Mrs Miles's Diary

by S. V. Partington

  ISBN 978-1-84983-366-0

  Paperback £7.99

  D-DAY TO VICTORY

  The Diaries of a British Tank Commander

  Sgt Trevor Greenwood

  Edited by S. V. Partington

  ‘We are being fired at in the tanks . . . machine-gunned from the air, shelled by artillery, mortared, sniped at, machine-gunned by ground forces . . .’

  Sergeant Trevor Greenwood of C Squadron, the 9th Royal Tank Regiment sailed for France in June 1944 as part of the Allied invasion of Normandy. From D-Day until April 1945, he kept a daily diary of the final push through France and into Germany, often writing in secret and in terrible conditions. Under fire, often outgunned and facing a bitter winter, he never loses his moral compass or his sense of humour. His astonishing diary has left us a unique record of the war in Europe from the rarely-seen perspective of an ordinary soldier.

  ISBN 978-1-47111-068-9

  Paperback £8.99

  Endnotes

  1 Surrey County Council Special War Executive Report, 1945.

  2 Connie refers to Elystan as Robin throughout the journal. This name seems to have been in common use between them, as there is a photograph of Elystan as a young man on the reverse of which is pencilled in Connie’s writing: ‘Elystan (Robin)’.

  3 Frederick Pethick Lawrence, Labour MP and noted advocate of women’s rights. He was Secretary of State for India and Burma from 1945–7, and was involved in negotiations for Indian independence. He lived in Peaslake, just south of Shere.

  4 The Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley, Southampton, a purpose-built military hospital constructed in the 1850s and demolished in 1966.

  5 ‘Terriers’ was short for the Territorial Army, the volunteer force of the British Army. Female volunteers in 1939 joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), formed the previous year. Their pay, however, was only 66 per cent of that of male volunteers.

  6 One shilling and sixpence, or seven and a half pence in decimal currency. There were twenty shillings in a pound and twelve pence in a shilling.

  7 The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a Scottish infantry regiment.

  8 The writer Barbara Euphan Todd, best known as the creator of the children’s character Worzel Gummidge.

  9 No connection to Netley Hospital. Netley Park, now owned by the National Trust, is a small estate and country house on the slopes of the North Downs, just across the A25 from Shere.

  10 Connie was a frequent visitor to Picket Post, a hamlet in the New Forest (now bisected by the A31) where her friend Muriel Andrews ran a boarding school for boys.

  11 Connie’s friend Joan Hoffman and her companion Mrs M. arrived in Shere on 4 September. Many people left London at this time for friends and relations in the country but returned when the threat of early air attack did not materialise.

  12 Edie and Madge were the Misses Davidson, who rented the ground floor of Springfield House, which Connie and her husband had divided into upper and lower flats. Madge was the billeting officer, whose task was to organise homes for evacuees.

  13 Connie’s younger half-sister, Mildred, lived in Lodge of Auchindoir, Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, with her husband Grange Kirkcaldy and their three children; Rosemary, sixteen at the outbreak of war, and thirteen-year-old twins, Pamela and Prudence.

  14 The SS Athenia, a passenger liner en route from Glasgow to Montreal, was torpedoed in error by the German submarine U-30. 112 of the 1418 passengers and crew were killed, among them 69 women and 19 children.

  15 The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry was a charitable volunteer organisation first set up in 1907, which had filled a vital role in the Great War driving ambulances and tending to the wounded. In 1938 the FANY Corps formed the Women’s Transport Services, the motor transport arm of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and it was as drivers that they were chiefly used in the Second World War.

  16 At the outbreak of war, there were already over 1.5 million Britons enrolled as wardens or other civil defence personnel concerned with Air Raid Precautions.

  17 Mrs M., Connie’s London friend, came originally from Germany, and although she had lived in Britain for some time the outbreak of war meant that she became in the eyes of the law not only an alien but an enemy alien. Restrictions on individuals such as Mrs M. eased once they were assessed as posing no threat.

  18 Connie’s stepmother, Lady Catherine Nicoll, known as Katie, lived at the Nicoll family home in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire.

  19 The magazine founded by Connie’s father, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, in 1886, to which she was a regular contributor.

  20 The Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey), the second most senior infantry regiment in the British Army.

  21 Barrage balloons, designed to impede low-flying aircraft and hence to protect a potential target from aerial attack.

  22 Someone who is resident in Britain but not a British citizen.

  23 Connie adds later in a handwritten footnote that this view altered completely once the canteen was open, to the extent that ‘they might send their own children as well’.

  24 May Browne was Connie’s closest friend. Connie quotes her frequently, referring to her as May Browne or May B. (later May Sinclair or May S. after her marriage to John Sinclair) to distinguish her from Robin’s sister May, or Mayo.

  25 Russia had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in August 1939, and did not enter the war on the Allies’ side until she herself was invaded by Hitler in June 1941. Two weeks and two days after Germany had invaded Poland from the west, Russia invaded from the east.

  26 HMS Courageous was sunk by German submarine U-29 off the coast of Ireland on 17 September while on anti-submarine patrol. She was the first Royal Navy warship to be lost in the Second World War.

  27 George Bernard Shaw, playwright, novelist, essayist and committed socialist, was known for his outspoken and cleverly argued commentaries on a wide range of issues.

  28 Since it was the Munich Agreement negotiated by Neville Chamberlain that had allowed Germany to annexe the Sudetenland unopposed, many people in Britain felt a particular obligation to help the Sudeten refugees.

  29 The National Registration Bill became law on 5 September. From May 1940, as fears of invasion grew, anyone over the age of sixteen had to carry their card at all times. Possession of a validated identity card was also required in order to obtain a ration book.

  30 The main thrust of Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag on 6 October was to justify the invasion of Poland, while denying that Germany posed a threat to Denmark, Holland, or Belgium, or other countries which might have reason to be nervous of German intentions. He also maintained he had no desire for war with France or Britain.

  31 Probably Captain Coppinger, judging from the entry for 28 September. In a handwritten note Connie adds: ‘Later, he was killed.’

  32 Fears concerning Stalin’s expansionist ambitions were confirmed when Russia invaded Finland on 30 November.

  33 The first air raid of the war, on the Royal Naval base at Rosyth, on the Firth of Forth. There were no British casualties, but two German airmen were shot down and killed. They were buried in Edinburgh with full military honours, a consideration which was not to last as the war intensified.

  34 Ernest Brown held the post of Minister of Labour under both Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, and was succeeded by Ernest Bevin in 1940.

  35 Joachim von Ribbentrop, German Foreign Minister from 1938 until the end of the war. He was hanged for war crimes in 1946 after the Nuremberg Trials.

  36 A crown was a five-shilling coin in pre-decimal currency, and half-a-crown was two shillings and sixpence.

  37 Approximately £240,000 today.

  38 Filmed by Frank Capra in 1937 and later adapted by the BBC as a radio play, the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton imagines an isolated valley in Tibet known as Shangri-La, where the wisdom of the world is preserved in time of crisis.

  39 Paintings from the Tate and other galleries were removed and stored for safety
in the tunnels of Manod Quarry in north Wales, which had been specially adapted for the purpose.

  40 Before the formation of the National Health Service in 1948, numerous local voluntary organisations operated subscription schemes to ensure the welfare of hospital patients and provide for their daily needs. These were the basis of what would later become the League of Friends.

  41 The battleship HMS Royal Oak was torpedoed by German submarine U-47 while at anchor in the harbour of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands on 14 October 1939. Of her 1208 officers and men, 833 were killed.

  42 Major General Sir Ernest Swinton, KB, CBE, DSO was a war correspondent and military writer who, during his active service, had helped to develop the first tanks. The Siegfried Line was a system of defensive fortifications and tank traps constructed along the full length of Germany’s western borders during the 1930s.

  43 On 8 November Hitler survived an assassination attempt by Georg Elser, a committed opponent of Nazism. Elser had planted a bomb in the hall where Hitler was scheduled to speak, but owing to a last-minute change in his travel arrangements, Hitler left the building before the bomb went off.

  44 The first officially published account of German concentration camps, released on 30 October 1939.

  45 Many of the Sudeten refugees were ethnic Germans fleeing forcible repatriation because they were Social Democrats or other political opponents of the Nazi regime.

  46 Edvard Benes, President of Czechoslovakia from 1935 until 1938, and again from 1945 until 1948. During the war Benes was head of the Czech government-in-exile based in London.

  47 Connie added after the war in a handwritten footnote: ‘Only Basil got through. Mickey was killed by a Japanese bomb thrown at his brow and hitting it, in Burma, when due for leave. Clive died on D-Day on the Normandy Beaches, gallantly leading his men.’

  48 Alfred Adler, influential psychologist and co-founder with Freud of the psychoanalytic movement, best known for his theory of Individual Psychology and the concept of the Inferiority Complex.

  49 Eudo Andrews, one of Muriel Andrews’ three sons. Peter and John were the other two.

  50 HMS Rawalpindi was a former passenger ship converted to an armed cruiser. On patrol off the Faroe Islands she encountered two German battleships, and her captain, 60-year-old Edward Kennedy, elected to give battle rather than surrender. He and 237 of his crew were killed: there were 48 survivors.

  51 Robin’s elder sister May and younger sister Sibyl lived in the New Forest not far from Muriel Andrews at Picket Post. Molly (elsewhere referred to as Molly W.) was clearly part of their household, but whether she was a friend or a relation is not clear.

  52 Connie was widely travelled in Europe and knew Germany well. Her hatred for Hitler and for the conduct of the war did not prevent her from sympathising with the German people, at least in the early part of the conflict, before its later horrors became apparent.

  53 The twentieth Assembly of the League of Nations, forerunner of the UN. The following day, the League formally expelled the Soviet Union for its acts of aggression against Finland.

  54 Following the Battle of the River Plate in the South Atlantic, the badly damaged Admiral Graf Spee was penned in Montevideo harbour, Uruguay, by two British cruisers, who managed to bluff her captain that theirs was a superior force, to the extent that he ordered the Graf Spee to be scuttled.

  55 The Eustaces, old friends of Connie’s. Eusti is a humorous ‘Latin’ plural: one Eustace, two Eusti.

  56 Meaning that enemy aircraft were five to ten minutes away.

  57 The tribunals were set up ‘to deal with all enemy aliens of registrable age who have not already been interned, of whom there are about 50,000’ (Daily Telegraph, 9 September 1939). Most were refugees from Germany or, like Otto, Austria, and ‘aliens with anti-Nazi sympathies may be found work in the service of this country.’

  58 As depicted in the 2011 film The King’s Speech, which portrays the relationship between King George VI and Lionel Logue, the therapist who taught him how to overcome his stammer.

  59 The shortage of paper caused difficulties for many magazines and periodicals. The British Weekly survived the war, however.

  60 Hermann Rauschning, a former National Socialist who had repudiated Nazism, claimed to have had many hours of conversation with Hitler. His book Hitler Speaks was later denounced as a fraud, or at very least an exaggeration both of the time he had spent in Hitler’s company, and of the Führer’s behaviour. Nevertheless it made a vivid impression on readers at the time and was influential in creating the image of Hitler as a madman.

  61 Steve Donoghue, ten times champion jockey between 1914 and 1923. Brown Jack was a hugely popular racehorse in the early 1930s, who had a locomotive named after him in 1935.

  62 The von Brunn family were friends of the Mileses prior to the outbreak of war. Basil had stayed with them when he was a student.

  63 Connie refers to Tony Dodds’ father sometimes as Captain Dodds and sometimes as Mr.

  64 HMS Grenville, a G-class destroyer, struck a mine off the north Kent coast and sank with the loss of 75 men.

  65 Italy, while it had allied itself with Germany, did not enter the war as an active combatant until June 1940; partly because it had insufficient armament at the outset to take part.

  66 HMS Exmouth, an E-class destroyer, was torpedoed in the Moray Firth on 21 January by German submarine U-22 while she was escorting a merchant ship.

  67 David Lloyd George had been Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War and then Prime Minister during the Great War of 1914–18. Aged seventy-seven in 1940, he was still a major political figure.

  68 Connie adds in a handwritten footnote (presumably tongue-in-cheek): ‘So I hear later, a live peacock was encased in ice. And a whole haystack!’

  69 The name by which St Petersburg was known under the Soviet regime between 1924 and 1991.

  70 Connie and Robin spent several weeks each winter in Mentone in the South of France, a tradition they inherited from the Miles side of the family. Robin’s grandfather had retired to Mentone, and had had a house there.

  71 HMS Ajax was famous for her role in the Battle of the River Plate and the eventual scuttling of the Graf Spee. Although heavily outgunned, she managed to survive a number of hits from the German warship.

  72 Two of Connie’s nieces, the twin daughters of her sister Mildred.

  73 Government bonds issued to raise money to support the war effort. National Savings schemes were promoted with posters exhorting people to ‘Lend to Defend the Right to be Free’ or ‘Save your way to Victory’ and so on.

  74 It could take some time for permits to be issued, since there were approximately 170,000 non-enemy aliens, as well as the 50,000 enemy aliens, all of whose cases had to be considered.

  75 William Joyce, who was hanged for treason in 1946, is most commonly associated with Lord Haw-Haw, but the name was coined before he became the main announcer on the Nazi propaganda programme Germany Calling in February 1940, and it is not certain which of his predecessors was the original. The most likely candidate would seem to be radio producer Wolf Mittler, who later fled the Nazi regime, although there were others in the early months of the war.

  76 Fanciful stories such as this spread widely. Connie was no fool, and the fact that she took this one at face value indicates how easy they were to believe, at least in the early months of the war.

  77 In 1964 the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar formed the United Republic of Tanzania.

  78 The Eustaces had money invested in China, which Japan had invaded in 1937. Presumably their hope was that Chiang Kai Shek, the Chinese leader, would repel the Japanese and restore stability.

  79 Prince George Chavchavadze was a Russian exile and occasional concert pianist. As a general rule, the troops tended to prefer jazz and swing to classical music for their entertainment.

  80 Connie was fiercely partisan in her likes and dislikes and had little time for Eden, who had resigned as Foreign Secretary in
1938 and was at this time Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs. Her opinion may have been coloured by his policy disagreements with Neville Chamberlain, whom she greatly admired.

  81 The IRA were actively involved in a bombing campaign in England in 1939–40 known as the S-Plan or Sabotage Campaign, at the height of which five people were killed and fifty injured in Coventry on 25 August. Two of the bombers were hanged on 7 February 1940, which in turn triggered further bombings in London and Birmingham in February and March.

  82 Harry was invalided out of the 2nd Battalion, The Loyal Regiment, who were in Singapore, as a result of spondylitis, a degenerative bone condition, and was awaiting passage to England.

  83 On Tuesday 19 March the RAF attacked the German naval base at Hoernum on the island of Sylt for six hours in order to disrupt German mine-laying and attacks on British shipping.

  84 The Ministry of Food introduced ration books for every individual, including children, which contained coupons for set amounts of various rationed goods. Shoppers could only buy from shops with which they had registered, as shopkeepers had strictly limited supplies, and had to take their ration books with them so coupons could be checked off.

  85 Connie adds a handwritten note: ‘Mrs H’s daughter, in the ATS’.

  86 Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Front (the Deutsche Arbeitsfront or DAF) from 1933 to 1945. Ley committed suicide while awaiting trial for war crimes.

  87 Edward Antony Bulwer-Lytton, Viscount Knebworth, pilot, MP and eldest son of the 2nd Earl of Lytton, died in a plane crash at Hendon in 1933.