July. Evacuees again. Streaming out of London. De Gaulle's government recognised. K. Hunt on Italian experiences. How the cats do it. Hitler escapes assassination.
Saturday, July 1
I never thought I should have evacuees in the house again, but they arrived again to-day. Brother-in-law and sister-in-law and baby aged six months from Wimbledon. The bombs came nearer and nearer and the ceilings began to fall in, windows go, etc. The baby spent most of the day in a shelter at the bottom of the garden where they slept at night. It certainly looked very well and flourishing when it arrived. Paddington very crowded, but they came down with pram, cot etc etc. and got into the train all right. One short alert this p.m. Providence against us clearly! Gale to-day and low cloud with some driving rain. What a summer! As the Wrays are also down for the weekend as a rest from the bombs we have six people and a baby in the house – an awful lot of work for Nora.
Margaret Sheehan’s Jack tearing round Kent on a motor bicycle giving instructions to A.A. batteries on how to deal with buzz bombs till quite exhausted. Apparently enormous numbers of barrage balloons are being put up south of London. Not very popular with residents!
Yesterday evening an enormous number of four-engined bombers went over and returned about 8.30. The sky was full of them at various heights and flying on various bearings. I have never seen so many at once – they were like a mass of dragon flies. I counted 50 in sight at one time on their return.
Sunday, July 2nd
Went over to Long Dene to see Hilary and found him and Con very well. I was shown a house he had built in a tree and also some good paintings. Took him a caterpillar cage, which was well received. An alert in the morning, but no bombs; day cloudy, cleared later, but rain again at night.
Monday, July 3rd
Bombs in London bad again to-day with several near Harrow where Nora working. One fell last week in the road outside Bush House and smashed up the Aldwych, where I saw There Shall Be No Night, so the play has stopped; another just off Piccadilly Circus on the Regent Palace Hotel. People streaming out of London, especially on long-distance trains to S. Wales. Weather remains cloudy, which is such a curse. If it would clear I am sure large numbers would be shot down.
Rita’s baby in pram in garden when a bomb came down in Surbiton. The blast stripped the leaves off the trees, which fell on baby – baby highly amused.
It looks as though the Germans are clearing out of Italy. The Americans are striking south across the Cotentin peninsular, but the tank battle outside Caen seems to have been a draw and we are “regrouping”, whatever that means.
Wednesday, July 5th
The Russians are pursuing the fleeing Germans west of Minsk and the German communiqués admit large numbers have been cut off behind the Russian front and are trapped. Germans involved in another huge disaster…. The Germans say Montgomery is getting ready for a supreme effort and fighting will develop into a great Battle of France.
In England people are still streaming out of London…. M got in with some of them on Saturday. They were obviously suffering from lack of sleep, tired out, with black-ringed eyes, and dirty – they glanced apprehensively out of the windows at the noise of aeroplanes. I saw my first P bomb this afternoon! About 5 while in my room there was a wallop and then the siren went. A little later I heard something going past which sounded like one, looked out of the window and saw it for a moment in a break in the low rain clouds, exactly as described with tail unit clearly visible. Shortly after the engine cut out, but it was a long time before we heard the explosion. It was going very fast and quite low. The engine had a kind of vicious stutter, rather like a motor bicycle engine.
People who were contemptuous of P bombs in London take a more sober view now. At Aldwych the dead office girls are laid out in rows on pavement with faces covered while waiting for removal, killed by blast but quite untouched. We are stale and tired, having got thought the blitzes and thinking the worst was behind us it is difficult at this stage of the war to nerve ourselves for the next ordeal.
The air is full of the scent of limes and this damp mild weather, though bad for the invasion, should be good for the honey crop.
Friday, July 7th
P.M. has made statement about the bombs. For a year a secret war has been going on between the R.A.F. and the Germany. We (?happened) to find their experimental stations in the Baltic and actually killed the chief scientist in an air attack. We have been trying to discover their launching sites in France and have all the time been making extensive photographic reconnaissance of the whole area. There were big sites for rockets and smaller sites for bombs. When these were destroyed the enemy used prefabricated structures, which could be built quickly in cloudy weather. For the last fortnight 100 – 150 bombs have been launched a day, the number of casualties about equal to the number of bombs – 2,750. The battle will be long and he could give no guarantees that rockets of greater range, speed and explosive power will not come upon us. When he went to the sites of bomb explosions on Saturday a man asked him what he intended to do about it. He replied, “Everything in human power, and we have never failed yet!” “London will never be conquered and will never fail and I am sure that her renown in triumphing over every ordeal will long live among men.”
We are said to have four to one superiority in fire power in Normandy. One German division took 14 days from Galicia to Paris and 14 days from Paris to Normandy! Some infantry have been forced to march from Paris.
Weather improved yesterday, but ended up in thunderstorm and this morning was dull, cloudy and wet. It started with some heavy distant explosions, but there were no alerts here, which was good as the children were doing H.S.C. [Higher School Certificate] biology practical dissecting mice etc.
Con writes to say she was worried about Hilary last term, but now his gaiety and independence are a daily delight to her.
Sunday, July 9th
Caen captured to-day. Hope Norman abbey undamaged but expect most of it a heap of rubble…;.. Germans said officially to be short of petrol and ammunition. I am beginning really to be optimistic, but I do not think as some people do that the war may be over by the end of August….. Hitler believed now to be organising a German underground movement so that no German govt can be formed in the event of an allied military occupation and the whole thing will just disintegrate. Samson and the pillars of Gaza.
Ken visiting his bank in London found the ground floor unoccupied and was directed by notices to the cellar where he found the manager seated at a little table in the door of the strong room. He says however that people at the stations, such as Waterloo, take no notice when told hostile aircraft are approaching. On the whole it seems to have been a better week in London, The weather is still stormy, windy and wet, but with clearer intervals and higher cloud.
Friday, July 14th
Quatorze juillet. De Gaulle govt recognised as de facto govt of France by U.S.A. Tremendous sabotage and destruction of communications going on behind whole enemy front.
Huns surpassed themselves by wiping out a whole village in reprisal, shot all the men and burnt the women and children in a church. It sounds even worse than Lidice [Reference is to Ouradour. Lidice a village in Czechoslovakia where on July 10, 1942, Gestapo shot all men over age of 16 and some of the women (the rest were sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp) following the assassination of the Nazi governor Reinhard Heydrich] .
“Victories have been and shall be won by men such as he. May there never be wanting in this realm a succession of men of like spirit and discipline, imagination and valour, humble and unafraid. Not dust, nor the light weight of a storm, but all the sea of the western approaches shall be his tomb.” Part of speech as funeral service of naval captain.
Friday, July 21st
An eventful week. On Tuesday Kenneth Hunt and wife came to supper. He had sailed via Cape to India, then to the Persian Gulf and the oilfields; from Iraq at the time of the Tunisian campaign they drove overland via Syria to Palestine, to Egypt and Tripoli. Arrived just after Mareth battles. After end of the campaign fought in the Salerno bridgehead. Here the Germans knew they were coming and greeted the officers by name though loud speakers. He was in the division in the centre, which got ashore, but it was a very close race between the build up of anti-tank weapons and the enemy’s armour. Next he went to the Casino front where he fought in a cloud on Monte Casino and was then moved to the mouth of the Garigliano. The plan was a big punch forward across the river while the Germans were concentrating on the beachhead landing. Unfortunately the Germans did not bother about the landing at first, they just let it expand will the perimeter was dangerously thin while they moved everything south, even divisions from Denmark and Yugoslavia. After the attack on the Garigliano had bogged down, Hunt’s division was sent to the (Anzio) beachhead. They arrived just in time to meet a terrific German attack. Of 700 men in his battalion, only 70 came out. He was lucky to be wounded at the beginning of the action by a mortar shell. He had the choice of staying where he was and being captured by the Germans, when he would most probably have been knocked out by an artillery barrage, or making a dash for it to the shore. He chose the latter. The stretcher was put in a jeep and off it started all out along the road past Germans who had walked into our positions through the German artillery barrage. They were doing about 60 when they ran into an Italian bullock cart. The jeep was ditched but did not overturn and the stretcher remained on it, though the bullock’s horn grazed his chest. They got onto the road again and reached the coast. From there he went to Naples, Algiers, Gibraltar and England by hospital ship and plane.
He was full of interesting stories about deserters whom he had defended in court martials and how their sentences of five years penal servitude in some cases seemed to be so unjust; of the other officers, the man who commanded a company but couldn’t read a map so you never knew where he would get to, usually one village ahead of where he ought to be on your flank, of a bible-basher who was so filled with fanatical hatred of the Germans that he was sent back to base as too expensive in men’s lives and was put on to winding clocks and handing out fresh blotting paper in Cairo.
Of the Germans he said you could not generalize, units differed so much. Some fired on burial parties, others borrowed British transport to evacuate wounded and returned it intact. Hospital ships were bombed, but they were anchored just next to cruisers which were in action, others were held up by submarines and searched and when the officers had had a drink in the bar were sent on their way. His ship reported its position to the German G.H.Q. every hour.
At the end he had men of every kind in his company and headgear varied from berets to glengarries. He also had one man who was a tailor. His army life had been spent altering battle dresses and when asked what he could do he said any little job in the tailoring line. Asked if he could carry 3 mortar bombs, he said he thought he could. Hunt had a lorry, a jeep and a Bren gun carrier. He soon learnt not to travel in his jeep when advancing in Italy as the enemy reserved their fire for it in order to knock out officers. He had changed much from the young officer of 1941 and had gown older and graver but also more interesting and his experience and wounds and escape had not unbalanced him.
Early on Tuesday morning an attack was launched on Caen. It was preceded by a colossal air bombardment about 5 a.m., which made the German line a spouting hell of smoke and flame and left even the war correspondents at a loss for words to describe what was happening….. The attack has driven forward but not broken the Germany anti-tank screen and seems to have been bogged down by heavy rain.
The B.B.C. eight o’clock news to-day began, “Here is the news. It is of a sensational character!” Yesterday afternoon telephone communications were cut between Sweden and Switzerland. At six it was announced that an attempt had been made on Hitler’s life “by enemy agents”, but he was unhurt apart from burns and bruises, but some of his staff had been killed. At midnight all German radio programmes were interrupted and Hitler, Goering and Admiral Doenitz spoke, but no generals. From the speeches it was clear that the attempt was made by army officers and generals, some close to Hitler, that they had made or were making an attempt to set up an alternative govt, that they were issuing orders to the armed forces. Goering said the air force was to accept no orders except from him and all doubtful orders were to be confirmed by telephone, that Himmler as Gestapo chief had been put in supreme command of the army inside Germany…. Whether or not there is fighting inside Germany the psychological effect on the Germans themselves must be very grave and I feel that anything might happen for it is clear that the leaders of the army were implicated….
Treacle (the marmalade cat) ill and taken to the vet, who gave him a shot of M & B. He advised us to have him “altered”. When asked why if so many cats were gelded the supply of kittens appeared in no way to diminish he said, “Well we have a theory that they go round on bicycles.”
Wednesday was one of the worst days for flying bombs in London and last night about nine o’clock as watering my lettuces a heavy barrage went off in the London direction. Things are bad there. They are importing tilers and slaters but they cannot keep pace with the damaged roofs and windows and when it turns wet it will be pretty uncomfortable. Continual strain of rushing to shelters in middle of meals and coming back to find that the handles have fallen off the jugs etc.
Sunday, July 23rd.
Ruth and Molly down for weekend and glad to get away from bombed London where working in censorship in Holborn. Southampton was attacked at invasion period, though before they went to work at Fleet Mail Office there they had been warned that they must expect to have people blown to pieces around them. One night a terrific explosion when some bombs fell on a line of tanks waiting outside the town. They thought it was Portsmouth and their turn was coming next…. but it did not. Had seen both Churchill and King at docks and impressed by how small and ill Churchill looked.
No more news from Germany and difficult to tell whether any resistance going on or not….. Various generals arrested, including Kesselring..… Split between generals and Nazis clearly on question of whether to go on fighting now defeat is certain or surrender. … Some feeling that now is the time to publish our surrender terms.
Monday, July 24th
Bomb said to have been put in papers on Hitler’s desk and to have blown his back hair and trousers off, but feel should be received with reserve….. Hitler salute to be given by army instead of military salute, this most helpful against Russians who are sweeping westward and will soon be in Warsaw. “General” Himmler now takes command to see if a Nazi amateur can succeed where the professionals have failed. Feel that at this rate war might be over by autumn.
Churchill has gone to Normandy again. Suspect that he has gone to see why Caen thrust got bogged down and has only achieved a limited salient a few miles deep, for before Parliament rises he will have to make a statement on the war.
As I write these lines at half past ten as the light is fading the sky is filled with the thunder of our bombers invisible above the cloud – “who make the clouds their chariot and walk upon the wings of the wind” – Even the door is vibrating with the engines, something I have not noticed before. It is impossible to sleep. This is the nemesis of Germany – the unloosing of Titan’s power. The mind shrinks from the blasting force they will soon release on the enemy.
Wednesday, July 26th
Goebbels to-night giving his version of what happened in Germany. Bomb in suitcase blew people out of windows, but Fuhrer “miraculously” saved where sat at a map table in conference room. Conspirators flew to Berlin with news of Hitler’s “death” and ordered troops to cordon off government offices. The officer in charge was “loyal” and rang to find out if orders genuine, then arrested conspirators, who were summarily shot.
Thursday, July 27th
City of London plan for rebuilding out to-day. Main idea is to have 80ft roads…. Anything is bound to be better than the riotous commercialisation, which Hitler has so obligingly removed for us. Cannot summon any enthusiasm for “city”. St Paul’s partly cleared, but no spacious surroundings of piazzas etc. A businessmen’s report, anxious chiefly for return of business to old sites and increased values by cutting big roads to promote traffic. A pretty poor effort.
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