Mrs Miles's Diary

by S. V. Partington

  Saturday, 17 February

  Deep snowfall.

  We hear Hitler is thinner, working harder than ever, and more nervous than of yore.

  At at least one East Coast port, says the News Chronicle, the crew of minesweepers about to set out to sea go through this little ritual. All hands group themselves round the master at the helm. ‘Are we all here?’ he asks, and the reply comes to him, ‘Yes, in God’s care, Amen.’

  ‘Of what, then, are we afraid?’

  ‘We are afraid of nothing,’ comes a second reply. And the ship beats her way out of harbour to do as unpleasant a job as any on the Seven Seas.

  Sunday, 25 February

  I write in great excitement at 6.30, because, as Summer Time came in today, it is still light, and how extraordinarily blessed that is. Yesterday came spring. Sunshine actually streamed in, the first happy-looking day we have had for months. Hikers sprang out of towns and aconites came out in their pretty green ruffles, and the pale cold azure of the perfect grape hyacinths in a vase by my bed whispered that possibly they might soon be seeing some of their sisters in the garden borders.

  The lift to the spirits of more light is amazing.

  The journal has been discontinued for a whole week owing to an attack of influenza and laryngitis, prevalent all over Britain. The doctor says it has taken the form for the most part of a very sharp pain in the chest – I felt as if I had a whole heap of knives in mine cutting me.

  Prince George Chavchavadze played Chopin the other day to some troops. They listened politely and then a voice was heard enjoining him to ‘Swing it, George!’79

  Monday, 26 February

  Tried to get spaghetti, baked beans, beetroot and celery today and failed in getting any of them.

  Singing (yes, I’m afraid so) ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, the first squadron of the Canadian Air Force arrived in England yesterday.

  Tuesday, 27 February

  Mrs Dell wrote to me from Princeton, New Jersey, today about the war. She says: ‘I feel in perfect agony over the war, and sunk in shame at the indifference and spinelessness of my government and many of my acquaintances. We are all doing most footling Red Cross work and at long last a private committee has been formed in New York called Fighting Funds for Finland, and I am engaged in organising the local branch . . . We Americans are giving millions of dollars for Finnish relief, but until last Friday everyone was hoping that the Government would give the Finns credit with which to buy guns, ammunition and planes for their defence. Now it is quite evident that the Government will do no such thing. They may eventually lend them money for more food, etc., but not for arms.’

  Barbara writes from her Berkshire village: ‘The housekeeper of a friend of ours here still thinks we are fighting the French. She said, when Sibyl told her of the discomforts her nephew had had in a French ambulance after being wounded: “Well, what can you expect of the French. It’s a wonder they didn’t murder him, poor boy!”’

  Such are our voters.

  Wednesday, 28 February

  Robin and I talk a great deal in the firelight, sipping glasses of sherry, about the mysterious element in this war. It is as if the Germans are playing a very deep hand indeed, keeping us all on the alert and not attacking. Is this going on indefinitely?

  True, spring is not yet very far advanced, but it is surely light enough for the Great Air Raids to begin. Are all the people in England now on guard going to get quite sick of the inaction and the deadlock? Will there not be a huge cry going up for compromise?

  One thing seems certain. The Germans can get on very well with their food supplies, limited though they may be. It must pay them to play this waiting game.

  I had a postcard from Winnipeg from my old Nanny to say she was at the head of sixty-five women sewing garments for the poor evacuated children in England. Sad and shameful that it should be necessary.

  Thursday, 29 February

  We should normally be finishing up our Mentone month and saying goodbye to the yellow walls and the bougainvillea. Robin says we must pretend we have been.

  Anthony Eden made a speech which was given on the wireless. Did not bother to listen much. I feel he is only a façade – nothing of importance behind that graceful manner.80

  Friday, 1 March

  March comes in with a bitter wind.

  Phyl writes that when the searchlight unit near her cottage got flu they had no hot water bottles, so she put half-filled sandbags which they had into her oven and warmed them and they retained the heat for a long time.

  There is a great deal of talk as to whether the Germans will bomb us or not. Everybody seems to think not, till we remember they may ‘get nasty’ and let us have it hot and hard. Yesterday in Guildford a great aeroplane passed, it seemed, roaring northwards almost over my hat.

  ‘No dripping,’ says the butcher firmly on the phone. ‘No, we can’t be sure of letting you have a pound and a half of sausages. You shall have what we can spare.’

  Sunday, 3 March

  Basil and I walked over to Mrs Theobald’s and heard her tell some stories of her evacuees. The two little boys are imps. One day during the bad winter weather they turned off the water at the main without saying a word. Mrs T., their kind hostess, found herself having a very tiny bath at midnight. Her husband warned her that the boiler might burst. He went up into the chilly loft to inspect the cistern, poor man, while Helen in night clothes toiled away at dispersing the boiler coke in buckets and carrying it across the freezing yard. In vain did they ask a plumber to come next day when no water. He was so busy he couldn’t get to them. The secret was not discovered for many hours.

  Tuesday, 5 March

  One of May’s great friends has committed suicide, a deaf, rich, lonely batchelor of forty-eight. He cut his throat, fearing none of his friends would have time for him during the war and knowing he could not go on travelling. Poor C. H.!

  Eileen’s father has had to kill off many of his chickens owing to lack of foodstuffs. It’s very lamentable and makes a great difference to them, as they are hard up.

  Sunday, 10 March

  Tomorrow starts the quite alarming meat ration. How to manage, is the question. Take what you can get and when you can get it, is the reply.

  What is going to happen about Finland? Everybody Robin met today in the village spoke with anxiety about its fate.

  Monday, 11 March

  Ursula says this morning in a letter: ‘We are supposed to be guarding the Chelsea Power Station from the IRA.81 We patrol all night in turns. When Molly and I were on patrol the night before last, there was a terrific explosion. We rushed round expecting to be stunned by falling masonry at any moment and were awfully relieved when the police rang through to say it was in Park Lane.’

  The whole of the men’s and women’s armies seem to be screaming for cooks. Many good men and true of forty-five and upwards are unemployed. Why set Ursula and Molly, frail girls, to guard the great power station?

  Ray says in her letter: ‘I got a shock when glancing into the Yeovil Town Hall today to see where hundreds of the soldiers sleep, just within a yard or two of each other, and on ground sheets on the hard floor.’

  People were encouraged to save their kitchen scraps for much-needed animal feed. This municipal pig bin was at Kingston upon Thames.

  Photograph © IWM HU36203

  Robin says, however, he thinks the men would have ‘biscuits’ to lie on – some sort of mattress.

  Wednesday, 13 March

  Woke feeling so much oppressed by the Russian victory over Finland. Everybody feels dreadfully depressed about it. Four hundred thousand people will have to be evacuated from the part of the world now ceded to the Russians. God help them all, and forgive us.

  Thursday, 14 March

  Prices all up in the village shop. Stockings a shilling up, chocolate getting rare. Indeed a day of discomfort as well as mourning. As I write, Robin is lamenting bitterly that we did not force our way through Sweden. The Evening Standard
says that even if our Franco-British force had gone to Finland, Germans would have poured in and the little country would have become a Flanders. I wonder.

  Friday, 15 March

  Motored to Brighton, still full of depression over Finland, feeling it so much more than one felt the misery of Czechoslovakia or Poland.

  Glorious March sunshine. Truly you would never know at Brighton that there was a war. Certain terraces want repainting, but crowds move about and there is traffic on the front and lots of buses.

  Monday, 18 March

  Who was James Isbister? The unfortunate first civilian to be killed by an air-raid bomb in the United Kingdom. Aged twenty-seven, an employee of the Orkney County Council, poor James perished, leaving a wife and baby, up in the remotest of islands, standing at his cottage door.

  ‘Hitler and Mussolini meet in a blizzard at the Brenner Pass’ – so runs the evening paper placard (yes, there are still placards, though we are so short of paper). I wish generations to come, if they ever read this, would realise that to us in England these are not Napoleonic names. We despise Hitler as a little and nasty man. Mussolini we hesitate over a little, but he does not cut any real ice, and his prolonged flirtation with the German powers alienates us. The ladies of England in this March of 1940, believe me, are sick of these two men, and weary of hearing of their sinister plots and hateful designs.

  Says a newspaper correspondent:

  ‘A night-flying RAF machine, its petrol running low, landed in Germany. Its crew were given their position by a German peasant, got back in the plane, and flew off! The story was told to me today by the pilot of the plane. He said:

  “The second pilot, who spoke French very well, said to one of the peasants, ‘Is this France?’ and received the alarming reply, ‘No, this is Germany: France is over there, about twenty miles away.’

  “We did not stop to say ‘Thank you’. We bolted for the machine, and started up.”’

  Wednesday, 20 March

  Had Harry’s room cleaned out, and am longing to see him, but think it must be another month to wait.82

  Am reluctant to read the paper full of Stalin bestriding Finland, and shouting that they must have no pact with Norway and Sweden. (I wonder if I shall be able to force myself to read it?)

  The description of the air raid up on the Orkneys sounds dreadful. A ring of red flame from the guns spread round Scapa Flow and the earth shaking ‘as if all creation were rocking’, said one old woman.

  I think with pleasure of Brighton and the many gay girls staying in the hotel, and outside the wind tearing down the esplanade and blowing colour into many middle-aged cheeks.

  Thursday, 21 March

  I got herrings – three for ninepence. Delicate Mrs G. said when I met her at Guildford that it was very dull being poor, and her pension arrived this morning docked considerably for income tax. And, furthermore, she thought we should begin bombing German cities – yes, civilians.

  The Sylt raid must have been tremendously exciting, but what a strain on the flyers.83

  Good Friday, 22 March

  Here is something from The Author’s current number, in which many writers express what they think about wartime conditions.

  ‘When war is declared,’ writes the ancient Bernard Shaw, ‘we all go mad. We assume that all who are doing anything must stop doing it, and do something else, and that wherever we are, we must go elsewhere. We forget, if we ever knew, that a war is only a ripple of slaughter and destruction upon the surface of the world’s necessary work, which must carry on without a moment’s intermission, war or no war.’

  Osbert Sitwell says: ‘When the bombs begin to fall, there will be a slump in reading even of Gone With the Wind.’ Everybody, he goes on, is in for a hard time – authors included. But authors were in for a hard time in any case. The old reading public is dead, and the new one which will be made by the Penguins and kindred enterprises is hardly awakened.

  Easter Saturday, 23 March

  Mickey arrives to spend Easter, bringing a ration card. I and my Coldstream Guard proceed to the grocer’s, where we are given half a pound of butter and half a pound of sugar for the one night he spends here.

  The manager of the village stores looks much older since the war. He had 8,000 coupons to count last week and is foaming at the mouth at the whole system. ‘There’s a woman up the street who has nine children. She can’t afford four-and-a-half pounds of butter. The lady next door with two chidren longs for more butter and can’t get it.’84

  Easter Monday, 24 March

  Saw a lot of hikers. Scores of young men in unbecoming brown suede golf jackets, all looking as if they ought to be called up. I suppose the war has thrown its shadow over every one of them.

  Wednesday, 27 March

  A letter from the Finnish Troops Comfort Fund, very grateful for my grandfather’s ancient gold seal and an old watch-chain. They say they have packed already 2,800 bales of comforts and are in daily cablegraphic contact with Finland.

  Sibyl writes that capable Molly W. can’t get a job in this war, yet she is a first-rate cook. She can’t be prepared to enter the Army, I think.

  All the beans in the garden are destroyed. We have no vegetables now save potatoes, and tomatoes are tenpence a pound.

  Thursday, 28 March

  A delightful surprise by this morning’s post. My godchild Ursula (who has been guarding the Chelsea Power Station) is betrothed to one Kenneth Steele, a policeman. She will have a war wedding, but I am sure it will be pretty.

  The bank assistant is exceedingly caustic as he cashes my little cheque, about the strange goings-on at the Ministry of Supply. He has some remarkable ideas about Mr Neville Chamberlain, past and future. I tell him he is ‘very cynical’, and I go on my way.

  My thoughts very much on Harry today; possibly he is starting [for England].

  Went to see Mrs Hopgood, back from St Briac. She is very interesting. She loves life in France. She says the French are full of a spirit of revenge, and fear we may go all soft and forgiving after the war. Marna85 is stationed at Folkestone, the billet a boarding house full of aspidistras and beds. She lies on a lilo mattress on a frail camp bed. The rations are rather scanty. But her eyes shine, it’s an adventure; and there are no doubt affairs of the heart.

  Last night the young airmen on the wireless explaining about their fight with German Messerschmidts were amazingly calm and bold. But can flesh and blood stand this aerial warfare for long? The casualty list is very lengthy.

  Friday, 29 March

  To the dentist. He said his old father was getting depressed with the war, and that old people should turn their faces in another direction when it was possible, and not think war thoughts all the time.

  The Times says:

  ‘In Mariendorf, a small village near Aix-la-Chapelle, the correspondent visited the cinema. There he saw the official film of the Polish campaign, which contains harrowing shots of executions and other brutal happenings of the war. During the interval the correspondent was struck by the effect on the audience; women were in tears and men looked pale and stunned. This type of propaganda, intended to impress people with the ruthless power of the Nazis, is being used more and more.’

  Dr Ley86 has informed the German workers that the ‘Strength Through Joy’ holiday tours will at the end of this summer include trips to the South Coast of England – I suppose Bexhill, Bournemouth, Torquay!

  Hardly any parents in danger areas have replied to the Government paper about evacuation of their children in the event of air-raids. Nineteen thousand people have not answered in West Ham!

  Saturday, 30 March

  Olive’s young man told her that our soldiers in France are drinking far too hard. He brought back a bottle of champagne for Olive’s unemployed father.

  Sunshine, cold wind. I think of Basil, settling in to his new billet by Father Thames. I wrote a short story this morning at top speed – no war; love, and brown eyes.

  Monday, 1 April

 
To London. Men busy in Kensington High Street digging shelters. Ursula and Kenneth think they will have no difficulty in getting a flat in these days of a deserted London. They hear existing flats are to be made smaller (so poor are we all to become) by halving them.

  I bought an American dress – ‘positively the last shipment, madam’ – and dashed to Waterloo.

  Tuesday, 2 April

  A letter from Harry. No departure in sight. I long to see him.

  Mrs Beck and Mrs Wilkinson to tea. Mrs Wilkinson talked of the Lyttons’ kindness to the girls now at Knebworth. The Froebel School is there. The room belonging to ‘Antony’, the son and heir, killed flying, is kept locked.87

  Wednesday, 3 April

  We hear the Canadians near us are very restive and complaining of the inhospitability of Guildford. They don’t understand there is now a layer of gloom over our natures, spread by winter.

  I wonder if I should have bought those two garments in London. I could have done without with difficulty. One hardly knows in what world one is walking, and there is no commoner sentence in this village than ‘We must live from day to day.’ Women always say it, as men do it, anyway.

  Eva’s letter just in says: ‘I hear it is really very nerve-shattering living in Dover now that the gunfire is almost ceaseless night and day. How much of this is practice one doesn’t know; nor do the people of Dover.’

  Thursday 4 April

  Olive demands a rise in wages. Housekeeping very difficult. Winds howling about. Neville Chamberlain still lets old stagers like Hoare88 look after the modern and fiery Air Ministry and so makes our loyal hearts sick. Why not appoint somebody young and ardent and up-to-date?

  Words we have now taken from Germany are: Lebensraum,89 Ersatz, Gestapo, Blitzkrieg.

  We seem to be forging ahead in the air. Every day come accounts of fleeing Germans. Nobody seems to think that we will attack by land, and in my opinion it is likely to be a long, slow war.