Mrs Miles's Diary

by S. V. Partington

  The Japanese are drawing nearer to Kuala Lumpur. The Australians are said to be rushing fighter planes to help General MacArthur163 in the threatened Philippines.

  Mrs Rayne to tea – her boy is flying over Germany. He writes to her about the cloud effects and the moon and the islands lying far below. No word of bombs.

  Sunday, 11 January

  Bitterly cold. Now four o’clock, Robin is teaching map-reading to some NCOs in the clear frosty air and enjoying it fully.

  Monday, 12 January

  Woke to find bitter cold, and pipes frozen. Robin worked very hard from eight-thirty. It was three before we heard the welcome sound of running water. Poor Robin did not even cast a glance at the newspaper. Kuala Lumpur has fallen, and where is Lilian of the bright hair? I hope she got away in time. The lights have now fused, to add to the entertainment.

  Tuesday, 13 January

  I was aghast at being asked on the telephone this morning to become Billeting Officer – I am considering it; as there are 8–900 children in the village it would be no sinecure.

  Went to London. Coming down in a crowded carriage with two men standing, a Canadian soldier turned on his small wireless set and the whole packed carriage listened gravely to a fairy story from the Children’s Hour about Grimalkin. So English were we, we made no sort of response or comment, or thanked the Canadian. But I suspect we all enjoyed it, jogging through snow-covered fields. Returned much elated, and gave Robin the gift of an apricot tart. Tried not to think about Malaya and the increasing danger there.

  Thursday, 15 January

  A. writes from Edinburgh. She has taken a job as a domestic servant, and finds herself living in a tiny back bedroom in a tall house, with a hard chair and a broken radiator, in spite of the promise of a nice comfortable bed-sitting room. There is a steep stone staircase and there are three coal fires to light (apparently no electricity); and the old lady, who is sole occupant, and A. between them have half a pint of milk every second day. I think the old woman is living in a dream and should be rudely awakened. Such monstrous houses must either be torn down, or made into flats.

  Friday, 16 January

  Great fear is expressed about the possible fall of Singapore. Articles on this appear everywhere. Japanese submarines based in Singapore would be able to interfere seriously with the British supply routes to and from Australia.

  The papers are calling for Winston’s return,164 and say it is high time to ‘knock a few heads together and put some order into a disordered situation.’

  Parcel just in from America. Honey, chocolate and bacon. What a help!

  In the bank today Mr F. was very bitter about the approach of Warship Week,165 of which he is secretary: ‘I never knew such a village. The same set of people do everything again and again.’

  Afterwards I rang through and offered to type any letters for him. ‘No, there would be no need.’ ‘Very well, then, I’m ready to do anything else.’ ‘Thank you, I’ll bear it in mind.’

  Robin received a communication from the Labour Exchange at Guildford this morning, calling up our maid, Mrs Olive Sutton. Could she not go to make munitions? He answered by pointing out that she was a soldier’s wife, her husband did not wish her to leave home, and so on. Compulsion cannot, very rightly, be applied to married women.

  Sunday, 18 January

  Snow still lying thickly over Shere. The lonely soldier arrived for tea,166 and we enjoyed his conversation as usual. He spoke of the beautiful carved stone mantlepieces in the country house where he is stationed, and of the thoughtless way some of the troops idly carve circles on them.

  The papers are exceedingly interesting, as usual. I should like to know the name of the Belgian woman who found a German soldier pointing a rifle at her when, the other day, she was proceeding to lay flowers on a dead British airman’s grave. She went on with her task in spite of it. When the Germans marched down the cemetery path, the assembled Belgians just turned their backs on them.

  Tuesday, 20 January

  An awful day, snow and cold and frost. Everything looks very quiet and very unfriendly in the garden. The paths are hidden in snow, and the elms hold up their branches as if saying, ‘We are dead and gone, and will never have green leaves again.’

  There are some stories of the capture of Halfaya Pass167 that are interesting. An orderly of the RAMC said in an interview: ‘I operated with a penknife and amputated a German’s arm, after he had been hit by a British bomb splinter. It saved his life, and the German commander sent down a packet of cigarettes as a reward.’

  Wednesday, 21 January

  Basil writes from the desert. His nearest hospital is at Nazareth: how strange.

  Florrie writes that the Air Ministry has told Iris that her husband is undoubtedly dead, and buried at Dunkirk. He was last seen diving in his plane into the sea. Poor Iris.

  Mr Churchill has a cold, and is obviously feeling rather touchy.

  Thursday, 22 January

  Feel sick with anxiety about Malaya. The authorities there are ordering many rubber plantations to become scorched earth. The rubber tree takes years to cultivate; tens of thousands of trees must now be charred and burned. It is pitiful.

  I shall write on a postcard, ‘America is In’, and put it on the mantlepiece to remind me of Hope.

  Sunday, 25 January

  The lonely soldier, who again came to tea, said, ‘I should go potty if I couldn’t come here.’ He brought back Wuthering Heights, which he has read for the first time, and remarked that he would not like anybody dear to him to go through such sorrow as that.

  Monday, 26 January

  Distressed to find that my firm friend and hairdresser in Guildford was left alone to cope with her work: the last maiden has gone off to the Forces. Nora has a heavy Guildford rent to pay, and I fear she cannot make things go as they should if she can’t get help. She can’t get anybody, and has advertised twelve times in vain. I cannot think what she can do: expenses mount every day, and she has only two hands; and she deserves to succeed. Many people have left the town, going back to London, so in any case business is not as good.

  Thursday, 29 January

  The debate last night seems to have been bitter and unpleasant. Lord Chatfield in the Lords and Sir Archibald Southby both accuse Winston of having denied an aircraft carrier escort for Repulse and the Prince of Wales: they allege that he manages and controls naval strategy. This is all very wretched, and I hope it may be denied.168

  I am sitting by the fire. Robin looks up and says the Japs are only thirty-one miles from Singapore.

  Saturday, 31 January

  Came an army chaplain to tea, who said that he surmised that the government did not compel the lads of fifteen, sixteen and seventeen to join some organisation because there were not sufficient people ready and trained to deal with them. Sagacious comment.

  The lonely soldier came and left a small chocolate offering on the mantlepiece.

  Monday, 2 February

  Today is the birthday of my nieces, Pam and Prue, to whom the brand new world is going to belong. I have written to Gorringes for two brocade bags for them to take to parties: one geranium red, one green.

  Tuesday, 3 February

  Awful weather again. Interesting letter from May Sinclair. She is in charge of a ‘crisis’ department at the BBC.

  ‘When you get a News Editor with a broken knee-cap from a fall on ice – three typists sick, a fourth (new) found to be hopelessly incompetent. The head clerk had two broken ribs (fell on ice). All in one department. But the news must go out to the Empire! I have to get replacements.

  ‘I dined with Ted Morris169 last week . . . heard some really amusing stories about Stalin. He said at one of those dreadful Kremlin feasts to the British Mission, ‘Do your Marshals drink much?’ The horrified Englishman said, ‘No, very little.’ Stalin cried, ‘What a pity! The better the drinker, the better the Marshal. My Marshals are great drinkers.’

  Friday, 6 February

  So
dismal a day, with the snow lying thick and cold everywhere, that I did not go out. I feel restless: I wish we could go off and do some war work, and let the flat, which gets shabbier and shabbier.

  Dean Inge170 is now writing to suggest that the depleted middle classes should form communities after the war and occupy country houses that nobody wants, ‘to save what can be saved of the cultural tradition of the shattered Empire’.

  It is very surprising, since the Socialist idea is so rampant in our midst, that the community idea does not take surer hold: it is not popular. The small shops are at the moment being urgently advised to amalgamate and save themselves from bankruptcy, what with the growing scarcity of goods to sell, and the depletion of their small but important staffs. But many will not hear of it. Mrs James, for instance, who has a suburban baby-clothes shop fairly near another one, said to an interviewer in the Daily Mail, ‘I’d rather go on Poor Law Relief 171 than merge with another. I am temperamentally unsuited to working with another woman.’ So said others all round her.

  Many women who could not work full time did part-time war work. This group are sorting rivets at a converted private house in Northchapel, Surrey.

  Photograph © IWM D14147

  Saturday, 7 February

  To Guildford again. Readers standing four deep in Boots’ Library to have their books changed, and about eight deep at Lyons where I drank a hot lemonade in the freezing cold and talked with a dark-eyed young man at the same table. He has made a study of Russia, and admires her very much, and thinks Socialism is the thing. I said I did not think it was, which he accepted with gentle resignation.

  Heard from Picket Post – still no cook, no scullery maid, and the mistress of the house washing up for the great school household, and her daughter (fain to be off to the Wrens) gallantly cooking for forty or so. What will be the end of this?

  Muriel has had a cable from Eudo in the East Surreys in Malaya saying he is safe. The rumour is that they were cornered by the Japs and cut off and heavily punished.172

  Sunday, 8 February

  Abominably cold. Snow still lying. I talk with a young WAAF who is staying here. She longs to fly – her face lights up with delight at the very thought. She told me that the postal arrangements of all the Services are very inefficient. When girls are suddenly despatched all over England, and their mail arrives at the stations from which they have departed, many of the letters don’t get sent on. The postal people just burn them. ‘What, burn unread, unopened letters?’ I said incredulously. ‘Yes, I had all mine registered when I was at Gloucester; that was a bit better.’

  She added that many tough, cynical women, who abuse their authority, are in charge. She described queueing up for breakfast on an ice-cold morning at seven, having been up for ages, only to be told there was none. ‘What did you do?’ ‘Drilled half the morning, and then had a cup of tea in the NAAFI, you know, one tea leaf and gallons of water.’173

  She loves the life, however.

  Monday, 9 February

  Robin’s birthday. He is sixty-four. He had four gifts:

  A tin of anchovies from me. A twopenny slab of chocolate from a WAAF. Two fresh eggs from our neighbour, who said while putting them in my hands, ‘It is as if I gave him a pearl and a diamond.’ A pot of jam from Rosemary Murray, I fear almost the last she has.

  The soap rationing is a real trial. I had bought a hat-box full of tablets at the beginning of the war, and am thankful. The ration is sure to be reduced.

  Woke to hear that the Japanese had effected a landing on Singapore. Very distressing.

  E. writes: ‘I have got to know some Canadian officers, thank God; it makes life less dreary. Am actually being taken to a dance by one of them, in a lorry. I expect it will be the death of me.’

  A beautiful parcel came from New Jersey today: a tongue, a cake in a tin, and two boxes of Swiss cheese. They say the war has, as yet, affected the Americans so slightly that sugar and motor tyres are the only things that can’t be procured.

  The WAAF was a hospital nurse, it turns out, on an ambulance river boat during the worst of the Blitz. She told of the awful night when the cadet training ship near the Tower of London was hit,174 and the water was full of bodies. They picked up seven, one of them without an arm (he took it so bravely), gave them hot coffee at once and the doctor on board ordered a shot of morphia. They took them up the Thames to Bermondsey hospital, and they all recovered! She spoke of the blaze in the sky; of the tramp ship which struck a mine in the river and blew up in half.

  It is jolly to think that this little woman is going to be happy this evening. She is meeting her RASC fiancé in town and they are dining at the Café Anglais and going together to Dumbo.

  Very much troubled about Singapore. It seems as if it is going to be taken.

  Thursday, 12 February

  There is hand to hand fighting in the city of Singapore; the air is dark with Japanese bombers, and our lads go up in ancient planes which go slowly. It is all ghastly.

  A Home Guard died in A.’s hospital in Dorking the other day. He had been bombed by mistake at practice, and had both legs amputated. After that, lying in bed, he said brightly to the nurse, ‘I am so glad my feet feel warm again.’ Later he realised suddenly what had happened, fell silent and quietly passed away.

  Friday, 13 February

  News of the great naval battle. At the time of writing it seems as if it were another setback for us, but we may get more cheerful news later. What a fearful thing a sea battle must be, with all those planes!175

  I go to see about a dozen three-year-olds at a local war home. Where the mothers are, I don’t know. I believe they are making munitions.

  I meet a corporal coming up the hill, obviously on leave. There are four children. He has the one next to the youngest on his shoulder, and makes him laugh, and then glances at me, and I laugh, and the corporal laughs, and the child laughs. I can’t help saying to the wife, ‘It’s good to have him home, isn’t it?’

  Tuesday, 17 February

  Singapore has fallen, and all is lost.176 I feel physically ill when I think what the suspense must be for Muriel, who has her boy there with the East Surreys. Harry’s regiment, the Loyals, are there also; dead, wounded, prisoners, those men and officers he knew so well. I have much to be thankful for, that he is out of it.

  There seems a great cry going up in the House (not the country) against Churchill – the old familiar way of making a scapegoat of somebody. I feel terrified he will resign in a temper. Then what?

  Robin has mended Mrs Murray’s kettle. You can’t buy one in Guildford. She is so grateful, but as she gave him a pot of jam the other day, he feels very friendly towards her.

  Wednesday, 18 February

  Cold, unflinching cold, perfectly sunless and bitter. A brave letter in from Muriel about Eudo in Singapore. The East Surreys’ colonel got ‘a packet in the leg’ and was safely evacuated. But what of the Major?

  Friday, 20 February

  Much cheered by a letter from Harry, written before Christmas. This had taken sixty days to come.

  In the House of Lords yesterday, Lord Atkin said that the figures of juvenile offenders had increased alarmingly during the war. From January to August 1940 they increased by 41 per cent among children under fourteen and by 22 per cent among those between fourteen and seventeen. There are many waiting to be taken into special schools.

  No news yet from Japan about our Singapore prisoners.

  I place it on record calmly and gravely that this stage of the war is the worst that we have gone through. Suspense, death and cruelty. Silence between those that love one another. All this sorrow intensified by the bitter, stormy grey weather with no sun.

  I go to sleep thinking of Eudo, gallant Major, East Surreys, whose very laugh I hear in my ear, young and infectious. Where is he? Alive or prisoner?

  Sunday, 22 February

  The dining room is full of Home Guards learning map reading. Robin is very much excited.

  A
n old woman of eighty says, ‘I always bake some little cakes every Saturday in case one of the boys (in Libya) comes in.’

  The news seems terribly bad.

  Monday, 23 February

  Received an arresting letter from a great friend, in whose thoughts I am always most interested. She says: ‘Do you have a horrible feeling that nothing will ever be the same again? One will never just be quite pleased with life – a lovely sunny day in the country perhaps. Just as you are going to enjoy it, a memory of this horror will come like a cloud over the sun. More and more I feel I’d like to go and live, afterwards, somewhere that doesn’t remind me of post-war England. Somewhere where one can work and build up from the beginning – not merely to patch up . . .’177

  Went to tea with Baby Lisa, the seven-month-old daughter of an airman who died before she was born. It was very touching, sitting by the bright wood fire watching the fatherless baby drink her orange juice – obtained, said the pale young mother, from America, under the Lend-Lease Bill. She talked a lot about her husband, and how he loved flying above the beautiful Scottish hills, and would come home and tell her about it. I came away so thankful that she had a child. All the difference between heaven and hell for her.

  Tuesday, 24 February

  Nothing more about our men in Singapore.

  I discover an advertisement in today’s Times about a job I think I am able to fill. If only I could! They want gentlewomen for portresses at University College Hospital, London; no manual work, but answering enquiries, phones, etc.

  Robin throws cold water on it firmly. ‘You would always be ill,’ etc. I can do nothing, of course, as my duty lies at home. A nuisance.

  Thursday, 26 February

  Cissy writes today that her mother-in-law’s estate cannot be settled until her daughter M. comes out of captivity – she is interned in Jersey. Everything is held up till – when? That seems appallingly stupid. I hope they can make a fuss.