Mrs Miles's Diary

by S. V. Partington

  Sunday, 12 May

  I wish Sinclair and Eden were not in charge of Air and War. Gentle, foolish fellows I call them.100 What a weight is on Winston!

  Just passed an army lorry, one of a great convoy stuck on the hill outside, on which is written the name ’Connie’. ‘My name,’ I said to the youthful driver. ‘There now, we’ve been waiting to find somebody called Connie!’ and he beamed.

  The news is good. The Dutch are full of what their sturdy, fine Queen calls ‘a flaming protest’.

  Whit Monday, 13 May

  Professor Trevelyan101 (who years ago told me his private opinion of Mussolini when we sat side by side at a Literary Fund dinner – not favourable) writes in The Times today:

  ‘This war is full of bitterness. The thought of Norwegian mountains and fjords in the power of the dog is scarcely more bitter than the thought of the lovely, quiet, old brick streets of Holland, full of art, civilisation, and history at its best, crumbling under bombs. But if freedom were to perish in Europe, what would even they any longer be worth?’

  Holland and Belgium are turning into infernos. That Queen Wilhelmina should come over to England seems to me a very wretched piece of news. I am sure she hated the idea of coming.

  Tuesday, 14 May

  Woke to the most appalling news on the eight o’clock wireless; the Germans advancing, air raids everywhere. It is a very bad plan hearing it all at the break of day, I think, when one’s brain is still clouded from sleep.

  Mr Struben telephoned very anxiously about the volunteer police force proposed to combat parachutists. Millions of imaginative people in Britain are picturing the air above the countryside full of parachutists disguised as nuns and clergymen, armed with machine-guns, rifles, cycles and heaven knows what.

  On the contrary, the air has remained clear all day in these parts anyway.

  I wrote to Ada Maartens at Doorn, asking her to take refuge here should she wish to do so. The vision of the peaceful Dutch lads and lasses coming in and out of the Youth Hostel that Ada has installed in the stable gateway of her stately mansion haunts me.

  Wednesday, 15 May

  Learned with utter dismay this morning that the Dutch had laid down their arms and that only Zeeland is still fighting. The odds against them were too tremendous and the heart of the country was laid open to the enemy.

  What is Ada doing? Utrecht and Doorn lie in enemy hands. I have looked up the letters of Maarten Maartens, her novelist father, to verify the fact that he was Jewish. I hope she does not suffer personally through the insolence of the invader, though that proud heart will be severely wounded.

  Robin heard last night on the wireless that the Local Defence Volunteers were to be formed which would actually – poor, eager Robin! – include men of his age. He went this morning to put his name down at the Police Station, and the form asked if he were prepared to go anywhere. He answered yes, if the details were satisfactory.

  Two members of 32 Surrey Battalion show how the Home Guard developed from their early beginnings as Local Defence Volunteers.

  Photograph © IWM HU18501

  Everybody is talking about parachutist troops. We are told not to let our cars be available for German soldiers, but to take out the ignition keys, etc.

  Saturday, 18 May

  I have never felt so acutely a sense of impending disaster. The Germans reported in their official communiqué that they had broken through sixty miles of the Maginot Line.102 This is none too clear in our news, we are only told that the Germans have made a big bulge in the line.

  It is a war of detonations. Apparently the bombers go first, the new battleship tanks go after and their shells are so huge that they stun the wretched soldiers.

  Our gallant Air Force, for which prayers should be put up every five minutes, are performing miracles of skill and bravery. Gamelin’s103 orders to his troops are so grave that one feels the end may be near at hand: ‘Every unit which is unable to advance must accept being killed rather than abandon the nation’s territory entrusted to it.’

  This comes from a man obviously almost beside himself. Yet today in our village I saw, on this critical day, a young man carrying in his hand a book which was the script of a play he is going to take part in on Monday, going to rehearse it under a large may-tree in a pleasant garden.

  A lady searching for some nice corner to sketch in.

  In the afternoon the usual sight of a cricket match on the village green, everybody in white flannels.

  ‘Oh,’ says Robin, all on edge, ‘why don’t they invite some parachuters to come and play them next Saturday? They could lay down their hand grenades and give us a game before killing us . . .’

  I sometimes think we really deserve to lose this war. Boys of twenty-six are not yet called up. A look of infinite boredom breaks over many faces when Robin urges that trenches should be dug.

  In our peaceful street this evening twelve men advanced upon us. They were rather elderly and carrying strange foreign luggage. Was this then a band of Germans who had desecended neatly in the woods and abandoned their ‘chutes’? I was worried enough and tired enough and anxious enough almost to think so. All vanished, as I turned to look at them, into the White Horse Inn.

  Everything at tea-time, watching the slowly waving branches of our great green beech-tree, seemed worthless and life no longer worth living. Thousands to be blown up and to die in the most horrifying moments of terror. Everybody is paralysed with anxiety, and I hear letter-boxes are often empty when the postman comes to call.

  The Maginot Line!

  Editor’s note. Six weeks of the journal are unaccountably missing here, from 19 May to 31 June, 1940. During those six weeks, the situation worsened:

  By 20 May the Germans had reached Amiens, trapping the British Expeditionary Force, which retreated to Dunkirk. Between 26 May and 4 June 200,000 British and 140,000 French troops were evacuated by a combination of Royal Navy warships and 700-odd fishing boats, merchant ships and pleasure craft which had answered the call to rescue the waiting men from the encroaching German forces. Nine destroyers and 200 civilian vessels were lost during the evacuation, and the RAF suffered heavy losses covering the operation from the air.

  On 10 June Italy entered the war.

  On 14 June Paris fell; the French government fled to Bordeaux and a new administration was set up under Marshal Petain.

  On 22 June Petain signed an Armistice at Compiegne, north of Paris (the same place where Germany had signed the Armistice ending the Great War twenty-two years before) which surrendered two-thirds of France to Germany and disbanded the French Army.

  Between 30 June and 2 July Germany occupied the Channel Islands, the British government having decided, albeit reluctantly, that they were not strategically important enough to be defended. Some 30,000 islanders, roughly one-third of the population, had been evacuated earlier in June as the German forces pushed through France, but the remainder had elected to stay.

  At the end of June, Harry arrived in England from Singapore. The journal resumes on 1 July.

  Monday, 1 July

  Six o’clock. Hot sunshine, the vases full of red sweet peas. Robin is in town fetching Harry. More than a million French people are unemployed in Paris, and stop others in the street asking for food.

  Tuesday, 2 July

  More about occupied Paris. Fruit stalls and flower barrows are again in the streets. The opera may begin. Life is more normal. In Holland they say food is scarce and rations are small. In Belgium, much unrest.

  A heavy day, very hot. Felt dreadfully low over the Channel Islands’ occupation by Germany. I am so afraid the Islands will think us powerless, as we do not send anything to protect them. Grover the fishmonger was very heated on the subject this morning: ‘We have the men to send.’

  Cis reports that she waited half-an-hour in the queue outside the Passport Office to see about Christine, sixteen, going to America, where she is offered her education free at a Boston college. The man who interviewed her
said rather brutally, ‘Oh, Bevin will soon see that she is hoeing beetroots.’104

  Wednesday, 3 July

  General Fuller says tonight in the Evening Standard that invasion will come on a grand scale, beginning all over the place on little beaches, and then at our big ports. It is bound to come, he says, probably about Friday. On the other hand, it was expected yesterday and today!

  Thinking a great deal about Sark, and the sunny hours spent there. Will they ever forgive us for abandoning them without a blow, logical though the reasons may be?

  The village is full of Canadian soldiers. They speak a queer French patois, hailing, some of them, from Quebec and Montreal.

  Thursday, 4 July

  Delighted to see in the Daily Mail that the Dame of Sark announces that she is staying on the island, with her 471 subjects. They have coal enough for a year, and they are full of confidence that Britain will win through.

  I feel much happier. Sarkians would die if moved.

  Bombs have fallen in Haslemere, Witley, etc.105

  Saturday, 6 July

  To town to a war wedding: my goddaughter Ursula. The bride had met her groom through ARP work in Chelsea. Everybody there seemed infinitely relieved to forget the war for a while, and to return to normal life, eating a happy wedding lunch in a Kensington hotel. We waved goodbye to the bride and her husband in his car, she very pretty, hatless in her grey coat and skirt. The best man had tied on a tin can at the back which trailed after them.

  Travelled up with a woman in the act of leaving her home in Portsmouth, unable to endure the nightly alarms.

  Sunday, 7 July

  Many soldiers in church, quite unable to join in the Psalms, owing to the high pitch of the organ. They rolled out ‘Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past’, however, with great gusto.

  Monday, 8 July

  The sun sinking in pale watery gold. A notice has just been brought in, imploring men to go and dig defence trenches at Guildford, bringing picks and shovels.

  Tuesday, 9 July

  Tea is rationed now, and the charwoman is very vexed, as she usually drinks many cups a day. Feebly listened to the German news in English, although I don’t believe that I ought. They were gloating over the tea ration and announced that we haven’t the faintest chance of winning the war.

  Shere is full of passing tanks. Even the oldest inhabitant raised an ancient hand to wave to the merry Canadian faces peeping out of the waggons this evening – yes, quite a sour old fellow, carried away by the movement and the excitement.

  Wednesday, 10 July

  Heard from Arthur that his nephew Lionel, the airman,106 flew a bomber back from Dunkirk, a bomber that had lost its crew. He had no experience of bomber-flying, but gallantly volunteered. It saved the Government £40,000. He had no compass, but got it to the Isle of Wight.

  Found a soldier writing a letter by the roadside, and got him into the garden. He pulled a photograph out of his pocket of himself and his bride. He has been married two months. ‘I’ve been moved here, and I’ve lost all my mates,’ he said. ‘I shan’t make any more friends in case I lose them.’ He looked very fair and young. He told me his health was much better since he had been in the Army. I hope he will come again.

  Friday, 12 July

  Christine, aged sixteen, writes an ecstatic letter about life on Peewit Farm. She milks Damsel, Blackie, Cherry, and loves it. Bless her. What an innocent, useful day it is for her in the fresh air of Berkshire, the wind blowing roses into her pretty cheeks.

  Robin has gone down to deposit on the aluminium dump my passionately loved preserving pan, and a case for motor papers. The local bone dump has had to be put on a high pole, as the village dogs conceived the idea that we were doing war work for them.107

  Harry has taught me how to identify a Lysander aeroplane and a Defiant (a very fast variety).

  Woke exceedingly sleepy, and hear in a haze the wireless announce that Pétain at eighty-four was to be supreme Arbitrator in France.108 I felt I was in a mad sort of world. ‘Think of the old men round hereabouts of eighty-four!’ cries Nancy to me as we discussed it later, going down the street.

  Fifty more children arrive to be billeted here next Sunday! Fifty more for dinner at H’s communal kitchen. Poor Helen’s car was full of her five little boy visitors yesterday evening, and a free fight, arms and legs flying, was going on, and a great bawling came from the junior (usually an angel) when we went to see.

  Mickey writes from Sandhurst that he is worked almost to death, digging, in his spare time, the outer defences of London.

  Sunday, 14 July

  Went with Robin and Harry to look at our Shere defences. Robin was fascinated as usual by the sight of the concrete mixers, incongruously placed at the very entrance to one of my dear favourite walks, where they are hewing down ancient beech trees.

  Monday, 15 July

  Very wet. Uncomfortable thoughts of the winter come into my head. Churchill said that we should have to go through the years 1941 and 1942 in this war. Is it really possible? Can we endure, all the world, the strain? We shall, I suppose, look back, if we are spared, on this time with amazement.

  We are trying to take in that we are in a village where a line of defence (is it for London?) nearly cuts into us.109 ‘We might have to stay in our shelters for days,’ says a Colonel’s wife. ‘It would be very cold.’

  Maurice Ainslie, an acquaintance of ours living at Monte Carlo, is missing. His poor old mother is advertising for news of him.

  Tuesday, 16 July

  From The Times front page advertisement: ‘A lady (young) wanted to cook for six convalescent officers in private house, Wiltshire, good cooking essential, no other duties: useful drive car, play tennis.’

  One can imagine many pretty and efficient damsels hastening to answer.

  Wrote a glowing character for my goddaughter Christine to present at Radclyffe College, Cambridge, Mass., if she goes to America. At present she is perfectly happy milking Cherry and Damsel.

  Wednesday, 17 July

  Phyllis Twigg says she can live on sixpence a day: she has just practised this for six days.

  Thursday, 18 July

  To London with Basil. We got seats for the ballet, and it seemed rather too good to be true to be lifted suddenly from the everlasting round of food problems and to have a holiday. Who knows what ugly war thoughts were banished by the exquisite dancing and the lovely colourings?

  The trip to Sadler’s Wells was made via St Pancras. The arched station roof, entirely blacked out, made the place look like a great dark cave.

  Going back to Piccadilly in the darkened bus was most interesting. The buses at night are shrouded and mysterious, and our conductor did not announce the names of the stops. A huge moon rose solemnly over Hyde Park.

  Saturday, 20 July

  All day catching up with tasks left undone. Hitler’s speech is a hollow mockery, full of lies and insults. After alleging that Mr Churchill had ordered the bombing of civilians, he said that the German reply, when it came, would bring upon the British people unending suffering and misery. ‘Of course, not upon Mr Churchill,’ he added, ‘for he no doubt will already be in Canada.’

  The blackout made streets extremely hazardous both for pedestrians and for drivers. This was one of a series of posters produced by London Transport.

  Photograph © IWM PST15477

  Monday, 22 July

  Great despair on the part of the local grocer over the new fat ration, so difficult. All day long yesterday, Sunday, he spent cutting up rashers for the troops and is exhausted.

  Saturday, 27 July

  Do we really need 20,000 tanks to win? General de Gaulle says so.110

  Letter from Basil. One of his dispatch riders has died of a fractured skull.

  Sunday, 28 July

  Colonel P. came in to have some sherry. He said he felt that to avoid all the miseries of stagnation in the disagreeable cold months, our regiments should be sent to make raids on the enemy coasts, ‘even if we
did not come back,’ he said sturdily.

  Major Thomas came, and also mentioned the problem of the coming winter. He dreads it for our army and for the colonial troops.

  Mrs Thomas said she was at Guildford station when the Dunkirk men came through. They all wanted postcards and pencils. ‘And they all wrote to Mother – none was addressed to Mister,’ she said gleefully.

  Monday, 29 July

  Lunch with Edna. She is working at the American Embassy, interviewing people about getting their children to the States. She says there are about 2,000 names down. Some of the people are exceedingly difficult and fidgetty.

  May Browne came about three and we motored to her new flat in Lancaster Gate. She said one thing I shall remember especially: ‘Hitler has got the right way with the Germans; they respond to his touch. But wait and see, it will not answer with any other nations.’

  Thursday, 1 August

  Last night I went to a concert in the village hall, given by some RASC men. Mrs Isherwood allowed one to have her violin, as he had left his at Dunkirk. It was an excellent show; all the music, however, of the jazz variety. Audience of troops and villagers. A little later Canadian soldiers visited the hut where our canteen for the children is, and stole the clock and also a lot of jam, and left the place anyhow. A pity. The Canadian boys are longing to let off steam. ‘Where’s this — battle?’ they roar, lurching along the road.

  Interesting in today’s paper to hear the numbers of those who chose to vacate the Channel Islands:

  Jersey: 6,000 out of 50,000.

  Guernsey: 17,000 out of 42,000.111

  Not a word comes. Not a plane escapes, to tell us what is going on.

  Saturday, 3 August

  If only I were an artist, I would keep a war scrapbook. Today my pictures would be:

  (1) General de Gaulle smiling over the news that informs him that the Pétain Government has condemned him to death.