Saturday, 19 October
A mild morning. If there were no war, I should be trying to get to Paris to sit outside a café and drink coffee in the sunshine on the quay.
Felt rather desperate on hearing that Japan had already begun to bomb the Burma Road. Can’t we frighten them?
Sunday, 20 October
A glorious morning. I found a maid, lurking in a field cottage. As I brought her back in the car, she said: ‘My young man is a prisoner of war. He has written to me and on the postcard he put, “Please send me a cake”.’
Monday, 21 October
‘I always thought,’ says a writer in today’s Chronicle, ‘that the mother-lynx defending her young was the fiercest animal in the world. Worse, much worse, is the Englishwoman fighting for the last silk stockings of the war.’
Dinner punctuated by gunfire. I move from the window.
Thursday, 24 October
Sibyl writes from the New Forest: ‘We had a bad scare at lunch time yesterday. Molly rushed in. “They are machine-gunning the house – lie down!” Reg had thrown himself on the floor after shouting “Down!” to us, which we did not hear. The noise was simply awful. I thought a plane was coming down on the house. Really it skimmed over the porch end, chased by two Spitfires (which were doing the machine-gunning), and eventually was brought down a flaming wreck in a field at Hordle.’
Saturday, 26 October
Wrote my Xmas story, ‘Mrs Halliburton’s Trouble’, and a column for the Home Messenger. There were bombs within a mile of two of us.
A letter from Ray full of bomb news of Yeovil, where they are closing the schools.
Harry sent a cable to Rhodesia today and so did I. He extracted the necessary letter from the War Office yesterday.
Monday, 28 October
The great news is that Italy has declared war on Greece. How quick this is! What of Yugoslavia?
Imagine Hitler choosing Florence for the scene of his meeting with Mussolini. Poor desecrated Florence!
Hear of the bombing of Athens with sharp alarm. What barbarity!
Tuesday, 29 October
Muriel writes that the great double and treble searchlights keep her awake, as they flash across her face and light up the room. When she comes back from Bournemouth there is ‘usually an air raid and the searchlights light up all the inside of the car in an extraordinary way. One can see everything, which is rather convenient in the black-out.’
Went to call on a Paddington evacuee cat in the village, a sweet whitish kitten. The two dressmakers accompanying it are humbly grateful for their one room, where they can just squeeze in.
Friday, 1 November
Another month has started and we have a strong hope that there will be good news for Britain before it ends. Greece seems to be holding out well at the moment.
Sunday, 3 November
I write actually on All Souls Day. I think of the masses of French people wending their way to pay homage to their dead, and I am pretty sure that in many minds there must be a strange and quite new thought. They must be glad, many of them, that their near and dear ones are out of this disgusting war of conquest; that their brave mothers and bright, dark-eyed fathers had not silently to watch the Gestapo preening by.
We have landed troops in Greece.
Monday, 4 November
Went to see Miss B., whose niece is training to be a ‘roof-spotter’ in Buckinghamshire. She can now identify thirty-six aeroplanes and has ‘a nodding acquaintance’ with others. This enterprising young Englishwoman has three small children and intends to take America’s offer of hospitality if she can for her elder girl, aged seven, for California. The offer is of course not open just at the moment. In fact, the news about our shipping is very grave.
Robin went to Guildford hospital this morning to give blood. He enjoyed the whole show, resting and having a cup of tea. He said to one nurse: ‘Do you ever take a conscientous objector’s blood?’ ‘If I did,’ replied the warlike woman, ‘I would take five or six pints and do him in.’
I don’t have the slightest feeling against the conchies, but Robin has a lively emotion of rancour.
Joan Hoffman has just rung up to say they have had no gas at their Harley Street house for ten weeks.
Thursday, 7 November
We had the most alarming evening. Again and again I descended to the hall to talk to Miss Scott below. We spoke lightly and foolishly, planning that I should give a party in ‘Montmartre’, my cellar, which is decidedly Montmartrish with its card table, gas meters, meat safe and empty jam-jars and chintz chair.
Robin went out on Home Guard duty early in the dawn, heavily dressed. Hundreds of machines seemed to drone past all the time.
Have just rung up the grocer’s. No biscuits, no marmalade, no currants, no figs.
Ray writes that she and her husband go from Yeovil nightly now to seek a good night’s rest in a village called Yetminster, where in a rich and obliging private house they have a big spare room. Poor Ray hates ‘the turn out into the cold eve and morn – back for an 8.45 breakfast.’ Her husband takes a bath at home as the other water is lukewarm. She says: ‘We drove the other night steadily through gunfire and flares, a bright light, white, almost like being on a battlefield, it seemed to me.’
Friday, 8 November
I see Cummings of the News Chronicle says that through the election of Roosevelt again all is signified.125 In fact we cannot now lose the war, being firmly assured of the support of the USA. They say Hitler listened to the figures of the election feverishly, and was constantly informed.
Friday, 15 November
Last night several people I know didn’t go to bed. The planes over us were incessant: and there was a devilish raid on Coventry, about which we have not yet got the facts. I went to sleep about two.
Saturday, 16 November
Did not properly undress last night. It was weird standing on the terrace at midnight, unusually light, with just a sinister vast throbbing of plane engines all round; and you couldn’t see a single machine. London must have had hundreds of visitors. The noise never died.
Harry was delighted to get his entry permit to Rhodesia. Now we wrestle with the Passport Office.
Sunday, 17 November
As I write, there is a BBC lament going on for the lost folk of Coventry.126 Coventry and Hamburg – these are the cities on our minds. The Germans will get even more violent.
I long for flowers. They are so dear now, and many for sale look broken by the wind. The British officers in Crete were carried shoulder-high the other day, and their cars filled with fresh glowing chrysanthemums, pink, bronze, white and gold.
Harry thinks he may not get a ship to South Africa for many weeks. As phones and telegrams are so bad, he will have to get a friend in town to bring him a message down if news comes that there is a vacancy.
Friday, 22 November
This is a very poor journal this week, as every effort is being put forth to help Harry pack his things for what may be life settlement in Rhodesia. I am so very bad at packing, and hover round Harry, who appears to me to be equally bad. But I have the sense to get help always in sorting and folding and he, being twenty-seven, will not have it.
Sunday, 24 November
Basil arrived. He says Dover is not so badly knocked about as one might think. He is sad that he can’t go East at the moment as there is a shortage of doctors in his Division.
The brothers cooked sausages together for Sunday supper. Harry kept exclaiming ‘It’s gone!’ when one burst, as if it were a death.
Basil returned to Kent in a friend’s aged car. Having no signposts is ghastly. England is full of people gaily motoring up the wrong turning.127
Men from the Ministry taking down signposts at a Surrey junction.
Photograph © IWM HU4925
If we find the secret of defeating the night-raids, so will Germany. That is a thought that haunts me today.
Monday, 25 November
No ticket for Harry. P
assage cancelled till early December.
From News from the Outpost, a paper issued from the Americans in London, this story:
Dear old lady of seventy-five: ‘I don’t think we are doing so well in this air war now. The Germans are dropping their bombs nearer every day.’
‘Nearer to what?’
‘Nearer to me.’
Wednesday, 27 November
Much distracted by the Christmas gift question, deciding, in view of our heavy expenses, to give nothing, but not able to screw up the courage. Women live by getting gifts, and count on them, and there it is; women also enjoy giving them to the full.
There was apparently a heated discussion of the Trade Unions this week, as to whether they should insist on extra wages. This thoughtful comment was made by one Jenkins: ‘. . . in Portsmouth, when the men stood at the guns during air raids, dockyard workers went to their shelters, and some of the gunners said after the raid: “Look at the £6-a-week men coming out of their shelters while we stand by the guns!”’
Feel rather dismayed tonight. Have been out on the terrace, as there was such a roaring of planes. If only one could see them, but tonight we only shuddered in the bitter winter air, and looked at the stars and the roofs and the spire of our little village against a murky sky. The murderers were hidden; tonight’s victims as yet comfortable by their fires.
Took two notes round tonight, one to a newly-made widow of a flying officer, one to a mother whose only child has just rejoined his ship after a very glorious leave.
Friday, 29 November
Went into an old cottager’s house this afternoon to find she had made me a good Christmas cake, for which I shall pay her five shillings, although it was offered me as a gift. She had saved up her rations very carefully to get the material for the cake, which it is a triumph to possess these scanty days.
I observe with dismay that all the professors of the Faculty of Law in the University of Utrecht have been sent to concentration camps in Germany ‘because of their loyalty to the House of Orange and their preference for a democratic form of government’.
The Germans have no idea of how to govern! You never hear of any wise, just measure calculated to win the hearts of the new subjects.
As to news, Greece seems to be doing well, but the shadow of our shipping losses is still heavy on us, and my one idea is when will Harry go, and will he be safe when he is on the deep?
Sunday, 1 December
Everybody seems to think Italy is dished by the Grecian triumphs. It is amazing.
Monday, 2 December
It is terrifically cold, alarmingly cold.
Robin reads me a long and deeply interesting account of the French in occupied France from the paper while I rush about over morning jobs. Harry’s fiancée in Singapore has leave to resign and marry him. This is a great matter. Now we must just wait for his small Dutch vessel to receive him on board.
Later: the Greeks seem to be wonderfully successful and their triumphs are cheering us tremendously. For rations they have sardines, hard bread, thin soup and cheese.
Southampton, that pleasant town, has had two dreadful air raids. When you know all the main streets, it makes your heart turn over.
All news from all sources reports a rising feeling of annoyance with Germany in France and speaks of the low spirits of the homesick German soldiers.
Catering gets pretty difficult. Barbara writes: ‘I managed after much labour to get four eggs, rang up the farm and was half-promised three.’ There have been egg queues in Woolwich.
Wednesday, 4 December
This afternoon the telephone rang, and it was a telegram from South Africa House to tell Harry to be on the quay at Liverpool by nine o’clock on Monday morning.
Heard that when the Hun was busy over Southampton our poor friend and ex-cook, Mrs Smith, hid under a kitchen table and put a large saucepan on her head as a tin hat.
The news of the shipping losses is exceedingly serious. I must keep calm and controlled during the next difficult week.
Thursday, 5 December
A strenuous day of jobs for Harry in Guildford. It is all a lucky dip now in the shops. ‘Have you any sausages?’ ‘No.’ ‘Any tintacks?’ ‘No.’ ‘Any slab chocolate?’ ‘No.’
The insurance agent called from Croydon and was eloquent about the sufferings of that unhappy place through bombing. He himself lives in Streatham. Much has been destroyed. ‘You get used to it, of course, but if a bomb whistles by you quite near, it is a sound that you could never forget all your life.’
Friday, 6 December
So afraid that the phone will bring news of a fresh cancellation of shipping, now we are all set and screwed up to bear the parting. The usual brisk and cross drama over keys and straps, in spite of idle days.
Saturday, 7 December
The great day of Harry’s departure for Rhodesia. May the Dutch vessel start and sail safely into port! There will be little peace of mind for the next fortnight; so many U-boats, so many enemy bombers.
Sunday, 8 December
We have just been out on the terrace to look at a couple of incendiary bombs burning themselves out in the lane below, so near I could have shied a ball at them. Crowds of little fires all over the village. Now a man has reported that he has picked somebody up on the road with a bad burn, and the doctor has been rung up.
Harry struck the one bombless night in London, and must have been disappointed. He wished to hear the barrage! He must be sitting in Liverpool now.
A cold bitter wind. Asked Miss B. about billeting soldiers. She finds hers pretty good; they never make their beds, apparently, but that’s their pigeon.
Monday, 9 December
Last night slept in my clothes. The stream of German planes going to London was loud and incessant. It was very chilly tripping up and down stairs to take refuge in the safe corner, and ‘Montmartre’ felt very damp.
8 p.m.: Mrs Rapson, my charwoman, arrived in a state of almost perfect incoherence about the incendiary bomb that fell on her daughter-in-law’s house last night. ‘I knew something was going to happen. I was that uneasy, I told Robbie, our London child, to put his clothes all ready in a case, just supposing he had to quit in a hurry. Then it all happened, and the village was lit up something beautiful. Went through the roof, quite a small ’ole, slanted across to James’s bedroom, then made a bigger ’ole and exploded and went through the scullery below. My son was ever so handy at putting out the fire, but everything’s scorched and a chair’s burned out, and you’d never believe the black smoke on everything. There’s a bucket of sand I have standing in my hall, and in normal times it’s so heavy I can’t lift it, but you know I just seized it, and I dashed over the road to my son with it!
‘Mrs Mensil had one come right down her chimney and lodge in the copper, and it didn’t explode. Jerry don’t seem to be here tonight.’
It is blowing hard. Is Harry feeling it on board, or will he walk in tomorrow? I hear Beryl’s ship from New York was cancelled six times before she got away.
Tuesday, 10 December
Tonight’s Evening Standard tells us of a Greek Lance-Corporal named Tassos, only thirteen; an amazing boy and a dashing leader.
May wrote that Southampton is a sad sight. Many forsaken cats sitting on the rubble, and piles of stones and bricks.
I stop writing to listen to Churchill’s speech about our success in Libya.128 It is glorious news. The Italians seem to have been surprised.
Thursday, 12 December
Just rang up Kitty Eustace. She has heard neither from her daughter-in-law in Nairobi nor her son at sea, nor her son-in-law at sea nor her daughter in Singapore for ages.
Friday, 13 December
Felt a great sense of relaxation that dear Harry was finally on his way.
From Mother’s letter today from Aberdeenshire: ‘Last Wednesday at our Women’s Institute Red Cross meeting I found a table covered with little piles of presents for each of our village men in the Forces, not yet abr
oad. Each pile had a helmet or scarf, chocolate, cigarettes, soap, pencil, handkerchief. The relations came and carried off parcels to post themselves.’
Mrs Burnett Smith writes that farming conditions are so arduous in Scotland that she is afraid her farmer host, who has worked so hard all his life, will have to come out of it next year. Too sad.
We have a glorious and clever victory in Egypt.129 The troops were silently moved up across the desert during the darkness of Saturday and Sunday nights and spent the whole of Sunday lying motionless in the open – a very trying test of endurance. They had their reward in being able to spring a complete surprise on the enemy. It is difficult to know how we are going to supply 20,000 prisoners with water.
Saturday, 14 December
The news this week is excellent. We are all waiting to see what Hitler will do next – he is bound to make a leap. We take more and more prisoners in the desert.
Harry has now been at sea five days.
Monday, 16 December
Everybody is wondering if Hitler will march into Italy, or try an invasion here. Last night I dreamt that I saw German troop-carriers landing their men on a solitary English marsh.
Then, later, another dream. The Germans were in possession here, and we all had to go to Selfridges and give in our gas-masks. I had lost mine. When I arrived in London, the whole of the great shop had been stripped by the Germans, and we had to queue past empty counters behind which stood triumphant Nazis in uniform. I felt I would be shot, then woke.
The outline of the future does not yet emerge, and all talk about our war aims seems to be lifeless and unreal.
Went to see D. She says her son, a policeman in the Air Force, was mad keen to get abroad, but now he has fallen in love with a girl six foot high with fair hair, so he would rather stay at home! Both, I think, are twenty-one.
Mrs Miles's Diary Page 13
