March 4, 1943
Well, today, March
Fourth, I live. I still live. Last night we had two bad raids. The first came
at eight-thirty and went on until ten p.m. The second came at four thirty this
morning, and lasted until a quarter to six. Our gunfire was terrific. I have
not heard yet what damage was done. Nothing in this immediate vicinity, though
when Ted returned from the Home Guard he said one of their officers had come
in, in an extremely nervous state, and said bombs had fallen in Collier Row. However,
when the radioman came this morning, about a half and hour ago, he said, no,
not Collier Row last night, but nearer to Fairlop and Warley, the airdromes,
well, we’ll know later. Whilst the racket is going on I get very sick, and
retch constantly. I can’t help it, and I can’t stop it. This morning I feel
sore in the ribs, as though somebody had kicked me. If a bombardment went on
for twelve or eighteen hours, I think I should expire, not from a direct hit,
but from my one bodily mechanism, which will not behave properly, and which I
can’t control, no matter how emphatically my will commands it. Sheer animal
fear, over which the soul has no control, yes, sure it can kill you. This
blasted war! When, oh when, will it finish? If there is anything in this world
stupider than war I have never heard of it. Men deliberately destroying
mankind, men deliberately destroying the entire world, could there possibly be
anything more insane? Well, I pray like mad. God be merciful to me, a sinner.
Deliver us from evil. Oh deliver us from evil.
This
afternoon I went to tea, on invitation, with Mrs. Owlett. Before going out I
wrote a letter to Artie, and posted it at the corner. When I got back to the
house after leaving the Owlett’s, I found this letter from Artie:
Dear Mother and Dad,
I am glad you sent me news
of Maureen’s wedding so that I was able to send a greetings telegram on
Saturday morning. Do you remember the brown leather case you let me use? Well I
have finally disposed of it. Hilda paid me a visit so I let her take it back
with her to keep for me at her house, with my good greatcoat. I have asked
Hilda always to keep in touch with you, and should she at any time be posted
near Romford will you please give her all the love and care you give me. I know
she is happy with you and admires and loves you both. She means everything to
me.
Just now it is like the
beginning of summer. Dry and warm, perfectly glorious. I shall try and write
you again later this week, “meanwhile all my love for the two of you now and always.
Fred (also called Artie)
This
overwhelms me with sadness. Indirectly this is a notification of his
embarkation, for somewhere or other; for he said that when he sent his
greatcoat home, then we would know he was off. He had hoped to be sent to Africa,
but Ted thinks it is more likely that he will be with the men to be used for
the Invasion of Europe. It’s awful. Of course we always knew that as a soldier
he must fight someday, but when the reality comes, it stuns.
March 5, 1943
I wrote Artie today,
also Hilda, and Hilda’s mother, Mrs. Kane. I am weepy. I can’t help it. There
is news today of a terrible accident on Wednesday night, mostly women and
children, and sixty injured when the crowd entering the shelter after the
alert, tripped up and fell on top of one another, blocking a stairway. They
were suffocated to death. Authorities say there was no panic, and the nearest
bomb to fall was two mile away. There must have been panic. There were nearly
two thousand people already in the shelter, and many more coming in. A woman
with a baby and a bundle tripped near the foot of a flight of nineteen steps,
which leads down from the street. This flight of steps terminates on a landing.
The woman fell down the last two or three steps and lay on the landing. Her
fall tripped an elderly man behind her and he fell similarly. Their bodies
again tripped up those behind them, and within a few seconds a large number of
people were lying on the lower steps and the landing, completely blocking the
stairway. Within a minute there were hundreds of people crushed together. What
a terrible accident!
This
was announced over the radio, but I heard of another awful disaster this
afternoon, which has not been broadcast, nor put in the papers. Mrs. James came
in as I was finishing my letters, and she told me of it. She got the news from
the wives of two railway men who live in the neighborhood and are customers of
Mrs. Dumaresque’s. On Wednesday the bombs hit the railway, at Sheffield, when
the Harwich Express came through it went straight down into the crater. The
engine catapulted three times and the four first coaches were completely
smashed. Nobody got out alive. The train was full of sailors, returning to
their ships at Harwich.
We
boast about what we do to the German railroads, but we don’t utter a word about
what the Germans do to ours. No, we are not told half the news, nor yet a
quarter of it. We are lied to, half-lied to, and kept ignorant of events.
Propaganda? The Germans are not the only liars.
March 10, 1943 —
Ash Wednesday
Ted is with the Home
Guards. All is quiet for the present. On the six o’clock news we heard that all
boys and girls of sixteen and seventeen must register next Saturday. What next?
Are the children now to fight? Blast the war!
I
am more than ever determined to get whatever I wanted, whilst I can get it.
Today alone I live. As with the books I ordered that came today, they are not
necessities, oh, no. I am not going to content myself with necessities, not
ever, not ever again. Why save for a future, which may never dawn? This week is
a “Wings for Victory Week,” and the city of London has set itself the job of
collecting one hundred and fifty million pounds for the war effort. Hundreds of
millions has already been reached. This leaves me cold. The men wanted this
war, let them pay for it, that’s what I think. I’ll never save. I’ll soon be
fifty-nine if Hitler lets me reach my birthday. Even if the war stops, how many
years are left to me anyhow? We considered Mother a very old lady yet she was
only twenty-one years older than me. I intend to get all the pleasure I can out
of whatever time remains to me. I intend to spend my own money while I know it
is expendable. God knows what life will be like when the war is over. Well, I
am not going to voluntarily put myself into any sort of straight jacket. Save?
Economize? Give to charity? Not me. No, I’ve no sympathy, no charity, and no
patriotism. I realize there isn’t a darn thing I can do about the outside
world, so I quit trying. To keep myself secure, serene, inviolate, that’s my
object. To keep still, and let the damned war wash over me, and so to keep
sane, that’s what I must do. Today, tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow. Every
day.
March 12, 1943
Whilst I was in the
bathroom washing, just before seven -thirty this morning, I was considerably
startled by what sounded like the wheels of a plane directly on the roof, and a
second later a huge machine flew in view, right over the gardens, away towards
the town. Then there was firing, and a minute later, the alert. From the back
window I saw smoke, a row of it, running down along the railway.
Six
enemy planes were over this district; flying so low they cut the tops off the
trees, machine gunning and bombing. They set fire to the gasometer, hit the
brewery, and took the roof off the water-works; they machine gunned people in
Old Church Road, in the buses, and the trains on the line. Our butcher’s boy,
crossing the railway bridge from Victoria Road, was hit in the leg. It is not
known yet how many people have been killed on the streets. Leaving here they
flew on to Ilford and Barkingside. At Ilford they hit the co-op stores,
completely destroying them, and two buses standing near. Both drivers were
killed, and several passengers inside, also passengers waiting in the ques. At
Barking they dropped their biggest bombs, bringing down several streets. All of
this out of the blue, before breakfast this morning. War, damnable war! Death
may come without warning, and not to the soldier, but to the civilians going to
work, and to the women and children in the houses. It is simply devilish. Yes,
today alone we live, and for many of us, not even today. Oh, when will all
madness end?
March 16, 1943
Doreen Peel was here
from about two-thirty until nearly nine this evening. I am absolutely
exhausted. These girls bring me all their troubles and talk by the hour about
their love affairs. I try to help them with practical advice, but I really
don’t suppose it s the slightest bit of good. I had Dorrie Stanford here last
Saturday, talking, talking. I do get weary of it. When Doreen left just now she
said, “I wish you were my mother, then maybe I wouldn’t fall down so often.”
There it is, the same old remark, “I wish you were my mother.” Horrid really.
In the end nearly every young girl I come in contact with says that to me. It
turns me kind of sick. For I don’t want to be their mothers; and I feel it a
slight to their own mothers, the women of my generation.
March 17, 1943 —
St. Patrick’s Day
The death of Cardinal
Hinsley was announced this morning. It was a terribly foggy morning. I went to
town, and had to wait fifty-five minutes on Romford Station for a train. Whilst
waiting I was joined by Jean Lee, and then later by Doreen Peel, who was in her
W. R.A’s uniform. So of course we all rode up to Liverpool Street together.
I
got a jolt of enlightenment about Doreen. Yesterday she had been weepy in my
house, telling all about her love affair with a Belgian officer, Sylvain Zuka,
and how she didn’t know what he meant, and why didn’t he propose? She couldn’t
stand it much longer, she’d have a break down and so forth. In the train today
she was a different girl, all girly-girly and talking about “the services” all
to show off, and impress Jean, who is a mere married woman, not in uniform, and
the rest of the people in the compartment. She wasn’t a bit unhappy, and I just
thought “You little exhibitionist!” I also thought, I’m damned if I ever listen
to any more of that fool girls confidential troubles! Why do they talk to me?
It’s simply because I listen, whereas their aunts and mothers won’t. Silly
female egotists, “floating their own glory” as my mother would have said. No,
I’m going to act stony hearted in the future. They only want to talk, and to
talk about themselves. Well, I’m going to be short in the future in my
listening.
Anyhow
today when I looked at Doreen “in public”, as it were, and saw her placed
against a back frown of strangers, I saw how truly insignificant she is. Of
course, I thought, her Belgian will never marry her. She is earmarked as a born
old maid. I guess he is only passing time with her when he has nothing better
to do. She is not the sort of girl virile men marry; and probably she has
magnified in her imagination all his contacts with her. Silly little Doreen!
March 31, 1943
The war gets worse and
worse but seems now to be mounting to a zenith. At this last full moon we
expected to be told any hour that we had begun the invasion of Europe. No, the
moon is waning, and except the increasing aerial bombing by the R.A.F. nothing
has been done. The Germans are still in Russia, still in North Africa. Artie
has vanished. He is probably at least off on invasion tactics somewhere. God
knows. No more word of Cuthie since the Third of January. No news from America.
My sons, where are they?
I
am terribly restless. Some days I feel I cannot endure the war, this life, any
longer. Here I am, still here, still miserable.
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