1941 October

October. "Out of the pit of peril". Prayers for the people of the Soviet Union. Trafalgar Day at HGS. 

Wednesday, Oct 1^st                             

Speech by Churchill in House last night. Gave very little away but contained news that shipping losses last quarter only 1/3 of those in previous quarter and may expect improvement in food situation this winter.

    “We are no longer alone. Little more than a year ago we seemed quite alone by as time has passed our steadfast conduct and the crimes of the enemy have brought two other very great states into most intimate and friendly concert with us”

              “We have climbed from the pit of peril onto a fairly broad platform. We feel round us the upsurge of the slave countries of Europe….the patient, faithful, inexhaustible spirit of the Chinese people….We are marching in the company of the vast majority of mankind….towards a goal which although distant can already be plainly seen.”

    Just heard noise on the terrace. Went out and found khaki figures dismantling a machine gun by the light of an electric torch. They turned out to be Home Guard, including an ex parent.

    The Germans still hold a million and a half French prisoners as hostages to blackmail Vichy. Promises of release have been made, but the only men allowed home so far have been veterans of 1914-18. Calculated attempt to cause a sharp fall in the birthrate and limit the numbers of the next generation.

Thursday, Oct 2^nd

Snow falling in the Ukraine and Russians hitting back at Leningrad. Occupied Europe in grip of German frightfulness, more executions in France and Czechoslovakia….

              A parent to see me tonight thinks the war will go on three or four years more!

              Big military exercises have been going on in Southern Command and civilians warned to expect unusual sights, tear gas and bags of soot falling from aeroplanes. But so far nothing but m/gs at Henley Bridge and Bren guns on road….

Thursday, Oct 9^th

The Russians admit seriousness of the situation, and it is very serious indeed. The greatest offensive in history has been launched by Hitler in an attempt to reach a decision before winter sets in and German columns have penetrated deeply towards Moscow, cutting off large bodies of Russian troops…. A terrific battle is going on and if the Russians break the course of the war may alter altogether….

Friday, Oct 10^th                           

The Germans claimed in Berlin yesterday that Russia is finished as a military power and on the day that offensive was launched Hitler in an order wrote: “We can now deal the enemy a mortal blow. Today the last decisive battle of the this year begins. By smashing Russia we shall eliminate Britain’s last ally on the continent.”

“It is all too obvious” The Times wrote, “that the situation is extremely serious.” All the press are asking whether more can be done to help – “A sharp questioning” – again The Times – “whether we are doing all in our power.” But it is too late whichever way it goes…Reminds me of Reynaud’s appeal to Roosevelt to help France in 1940 when French army already in dissolution.

Sunday, Oct 12^th                           

Visited Communist friends in Reading, now running a People’s Bookshop. Found them in a very poor way, like most people when our army [was] at Dunkirk. “The governing class had betrayed Russia and wished for her defeat etc etc”.  We stood alone after Dunkirk and may have to again, but certainly don’t like the prospect much……..See that various organizations have sent resolutions to P.M. asking for counter measures in west…. Communists argue that friendly populations would make a lot of difference….News tonight prefaced by: “People of Soviet Union, our thoughts, our wishes, our prayers are at this time with you."

Tuesday, Oct 14^th

              One German column within 65 miles of Moscow. State documents etc have been sent to Kazan. Women and children being evacuated.

Wednesday, Oct 15th

Head of German columns now nearing Moscow, but Russian armies still resisting fiercely. The drive in the Ukraine seems to have slackened and weather there is reported to have broken.

              Reduced now to attempting to coach small boys at rugger.

Friday, Oct 17^th                           

Widespread feeling that we have missed an opportunity of forming a bridgehead on the Continent, which may not recur again. The Germans with the help of the Rumanians, Finns, Hungarians, and Italians have drained the west dry of troops and, by announcing through the mouth of Lord Halifax that we do not intend to invade, we have encouraged them. The government and their advisers charged with underestimating the Russian equipment, morale and power of resistance through political and social prejudice, and regarding Russia as a country to be “aided” by munitions while we sit back….The ordinary man and the amateur strategist hasn’t got the facts, but what he does know makes him suppose that there are never likely to be so few enemy aircraft or soldiers on the channel coast as there are now….It looks to some as though we are more interested in protecting our imperial communications than in fighting Hitler in Europe…. All the old suspicions of Chamberlain’s day raise their heads again, the prejudice of the Conservative Party leaders against Russia, the assumption that anyway she will be defeated…The danger is that this distrust of the government’s war policy may lead to disunity in the nation.

              Are we ourselves living in the kind of Polish lull the French lived in the autumn of 1939 when they sat tight behind their Maginot Line while the German armies overran Poland? Hitler is approaching step by step to the creation of a continental block, too vast to be stormed and too strong to be attacked. Then we, living off this continent and with access to it denied to us, will be finally crushed by invasion. Not a pretty prospect, and only continued Russian resistance stands between us and it!

              Our own wireless has been interrupted, as the German has been by us, by a “voice” that shouts “Rot” etc. I haven’t heard it, but its strength is weak and its wit feeble, I am told.

Sunday, Oct 19^th

Went up to London yesterday, saw a picture exhibition, Sickert, at the National. Gallery and then to a ballet. Walked in Green Park as dusk was falling. The line of houses facing the park was a depressing sight, some were empty shells in others the remains of curtains flapped in the gaping windows; all seemed tenantless and deserted.

              Moscow is holding.

              Con at lunch yesterday talking of conscientious objector in prison, long periods of solitary confinement, a very meager allowance of letters, few visits, slowly being driven potty.

              As came home by Tube at nine o’clock, shelterers with bedding waiting at bottom of escalators and in approaches to platforms, including one very hairy tramp. A three-decker tier of steel frame bunks line the walls of the stations. Paddington almost completely black with small blue lights and the big clocks painted with luminous paint.

Wednesday, Oct 22nd

Trafalgar Day yesterday celebrated by special hymns and reading account of battle. Today a naval officer turned up to give us a talk on the Fleet Air Arm. He was an ex-commander of the Ark Royal and told some stories of the various attempts by bomb and torpedo to sink her when the Germans claimed her sunk. Naval aircraft owing to the landing space are much slower compared with R.A.F. machines, but the list of battleships and cruisers sunk by the Fleet Air Arm was impressive when he detailed it. He was a small man but very tough with a loud foghorn-like voice.

Friday, Oct 24^th

Russians still holding defences of Moscow and for last ten days Germans have made little progress. Weather very bad, fog and rain.. In south position still serious, Germans advancing towards Rostov and attacking Crimea.

Saturday, Oct 25^th                           

In reprisal for shooting of German officer in France, Huns have killed 50 hostages and threaten to shoot 100 more if not discouraged. Denunciation of this savagery by Beneš, Churchill and Roosevelt.

Wednesday, Oct 29^th                           

Description how our bombers flew at 0 feet over the French coast to Nantes and how the people lit their lights, opened their doors and windows and turned switches on an off and ran outside waving to welcome them. Wonder what the hostages thought as they heard the bombs thudding down on the docks on the Loire.

              Hilary in bed today with bad cough. Celebrated the occasion by cutting off all his front hair. Now looks like an evacuee suffering from ringworm! 

              The N.S. this week had a competition for ruthless rhymes.

Landing from their parachutes

The Huns raped cousin Flo, the brutes.

“Cheer up Flo” exclaimed her mother,

“One man’s very like another.”

              To critics of Lord Halifax for saying their would be no attack in the west, A.P.Herbert writes in Times: Sir, Why so much indignation because a British minister says we do not intend to invade France. After all Hitler said the same thing for years!

Thursday, Oct 30^th

Moscow still holds. “The lesson to be derived from recent experience is never to give in. Never, never, never, not in any event, great or small, large or paltry, never, never yield except to conviction and good sense.” W. C. S. at Harrow.

Portrait of M, aged about 30

1941 September

[September.  Clem Clifford takes to the Air Force. Tom Wheeler fed up with army. Leningrad besieged. Income tax £185!]

Monday, Sept 22^nd                           

[No entries for] another month while I was away in Devon, and now Leningrad is besieged, the central front before Smolensk holds, but the Germans have had a big victory in the Ukraine…..A conference on supply between G.B., U.S.A and U.S.S.R. is about to start in Moscow and a ”tanks for Russia” week is to be worked in the factories. One American expert said that by 1943 !!! we might catch up with Axis production….. R.A.F. fighters have been sent to eastern front, but how many of course is secret.

              First air raid warning for some time the other night, but quite a lot of gunfire and bombs one night at Budleigh Salterton.

Sunday, Sept 28^th                                         

Two visitors this week, Tom, the caretaker, in R.A. [Royal Artillery] for six weeks and Clifford in R.A.F. Intelligence for same time. Tom talks of grouses and morale (? like that of the Army) low. Hard work combined with large amount of spit and polish and no facilities for drying clothes or lamps to shave with in the morning, which seems everlastingly typical of army arrangements, had made him utterly fed up. Desertion is not uncommon and when they leave all papers behind they hardly intend to come back! Food not very good, discipline hard, and language of N.C.O.s foul and abusive.

              Clifford on other hand full of his work and thoroughly enjoying it. After course at Uxbridge he went down to N. Cornish coast, where he is on duty in control room of fighter station. Saw a car on road, always stayed there, no one used it, and it appeared to belong to no one; asked about it. “Oh, he’s in France.” Owner missing over Brittany, just didn’t come back one afternoon, so car left there as no one liked to touch it. Don’t use phrase “shot down” but “in France” instead.  

    He has now come up for course at Harrow so secret that all notebooks have to be left in lecture room and consulted there. Believes our method of radio location far ahead of Germans and that night bombing this winter will be countered. R.A.F. believe they have the measure of the Germans.

    War reaching another critical point. Will the Germans be able to seize the Crimea, Kharkov with its iron and steel plant, and Rostov, or have the Russians still sufficient troops in the south to hold the eastern Ukraine? If not they may have to retreat to the line of the Volga and then what will happen to the oil fields. It is not so very far from the Crimea to the western end of the pipelines. Things are getting pretty desperate……

    Paragraph in paper last week reminded me of For Whom the Bell Tolls – Montenegrin  mountain village of guerrilleros wiped out by dive bombers….The creation of an Allied Council includes all overrun peoples, except the Danes, will help to make possible a coordinated revolt when the time is ripe.

Meanwhile, income tax £185!

    “Tanks for Russia” output last week surpassed all expectations and broke all records. I notice the Primrose League in Henley has been having a talk on Russia! The effort of the factory workers shows what a difference the attack on the socialist state has made to the attitude and feeling. Wonder if the Primrose League will note. We have come a long way from Chamberlain, thank God.

1941 August

[August. Dangerous to wake the dead, Mr Schikkelgruber. Churchill meets Roosevelt. Surgeon's children sent to USA]

Saturday, August 9^th

Took Hilary for his first visit to the zoo today. Packed with children of all ages in the afternoon, the fruits of our victory in the Battle of Britain last summer, a gift from the so few to the so many. But when you see the many guffawing at the antics of the chimpanzees you wonder at the qualities they display in war. Hilary was disappointed to see no elephants, which had been moved to Whipsnade, but everything else of note except kangaroos and gorillas. Few visitors had any food to offer the animals, but we had taken the precaution of bringing lettuces and carrots, so several times became the envy of a small crowd, especially when giving our last and largest lettuce to the giraffe.

              Been extracting honey all week, but by a piece of bad luck crop very poor - early cold spell and long drought.

              While away heard no wireless and had no papers on Moor, but returned to find Russians still holding Smolensk and before Leningrad…..Berlin has been bombed again both by Russians and our bombers. The Germans said bombed by R.A.F. on a night when no bombers were out, as they did not want to admit that Russian bombers had arrived. Don’t think Berliners are going to have much of a winter somehow.

Sunday, Aug 10^th

Postscript tonight by American journalist – “You bet there’ll be chaos on the continent, Mr Schikkelgruber!” Very fierce and spirited broadcast addressed to Hitler himself. “Do you really believe you have made the Germans believe their miserable existence is heaven?” “It is dangerous to wake the dead, Mr S – Drake, Nelson, Wellington, Allenby, Beatty – that is all Mr S!”

              Things are working up to a climacteric “again”. Some evidence that troops are massing in the race to attempt the Straits and advance along both sides of the Black Sea to Baku and the oil, Iraq and Iran. Japs are on the very brink of war. Their troops on the frontier of Thailand and if they invade Thailand they are on the frontiers of Burma and Malaya. The Japs cannot decide whether America will fight or be content to help Britain and Russia. The freezing of American assets and the stoppage of oil will be a long-term disaster for Japan. Will she take the short view and go bald ahead from the British and Dutch East Indies?

              Queen gave a good broadcast to American women – a very young voice.

              Visited Stratford with M. Great difficulties with food. Came back to private room, in Radcliffe [Hospital, Oxford].

Friday, Aug 29^th                           

I take up my pen again after a fortnight, a week of which was spent in the Radcliffe having my tonsils out. I am now convalescent.  The most striking event of the first week was the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt. Churchill crossed the Atlantic on one of our battleships, the Prince of Wales, and they met in some landlocked firth off the American coast where they and their staffs conferred for three days. An eight point statement of joint aims was then issued. On the eastern front battles continue to rage from the Baltic to the Black Sea….

              On the home front, milk is to be restricted this winter. Men write articles saying that production has increased, but consumption has increased still further! Curious!. Honey has been priced at 2/9 maximum, but it is not to be compulsorily bought (so far) by the Food Ministry.

              The lodgers have been away for a fortnight and have fortunately decided to stay away for another week. We shall not know the house when we have it to ourselves again. The food at the hospital was excellent, plenty of jelly of all sorts and even dried figs. The surgeon who took out my tonsils has sent his three young children to U.S.A. where faculty at Yale offered hospitality to teaching staffs’ children from Oxford. Still thought it was the right thing to do as believed Russia would collapse this autumn and airborne attempt at invasion made next year and might pitch anywhere inland.

1941 July

[July. Sardines with everything.  The working married women. P. G. Wodehouse. Feeling pleased to be English. V sign army at HGS.]
        

Tuesday, July 1st                         

Professor R over today for the French oral exams. Still obsessed by the French collapse, as is only natural, and hatred of Germans but especially Darlan. He has learnt nothing of his mother and can make no attempt to communicate with her. Says food position in occupied France is dreadful, especially in the big cities such as Lyons. In occupied territory workmen are given chance of working for Germans in factories. If they refuse the are cut off relief. And when the agree they are moved into Germany. 2,000,000 soldiers are still in concentration camps in occupied territory. He is in the Home Guard here. “We shall stop them for at least 10 minutes.” French men are crossing channel in their fishing boats from Brittany. What a disaster our Spanish policy has been. With a neutral but friendly Spain we should have had a backdoor into France and they a way to us. Some of his information comes from a Frenchman in Dublin who, as in a neutral country, had been allowed into France. He gave a picture of despair and a feeling of the hopelessness of resistance.

              Petrol ration to be cut by 1/6th by halving ration for October.

              ^{Russian news not good tonight. German motored columns said to have reached the Beresima on way to Moscow. Battles on so huge and long a front that after 10 days no coherent picture of situation.}

Friday, July 5^th

Struggle continues and Russians seem being forced back, the war becoming one of zones instead of fronts; the armoured forces on both sides seem to have overshot the infantry and to be operating by themselves – at least the Germans do…. Hard to tell if they can keep up this pace for long. Been at it for a fortnight now.

              Churchill’s speech of last Sunday week more and more seen as a masterly piece of propaganda, swift and sure. The Soviet propaganda will now go all out among the German working class and the Balkan peasantry. Though things look black, if Russian resistance continues we may have turned the corner. The clash with fascism which began in Spain has now reached a climax and everywhere for the oppressed peoples of Europe the knowledge that the U.S.S.R. is fighting the Nazis will bring fresh hope and the spirit of resistance.

Sunday, July 7^th                           

As more things are controlled in price but not rationed, the queues are forming. Yesterday two long queues in the market place, one for tomatoes and one for potatoes. It is very difficult to find anything to take on a picnic except sardines. There are plenty of those and you are offered them everywhere. On toast they are sometimes the only thing in teashops, you get them if you go out to supper, they are taken on picnics, and even offered to travellers on trains in the restaurant cars. Soon I shall start growing fins as I have eaten so many lately. We are lucky for we have honey, but after honey for breakfast, tea and supper for weeks, one gets tired even of honey and would like some jam and marmalade. The honey this year is poor because of the early cold followed by a long drought.

Friday, July 11^th                           

              Rain at last after very long drought. News better this week. Russians are holding and counter attacking. They claim some big victories in central and southern parts of front and say they have destroyed many German tanks. In Syria our forces in Beirut and Vichy has asked for an armistice. Best of all the Americans have sent troops to Iceland to co-operate with  our force already there to prevent Iceland being used as German base for attack on Greenland. Very alarmist stories of wasted time, confusion and muddle in production debate in House of Commons. Air Force offensive by day over N.W. France and by night over western Germany continues. One air raid warning this week at night – quite unaccustomed to them.

Sunday, July 13^th             

              We heard today that Russia and Gt. Britain have signed a treaty of mutual aid and an agreement not to conclude an independent peace.

              Hilary Daniels, welfare worker with the L.M.S. [London, Midlands and Scottish Railways] has been staying with us and tells of the problems on the railways caused by the employment of hundreds of women – the intrusion of a new class, married women, to the two already recognised – virgins and widows! The enormous number of pregnancies and the difficulties about leave of absence, the language difficulty where men and women work together and the medical examinations, the “crudity of their conversation” there, and so on. H.D. sometimes interviews nearly 100 women a day. Described the appalling stench in the lavatories where a refrigeration plant for meat had been bombed and the carcasses were rotting under the debris. Also the unpopularity of the railway because an ammunition train had failed to get clear of the city before the night raids began and had been blown up - great damage to life and property in the area where it was caught.

Tuesday, July 15^th                           

              A nauseating broadcast tonight by a journalist, “Cassandra” of the Daily Mirror. P.G. Wodehouse, the funny writer, was caught in France by the Germans and put in a prison camp. He recently broadcast to America, after his release, from a suite in a hotel in Berlin. We have not been allowed to know what he did say. But questions have been asked in Parliament about his activities. Tonight’s broadcast was in reply. It was a thoroughly undignified performance, full of rhetorical questions addressed to P.G. Wodehouse, every device was used to chuck mud at him. Only one scrap of what he actually did say was allowed to escape – apparently that was that he was unable to arouse any enthusiasm for the war. Very stupid and silly.

              Firmly announced by P.M. today that Russians are our Allies and no nonsense. He made a fighting speech yesterday, which I heard recorded at 10.0. The massacres of Rotterdam, Warsaw and Belgrade would be fully avenged. “In the last few weeks alone we have thrown upon Germany about half the tonnage of bombs thrown by the Germans on our cities during the whole course of the war. This is only the beginning.”

          “I remember one winter evening travelling to a railway station – which still worked – on my way north to visit troops. It was cold and raining. Darkness had almost fallen on the cold and blacked out streets. I saw everywhere long queues of people, among them hundreds of girls in silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, who had worked hard all day and were waiting for bus after bus, which came by already overcrowded, in the hope of reaching their homes for the night. When at that moment the doleful sound of the siren betokened the approach of the German bombers, I confess to you that my heart bled for London and the Londoners. Sometimes the gas had failed over large areas – the only means of cooking for great numbers of people - sometimes the electricity. There were grievous complaints about the shelters and conditions in them. Water was cut off…large districts were destroyed by fire, some 20,000 were killed and many more thousands were wounded. The courage, the unconquerable grit and stamina of the Londoners showed itself from the very onset. Without that all would have failed. Upon that rock they all stood unconquerable.”

Monday, July 21^st                           

              Broadcast on P. G. Wodehouse did rouse some letters of protest to The Times I am glad to say.

              School today plastered with V signs and “ . . . – “ in Morse. This propaganda device put up by a Col. Britton on the foreign broadcasts a few weeks ago. All the oppressed peoples of Europe asked to put up the sign as the symbol of victory, victoire, victoria (German sieg) and tap it out in rhythm of the opening chords of Beethoven’s Vth symphony. This caught on last night and the V army was mobilized – i.e., to chalk up the sign, take a vow never to submit to the Germans and read if possible Daniel 5. v.v. [the writing on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace].  The Germans have tried to pinch it for themselves by hanging out the sign on such places as the Eiffel Tower.

              There seem indeed to be some signs that they are getting rattled, especially by the air raids which go on day and night on France and western Germany….Also reports of demoralization in the ranks of German infantry in Russia and dissensions in the party (Goering reported arrested)….The German drive to Smolensk and Moscow continues…

              Reading book by American journalist, Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble – good on the character and stamina of the English. Our secret, according to her, is that we can and do trust our government, the French could not and did not. The distrust of government the root of French collapse. Last summer eight sovereign states had been disarmed and broken, England’s equipment lay scattered through Flanders, the Navy was engaged in the Atlantic, the European coast from Bergen to Bordeaux was in enemy hands and the Air Force was only a third of the size of Germany’s. The ordinary people actually took heart from the fact that they were alone and had no longer to rely on strange and unpredictable foreigners, and felt that their own people were bound to prove more reliable. On June 29^th 1940 she broadcast to the U.S.A. “Englishmen are proud of being Englishmen. They have been the most powerful race in Europe for over 300 years, and they believe in themselves with passionate conviction…..” “Although the people knew they would be bombed, blockaded and besieged, their insularity, with roots in nearly 1,000 years of independence, was serving them in good stead; they were positive their island could not be invaded. It was not surprising that Hitler’s peace offer of July 19^th fell on deaf ears.” This and a great deal more of the last part of the book made me feel quite pleased that I am English.

Thursday July 24^th                           

Russians holding German push towards Moscow and at Smolensk, after reporting town captured several days ago [Germans] are now having to admit that are not in control yet. The new offensive started 10 days ago and will probably spend its force soon as reports are coming through of heavy strains on transport as lines of communication lengthen and it takes a gallon of petrol to take a gallon of petrol to the front. The German communiqués are beginning to make excuses, which is a good sign – bad weather, rain and so on, to prepare the German public for a long campaign.

Friday, July 25^th

2.18 to Exeter ran punctually. Up at Runnage on Dartmoor by 7.30. Molly had pitched tent. Bull in next field with one cow and quite amiable. Wind got up and tent flapped a good deal.

Saturday, July 26^th

Molly and Ruth went off early to help with sheep dipping at Stannon. I walked out with the lunch at about 12. The sheep went through the dip about 10 a minute until the afternoon when the policeman turned up. Then they were left longer. About 1,200 done in the course of the day.

Since last year wooden watch tower has been built up on Merripit Hill. In the evening walked up to Sousson Down, and as we climbed we could see the barrage balloons over Plymouth gleaming in the sunset. Found a shell of an incendiary bomb embedded in peat up to the fins. By tearing and scraping with fingers and a sharp piece of granite was finally able to dig it out. It had ignited but the lower end of the case though burst through had been extinguished by the enclosing peat. Brought it back to the caravan and hung it in the porch as a trophy. A big white crater on the hillside beyond Stannon, big enough, Mr Coker said, to put two houses in! Apparently aimed at searchlights.

Sunday, July 27^th

A lovely day with big white clouds and hot sun. Walked to Dartmeet with lunch, had tea at Badger’s Holt and walked back to support of bacon and whortleberries with huge dish of cream. Saw dipper at Dartmeet.. Lovely views over Bellever…

Monday, July 28^th

              Molly and Ruth left for school at 7.30. Could hardly leave caravan all day for fog and drizzle. Slept in caravan.

Tuesday, July 29^th

              Showery with very clear views over Moor. Walked to Birch Tor where had lunch on egg and cheese, then to Chagford and to Exeter by bus.

Wednesday, July 30^th

              Went to Budleigh Salterton in afternoon. Only one small avenue in the wire down to sea. Much more wire than last year, and kind of skeleton grandstands been erected with steel tubes, like the early stages of the coronation, and placed against the shingle as tank traps. Saw practically no aeroplanes while on the Moor and only fighters at Exeter. Drone of bombers we get at Henley noticeably missing.

    Stayed with Maud till Saturday. She brought out a plum pudding that was a year and a half old and served it with brandy, but no cream. It was excellent.

              The public were asked not to travel for Bank Holiday, but they disregarded this and poured out of London by the westbound trains, which had to run in five or six parts.

1941, April - June

April.  Intelligence from Hunt, Ox & Bucks.  Income tax 10d in £. Balkans fall to Hitler. Battle for Crete. May.  Hess. Reading and Southampton. "The kind of language Hitler understands" from Roosevelt. Sinking of Hood. June. All clothes rationing.  Barreling downhill. Crete evacuated. Hitler attacks Russia; "This blood-thirty guttersnipe."

Portrait of Nora Barnes (1932)