Mrs Miles's Diary

by S. V. Partington

  (2) The eighty-six children on board a ship bound for Canada making friends with everybody in two hours, including the Captain.

  (3) A sad one. In French country places the refugees poke listlessly into heaps of rubble that were their homes.

  Monday, 5 August

  People who up to now have disdained all mention of dug-outs are ordering them to be made in their gardens. Mrs M., who is not well off, ruefully confesses that she had ordered one ‘five-foot deep hole’. Robin is dying to go round and do it for her.

  I notice also that great hatred for Hitler is abroad. It flies like a fiery cloud over England; hate and loathing.

  Tuesday, 6 August

  Listening to Haw-Haw tonight from Bremen, we hear that we are desperate, and that our shipping is being slowly destroyed. He seemed particularly angry tonight.

  ‘When they told me,’ said my charwoman today, ‘that Hitler plans to be crowned at Winchester Cathedral on 25 August, I saw red. You couldn’t believe what I said!’

  Wednesday, 7 August

  Ruth F. here tonight in black satin and flowered blouse. She has been back to Folkestone where her house is. A raid warning sounded and all the aeroplanes in our aerodrome mounted immediately into the blue. No sign of the enemy.

  Robin prepares for his first Home Guard patrol. I have supplied chocolate and a thermos of tea for the joyous return, when dawn is breaking over the downs, and Muff, our cat, begins to stalk the starlings.

  Thursday, 8 August

  Mr Forbes called about organising a rota of workers for the canteen about to arrive here. A horrible job. Impulsively I consented.

  Friday, 9 August

  Heard from Betsey F. at Haslemere about the beautifully run evacuation of officers’ wives from Malta. It was something like this: ‘You are requested not to think,’ ran the notice that was sent to them. ‘We will do the thinking. All we ask you is to be at a certain place at a certain time with a certain amount of luggage.’

  Saturday, 10 August

  Much interested in Sir Ronald Storrs’ The Second Quarter, a history of this war from December 1939 to February 1940. I had not grasped before that we habitually import 90 per cent of our fats and flour and 50 per cent of our meat and 40 per cent of our eggs. Before the war about a million tons of foodstuffs were thrown into dustbins every year, Sir Ronald reminds us!

  Tuesday, 13 August

  I suppose an air battle begins with a great hum of engines all round. I have just been out – 8.30 on a rather sullen summer night – and found the air full of noises. You felt as if planes were approaching from every direction and converging. Harry is out with glasses identifying them, and Robin also. I can hear them now buzzing past. They are huge Whitley bombers, with crews of five.

  The air war certainly intensifies.112 I was in London today and oberved placard after placard written in big letters in ink or chalk on white slips of paper: ‘Air battle raging – more raiders down.’ Twenty-eight Germans are down and we have lost four.

  Saw Muriel at the Strand Palace Hotel – lovely. I am much afraid regulations as to closed areas will prevent my visiting Picket Post for the duration – a great blow.113 There was standing room only at the National Gallery Beethoven concert. I consoled myself with another good look at the war pictures exhibition.

  How tiresome it is to listen to the wireless bulletins about the air fighting. One gets perfectly dazed with the ‘south-west towns’, the ‘south-east towns’, the ‘north-east towns’, the ‘north-west coast’ and so on. Nor can one identify the separate battles or their separate days. Haw-Haw tonight was lying vigorously over the results – remarkable numbers. ‘It cheers me up, it is all so piffling,’ said Harry afterwards.

  Wednesday, 14 August

  To see Mrs Palmer’s dug-out for herself and family. In it is a box. Lift the lid and you see every preparation for a long stay. Syphons of lemonade, chocolate, children’s books to read, vaseline, cotton-wool. She reminded us that the tide is just right for Hitler’s invasion tomorrow.

  Thursday, 15 August

  And sure enough, some parachutes have been found. In a Midland village they discovered them, and felt that the Hun soldiers had descended and were about. The church bell was rung as an alarm. Nothing more has been heard.

  Eva says in her letter this morning: ‘Sometimes, in spite of all the magnificent bravery of the Forces, the tireless planning of Churchill, and all the determination of the people, it seems almost impossible to think of the end. Germany – yes, we shall beat her well and truly, but at the end of that – to force Russia to give up her half of Poland! Well, one can only hope for the best.’

  Saw Mrs Rayne at Ponds Farm. She told me she had had a pessimistic letter from a friend in the Near East. His Air Force boy has crashed twice lately in a bomber, the last time in the cold North Sea. The rubber boat they carry holds four, but there are six on board. John swam for help for an hour, not at his best because he had had a land crash just three days before. He was rescued, unconscious, and has been in hospital for weeks.

  I hear that one of the survivors of the torpedoed Transylvania114 came on shore with a cat in his arms, purring contentedly. Good!

  Friday, 16 August

  An air raid warning sounded about an hour ago, and the dim grey sky was filled with an enormous dull roaring. Nothing to be seen. Machine-gun fire. I was glad to have my cotton-wool ready in the little green bag around my neck. I went into the dug-out and thought how beautifully Robin had done the bricklaying. I laughed when I saw him standing outside gazing up, just as he had expected the foolish public to do. ‘Oh, I should throw myself down directly,’ he always says.

  Another plane is zooming above now and there are thuds. The charwoman arrives saying, ‘I don’t want to die yet.’ I had no idea that we should not see the fighters in a raid, that they would be so far up.

  Saturday, 17 August

  In the bank this morning a stranger, a young man, was showing the people present a scrap off a German parachute which he had obtained at Northchapel, not far from Petworth. A Heinkel had come down in flames and the airmen were blown to bits. ‘Did you fetch a doctor?’ ‘Oh, no. They were dead – smashed to pieces, bits of their bodies blown up in the trees . . .’ ‘Did it make you feel sick to see it?’ The young man replied readily: ‘I’m joining the Air Force myself on Saturday. I’m very glad I did see it. It showed me what I was up against.’ ‘All the best to you,’ murmured the small crowd of us, awed and impressed by his resolute manner.

  Monday, 19 August

  In the evening Bey came in, and described her ride home from Oxfordshire to Guildford on Friday last. In Slough she found German planes overhead and took shelter in a baker’s. The man exclaimed defiantly: ‘I’m not going to let the Huns spoil this batch of Madeleine cakes,’ and continued to bake amid the roar of guns. She left after a time, and saw people’s heads popping out of air raid trenches like rabbits coming up out of burrows. At Brooklands there was a big raid, and she was allowed to shelter in the Vickers works shelters, long tunnels elaborately planned with a trained Red Cross man every few yards. There were huge jokes going on and many, seeing the haversack on her back, enquired gaily if by any chance she had a frying pan and some sausages in it. The din of our guns was tremendous and she was delighted to find she did not mind it. So far as I could make out, there were no casualties or damage.115

  A lady called, to offer her services at the canteen. She escaped from Paris to St Nazaire only a few hours before the Germans arrived. She said it was awful on the blocked roads in her car, just creeping along in the chaos. She said the reason France collapsed was fear. I must find out more.

  ‘Four hundred killed at Croydon,’ said a little grey-haired wife at the butcher’s this morning. I don’t believe this for a moment.116

  Thursday, 22 August

  Yesterday at a meeting of women MPs Lady Astor expressed the complaint which I personally have felt for so long – that women have not got a word to say in the policy of
this country. ‘Women of ability,’ she cried, ‘were held down because of an unconscious Hitlerism in the hearts of men.’

  Friday, 23 August

  We had a very restless night, a plane zooming and throbbing over us with great persistency. It seems exactly as if the Germans wanted to alarm us, insolently flying up and down, up and down. We go back to bed about 1.30. In the morning I find Harry has again been up about 3.00, when bombs dropped and red flashes were seen as they fell.

  Saturday, 24 August

  To sherry with the F—s. Their son is a bomber observer and flies constantly to Italy and Germany. The bomber crew carry each two Thermoses of coffee, chocolate and raisins and barley sugar. He likes the job very much and said that the moonlight over the Alps was wonderful.

  Mr F. shows us his very expensive dug-out, a work of art with £7 of sandbags, electric light and an electric fire. He tells me the Canadians are going to have a baseball match next Saturday here to show the village boys what’s what.

  Sunday, 25 August

  Captain Dodds came in and said he had been to see a lot of French soldiers now resident in the White City, some longing to get back to captured France, to stand, we will suppose, at their families’ sides. There is great boredom – it is a difficult crowd.

  One’s feelings now are these. The atmosphere of the world is poisoned, there is something wrong with the happiest moments. Day follows day almost indistinguishably. The wireless news – often completely concerned with air raids – is nauseating. I feel one must be careful now not to write and talk of air raids all the time.

  Monday, 26 August

  As I write, a talk is going on from Germany telling us we are starving. Also that we are using girl pilots in the air, as we are so short!

  Tuesday, 27 August

  It is nearly nine o’clock, a sultry night. Robin has spent hours today over a device to be given to the Home Guard for observation.

  In Guildford today the fishmonger bitterly said that since the Channel had become a ‘No Man’s Land’, as he expressed it, he would have to shut up shop. No kippers, no herrings, no nothing! He pointed to some dried haddock and said, ‘If I sell that at one-and-eight a pound I shall have made a penny profit.’ The shop was certainly very empty and the fine, stalwart man was extremely worried.

  Sibyl writes that there has been a big raid on New Milton. Crouching by the road for shelter, she saw lorries coming past full of dead.

  Wednesday, 28 August

  Rosemary’s and Ellen’s birthday today. I wish I could be in Scotland to see them. When will one go north again? Great rumpus in the night, aeroplanes hovering and the house shaking and distant bumps. I woke Robin, but we didn’t go downstairs.

  I saw the billeting officer, Mrs L., looking very determined, driving rapidly along to enforce some householder possibly to take children in from Portsmouth.

  Thursday, 29 August

  Last night about ten we suddenly heard an enormous explosion, apparently just out on the lawn. I took it to be gunfire, but it was bombs. Harry appeared in pyjamas and we all went into the hall.

  I couldn’t sleep. The noise was so constant and so extreme. Robin got up at 2.30 and dressed for the Home Guard duty. Still there were thundering noises.

  When I went out after breakfast, I heard that the bombs had fallen two miles away, near a searchlight.

  Went to serve the evacuated children in the canteen. They all seemed very little and shabby and held their spoons in a firm grip. ‘No cabbage!’ cried so many of these tiny mites. I said severely to some little girls, ‘You will never grow up pretty and get big unless you eat cabbage.’ One looked up and said: ‘Shall I grow pretty if I eat cabbage?’ ‘Yes indeed,’ said I. ‘Then I don’t want to be pretty,’ she replied firmly.

  This canteen for evacuee children is at Hindhead, Surrey, but the canteen at Shere would have looked very similar.

  Photograph © IWM D21631

  Olive goes into a factory on the Kingston by-pass next week (Oh, Olive, what a good cook lost!). She will get two pounds, better money than service. She tells me that her name has been down at the Labour Exchange since June and it is exceedingly difficult to get work. ‘If you’re over twenty-one nobody needs you.’ She described how many women were fruitlessly seeking work and faking their ages.

  Here is a true story I like. During a raid yesterday ninety-two-year-old Mrs Turner was assisted from a train to a shelter in a London distict. On reaching the entrance she turned to the warden and said: ‘An Ancient Briton returns to her cave.’

  Saturday, 31 August

  We are getting to understand the necessary technique for air raids slightly better, and no doubt we shall get infinitely more skilled at it than we are now. At all costs we must not keep awake all the time we are being haunted by German machines. If one person in a large household is naturally more alert and wakeful than the rest – and there is generally one – let him or her undertake to call the others.

  Sunday, 1 September

  We are bombing Chartres aerodrome and Stuttgart, two towns well known to me. Is the damage repaired at Orleans? Is the cathedral at Auxerre hit? I hear the place is badly damaged.

  Tuesday, 3 September

  This evening I went to teach French Canadian soldiers English. They were hungry to learn, much to my astonishment. I had expected boredom and fidgettings. Instead I received earnest stares of attention. One showed me a letter from his people received that day postmarked Lewiston, Canada. Inside were two little medallions of glazed paper, on which were written the names of the man and his brother – ‘I am a Roman Catholic. If I am hurt, please send for a priest.’ I thought of the anxious sister over the Atlantic, sending them, and wished she could have seen her brother’s satisfaction.

  In a letter from Nantucket, Jackie says she finds it hard to write as her heart is so full. ‘It’s like a log-jam where the key log can’t be found to loose all the rest which are tangled and caught. Over here,’ she continues, ‘there seems to be utter confusion. I don’t think that there are two people in the USA who can agree as to what ought to be done.’

  Wednesday, 4 September

  There was an air raid today just as we were sitting at lunch. The charwoman and I went down to the cellar and invited the postwoman (who was calling at that moment) to come down also. Robin stood by the open door and was amazed at the speed of the dog-fight. One plane came down on Netley Heath. We saw the smoke coming out over the hill. Later Robin went up there, and a Canadian soldier told him how they went to secure the airmen, as it was quite near their camp. Apparently some of the crew were blown to smithereens and a hand of one of the Hun fliers was proudly carried round the tents by a French Canadian soldier. How terribly sad – how often had that boy’s mother held his hand tenderly!

  Thursday, 5 September

  A most lovely letter from Rhodesia, bidding Harry go there.117

  Saturday, 7 September

  In Edna’s letter this morning she says that the London shopgirls are getting very weary, in and out of shelters all the time, and nobody is venturing out to shop, so trade is miserably bad. She lies on her Sussex balcony looking up at the stars at night and feeling their benediction.

  What is going to be the end of all this air-raid warfare? It seems totally inconclusive. One cannot get it out of one’s thoughts and comversation and letters.

  Sunday, 8 September

  The papers do not arrive. London has had a terrible time – a reprisal for our raids on Berlin, the Germans gleefully announce. The names Shoreditch and Fulham are heard as having greatly suffered, as well as Dockland.

  It is said that some of the searchlight personnel are longing to learn astronomy, gazing up at the starry sky un-understandingly every night.

  It’s six o’clock and there is a great noise of planes. It gives one a headache.

  I like this: London householder, looking at searchlights and parachute flares: ‘Very good in its way, but I still hold that the old Crystal Palace was better.’r />
  Berliners go to bed wishing one another a splinterless night.

  Bey came in. She had danced with a Canadian sergeant, who had been first on the scene when the German plane crashed at Netley Down. Only the pilot was recognisable, and he had been shot between the eyes. The Sergeant took his papers, his bottle of vitamin tablets, his wad of money (quite a lot), the picture of his girl, etc. He was twenty-one. All these things will be sent back to Germany, to his mother.

  Monday, 9 September

  Harry reads out from the Aeroplane that Germany has about 7,000 bombers and 4,000 fighters, two-thirds of which might be used against us. It is imagined one side must crack, probably in October.

  It is difficult to write about the great air raids over London. Various men and women with suitcases appeared in the village today, trying for rooms. They have been bombed out of their homes.

  Tuesday, 10 September

  A very disturbed night – zooming of planes without even five minutes intermission. Many thuds. At the canteen this morning I had a chat with a woman whose husband has come down to see her from Fulham. The hospital in Fulham was hit once or twice and the scene was indescribable, he said. He himself was in the demolition squad who rescued some of the patients. The young nurses, he said, ought to have had VCs, so cheerful and efficient.

  Everybody is tired but determined.

  Later: Harry comes in from a tremendous journey back from London. He saw great damage, just escaping Baker Street Station and Madame Tussaud’s. Firemen were being very brave, clambering about ruined tenements. He said people’s faces showed distinct signs of strain. It of course must get worse, and we must brace ourselves.

  Thursday, 12 September

  Robin went out on Home Guard duty about 3 a.m. He said the firing over London was terrific, more tremendous than ever before.