January 1st, 1942
New Year’s Day! Have turned up the Diary for 1940-41 and feel like singing a thanksgiving. Last New Year’s Day we were in the middle of the Blitz and without an ally. To-day we have a year’s production in the instruments of war behind us and are a year nearer superiority in weapons. We have the numbers of Russia, the masses of China, the power of population, and the United States as our allies. Most cheering of all, a note of fear has crept into the speeches of Hitler and Goebbels. Their promises of victory in 1941 have come to nothing and their failure in Russia becomes more obvious to the German people at a time that the entry of the U.S.A. into the war against Germany casts long shadows of 1917 and 1919 across the Reich. Food is enough, and though there is much less than a year ago in the shops and more rationing of everything from clothes to tinned food, we are well off indeed compared with the Greeks, the Norwegians and any of Hitler’s victims.
Listened last night to programme on France. Heartbreaking, France meant so much to Europe, confess that I wept at the appeal from Free France to those who live under the monstrous evil to keep their faith and spirits, to remain true believers, and never to doubt that the day will come when France will again take her place in Europe.Sunday, Jan 5th
Hilary started with a kind of ’flu which takes the form of earache and lay awake a good part of the night moaning and calling ”My ear, my ear”. We do not seem to have much luck just now.
Monday, Jan 5th
Hilary with temperature of 102 in the morning, but slept in the afternoon and better to-night. First snowdrops in bud and brought Daphne Indica with its heavenly scent into the house.
Am getting like Arnold Bennett, unable to resist patent medicines. Am now taking for sciatica Bemax, Green and Amber Vitamins, Malt and codliver oil, Fibrosan, Fynnon Salt. Something ought to touch the spot sometime!
Tuesday, Jan 6th
Sweets and chocolate to be controlled in price.
Friday, Jan 9th
My distant cousin, Edward Sims, in news to-night as H.M.S Galatea, which he commanded, was torpedoed.
School started to-day, hard going with bad leg.
Saturday, Jan 10th
Learnt to-day that Galatea torpedoed at night and sank in three minutes over a month ago. Chances of Edward surviving not very good
The German press is giving a much more gloomy picture of the war. “When the Polish war ended we thought the final decision would soon be reached. After France was conquered we wondered when the jump across the Channel would take place. England’s part in the war took on a super dimensional size. At the back of her appeared the U.S.A. After June 22nd we again turned eastwards. To-day after six months we know that nothing was as we expected”. Westdeutsche Beobachter.
Monday, Jan 12th
Edward’s death announced in The Times to-day. As a boy I saw a good deal of him and we were the same age. He had reddish hair as a boy, which later went quite white.
The Japs pushing irresistibly southwards in Malaya….Kuala Lumpur now in their hands.
Sunday, Jan 18th
Weather foul to-day. Beastly cold and can’t take any exercise to get warm because of leg. Snow fell in night and sky yellow and foggy, so looks as if more will come. But everything on and still feel cold and miserable. Have to stay in bedroom as children playing in dining room. Nora messing about in scullery looking half dead. God, what a winter! If only it would get warmer. Asked the lodgers last night when they could move. All very involved, but they held out some hope at indefinite date.
Tuesday, Jan 20th
Yesterday evening more snow fell and this morning it was about 8 inches deep and very cold. Only about half the school arrived. The trees still deeply coated and festooned, looking lovely, especially the cedars.
The news from Malaya very serious and the Japanese now about 75 miles from Singapore….. Soon a pitched battle must be fought for Singapore. I do not think it will fall.
Thursday, Jan 22nd
Still very cold and ground covered with crisp, powdery snow. Hilary was bought a toboggan to-day and burnt his name on the front bar. He had it out in the afternoon on the slope below the house. He was a bit nervous at first, but became more confident when he found he could brake it with his feet. As I had never had a toboggan, or tobogganed, in my life I felt it was time I had a turn (in spite of sciatica) and did one or two good runs! We came back with feet and hands very cold and rather wet.
Friday, Jan 23rd
Hilary’s tobogganing did not last long as rapid thaw with rain set in this morning and by this afternoon everything was covered deep in semi frozen slush filled with puddles of water.
New Statesman this week as gloomy as usual…. Continues to harp on production failures and says uneasiness in country about war has not been equalled since the days of the Norwegian fiasco in early 1940. I wonder. They are such Jeremiahs and grumblers.
Sunday, Jan 25th
A better day, strong and rather cold west wind, but sunny. Went to Reading yesterday and had tea with M. On way back had puncture and found outer cover very thin, so went into garage to enquire about tyres. No new tyres to be obtained, and none to be retreaded, although this advertised in papers. The garage man had been badly ticked off for trying to get two new tyres for a doctor. However he he had two worn tyres, one of which was rather better than mine, so I negotiated for this in place of mine. When the present lot wear out, finish motor!
Stafford Cripps returning from Moscow says Russians believe a counter attack will be made in the spring but that they can hold it. In the autumn and next winter they think they can finish off the Germans. We must strain everything to keep Russia strong in tanks and to do that we must keep the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and the Middle East with Suez. We cannot do anything that might endanger these key positions or lay this island open to invasion.
Typhus is reported to have reached Paris and people in Paris are dying of cold and hunger. Paris !
Reading reminiscences by Sidney Dark, journalist and editor of Church Times. He points out that if Churchill had denounced the Nazi barbarities and persecutions as eloquently in 1933-39 as he did later the war might never have happened. He is good on the obvious incompetence of McDonald, the smug complacency of Baldwin, the cowardice of Simon, the most futile Foreign Secretary for generations, the grotesque preferment of Inskip! Chamberlain raised by political accident to a high position for which he was utterly incompetent, a man of limited knowledge and experience without a scintilla of imagination, a sincere bourgeois pacifist ready to buy peace at almost any cost. Never has England had such a succession of second rate prime ministers. In 1936 Baldwin failed to say, “Germany is rearming, we must rearm” because he believed this would have lost the Tory party the election. The Tories won the election and five years later Coventry was nearly destroyed! Think history will endorse this verdict.
Monday, Jan 29th
Yesterday I found the first snowdrop. To-day the wind has become icy and snow seemed likely.
Churchill’s eagerly awaited speech made yesterday in opening three day debate [which] he insisted should be on a vote of confidence in the government. He was in good fighting form.... "For the sake of the Libyan battle we concentrated everything we could lay hands on …I am sure this was the right decision.” He said the Libyan battle would have been lost on November 24 if Auchinleck had not changed the command and ordered the ruthless pressure of the attack to be maintained without regard to risks or consequences. We have not succeeded in destroying Rommel’s army, but nearly two thirds of it are wounded, prisoners or dead. "We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us and may I say across the havoc of war, a great general”.
Asked Hilary why he was taking his pistol to bed with him. He looked at me in a peculiar way and said, "In case a mischievous father fires off the caps!”
Clifford, the French master, who left before Christmas for the Near East, has turned up in Rangoon. “We must not be rattled because this or that place has been captured.”
Saturday, Jan 31st
Always glad to get to the end of January – never a good month. Turned very cold and very windy again to-night.
The war is reaching a stage where owing to calling up everything is reaching a point of shortage and inefficiency. You notice it most in shops, transport vehicles, teashops and restaurants. The second or third rate get these jobs because the more intelligent are elsewhere. This imposes an added strain on everyone's nerves and tempers.
And everywhere there are queues. The population crowded into evacuation areas like Reading and Oxford over-strains everything. The Post Office at Reading is frightful; you can hardly get into the place for the people waiting in long queues in front of the counters. The station is the same and to get a ticket you have to wait for ages in a queue; the buses are the same or worse. It takes an immense time to get served in the shops. When things break down, wear out or go wrong it is impossible to get them repaired or replaced; you have to do without them. We live a life isolated from our friends at close quarters with evacuees whom we dislike and food that is dull and monotonous, if sufficient. This is war for many people. We think of the spacious times that will come with peace, but will they for a long time be spacious or will shortages, high prices and scarcity continue, asks Nora. I reply that at least some of the minor annoyances that bulk so large will end, e.g., the blackout and evacuees.
No comments:
Post a Comment