In May 1940, Britain had no effective allies* in Northern Europe, and a vast distant empire at risk. The evacuation of Dunkirk was imminent; the Battle of Britain a few months ahead. A force had been sent to (neutral) Iceland in an attempt to keep control of the North Atlantic, to be replaced later by American troops; during 1940 the United States also supplied Britain with large quantities of arms and with destroyers – but the United States was not to enter the war formally until December 1941.
The war years were well served by diarists at home and abroad of whom a few have been quoted to give a partial impression of an extraordinary story. Leo Amery, from 1940 to 1945 the Secretary of State for India in the wartime Coalition government, unsurprisingly called his diaries The Empire at Bay. Hugh Dalton was by then Minister for Economic Warfare; Harold Nicolson and Duff Cooper were, in the early days, at the Ministry of Information. Of the military diarists, Admiral Louis Mountbatten was a controversial appointment – as his personal diary demonstrates – as Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia, 1943–6; General Sir Alan Brooke, Commander of Home Forces and from 1941 Chief of Imperial General Staff, somehow also managed to write a masterful series of letters and diaries through the war. A young Tony Benn,* was sent to Rhodesia to learn to fly, while a Wren officer, Audrey Deacon, was on cypher duties in Plymouth.
Nella Last (a Mass Observation volunteer known as ‘Housewife, 49’) kept a personal account during the war and the post-war peace of her life in the shipyard town of Barrow-in-Furness; Malcolm Muggeridge ‘found himself’ learning Portuguese in Lisbon as a member of the Secret Intelligence Service.
Harold Macmillan, representing the British government in Algiers, with de facto responsibility for North Africa, chronicled the campaign against the German army in the Italian colony of Libya. Joyce Grenfell also found herself in Algiers, entertaining injured British servicemen during a whirlwind tour which took her to Palestine and India. Noël Coward gave workplace concerts all over England, not always happily, as his diary records.
Throughout the war Vera Brittain describes her continuing campaign in the cause of pacifism, while Baffy Dugdale kept her focus on Palestine and a Jewish state. John Colville and Charles Wilson (later Lord Moran), as Churchill’s Private Secretary and personal doctor respectively, were two of the closest witnesses to the ‘struggle for survival’ – but whereas Moran was concerned with the impact of Churchill’s health on the war, it was, wrote Colville subsequently, President Roosevelt ‘whose powers were failing’.
Friday, 24 May 1940
Winston Churchill is 65. He has just been appointed Prime Minister and I have become his doctor, not because he wanted one, but because certain members of the Cabinet, who realised how essential he has become, decided that somebody ought to keep an eye on his health.
It was in these rather ambiguous circumstances that I made my way this morning to Admiralty House, wondering how he would receive me.† Though it was noon I found him in bed reading a document. He went on reading while I stood by the bedside. After what seemed quite a long time, he put down his papers and said impatiently, ‘I don’t know why they are making such a fuss. There’s nothing wrong with me.’
He picked up the papers and resumed his reading. At last he pushed his bed-rest away and, throwing back the bed-clothes, said abruptly, ‘I suffer from dyspepsia and this is the treatment.’
With that he proceeded to demonstrate to me some breathing exercises. His big white belly was moving up and down when there was a knock at the door, and the PM grabbed at the sheet as Mrs Hill came into the room.
Soon after I took my leave. I do not like the job and I do not think the arrangement can last.
Charles Wilson (Lord Moran)
Thursday, 30 May 1940
Off the French coast
I can hardly believe that I have succeeded in pulling the four divisions out of the mess we were in, with allies giving way on all flanks. Now remains the task of embarking which will be a difficult one. Went to see how embarkation was proceeding and found the whole thing at a standstill due to lack of boats!! Went to see Gort* and got little satisfaction …
Went down to beach at 7.15 pm and was carried out to open boat, and with Ronnie Stanyforth and Barney Charlesworth† we paddled out to destroyer and got aboard …We have been waiting till 10pm before starting, rather nerve wracking as the Germans are continually flying round and being shot at, and after seeing the ease with which a few bombs can sink a destroyer, it is an unpleasant feeling.
Later: We never started until 12.15 am, at 3 am we were brought up short with a crash. I felt certain that we had hit a mine or been torpedoed. But she remained on an even keel and after some shuffling about proceeded on slowly. I heard later from the commander that he had 3 routes to select from, one was under gun fire from the coast, one had a submarine and mines reported in it, and the other was very shallow at low water. He chose the latter and hit the bottom, damaging a propeller slightly. Finally arrived at Dover at 7.15 am. Wonderful feeling of peace after the last 3 weeks!
General Alan Brooke
Friday, 31 May 1940
Tens of thousands from BEF [British Expeditionary Force] getting back across the Channel hungry, tired, half-clad, and in any kind of boat that will take them, bombed all the time.
Unprofitable morning, then went to the Peace Pledge Union and worked on Pacifist ambulance scheme … after tea at the Euston Hotel [I] walked in Regent’s Park amid shaded mauve pansies and lupins in many delicate colours. Desertedness of everything gave impression of Sunday. Since most of the iron railings had gone for conversion into armaments, the Park looked like a vast green field, very fresh and vivid. A few elderly people were sitting in chairs, a few young people sailing in boats with striped sails. Such an illusion of peace. I felt as though I were watching the funeral of civilisation elegantly conducted. So the Roman Empire must have appeared just before the barbarians marched in.
Vera Brittain
Friday, 31 May 1940
Everybody elated by the progress of the Evacuation. One of the world’s greatest defeats is being redeemed by an outstanding achievement of organisation and gallantry. The BEF rearguards, though decimated, are standing firm against fearful odds; the RAF activity over Dunkirk is ceaseless; the Navy has attempted and achieved the incredible. Two hundred and twenty-two men-of-war have been used in the evacuation and 665 other vessels. The sailors are so tired that they are working automatically, but they are apparently quite undaunted.
The PM flew to Paris this morning with Attlee and the CIGS* but alas without taking a Private Secretary. As a result I had very little to do but gossip with Brendan Bracken.
John Colville
Saturday, 1 June 1940
Barrow-in-Furness
Today in town there seemed such an anxious feeling and women asked each other eagerly if sons or husbands had ‘arrived in England’ yet. I heard of telegrams received and, still more anxiously waited for. One big party of soldiers came off the train to march to the Fort on Walney. They looked hot and tired and the wave of sweat and the queer acrid smell of damp khaki made one wonder at the plight of the retreating army.*
Nella Last (Housewife 49)
Saturday, 15 June 1940
Cabinet at 10. French army seems to have disintegrated. After Neville [Chamberlain] brought up proposal … for fusion of British and French Governments – I had meanwhile drafted telegram to Bordeaux [to where the French Government had fled from Paris] suggesting French Government should come here. That is the most practical step.
I broke away at lunchtime – I’ve had ten weeks non-stop and it’s too much almost – even for me!
… Went out in a deluge of rain and picked peas and dug potatoes for our dinner, which was excellent. Did some writing after, but won’t look at work. Everything awful, but ‘Come the three corners of the world and we will shock them.’ We’ll all fight like cats – or die rather than submit to Hitler. US look pretty useless. Well, we must die without them.
Alexander Cadogan
Only a few minutes after the 5 o’clock to Salisbury had left Waterloo the air raid sirens sounded. Then the guard, a little man of over fifty years, came along the corridor crying ‘All blinds down.’ Above the noise of the train we heard thumps and bangs. We went on with our reading or minding our own business with lowered eyelids. The English behave impassively even in the face of disaster. Imagine this carriage filled with Latins! The screams! The hysterics!
When later we were on our way to Salisbury again, the damage all along the line was already being cleared up and the craters in the open fields were quickly filled before cows could fall in and break their legs. The guard in our train became emotional when the crisis was over. Waving victoriously out of the windows at the women and children clustered together, rejoicing in their safety, he ad libbed: ‘Those women have had a lot to put up with … It’s a hell of a strain for them with the responsibility of all their children to look after …’
On the somewhat halting journey (because of delayed action bombs, our train was diverted to Southampton, where another raid was in progress) miscellaneous snippets of information were picked up. Nine people had been killed at Basingstoke. Overton had got it badly.
Cecil Beaton
Saturday, 31 August 1940
Sir H Dowding and Sir C Portal came to dinner.* Dowding is splendid: he stands up to the PM, refuses to be particularly unpleasant about the Germans, and is the very antithesis of the complacency with which so many Englishmen are afflicted. He told me that he could not understand why the Germans kept on coming in waves instead of concentrating on one mass raid a day which could not be effectively parried. Ismay [General Hastings ‘Pug’ Ismay, Churchill’s chief military assistant] suggested that they might be short of planes and have to use bombers twice daily. There was a great discussion about the ethics of shooting down enemy pilots landing by parachute: Dowding maintaining that it should be done and the PM saying that an escaping pilot was like a drowning sailor.
John Colville
Saturday, 21 September 1940
Barrow-in-Furness
Aunt Sarah proudly showed me her work of the last two days – packing her bits of treasures in ‘lots and lots of newspaper’ and covering them with rugs and carpets – to keep them safe from bombs! Poor old lamb …
The countryside was a painted glory of crimson and gold and green, so heartbreakingly lovely, and it was impossible to believe that in the South – our South – there was death and destruction. I wonder if everyone has the queer disbelief that I have so often. And will it keep until bombs come and wreak havoc on Barrow, and I’ve seen death and destruction for myself? I feel as if between me and the poor London people there is a thick fog, and it’s only at intervals that I can believe it is our own people – not Spaniards or French or Dutch.
Nella Last
October 1940
Official war photographer
In the infernos of the Underground the poor wretches take up their positions for the night’s sleep at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. The winter must surely bring epidemics of flu, even typhoid. The prospect is not cheering … Nothing can really dash the spirits of the English people, who love to grumble and who, in spite of their complaints, are deeply confident of victory.
Churchill, still with cigar in mouth, looked so lonely and alone in this large room. This would make an aptly symbolic picture. From my distant vantage point, I clicked my Rolleiflex, and Haupt let off a flash. This surprised the Prime Minister. Although his sentences were not perfectly formed, I would hazard that the following would be an interpretation of the barks, wheezes and grunts that turned my blood cold: ‘Hey damn you, young fellow, what the hell are you up to with your monkey tricks? Stop all this nonsense! I hate candid camera photographs! Wait till I’m prepared: the glass of port taken away, my spectacles so – this box shut, the papers put away thus – now then – I’m ready, but don’t try any cleverness on me!’
The PM settled himself and stared into my camera like a bulldog guarding its kennel. Click!
Cecil Beaton
Sunday, 20 October 1940
My twenty-first birthday, Plymouth
Terry sent me a lovely Swedish vase. I was also given Andre Maurois’s The Battle of France. It is strange to read of the state of things in France at this time last year … So much has happened since then that we could not have thought possible if anyone foretold it: Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France. Poland had already been overrun. A Pole on the wireless the other day talked about the siege of Warsaw. There were no anti-aircraft defences and the ammunition ran out, while the city was bombarded from the ground as well as the air. It was terrible. Looking back it seems almost worse than at the time.
Audrey Deacon
Tuesday, 12 November 1940
Chamberlain is dead: and if we hold on till March we have broken the back (or whatever the phrase is). These two facts sum up the papers. I could add about Greece … Hitler’s speech … no: time goes so heavy and slow that nothing marks the days. A bomb fell at lunch yesterday. There is nothing new. Eastbourne bombed.
Virginia Woolf*
Saturday, 16 November 1940
Barrow-in-Furness
Barrow is plunged in gloom over the terrible Coventry bombings for it’s a town that many Barrow people have moved to in times of bad trade. I have many friends and old neighbours there, and also a cousin and his wife, and no word as to their safety or otherwise has yet come through. At Spark Bridge there was the same feeling of unease, for several people had sons and daughters who had gone to work in Coventry. One woman was very upset, for she had refused to let her daughter come home to have her second baby. There was some trouble when she came home to have her first baby: the mother said she was tired of being put on … The poor woman was distraught as she remembered her daughter’s words about the flat she occupied ‘in the shadow of the cathedral.’
Nella Last
Friday, 13 December 1940
Barrow-in-Furness
Isa Hunter came tonight to tell me her ‘guests’ had gone. It’s rather frightening to think, if one invites a soldier, one can have an experience like Isa has had. The two soldiers – Welsh boys – were very nice in every way the first time; the second time they asked for three helpings of everything, and after dinner was finished started again on the trifle that was left in the dish, were rude to the maid, ate every chocolate and apple and nut on the sideboard, smoked every cigarette in the cedar box Isa has, and asked for ‘smokes for the road’ on their departure. On the third visit the married one brought his wife back from leave and asked if she could be put up for the night.
A huge pile of luggage was taken upstairs and Isa’s bedroom was criticised and rearranged … [The wife] unpacked a clock, make-up box and various oddments and talked of arrangements for the future – presumably at Isa’s house – and seemed surprised when told that arrangements were only for one night.
Nella Last
Wednesday, 1 January 1941
I stayed on duty late, until the PM in the early hours ascended to the roof to look at the stars and the new moon. Eden and Kingsley Wood spent much of the evening here discussing the question of financial assistance from America. I sat in the room while the PM drafted a forceful telegram to Roosevelt, not hiding from him the dangerous drain on our resources. Sombre though the telegram was, with its warning that only by American financial help could Hitlerism be ‘extirpated’ from Europe, Africa and Asia, the PM seemed to enjoy drafting it … But he obviously fears that the Americans’ love of doing good business may lead them to denude us of all our realisable resources before they show any inclination to the Good Samaritan.
John Colville
January 1941
Scotland
On the return journey [from a visit by Churchill to Scapa, Orkney] Tom Johnston dined us at the Station Hotel at Glasgow, and I sat next to Harry Hopkins, an unkempt figure.* After a time Hopkins got up and, turning to the PM said:
‘I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well I’m going to quote you one verse from that Book of Books in the truth of which Mr Johnston’s mother and my own Scottish mother were brought up: “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”’ Then he added very quietly: ‘Even to the end.’
I was surprised to find the PM in tears. He knew what it meant. Even to us the words seemed like a rope thrown to a drowning man.
Charles Wilson
Wednesday, 22 January 1941
Plymouth
The Communist newspapers, the Daily Worker and The Week, have been suppressed. Though this may seem necessary I am inclined to think it unwise. It will drive the movement underground and give it a legitimate grievance.
Audrey Deacon
The Lease and Lend Bill, which proposes to lend material to this country, repayable in kind after the war, has passed the US Foreign Affairs Committee.
This morning in a fit of energy I stripped the dining room windows of their anti-blast cellophane and paper strapping, which were going mouldy, and replaced them with net (ex-curtains) stuck to the glass. It is an improvement.
Audrey Deacon
Wednesday, 19 March 1941
St Ives, Cornwall
News of a heavy raid on Hull.
Also casualties of Clydeside and Merseyside raids last week given as very heavy: 500 deaths in Clydeside, 500 in Merseyside; 500 injured in Merseyside, 800 in Clydeside. (The usual ‘500’ which I now realise from visits to blitzed areas represents the ‘official’ figure for a big Blitz. Actual casualties are obviously far more.)
Had hair washed at Preed’s little shop in the town; done by new assistant who told me she has just come here from Birkenhead and was in the Blitz there last Wednesday. She said … 10,000 homeless people were now sleeping in stations and shelters. Local authorities hopelessly Conservative. According to her, 3 miles of docks were virtually obliterated and 50 landmines fell last Wednesday in the area.
Vera Brittain
Sunday, 6 April 1941
Barrow-in-Furness
I wonder if we are so used to dreadful shocks that we are hardening. Today when we heard news on the wireless of Germany declaring war on Yugoslavia and Greece, there was none of that sick shock we had when we heard of Holland and Belgium being overrun. I wonder too if the fact of Greece being so far away helped to soften the blow. Soon it looks as if the whole world will be alight, and the prophesied Armageddon upon us all. It seemed to dim the sunshine and when snow showers started to fall, that seemed more fitting.
Nella Last
Sunday, 13 April 1941
Ministry of Information
From the propaganda point of view, all that the country really wants is some assurance of how victory is to be achieved. They are bored by talks about the righteousness of our cause and our eventual triumph. What they want are facts indicating how we are to beat the Germans. I have no idea at all how we are to give them those facts. Fundamentally … the British people have lost confidence in the power of the sea. Norway was a nasty knock. [And] ‘How,’ they ask ‘was Germany able to land four divisions in Libya?’
Harold Nicolson
Tuesday, 29 April 1941
Plymouth
War Zone Courts have been constituted. They will not function in any area until it has been declared a war zone, when they will operate with wide powers.
Two planes were brought down in each of two raids on Plymouth and another four last night … Plymouth is now to be an evacuation area. For the past fifteen months the C-in-C and the Lord Mayor have been trying to get it scheduled. It is now said to be one of the worst blitzed places in the country.
Audrey Deacon
Tuesday, 27 May 1941
I woke up this morning after a strenuous and very thrilling night watch and heard that the Bismark had been sunk (by Dorsetshire) some hundred miles west of Brest …
More than 100 ships were in the chase … for a time Bismark was lost; but was picked up again by Coastal Command aircraft. She was alone.
Admiral Lutjens sent a signal to Hitler saying that though incapable of manoeuvre, he would fight to the last shell; and went down with colours flying …
Audrey Deacon
June 1941
The work of Coastal Command and Fleet Air Arm, concerned as it is with our seas and shores (and those occupied by the enemy) is the least spectacular if perhaps the most strenuous, and even dangerous. Coastal Command is relied upon to be the eyes and ears of the RAF and is an air force within the air force with its own land planes, bombers, fighters and flying-boats to ward off attack from the air …
A jovial red-cheeked officer with a ginger, lavatory-brush moustache, completes his conscientious report of yet another monotonous daily sortie. He scratches his sandy head and asks ‘How many g’s in Skagerrak?’ The pink and perky flight orderly who comes in with a wicker cage of carrier pigeons does not know. The use of homing pigeons to carry messages is as old as Solomon: the early Persians trained these birds for the ancient Greeks to dispatch the results of Olympic races. Today, when modern methods have failed, they are considered the most reliable means of communication, and many men have been saved by these birds flying as quickly as forty miles an hour back to their home loft. The last act the navigator performs when his wireless fades out is to release the two pigeons carrying messages giving the position of the aircraft.
The fighter pilot is never away for more than two hours, but Coastal Command pilots, on their long flights hundreds of miles out over the Atlantic, must exercise enormous patience … Some of the feats of endurance do not bear contemplation. Gunners are clamped in the medieval vices of the narrow fuselages where they have bled to death. Sometimes they fly in temperatures so low that a thermos of tea becomes frozen the moment the cap is unscrewed.
Cecil Beaton
Tuesday, 1 July 1941
Walked and met A [Anthony Eden]. He had spent from 11 pm till 2 am with PM. But I gather nothing emerges. We are not prepared to take advantage of this Heaven-sent (and short) opportunity of the Germans being heavily engaged in Russia.* We shall look awful fools! But there it is.
Alexander Cadogan
Thursday, 10 July–Friday, 11 July 1941
Caught 10.30 train for Plymouth. Drove to Grand Hotel through terrible devastation.
Michael Redgrave arrived at 5.30. Extremely healthy and happy. What a magic the Navy does to people. Having left a luxurious film star life to be an ordinary seaman, he is obviously having a wonderful time. We dined and I drove him back to HMS Raleigh.
Friday: Spent morning with Lady Astor [the Conservative MP for Plymouth Sutton] walking round the devastated town. A strange experience.
The whole town a pitiful sight. Houses that held sailor families since the time of Drake spread across the road in rubble and twisted wood. Lady A. delivered a tirade against Winston.
Watched the people of Plymouth dancing on the Hoe. A large dance floor, white-coated, several hundred girls gaily dressed, dancing very well with sailors, soldiers, marines etc in the strong evening sunlight. A sight so infinitely touching, not that it was consciously brave, but because it was so ordinary and unexhibitionist.
Noël Coward
October 1941
By the end of the war much will be in ruins, ideas as well as buildings. The power of the bankers must lie buried in the debris of the City of London, the ghosts of vested interest must stalk disconsolate through the gutted warehouses, the abuses of the big monopolies must have been washed down the sewers by our jets. The old capitalist system, like the captive Samson, must perish in the ruins which it has pulled down on itself.
The people alone will survive – the tough invincible working people … When peace comes we will build a Brave New World.
Peter Pain*
Wednesday, 10 December 1941
Arrived at WO to be informed that both the Prince of Wales and the Repulse had been sunk by the Japs! This on top of the tragedy of Honolulu puts us in a very serious position for the prosecution of the war. It means that for Africa eastwards to America through the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, we have lost command of the sea.†
Chiefs of Staff conference moved to 10 Downing Street at 12 noon when we discussed the naval situation with the PM. He had stood shock well.
Spent afternoon in office with series of visits. Starting with Sir Keith Murdoch who controls Australian group of newspapers.
General Alan Brooke
Saturday, 20 December 1941
On board the Duke of York to visit President Roosevelt
Since we left the protection of the Clyde we have been battened down for eight days listening to the dull pounding of the great seas on the ship’s ribs.
To say that the PM does not seem any the worse for wear from the tedious days below deck is an understatement. He is a different man since America came into the war. The Winston I knew in London frightened me. I used to watch him as he went to his room with swift paces, the head thrust forward, scowling at the ground, the sombre countenance clouded, the features set and resolute, the jowl clamped down as if he had something between his teeth and did not mean to let go. I could see that he was carrying the weight of the world and wondered how long he could go on like that and what could be done about it. And now – in a night it seems – a younger man has taken his place … the tired dull look has gone from his eye; his face lights up as you enter his cabin …
Charles Wilson
Monday, 22 December 1941
Flight to Washington
After nine days’ racket I cannot get the sound of the great seas out of my head.
Our Lockheed was over the lights of Washington in three quarters of an hour … On landing I let the PM have a start before I got out. Looking round I noticed a man propped up against a big car, a little way off. The PM called me and introduced me. It was President Roosevelt. Even in the half light I was struck by the size of his head. I suppose that is why Winston thinks of him as majestic and statuesque, for he has no legs to speak of since his paralysis. He said warmly that he was very glad to welcome me … he began immediately to speak of the casualties at Pearl Harbour, many of them with very bad burns. He made me feel that I had known him for a long time. Halifax [British Ambassador] took me in his car to the Mayflower Hotel, while Max (Beaverbrook) went with the PM to the White House.
Charles Wilson
Sunday, 15 February 1942
It is the fact that, even now, we still seem to be muddling and unprepared, that has, after a dark winter and long periods of snow, ice and dirty skies, given so many people at home a feeling of cynical desperation or what’s worse – sheer apathy. I believe that for the first time the English now do seem to realise the possibility of defeat.
We hear that Singapore, to which we have been sending reinforcements, and which was defended by 80,000 men, has surrendered. This is one of the most shattering blows.
The gloom is all pervading … the cold, the untidiness, the ugliness of people in London, a lack of smartness in our army and, above all, the off-handedness and apathetic laziness of the people, have become a slight obsession with me.
Cecil Beaton
Portugal
Here in Lisbon is the last vestige in Europe of our old way of life now precariously existing.* It is like the owner of some ancestral mansion moving when ruined into the lodge with one or two of his pictures, a piece of plate or so, one aged servant in threadbare livery. Here are cafes, neon signs, money haggling, petit dejeuner with fat pats of butter brought in on a tray, jangling trams and taxi cabs and newspapers of all the nations. One deep and significant change may, however, be noted, the pound sterling has lost its magical qualities; rub, rub at the lamp and no all-powerful djinn appears, at best only a reluctant slut who must be coaxed for any service at all.
Malcolm Muggeridge
March 1942
Official war photographer in Libya
The general hospital at Tobruk† has suffered remarkably little from the bombing. At this time one of the senior surgeons, named Simpson Smith, with the rank of Colonel, a fair good-looking sportsman, was bemoaning the fact that most of his cases were accidental. ‘It worries me that there’s this terrible continuous waste. The other day we had seventy four cases all in at once: burns – very bad.’
The doctor’s enthusiasm for me to photograph his various exhibits is sometimes hard to face. He rubs his hands. ‘Splendid, Beaton. There’s a great deal to show you – burns all the colours of the rainbow. But best of all we’ve got in a field case. You are lucky! We’ve just received a South African, who was driving in a truck when a mine went off …’
Cecil Beaton
Monday, 30 March 1942
I considered with much quiet mirth, Sir Stafford Cripps, the British Government’s Special Envoy to India, and Gandhi closeted together; sympathy entirely with, and money on, Gandhi. He knows the game; after Halifax as Viceroy, Cripps will be easy money. The British raj then [in 1931] was still powerful enough to induce Gandhi to visit Halifax. Now Cripps visits Gandhi.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Monday, 13 April 1942
Plymouth
I’ve now got my second stripe [promotion to Second Officer in the Wrens, in charge of the Watch].
One night watch, I lost the sapphire from my engagement ring. We swept the office and looked everywhere but couldn’t find it. When I took the ring back to Bowdens, they sent it back to the makers, who of course replaced the stone free of charge. Which was very lucky though of course it should never have come out. I then proceeded to lose my fountain pen.
We recently had a ‘Warship Week’ here in competition with Portsmouth (who we beat); we raised £140,000 odd, having aimed at £12,000 … I went out selling savings certificates in an ambulance one afternoon.
Audrey Deacon
Sunday, 19 April 1942
Barnes, London SW13
It was so wonderful to have your two dear letters – Ben and I collected them when we went up to Boosey and Hawkes the day after we arrived.
We had a prolonged and rather boring journey. We sat in New York for several days and again in other places on the way up the coast – and the actual Atlantic crossing took only twelve days – but they were spent in the most desolate company – callow, foul mouthed witless recruits. How we missed you and William.
Coming back here has been the most odd and mixed experience. The countryside looking dazzlingly green – uniforms everywhere – destruction so cleared up that it looks like peacetime planning – the starchy food that fills but does not nourish – no fruit or cream at all – little butter – three eggs a month – and so on – but one’s friends are very glad to see one and couldn’t be more welcoming.
Our plans are of course vague. We have to register as pacifists which will take a little time. I hope very much that I will be able to work with the Quakers – I think I shall join them. If only I were a better person!
Last night there was the enclosed cutting in the paper. I’m dreadfully afraid it means Roger has gone.*
Always your Peter
Letter from Peter Pears to Elizabeth Mayer in New York
Wednesday, 24 June 1942
Nairobi
Staying now at Government House, servants, car with flag, black soldiers who present arms, etc. Governor a small Pickwickian figure, kindly, shrewd, remarked that indication of our lack of belief in ourselves and our civilisation was that we no longer attempted to make the blacks like us but insisted they were better as they were. Sad place, Nairobi, like India, twilight of Empire, all over and done with. Young secretary attempts to suggest that, on the contrary, wonderful new possibilities opening up, Empire based not on fear but on genuine collaboration, etc. Governor, wife and I listen politely.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Sunday, 5 July 1942
Lagos
Radio latest: The desert battle has raged for five days:† we are still holding the enemy. Dimbleby said, ‘There is no cause yet for optimism, but we need not be pessimistic,’ which seems a fair statement of the case.
Denton, the Information Officer, told me that the women journalists visiting the Middle East have made themselves pretty unpopular. One who is known as the WOV (World’s Oldest Virgin) boasted that she acquired most of her information in bed. [Another] was by far the most popular, and she was a beautiful, smiling woman until she transformed herself into a journalist; then her mouth became contorted and turned down at the corners, her eyes popped and she barked: ‘How many aeroplanes are passing through here a week? I must have hard facts and figures for the American public.’
Cecil Beaton
Friday, 6 November 1942
Began day with two concerts in the Speke aircraft factory. Three thousand seven hundred at each performance.
There can be no doubt about it, I have no real rapport with the ‘workers’, in fact I actively detest them en masse. They grumble and strike and behave abominably while their very existence is made possible by sailors and merchant seamen who get a quarter or less than a quarter what they do. In addition to this they are obtuse and slow-witted and most outrageously spoilt.
Noël Coward
Wednesday, 2 December 1942
Barrow-in-Furness
Never since I first listened to a speaker on the air have I felt as interested as I was tonight by Sir William Beveridge. I’ll feel a bit more hopeful about the ‘brave new world’ now and begin to feel a real effort will be made to grasp the different angles of the many problems. His scheme will appeal more to women than to men for it is they who bear the real burden of unemployment, sickness, child-bearing and rearing – and the ones who, up to now have come off worst.
I sat on the edge of the tiled curb [sic] to bake my shoulder and get the ache out and stuffed another wee rabbit as I listened … Trouble with menfolk of my generation, they looked on women ‘to be cared for’ – and did not realise how hard we worked, how small an allowance we had to bring up our families on and, when, as in our case, sickness and an operation had to be met and paid for, what a bitter struggle things could be.
Nella Last
I passed the table where Mrs Hockey sits. I’ve thought sometimes, ‘Poor darling, how brave she is, she can still smile,’ but today I noticed the smile was as forced as that of a painted clown. She caught my overall as I passed and I bent down while she whispered in a flat tone, ‘I got Michael’s Christmas greeting card today, Mrs Last. He said “Who knows where I’ll be at Christmas, Mom.”’ No tears were in her eyes; the light seemed to have faded. I felt pity burn like a flame in me – but I could only hold her hand tightly for a second, and get on with my work.
Nella Last
Saturday, 30 January 1943
Oxford
Not much happened today except an invasion exercise … In one of the main streets loudspeakers were broadcasting the noise of an air raid – machine guns, whistling bombs, flak, aircraft, explosions.
I returned to the College and was about to get down to some work when there was a knock at the door. In walked a Fellow of the College.
‘Excuse me,’ he said ‘but I must ask you to vacate your room and become a casualty. I am about to light an incendiary bomb outside your door. You will have to go to the first aid post.’
‘Would you be so very kind as to give me some superficial wound, sir,’ I said. ‘I am very busy.’ ‘I think we can manage that,’ he said as he fixed a label on me bearing the words ‘slight burns.’
The Fellow lit a bomb of tar and straw at the bottom of the stairs … After nearly a quarter of an hour five or six gas-masked figures arrived and tripped over the stirrup pump. Luckily for them they just got the pump working before the fire went out!
All the best Mike
Your affectionate and admiring bro
Letter to Michael Benn from Tony Benn
Germans still retreating in Russia. All newspapers filled with Churchill’s speech in the House yesterday about the Casablanca conference* and making the enemy ‘bleed and burn.’ Wonder how many years it will take this country to recover from having Al Capone at its head.
Vera Brittain
Tuesday, 23 February 1943
Papers this morning full of resounding tributes to Red Army on 25th anniversary; Russian victories still going on,† and Stalin seems likely now to be the chief victor of the war.
Vera Brittain
Monday, 17 May 1943
A [Anthony Eden] didn’t arrive (with a cold!) until lunch-time. Really it’s impossible to work like this.
4.30 saw A. for a few moments about a number of things. 5.30 Cabinet. V good Lancaster attacks on German dams!‡ Sinkings much better. 15 U-boats this month so far. (We want to keep up that rate.) Discussion on Thanksgiving Service on Wednesday [for the victory in North Africa] …
Alexander Cadogan
Wednesday, 19 May 1943
German fighter-bombers have been making these nights in London rather noisy – we have 2 or 3 alerts and an amount of gunfire which interferes with sleep – a bore. And we don’t shoot down quite enough of them.
We had good seats (for the Thanksgiving Service at St Paul’s), next to the Aisle. (But it was damned cold.) A dignified service and luckily Hitler didn’t bomb King, Lords, Commons and everything else. What a target!
Alexander Cadogan
Thursday, 20 May 1943
Victory Parade, Tunis
Left Algiers at 7 am … arrived at Tunis aerodrome about 10 am. On arriving at the aerodrome we found all the notabilities of North Africa having just arrived or arriving by plane.*
About 30,000 troops took part in the parade which lasted over two hours. In addition of course there were troops lining the streets. The audience consisted of all the civil population (including Italians) … First came the French – Zouaves, Tirailleurs, Moroccan and Algerian native troops, Foreign Legion. The procession was led by a detachment of Spahis, making a brave show with their white horses, red cloaks, red leather saddles and drawn swords. As they passed the saluting base they rose in their saddles.
The great majority of French were of course natives. The men are splendid – many with great beards and whiskers. But their equipment and clothing were pitiful – antiquated rifles, torn cloaks, slippers or bare feet. They had a tremendous reception from our own troops in the audience …
Two American regiments [were] led by a fine brass band. In contrast to the French, the American equipment and clothing are almost indecently rich. Every private soldier has a pair of lovely brown leather shoes with rubber soles.
He also has a pair of leather gloves which would cost me a fiver in England; he has a wonderful kind of golfing jacket, a splendid helmet, lots of gadgets hung round, and is altogether a very expensive fellow who has cost his treasury a lot of money.
The British decided to put on a show … the First Army – which in November 1942 came to North Africa an inexperienced body of troops, most of whom had never seen a shot fired – determined to show us that it was worthy of being linked with the Eighth Army in a splendid partnership which under Alexander’s magnificent generalship, had achieved one of the greatest victories in British history.
Appearing from apparently nowhere a faint sound of pipes. Soon came into view the massed pipers of Scots Guards, Irish Guards and all the Highland Regiments available … They marched in slow time, passed the saluting platform and neighbouring stands – the tune was ‘Flowers of the Forest.’ Then they countermarched … and as they passed a point on the return, broke into quick time and marched away into the distance. The effect was really very dramatic and made a splendid prologue. Then began the long march of our men in splendid procession.
Unlike the French and Americans, the British were in drill, not battle, order – shorts, stocking and boots, no helmets ([just] forage caps and berets) … With the forage cap or beret you can see his face – his jolly, honest, sunburnt, smiling, English, Scottish or Irish face – relaxed now, not worn or harassed as men look in battle – and confident and proud.
I really like the modern generals, in shorts and shirts instead of boots and spurs – looking so young – some of the generals and colonels are really boys.
Harold Macmillan
Thursday, 24 June–Friday, 25 June 1943
I went by the 0830 bus to Barnstaple to see Terry [husband] who had a free day. After lunch we baked in the sun by the river in our shirt sleeves. I had to leave again by the 1742 bus (the last?) from Bideford, so Terry went back with me as far as Bideford Quay. In spite of going straight after night watch (one hour’s sleep) I didn’t feel very tired.
The RAF has been bombing the Ruhr very heavily; the Germans no longer attempt to make light of the raids. It is a ghastly business.
Audrey Deacon
Sunday, 4 July 1943
At twelve o’clock the prime ministerial car fetched me and drove me to Chequers. Found Mrs Churchill alone and played a little croquet with her … an hour closeted with the PM during which we played six-pack (bezique) and I took ten shillings off him. At dinner he was very gay and sang old-world Cockney songs with teddy bear gestures. In the course of the day he said he had been mistaken over the abdication. Mrs Churchill added later that his mistake had proved providential because it had kept him out of office at a moment when it would have been compromising.
After dinner we saw a news-reel and I played the piano for hours and then left.
Noël Coward
Monday, 2 August 1943
Sissinghurst
We go to the village fete at Sissinghurst Place. All the village children dress up and there is one little boy who impersonates Montgomery riding in a tank. There are many side-shows. One of them is a darts contest in which people are invited to throw darts at large cartoons of Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini. The Mussolini target does no business at all. Hitler and Tojo attract great crowds but people do not want to throw darts at Mussolini as they say he is ‘down and out.’ Really, the English are an amazing race.
Harold Nicolson
Friday, 27 August 1943
Stayed at the Avon Hotel (Amesbury) … Terry had had a hectic week, with 60 miles marching since Monday; his feet were covered in blisters. He gave me a lovely book: the Phaidon Press Rembrandt.
The Quebec Conferences are finished. Roosevelt has gone back to the States and Churchill is having a short holiday in Canada. Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, has been appointed to the command of Allied forces in South-East Asia. It is a supreme command like that of Eisenhower.
Audrey Deacon
Barrow-in-Furness
[My husband] said he would wash up while I got ready to go to the canteen committee meeting.
I felt it such a waste of time – nothing is ever done … Same old thing: we all complained of badly apportioned stores, the filthy lavatory, no toilet for the girls, no disinfectants for the lav or smelly sink, no supervision of the slap-happy char who did only the bits that showed, no basin or dishes to mix things in, no kettles – only pans – to boil water for tea. When I get going I’m bad to stop and I’d the thirteen other members of the canteen behind me, agreeing and egging me on. [But] nothing will be done when it’s carried to the general meeting.
Tiger Tim was well discussed, poor smelly animal … I stuck up for him, he is a nice wee beast. I said ‘Will one more smell make any difference to the general odour of mice, mouldy bread, a room with practically no ventilation, gas stoves, dirty sinks and lavatory? Don’t blame it all on poor little Tiger Tim and don’t talk so lightly of sending him off to be slept away.’
Nella Last
Sunday, 14 November–Tuesday, 23 November 1943
Much talk of aerial bombardment, and rockets that will half demolish London. It will be unpleasant, and there is no doubt that the Germans are ‘up’ to something.
There is serious unrest among the Conservatives at the growing influence and power of Beaverbrook; it is said the new triumvirate of Bracken, Cherwell and Beaverbrook rule the country when the PM is abroad, and dominate and fascinate him when he is at home.
Tuesday: The last day of the dying session was largely given up to argument about Mosley’s inopportune release (from prison), which has caused considerable excitement in the country, largely whipped up by Communists and Jewish elements. I walked to the House and saw nothing unusual though I was told that an angry crowd had surrounded the St Stephen’s entrance [of the House of Commons] and policemen had had to use batons: then the public lobby was crowded with young factory workers indignantly protesting at his release. I rather enjoyed the ironical scene of the Labour Party so enraged by the release of one of their ex-Ministers by a Labour Home Secretary! Their indignation seemed great. Morrison made an excellent case for his [release] order; he is an able parliamentarian and he put it over with skill and persuasion, explaining that Mosley had been examined by five eminent physicians who reported unanimously that his [poor] health demanded his release from Holloway … he is an unscrupulous but not unattractive fellow.
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon
While the House of Commons was exercised about the release of Mosley from detention, Winston Churchill was in Persia to meet the leaders of the United States and the USSR (at the Teheran Conference) to discuss the next moves against Germany and to start to plan a post-war settlement, once the Axis powers were defeated. It was the first time Roosevelt and Stalin had met, and Churchill found himself isolated. Stalin was concerned to reduce the military action in the Mediterranean and Italy, and to see British troops transferred to southern France. Much of the discussion was about the details of Operation Overlord (the invasion of France), with Stalin attempting to dictate the terms of the operation. Churchill was accompanied by, among others, his doctor and the Chief of Imperial General Staff, General Brooke, who concluded that Stalin’s ‘political and military requirements could now be best met by the greatest squandering of British and American lives in the French theatre’.
The Teheran Conference, and the Yalta Conference in the Crimea in February 1945, effectively settled the post-war incorporation of Eastern Europe into the USSR.
Sunday, 28 November–Monday, 29 November 1943
Soviet Embassy, Teheran
The PM loves to be on the move once more; the thrust and parry of these conferences are much to his liking; he feels he is getting on with the war. But as he flew over the dark, jagged crags which guarded the approach to Teheran, his mind was full of misgivings …
The PM cannot get Anthony’s warning out of his head. He said that when the Foreign Ministers met at Moscow last month, Stalin appeared so anxious for a second front that our people began to wonder if all was well with the Red Army. Stalin, Eden reported, could talk of nothing else.
Roosevelt cannot understand why both men take this question of a second front so much to heart.
Anyway he has come to Teheran determined, if I can trust Harry (Hopkins),* to come to terms with Stalin and he is not going to allow anything to interfere with that purpose. The mathematics of this is two to one, and before the first day was spent (Alan) Brooke said to me: ‘This Conference is over when it has only just begun. Stalin has got the President in his pocket.’
About midnight I went to the Legation to the PM’s room to see if he needed anything. I found Clark Kerr [British ambassador to Moscow] and Anthony Eden with him, glasses of whisky in their hands. The PM was talking in a tired, slow voice, with his eyes closed.
‘There might be more bloody war. I shall not be there. I shall be asleep. I want to sleep for billions of years. But you will be there.’ He stopped. ‘Charles hasn’t a drink – When I consider the vast issues,’ he went on, ‘I realise how inadequate we are.’
‘You mean a war with Russia?’
I do not think he heard. Then he appeared to make a great effort to cast off the black depression that had settled on him.
Charles Wilson
Monday, 29 November 1943
Soviet Embassy, Teheran
We … sat down at 4 pm to another long 3 hour conference! Bad from beginning to end. Winston was not good, and Roosevelt even worse. Stalin meticulous with only two arguments. Cross Channel operation (Overlord) on May 1st and also offensive in Southern France! Americans supported this view quite unaware of the fact that it is already an impossibility. Finally decided that Americans and ourselves should have another meeting tomorrow with a view to arriving at some form of solution for our final plenary meeting at 4 pm.
I have little hope of any form of agreement in discussions. After listening to the arguments put forward in the last 2 days I feel more like entering a lunatic asylum or a nursing home than continuing with my present job. I am absolutely disgusted with the politicians’ method of waging a war!! … It is lamentable to listen to them. May God help us in the future prosecution of this war, we have every hope of making an unholy mess of it and being defeated yet!
General Alan Brooke
Tuesday, 30 November 1943
Teheran
All day Stalin has been as amiable as he can be and it was in this mood that he came to the dinner party at the Legation, to celebrate Winston’s sixty ninth birthday. The atmosphere was genial; things seemed to go smoothly from the outset. It is true there was one discordant note. The President made a speech proposing the health of Brooke. Just as he was ending his speech, Stalin rose and said he would finish the toast. Looking across the table at the CIGS, Stalin said:
‘General Brooke has not been very friendly to the Red Army and has been critical of us. Let him come to Moscow, and I’ll show him that Russians aren’t bad chaps. It will pay him to be friends.’
While Stalin was saying this CIGS sat very quiet and grim … he does not pretend to like Stalin; he is indeed repelled by the man’s bloody record.
Charles Wilson
Sunday, 12 December 1943
South East Asia Command HQ, New Delhi*
Troubles never come singly. The Commanders-in-Chief (led, I am sorry to say, by James Somerville) had staged a communal protest about the organisation of our respective Planning Staffs and so I had them all down to an informal meeting at Faridkot House this morning. I pointed out that this was not a British set-up, but an Anglo-American one and that we had to accept some of the Americans’ ideas on planning. They wanted the right to hold separate meetings without me, so I asked Giffard:
‘Did you ever have meetings of your Corps Commanders in the 14th army?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘from time to time, when I wanted their views.’
‘What would you have said if they held meetings without you and sent you joint resolutions signed by each of them?’
Giffard unhesitatingly replied: ‘I should never have allowed that. That would be mutiny.’
I finished up with: ‘Thank you for pointing out so clearly what you three Commanders in Chief are doing to me.’
The real trouble is that the various Commanders in Chief and the Americans were having a very happy time without anyone to integrate their efforts; each going their own way, and they very naturally resent a Supreme Commander being put over them, and naturally resist efforts at integration and unification; and unless I am firm, I might as well throw up the job.
Louis Mountbatten
Saturday, 25 December 1943
Christmas Day, Barrow-in-Furness
I said ‘Happy Christmas’ to my husband. He scowled and muttered. Looked at him. I thought ‘Over thirty two years of slavery, patience beyond belief, your house kept a home, whatever happens your meals ready always, perfectly cooked, and served – yet I’m treated with less consideration than the average man would dare to treat a servant. Not a flower, a card – or a sweet although you had the sweet coupons in your pocket thereby preventing me from getting any myself.’ I felt as if a little flickering flame burned even lower.
Nella Last
Thursday, 27 January 1944
The Hotel Victoria, Algiers
We have a room on the third floor, number 26, with two very comfy beds, stone floors, three windows and two balconies and running water, cold only. It seems that is universal in Algiers. No hot water bottle shook me a little, but a pair of golf socks and my fur coat on the bed got me off to sleep and I awoke much too hot.
Needless to say ENSA has done the minimum of advance work and no one was expecting us.
Joyce Grenfell
Tuesday, 1 February 1944
Algiers
We went to Hospital Number 95. In the first ward there were two of the illest men I have ever seen, I think. Just skulls with living, wide, very clear eyes. It was a huge ward and difficult to know where to put the piano. We put it in the centre in the end which meant that I had to keep spinning round as I sang. I tried a monologue, but it was no good in there – too big, too decentralised. While I was walking around, talking before we began, I said to the illest of the two very ill ones that I hoped he’d excuse my back when I had to turn it on him and he said he would if I’d excuse him for not being shaved. Oh, gosh.
Joyce Grenfell
Thursday, 3 February 1944
Algiers
One of the very ill men in the first ward we did … died that night. I wish I could tell his family how he smiled and even sang with us.
The final concert … was in a much smaller square whitewashed ward with about sixteen beds in it. Lovely for sound. Lots of eye patients, including a completely blinded boy who was being taken care of by a couple of pals with all the tenderness of mothers. When I sang a funny song or did a monologue their eyes were on him to see if he was amused. They were happy when he was, and exchanged looks. He was shy and completely unadjusted still to this new blank in his life … But he sang with us and he cried a little. It was the gentleness of his two friends and their concern and solicitude that moved me so much.
An ex-jockey from the north told me his pal was a good singer and we got the pal to perform. He gave us a truly heavenly song called ‘Blaydon Races’, verse after verse, in a true horn of a voice, full of rough rhythm and vitality.
Joyce Grenfell
Jaipur, India
The Maharajah had arranged a shoot for us. In my simplicity I had imagined a certain amount of personal risk was involved; but not on this occasion at any rate.
We drove into the mountains where the preparations had begun last night, when a tethered goat was provided for the dinner of a female leopard … We sportsmen retired behind the foliage-covered windows of a small concrete building to watch the misery of the bait.
As the mountain landscape faded into darkness, plaintive bleats rang through the canyons. The lonely chained animal strutted in circles round its stake. Suddenly, in panic, its blunt rock-like profile darted this way and that. Then its front legs collapsed, and the animal lay quite still. Why was I allowing myself to be party to something I considered so ignominious? It was awful to watch an animal suffering the mental torments that, mercifully, most of us leave behind in the night nursery.
The goat continued to emit pathetic, grating croaks, like whimpers of despair, then, exhausted by misery, lay down to sleep. After one and a half hour’s sleep no leopard came and the colonel who was organizing the shoot said that it was useless to remain. The anticlimax was crushing, but the joy of the goat when we came out of hiding to unleash it was heavenly to see. The goat, at any rate, had one more day to live.
Cecil Beaton
Tuesday, 28 March 1944
Westminster
An historic and altogether unexpected day. I walked to the House where the Education Bill was being discussed in the committee stage and soon realised that the House was in an odd, restless, and insubordinate mood. At about 4.45 Thelma Keir, nice but tactless, like all Cazalets, moved the amendment to the Education Bill for equal pay for men and women teachers. The House was crowded, and it was obvious that a storm was brewing. Rab for the first time held firm and was resolute. The principal of equal pay had nothing to do with him and he ought not to be placed in that position … after further parley and rising heat the House divided and the result was announced of 117 against the Government and only 11 for it. The first defeat Mr Churchill has sustained. The House gasped, as it began to realise the implications and I was appalled at the Government’s defeat on the very eve of the Second Front. This will cause jubilation in Germany. The young Tory reformers, led by Quintin Hogg … are to blame.
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon
Monday, 5 June 1944
I slept in an empty ward – or rather stayed awake most of the time. Soon after six I was brought a cup of tea, and then Sister came in and said he (Terry) was worse, especially during the past hour. I went down and saw him … For a few minutes I felt faint but afterwards found Sister and got her to ask the Resident Surgical Officer to see him again. He told me that Terry’s condition was very grave. I went back and dressed. Soon after I was told Warwick had arrived. We waited a little and then Sister told us to go to the ward. Then she said: I’m afraid he has just died.’
I just don’t know how to start again. I had looked to Terry for support and comfort for so long; absolutely everything was bound up with him.
I am very glad we were married: we had long enough together to know how wonderful it was.*
Audrey Deacon
Tuesday, 6 June 1944
Southern Rhodesia
I went up for over an hour and half during which time I finished spins and started on my final and crucial task – finding out whether I will ever be able to land an aircraft. It was not until breakfast time that I heard the great news … Flying Officer Freeman told me the real ‘gen.’ He had heard General Eisenhower’s broadcast announcement to the world of an Allied invasion of the French coast and containing the gist of issued orders to the underground movement … It appears that paratroopers have been dropped inland to capture aerodromes and that the beach landings were effected after an armada of 4,000 big ships and many thousand little ones, escorted by detachments of the RN, had crossed the Channel …*
When the work station gathered at midday, with clerks and fitters, the officers, the instructors and the pupils, and the air was quiet from lack of planes, we sang ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and ‘Fight the Good Fight.’
I thought at once of Mike and … the skill and courage which distinguished him from the ordinary run of pilots.
Tony Benn
Tuesday, 27 June 1944
Telegram to Tony Benn (‘James’)
DARLING JAMES OUR PRECIOUS MICHAEL GAVE HIS LIFE JUNE 23RD AFTER OPERATIONAL ACCIDENT DAVE AND I REACHED HIM DON’T GRIEVE DEAREST HE SUFFERED NO PAIN IS SAVED COMPLETE PARALYSIS FAMILY HOLDS TOGETHER FOR ALWAYS DEAREST LOVE MA
Thursday, 6 July 1944
At 10 pm we had a frightful meeting with Winston which lasted till 2 am!! It was quite the worst we have had with him. He was very tired as a result of his speech in the House concerning the flying bombs, he had tried to recuperate with drink. As a result he was in a maudlin, bad-tempered drunken mood, ready to take offence at anything, suspicious of everybody, and in a highly vindictive mood against the Americans. In fact so vindictive that his whole outlook on strategy was warped.
I began by having a bad row with him. He began to abuse Monty because operations were not going faster, and apparently Eisenhower had said that he was over-cautious. I flared up and asked him if he could not trust his generals for five minutes instead of continuously abusing them and belittling them. He said that he never did such a thing. I then reminded him that during two whole Monday cabinets in front of a large gathering of ministers he had torn Alexander to shreds for his lack of imagination and leadership in continually attacking at Cassino. He was furious with me but I hope it may do some good in future.
Field Marshal Alan Brooke
Friday, 14 July–Friday, 21 July 1944
God what a week! And how many more of them are we to have? After a lull, when we had hours at a stretch without flying-bombs and we began to feel we had got the measure of them and that they were dying down, on Tuesday night we lay and listened to an almost continuous stream being poured over us – all night long the sky was filled with the drone of the approaching, passing, stopping engine of a flying-bomb; and so it has more or less gone on through the week.
On Wednesday morning I got to the Bank station and as [I] walked up Princes Street heard the danger overhead warnings from the Bank. I didn’t know there was an alert on even, but quickened my pace [to the Northern Insurance Company] … A deafening roar and a sickening thud, followed by our huge eight foot windows crashing in, frame and all, plaster and glass careering down the lift shafts.
By a miracle we had no bad casualties.
Vivienne Hall
September 1944
The flying bombs and those beastly V2s, exploding from out of nowhere, have created havoc in London since I left for the Far East nearly a year ago. After travelling home via the States and enjoying for a spell the glitter of New York life, I was stunned to see such wreckage to poor inoffensive streets which contain no more important a target than the pub at the crossroads. Miles of pathetic little dwellings have become nothing but black windowless facades. Old, torn posters hang from scabrous walls, the leaves on trees have changed to tallow under a thick coating of cement powder.
After celebrating the liberation of Paris, in New York, I thought that things might be looking up a bit everywhere. But no. War in England is more total than ever, hardships always increasing.
Yet, in spite of all the horror and squalor, London has added beauty. In its unaccustomed isolation above the wastes of rubble, St Paul’s is seen standing to supreme advantage, particularly splendid at full moon. The moon, in the blackout, with no other light but the stars to vie with, makes an eighteenth century engraving of our streets. St James’s Park without its Victorian railings, has become positively sylvan … There are pigs sleeping peacefully in improvised styes in the craters …
Cecil Beaton
Monday, 2 October 1944
Gaza
Wynne Rushton who was ENSA billeting officer in Cairo last time, has coped well and remembered my plea to get us to the really out of the way places. ENSA has laid on a large Naafi bus capable of seating eighteen people, but having removed some of the benches, it now holds our piano – quite a good one too. Viola is delighted. We plan to hang all our dresses from the rod at the back of the bus and that will save continual packing and unpacking which is the part of this job that kills one, particularly as we are doing mostly one night stands.
The breeze doesn’t rise in the evening here as it does in Cairo. I must say I will always have a very special feeling for C, but I don’t think Samson missed much by being eyeless in Gaza.
Joyce Grenfell
Tuesday, 31 October 1944
Today the PM was gay, enjoying himself, and seemed in such high spirits that no-one doubts but that he will lead the Conservative Party triumphantly to victory at the Polls: though he wisely dispelled any hope of an early dissolution, and it now looks as if we shall have another year of this wondrous Parliament …
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon
Sunday, 5 November 1944
Dreadful news that Lord Moyne (the Colonial Secretary) has been murdered in Cairo … if this murder is really committed by the Stern Gang, the Yishuv (Jewish community) must now take action against them, which may well plunge the country in civil war. Also there is the risk to Chaim’s life. It is a dreadful tragedy.
Blanche ‘Baffy’ Dugdale
Saturday, 11 November 1944
Paris
Churchill and De Gaulle are to lay a wreath on the Unknown Warrior’s grave and watch the march past of France’s war effort – including the Moroccans, Algerians, Fire Services, Post Office men, etc.
The crowds, red-nosed with cold and crying, were quiet in their gratitude … When the leaders passed the crowd shouted in unison ‘Chour-cheel!’
It was remarkable that this great mass of humanity should gather within a few miles of an enemy that was now in retreat, but until only a short while ago, all-conquering.
Mrs Churchill told of the effort it had been to make conversation with De Gaulle at yesterday’s banquet. While sitting on the General’s right, and seeking desperately for conversational gambits, she reflected to herself on the difficulties of the lot of Madame de Gaulle. Suddenly the General broke the silence by remarking: ‘I have often thought it must be very difficult for you being the wife of Winston Churchill.’
Cecil Beaton
Wednesday, 6 December 1944
Dined with Beaverbrook at the Savoy – a party of 21.
Max was jovial, presided genially, and mixed the cocktails. Speeches. I over-ate and drank, and came home by Underground, where I was shocked to see the stations full of people sleeping in bunks, miserable heaps of dirty humanity.
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon
Monday, 25 December 1944
Christmas Day, Secunderabad
When I woke up at 8 I counted back the hours and found it was about half past midnight in England and I wondered if Aunt N. was in the little room behind the boudoir as she always used to be on Christmas Eve. It won’t be much of a day with both Jakie and Michael away; David too, perhaps? I count myself lucky to be away really. It’s a sad moment somehow with the war getting longer instead of finishing as we hoped and the news being generally disquieting. I wonder if Reggie is at Oxford. And Ma and Tommy? And how my Pa is. Apart from these little anxieties … it’s good to be miles off in isolation with a job to do that involves a certain amount of self-immolation. Viola is a heavenly companion and we have reached that comfortable state of sympathy when silences are often more articulate than speech.
The last show of the day was in the penicillin ward. Many bed patients, mostly feeling pretty low, for I gather that penicillin isn’t much fun; it hurts and the treatment includes injections every three hours.
I was asked for ‘Just a Song at Twilight’ which ordinarily I avoid because it’s so sad but the asker was the illest man in the ward, a creature of bone in a cast, so we did it and they roared it in a comforting sort of way.
I had a couple of rather bad come overs and nearly blacked out which was alarming but I didn’t quite and it passed.
Joyce Grenfell
Wednesday, 28 February 1945
The Prime Minister and Anthony Eden’s abortive attempts to explain away, to justify, our ignominious surrender to Stalin, whilst they pleased some section of the Left have deeply shocked public opinion.* People, gentlemen not easily excited like Alec Dunglass [Douglas-Home] and James Willoughby D’Eresby made eloquent pleas for Poland, and the unfortunate and pathetic and charming Polish Ambassador, Count Raczinski, was in the Gallery.
I am horrified by the inconsistency of some Members of Parliament, members of society, who went about abusing Mr Chamberlain about appeasement in 1938 and 1939 and now meekly accept this surrender to Soviet Russia.
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon
Friday, 13 April 1945
Alexandria
We heard on the news today that President Roosevelt was dead.* We were all gathered round the Sergeants’ mess when the eight o’clock news was read and the first, long item concerned his sudden collapse and death. Everyone was absolutely hushed for some minutes, a more marked silence than is ever accorded to great items of war news.
Without a doubt everyone was as shocked and as sad as if Churchill himself had died.
Service life – particularly in air crew – gets you accustomed to death of friends and colleagues. It was rather strange and impressive to be there.
Tony Benn
Friday, 13 April 1945
At the Zionist office we figured out that although an unmitigated disaster for Britain, the death of FDR may have some compensations for the Jews. He was a friend, but an ignorant and rather wobbly one … The Jewish vote in the USA lost importance after his Election … Spent morning drafting condolence telegrams from Chaim [Weizmann] and Jewish Agency.
Blanche ‘Baffy’ Dugdale
Sunday, 29 April–Monday, 30 April 1945
Whatlington
The war has virtually ended and I’m back at Whatlington, just as I was five and a half years ago, in my same room, looking out at the same window, turning over the same books; only five and a half years have gone by. During these five and a half years I’ve been here and there, and committed many follies, and sometimes I suppose I shall write an account of them. The last six months I’ve been in Paris. Now I have to begin another life, the Nazis having been defeated. The Nazis were supposed to destroy my life, along with much else, but they’ve failed, and I’m left with it on my hands – a rather battered, shabby affair now.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Saturday, 28 April–Tuesday, 1 May 1945
Gaza
The American–Russian link-up is broadening and Germany is rife with rumour … The end cannot be far off now. I wonder if I shall be in Jerusalem to celebrate it – what an appropriate place it would be. In the evening we saw The Lamp Still Burns Brightly with Rosamund John and Stewart Granger, produced by Leslie Howard. It was a fine tribute to nursing, and also pointed out some necessary reforms in a fine profession.
[1 May] I woke up early – it was cold. The train was steaming through the Sinai desert and by the light of the full moon I could discern an expanse of silver sand.
We got up and washed before the train pulled into Gaza. Here we had breakfast at the NAAFI and afterwards we wandered up and down the platform and were attracted by the quantity of lavatories. There was one for British officers, one for nursing sisters, one for women officers and one for Indian officers, and separate ones again for women other ranks, British other ranks and South African other ranks.
Tony Benn
Tuesday, 1 May 1945
In the middle of dinner I brought in the sensational announcement, broadcast by the Nazi wireless, that Hitler had been killed today at his post at the Reichs chancery in Berlin and that Admiral Doenitz was taking his place. Probably H has in fact been dead several days but the 1st May is a symbolic date in the Nazi calendar and no doubt the circumstances (‘fighting with his last breath against Bolshevism’) were carefully invented with an eye to the future Hitler Myth and Legend. The P.M.’s comment over dinner was: ‘Well I must say I think he was perfectly right to die like that.’ Lord B[eaverbrook]’s reply was that he obviously did not.*
John Colville
Thursday, 3 May 1945
Fall of Berlin to the Russians yesterday afternoon on last night’s midnight news. News, and also of surrender in Italy, confirmed in morning papers. Went into Southampton with Amy (amid pouring rain) to see news in cinema giving the atrocity pictures of the concentration camps. Saw also Roosevelt’s burial. Pictures of camps (as horrible as I expected, largely pictures of living skeletons and disintegrating bodies) accompanied by a hate-arousing talk which omits to point out that half victims in camps (and all before 1939) were Germans; and that camps, and Gestapo, wouldn’t have existed if opposition to Hitler had not been tremendous.
Vera Brittain
Tuesday, 8 May 1945
Today is the official celebration of the end of the war. I walked up the hill to get some cigarettes, and saw each cottage decorated with little flags.
We went to Church. The parson said: ‘Let us pray for a new world.’ What a foolish prayer! Better the old prayer for that peace which the world cannot give, for the granting of petitions as may be most expedient. ‘Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom,’ we sang after we had prayed for a new world; an exquisite line which made me think again of Newman.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Chequers
A lovely hot day. Went for a long walk and did my best to put the great array of papers in the box, most of which have been unlooked at for many days, in order.
Harold Macmillan, summoned from Italy … arrived at tea-time with Robert Cecil, who is acting as his A.D.C. The P.M. was still loitering with his geese and goldfish ponds (recently plundered of their, to him, precious occupants by a thief or an otter – it was long before anyone dare break the news) at Chartwell … I don’t like the would-be ingratiating way in which Macmillan bares his teeth.
The P.M. arrived for a late dinner and after it we saw a film … a good deal of aimless discourse took place.
John Colville
Thursday, 24 May 1945
The P.M. devoted the day to the formation of what the press calls a ‘Caretaker Government’.
With politicians coming and going – glints in all their eyes – and the Chief Whip in constant attendance, no work was done, even in regard to a telegram from Stalin demanding a third of the German Navy and merchant fleet (all of which have surrendered to us).
I was interested by some of the bombing figures showing our and the American share of the bombing of Germany:
Total for both forces everywhere in Europe: 2,170,000 tons
Losses in Europe: RAF 10,801 aircraft; USAAF 8,274 aircraft
John Colville
Thursday, 24 May 1945
The election [is to be] in July. The thought of possibly being governed by Attlee, Morrison, Bevin and Co is too horrible to contemplate. I hope above all that Winston is returned with a vast majority. He may have his faults but he is the only big man we have got. The Labour boys are a shoddy lot of careerists.
Noël Coward
Monday, 18 June 1945
Over all Europe hangs the cloud of insufficient supplies, disjointed distribution, lack of coal and a superfluity of destitute and displaced persons. The situation is no easier, nor are the prospects apparently brighter, than before the first shot was fired.
At home the first intoxication of victory is passing. The parties are creating bitterness, largely artificial, in their vote-catching hysteria …Without Winston’s personal prestige the Tories would not have a chance. Even with him I am not sanguine of their prospects, though most of their leaders are confident of a good majority. I think the service vote will be Left and the housing shortage has left many people disgruntled. The main Conservative argument is the prevailing good humour of the people and the accepted point that Attlee would be a sorry successor to Winston at the meeting of the Big Three and in the counsels of the Nations.
John Colville
The General Election was held on 5 July 1945, but the full results were not known (a large number of votes being cast by members of the Armed Forces still abroad) until 26 July.
Wednesday, 11 July 1945
South of France*
The PM disclosed during luncheon that he had had reassuring reports … which confirmed (an) earlier estimate of a majority of a hundred. I said Max (Beaverbrook) had set his heart on winning this election. The PM turned to me and said: ‘Do you think his support is a liability or an asset?’ He described him as a remarkable man. ‘There is no one like him. He has made several Governments in my lifetime. It’s better to have his support than his opposition. The Express has a circulation of between three and four millions.’
I hummed something out of the Mikado; the PM’s eyes brightened, he began to sing refrain after refrain from that opera. He sang, with great gusto, ‘A wandering minstrel I.’ He loved the words and the tunes. And Mary in her eager way joined in. Then I asked him about some game they had played at Chartwell and soon we were saying, ‘I had a cat,’ to be asked by one’s neighbour ‘What kind of cat?’ Whereupon one had to find adjectives beginning with the letter chosen, a tame cat, a timid cat, a troublesome cat, a tabby cat and so on until no more adjectives would come into your head and you were counted out, and only those with a full vocabulary were left in. Winston searched his store-house of words as earnestly as if he were writing for posterity. This went on until ten minutes to four, when the PM went off to the Nairns to paint.
Charles Wilson (Lord Moran)
Monday, 23 July 1945
Potsdam Conference, Occupied Germany
When I went into the PM’s room this morning he was breakfasting. I found Sawyers mopping the table by the bed; the PM had upset his pineapple juice. Sawyers took a long time and the PM got impatient.
‘That will do Sawyers; you can do that later.’ But Sawyers went on mopping.
‘Oh leave it Sawyers, leave it. Come back later.’
Immediately Sawyers had left the room the PM turned to me with great solemnity.
‘I am going to tell you something you must not tell to any human being. We have split the atom. The report of the great experiment has just come in. A bomb was let off in some wild spot in New Mexico. It was only a thirteen-pound bomb but it made a crater half a mile across. People ten miles away lay with their feet towards the bomb; when it went off they rolled over and tried to look at the sky. But even with the darkest glasses it was impossible. It was the middle of the night but it was as if seven suns had lit the earth; two hundred miles away the light could be seen. The bomb sent up smoke to the stratosphere.’
‘It is H. G. Wells stuff,’ I put in.
‘Exactly,’ the PM agreed. ‘It is the Second Coming. The secret has been wrested from nature. The Americans spent £400 million on it … It is to be used on Japan, on cities, not on armies. We thought it would be indecent to use it on Japan without telling the Russians so they are to be told today. It has just come in time to save the world.’
I own I was deeply shocked by this ruthless decision … I went out and wandered through empty rooms. I once slept in a house where there had been a murder. I feel like that here.
Lord Moran
Thursday, 26 July 1945
Plymouth
This morning before I got up a telegram arrived to say that I am to report pm 31st to HMS Fledgling …
The election results were announced today – Labour has a majority of 152 (I think). Personally I voted Conservative – more because I thought Churchill and Eden were two good men to carry on in their present jobs than for any other reason – but I’m not really surprised that Labour has won. After all the Conservatives had been in since 1935, and before the war, at least, weren’t particularly bright. But nobody was then, really.
Churchill had come back specially from the Potsdam conference to learn the result. The Conference (between the ‘Big Three’ – Churchill, Stalin and Truman) had not ended.
Audrey Deacon
Thursday, 26 July 1945
London
Winston asked me to go and see him at the No 10 Annexe at 4 pm. [I had been told that] his intention was to do nothing until after Sunday, have a Cabinet on Monday and then resign. This we all felt was wrong, for obviously Truman and Stalin won’t wait at Potsdam indefinitely, and, as Winston says nothing will induce him to go back there himself, somebody from this country must take his place.
Then I was called into his room where he was sitting in his siren suit, with the usual banana-sized cigar, taking counsel of David Margesson.* He did not look depressed, nor did he talk so. He attributed his defeat to the people’s reaction from their sufferings of the past five years – they have endured all the horrors and discomforts of war, and, automatically, they have vented it on the government that has been in power throughout the period of their discontent.
He had changed his mind about his course of action – perhaps David and I helped him to make it up afresh. Anyhow, he decided to resign tonight, and in our presence dictated a new letter to Attlee, tearing up the draft of a previous one. This was the final version:
My dear Attlee
In consequence of the electoral decision recorded today, I propose to tender my resignation to the King at seven o’clock this evening on personal grounds. I wish you all success in the heavy burden you are about to assume.
Yours v sincerely
W.S.C.
… As to Potsdam Winston felt that Attlee ought to get the name of his Foreign Secretary approved at once and take him to Potsdam.
Alan Lascelles†
Saturday, 28 July 1945
I went to White’s at about 11. Results were already coming in on the tape, and in an hour and a half it was plainly an overwhelming defeat. Practically all my friends are out … 10,000 votes against Winston in his own constituency for an obvious lunatic.
To the Rothermeres’ party – a large, despondent crowd joined later by a handful of the defeated candidates.
Evelyn Waugh
Tuesday, 7 August 1945
I had a long and somewhat dreary day. First of all a Chiefs of Staff meeting with Mountbatten and Lloyd of the Australian Army. The latter was quite excellent and clear headed. The former was as usual quite impossible and wasted a lot of our time. Always fastening onto the irrelevant points, repeating himself, failing to recognise the vital points etc etc. Seldom has a Supreme Commander been more deficient of the main attributes of a Supreme Commander than Dickie Mountbatten.
Then our first [Labour] Cabinet meeting. We were asked to deal with the strategic situation! I had to start, and go all round the world starting with the occupied zone etc. I was asked many questions by Bevan, Miss Wilkinson etc, all of them mainly influenced by political as opposed to military motives. A wonderful transformation of the Cabinet with a lot of new faces, however some of the old ones are still there such as Attlee, Bevin, Stafford Cripps, Morrison, Alexander.*
Field Marshal Alan Brooke
Friday, 10 August 1945
The Stock Market has recovered and is actually soaring. Evidently it does not fear the Socialist Government, now that the first shock has worn off.
Terry [Terence Rattigan] came to lunch at about 12.55. He said (he is a wireless addict) ‘Turn on the news’; and we did, as we sipped our pre-prandial cocktails. The wireless announced that Japan had asked for peace, but insists on the rights of the Emperor.† They want to save the Mikado.
The streets were crowded with people singing and littered with torn paper. People tear telephone books to bits and throw them into the streets.
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon
Wednesday, 22 August 1945
Barrow-in-Furness
The dusk fell quickly tonight and there were no stars in the overcast sky. It’s grand to think that this winter will have no blackout, that bright lights will be in the streets and from lightly curtained windows. How remote the last six years are becoming. I pray so deeply for real peace – for ordinary people who ask so little of life beyond simple needs, food and shelter for their families and a little for small enjoyments.
Tonight I thought of the dreadful new bomb – we will always live in the shadow of fear now … I feel again this world of ours has blundered into a beam of wickedness and unrest … it’s some evil force that affects us all.
Nella Last