1945 - August

August. First peacetime ice. Holidays a nightmare. Atomic energy harnessed. Hiroshima blotted out. Cowpat Hall. VJ Day on Southampton Water. Clothes rationing again.

Thursday, August 2nd

Hilary and Molly went to the baths this morning; in the afternoon we went on the river and saw Hilary swim, dive and turn somersaults under water. We took a kettle and had a fire and made tea.

Petain being tried in Paris, when he is not asleep.....

Everyone trying to go for a holiday and the result is appaling crowding and confusion at the London stations.

 

Saturday, August 4th

Went up to London, for another visit to the National Gallery, where spent most time with the primitives. Bought a flysheet for tent at a most amusing shop in Panton Street where I feel Victorian chaps must have bought kit for their big game hunting when their suits had been rejected. Went to the Marble Halls for lunch and my first peacetime ice. It was quite nice but neither the flavour nor the texture of the real ice cream de luxe of 1939! However that will come in time!

Sunday, Aug 5th

Last week there was an Antique Conference! Grocers still cannot deliver food. Ours [Ed: Mr Jones, Reading Road] can hire a van but cannot find anyone to drive it. Holidays this year are a nightmare. It it impossible to find accommodation, people are sleeping on beeches and in shelters after standing packed tight in the corridors of long distance trains. Ration coupons are supposed to be given up if you only have breakfast, so you have to queue for lunch and supper because you cannot buy things to eat in your rooms. No release of towels, table cloths, sheets or blankets has been made because, I suppose, a decent holiday after five years of war is just not considered important by the mandarins. Caterers are applying now for concessions for next summer!!

Dentists have been scarce for ages and appointments difficult to make, but now they are short of materials, especially small drills for children’s teeth. Most of ours before the war came from Germany via the U.S.A.!

Monday, August Bank Holiday

Heavy shower about seven with sunshine and a most lovely rainbow. The arc shone and sparkled and all the colours of the spectrum were clear. I called Hilary into my room to see it

To-night have received very extraordinary news, news which I feel may make the war seem of very minor importance. A tremendous step forward has been made in physical science. Atomic energy has been harnessed and the famous splitting of the atom has been accomplished by a pooling of British and American scientific brains. As long ago as 1942 plant was set up in the U.S.A. to produce an atomic bomb. Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent the secret leaking out and huge factories and laboratories were built. At the same time watch was kept on the Germans to see if they were following the same trail.

Now the bomb has been completed and dropped on a Japanese city after the ultimatum had been rejected and warning been given to the inhabitants. This frightful projectile has the force of 2000 of our largest R.A.F. ordinary H.E. bombs! No reconnaissance has been possible so far as dust and debris have not subsided.

One’s reactions are at present fearful. Are men fit to be trusted with such forces? The prime motive for this research is victory in war by the destruction of the enemies’ cities. Nora’s first thought was that nothing can justify the blotting out of an entire city. What would we have said, she asks, if the Germans had done this. Once the enemies of our civilization have been defeated will this knowledge be used constructively and will man be wise enough to turn from the false gods of national tribe worship to which so far they have been so ready to prostitute their scientific knowledge. Will the magnitude of this discovery make them rise to the measure of their responsibility to humanity?

Tuesday, Aug 7th

Went to Bursledon on the Hamble river for a fortnight [August 7 – 21], but it was not a very rewarding holiday. The district was very difficult to get about; lying between Portsmouth and Southampton, the buses were few and very overcrowded and generally in everything it was an area of congestion and scarcity

That was one snag. The other was the accommodation. It was a caravan belonging to Dorothy Wade. It stood in a corner of a field which it shared with 16 cows, hence my name for it – Cowpat Hall. The cooking arrangements were in a galley that stood 5ft high and sloped down to 4ft. You sat to cook, but it also contained the Elsan closet, here a very feminine arrangement as the roof permitted no standing for males above the height of Hilary. Nora christened it Miss Wade’s Domestic Battle School.

Hilary and I made an excursion to Cowes on August 14th. We saw the Queen Mary lying at anchor, her first visit to Southampton since 1939. She was taking on American troops for repatriation. Her peace red, cream and black had given way to a uniform light grey. Hilary was very excited at seeing her. On our way down Southampton Water we also saw an aircraft carrier, the seaplane station at Calshot, various R.A.F. speedboats, some of the drums that carried the oil pipeline to France and sections of the Mulberry Harbour, so we did not do so badly.

Wednesday, Aug 15th

The news that the Japs had accepted our terms was announced on the wireless at midnight last night. I had been asleep for an hour when I was awoken, but I am a very light sleeper, especially in the caravan, by some distant ships’ sirens, then one of the ships in the river rang its ship’s bell. In a minute or two pandemonium broke loose. All the sirens, bells, foghorns in the pool started up, a long bugle call was blown, there was shouting, singing and explosions as the M.T.B.s let off their rockets and Verey lights. I went out to Hilary who was half awake in his earwig (tent) but he took it all quite calmly. I suggested that we go down to the river to see the green, red and white flares, but he did not want to. The racket went on for about an hour with hardly a break, then it gradually died down....

to-day and to-morrow are public holidays. This morning the ships in the river were dressed with flags and at night illuminated. After dark bonfires were lit and we walked up with Hilary to Sarisbury Green, where there was a very fine one. Amplifiers have not added much to these celebrations. A very raucous petty officer was singing in one in an inharmonious bellow and there was canned music. At the jubilee of Queen Victoria the natives were, as for centuries, left to their own devices, and far better, too.

Everyone is pleased and delighted, but there is little excitement. I think the atomic bomb has made everyone uneasy. ”Well, that’s the end of the Japs,” said a newspaper editor when he heard the news; ”and of us.” ..... Our thoughts turning to the military and civilian prisoners in Japanese hands, and especially to Jack Potter in Java. He should soon be home, but in what shape, and fit to teach mathematics?

Friday, Aug 21st

Back from Southampton. Travelling difficult, not made easier by two white mice, Alert and All Clear, in a box. I called them "Blest pair of Sirens.”

Conditions in Japan are reported chaotic. Out of 12 heavy battleships, one is afloat, of 12 aircraft carriers, one; and 139 destroyers have been sunk.

We shall still be in rags! Our new 24 clothing coupons, which become available in September, are to be valid until May. Apparently the bottleneck is spinning, and spinners engaged in munitions are not anxious to go back in many cases.