alas they have not enough ammunition or guns. It was a brave, tragic speech, spoken with great dignity and self-control. Cannot the neutrals brave all and come to help? This fear of Russia is terrible.
Wednesday, 27 December
Woke early to wake Basil, who had to leave early for Salisbury. Very cheerful idea, this journeying in the morning, instead of the gloomy night. Tony Dodds called for him at 8.30 and the dark blue naval overcoat walked with the khaki overcoat down the village street in the morning air. I missed him all day dreadfully.
Madge is down at the canteen, getting ready roast beef (her turkeys from Aberdeen still linger mysteriously) for the evacuees’ parents who are being entertained by the village. She makes Yorkshire pudding for the very first time and is thrilled. The parents come: there are forty-five. They eat, they smile, they make speeches of thanks. They leap in the fields with their children (for it is fair) and return to eat again. Madge returns, exhausted, and has a hot bath while the parents travel back Fulhamwards and many of their sons and daughters go to bed in the cottages weeping.
Thursday, 28 December
Snow and muffled roads and white boughs, and the village nurse in her car slithering about the hill.
I hear from Margaret Dell in America. It is a vivid, agitated letter. They seem to listen in to Europe a great deal. ‘Our young,’ she says, ‘do not understand, but my husband and I agree that we are letting others fight our battles and that the fight is for the retention of all the things we hold most dear in life. One’s whole heart aches over the war and you.’
My article on our village in wartime is in the British Weekly. The number is a very, very thin one. I wonder how long it will live.59
Bey came to sherry, and tells me that a baker, an elderly Czech refugee, is allowed to work at last in Guildford, and is radiantly happy. His wife is to have a little home again of her own; they are leaving their sad haven here at last and taking lodgings in the town.
Friday, 29 December
I feel much overwhelmed by the state of things. Shall we win – can we ever restore Poland and Czechoslovakia?
Saturday, 30 December
Pipes frozen everywhere. A terrible earthquake in Turkey. So ends the year in angry frost and wintry rain.
Sunday, 31 December
I hear from May that twenty-two FANYs are volunteering for Finland and are taking out a complete ambulance there quite shortly. Some of them will not come back, she says.
1940
Monday, 1 January
I think people are getting much more grave about the war, feeling we are up against a wonderful, highly trained war machine. Nothing will ever induce England to get ready in good time. Slovenly, happy-go-lucky place.
Tuesday, 2 January
Robin has just read out that ‘the most horrible warfare is the kindest’, a great Hitler saying, quoted by Rauschning in Hitler Speaks, a most illuminating volume which I must read.60 Hitler would be much annoyed if he could hear the calm tone of voice in which Robin is reading out some of his more trenchant ventures.
Wednesday, 3 January
Here is an extract from Barbara’s letter about going round to see Donoghue, who has had flu:61
‘He is really a very nice little man. Jack suggested that if he provided a pair of old riding boots for the auction on behalf of the Red Cross and lettered them, “I rode Brown Jack” then he might make a lot, and he agreed.
‘His bedroom was all clean apple-green walls – tiny shoes by the bed, a tiny dark silk dressing-gown on the bed and a gas-mask slung on the radiator.’
Thursday, 4 January
Our gardener is still out of work, but for his three days here. I fear the war is against gardeners. Everybody coughs, looks hideous in the ghastly cold, and suffers, and the very idea of all these frozen people in Finland makes the reality of war cut us more sharply to the heart.
Friday, 5 January
A better day. Mrs Murray called, to bring some Balaclava helmets for the Surrey Regiment, and her face lit up when I gave her some more wool. We started off for Guildford, the back of the car full of books, etc. for the soldiers. Drank at Lyons a glorious glass of hot blackcurrent juice, reminiscent of cosy nurseries at night, with a fire glowing in the hearth, and a rosy face on the pillow. I ignored placards announcing that a great spring offensive was imminent.
Saw a film with Charles Boyer in it. There was a picture of the Graf Spee scuttling herself, and blazing down the sea, absolutely awe-inspiring and full of doom; a magnificent, dreadful sight, smoke mantling the huge turret . . . What history these films are writing for generations yet unborn!
Saturday, 6 January
Robin has finished Hitler Speaks; it gives an amazing impression of a mad, bad neurotic gangster, surrounded by opportunists. Sometimes Hitler sees some demon he dreads in the room, and points at him, screaming with fear. It is a terrible and serious indictment.
Sunday, 7 January
My poor Ebi von Brunn, of Tübingen, I think of you, gallant young Nazi, who, your mother told me in Germany, so hated the Labour Camp, when you put in your service there, that you would roam the woods and pick wild flowers to send back to your loved home, and write often and long to her. No Hitler can turn you against a peaceful, settled life, with love and beauty in it. We in England make you suffer longer, since we have been so slow to move, so late to prepare.62
Monday, 8 January
Dora said that her husband, a miller, is only having one third of his stock allowed to him by the government. How are they going to live, when their full business only just paid them? Everywhere people are having to put down pigs and hens owing to lack of food. The manager of the grocery stores today bitterly criticised the method employed, and showed me three tins filled with tiny tickets like postage stamps in size, which are the ration coupons that must be checked by the young ladies in the Guildfo
rd office. What a life! If they sneeze, they will blow away.
Robin and I both think the war may be ended by mutual difficulties and boredoms and wilting enthusiasm of the troops . . . it is a kind of nasty deadlock . . . and the expense horrifying.
Sunday, 14 January
Last night Captain Dodds63 informed us that there was a grave shortage of coal in this country. The great power-houses have only a week’s supply.
I see, by the way, that cold has made the mutton-headed ones of Germany (as Hitler so engagingly describes his flock) rebel for the first time in ages and ages. They were so perishing cold – owing to the great coal shortage in Northern Germany – that crowds of them appeared in stations and entered the still-warmed waiting rooms, and insisted on camping out there. Not even the tough Nazi boys could get them out. So that was that. Well done Karl, well done Anna!
On the other hand I suppose nobody did anything in Berlin about the fact that so many thousands of poor old Jewish women and Jewish children in thin clothes were ordered onto the streets to shovel away the snow. It makes one’s blood boil to read some things in the paper.
Monday, 15 January
Drove with Robin and some army comforts, books and mittens, over to Stoughton barracks. It was an unusually frosty morning. As I waited outside the ‘Old Comrades Hut’ I saw about twenty young recruits in the very act of arriving. Nice lads, I should say twenty-one or twenty-two, in grey flannel bags, dark blue and brown overcoats, each hanging on to either a paper parcel or a small suitcase.
I wondered what the mothers and sweethearts of the newcomers were thinking.
Tuesday, 16 January
Robin reads out as I write that nearly 800 Czech officers have been arrested lately in Prague and may be shot. Three of our submarines have been lost, and there are many who go to rest tonight in England heart-broken.
The wind is rushing round this ugly old house, but we are very comfortable inside it, and have so much to be grateful for. Mrs Dodds is very nervous about Tony and told me on the phone that each time she says farewell at the weekend is like dying a little death. I advised her to get sleeping tablets from her doctor.
Mrs Miles's Diary Page 6
