All this talk of war. Few people seem to know that talk of peace is also in the air!
It is being kept out of the newspapers, but through my work at the Red Cross I know for certain that Hitler has made two peace offers to Churchill this week. One was sent by way of the Italian government. The other was passed through the Papal Nuncio to Red Cross HQ in Switzerland. Churchill immediately rejected both offers.
I was despairing and furious when I first heard about it, but I have been having a think.
Churchill loves war. He makes no secret of it, even boasts about it. When he was a young man, ‘eager for trouble’, he pulled strings and even cheated his way into the front line of the wars in India and Africa. His reaction to the disgrace of the Dardanelles in 1915 was to join the British army and fight on the Western Front for several months. It is clear that he sees the present war as a culmination of his passion for fighting.
At the moment, though, Churchill is cornered. No warmonger will entertain an offer of peace while his back is to the wall. He would interpret it as capitulation or surrender, not peace, no matter that common sense would tell him that worse punishment is to come. Churchill undoubtedly believes that he needs a military victory of some kind, before he will talk to Hitler.
No sign of that, so how am I going to feel when England is invaded, as surely she must be? For all my beliefs I remain an Englishman. I can’t bear to think about a foreign army, any foreign army, marching across our land. Thought of the Nazis worsens that imagining by many degrees. B is more scared than I am – better than most people, she knows what the Nazis are capable of doing.
July 25, 1940
Several airfields in the south-east of England have been bombed by the Luftwaffe, with many casualties and a great deal of damage.
The Red Cross is in a state of official readiness. Tomorrow I will be joining three other chaps from our depot and driving one of two ambulances and a mobile field surgery to our South London branch. It will probably take us two days to drive to London, bearing in mind how hard it is supposed to be to get around the country at the moment. It’s difficult to obtain reliable information, but we hear that many roads have been blocked with crude barricades.
It means I shall be going into the front line of the war, an idea I find inescapably romantic and terrifying, although there is in reality little danger of my being caught up in the fighting. All four of us will be returning to Manchester by train immediately we have handed over the equipment.
Of course, it also means that I have to leave B alone here until after the weekend. She is feeling much stronger than she was and says that I must do what I believe is right. There is food in the house for her until next week. Since the weather has been so warm she has been spending more time in the garden. Teaching the child has given her a new interest in playing and she has been learning new pieces. She says she will be so busy she will hardly notice I’ve gone.
July 29, 1940
I returned from London late last night, after long but uneventful journeys. B was asleep in bed when I arrived, but she woke up. She was obviously pleased and relieved to see me home safely again. We have spent a quiet, contented day together in the garden, as I was given today off work after the trip. In the evening B played me a new piece she has learned, by Edward Elgar.
British fighter aircraft are constantly active in the skies around here. I wish that reassurance was not what they bring, because that translates, I must admit, to their ability to shoot and kill.
I get so confused by the strength of feelings the war induces in me. I write down in my diary what I feel, but in truth I no longer know exactly what I feel. Was it the bump on the head? Or am I simply responding to the changing circumstances, which I would never have predicted?
July 30, 1940
We have to deliver more ambulances to the south, so tomorrow I am once again driving to London. My immediate concern was with B and how she would cope during my absence, but she has assured me she will be all right on her own for as long as I have to be away.
I have spent today packing the vehicles with emergency supplies. We will be setting off to London first thing tomorrow morning.
August 6, 1940
I am still in London after a week. I cannot begin to describe the confusion that the Society is having to deal with, a terrible warning of the chaos that will follow, should hostilities really get going. Every day the fighting seems to worsen, although for the moment much of it is skirmishes between warplanes. The bombing is confined to attacks on military bases. Naturally, the damage spreads far and wide, so civilians become casualties too. This is where we come in. For the last four days I have been driving my ambulance to and fro across the southeastern counties, acting as a relief to the regular ambulance services. Mainly I am simply expected to be the driver, but inevitably I have to help out with many of the injured. I am learning fast about the work.
I have left a telephone message for B at the post office in Rainow, so she knows where I am and that I am safe.
I am staying at the YMCA in the centre of London. I wondered at first if I might meet other COs doing similar work to mine in the capital, but as far as I can tell I’m the only one. Almost without exception the men here are in the forces, in transit from one part of the country to another. Most of them are only staying overnight while changing trains or arranging to be picked up, so it is difficult to strike up friendships with any of them. The few civilians appear to be merchant seamen, en route to one of the ports to find a berth. It leaves me feeling isolated and wishing I could be at home with B.
At the end of last week, Hitler made a speech to the Reichstag, in which he made public an offer of peace to Britain. German aircraft even dropped leaflets over London reporting what he said:
‘At this hour I feel before my conscience that it is my duty to appeal once more to reason and common sense in England and elsewhere – I make this appeal in the belief that I stand here, not as the vanquished, begging for favours, but as the victor speaking in the name of reason. I can see no grounds for continuing this war. I regret the sacrifice, and I also want to protect my people.’
Whether or not we should believe him was swept aside yesterday, when the Churchill government formally rejected the offer. The war goes on, presumably to Mr Churchill’s deep satisfaction.
August 12, 1940
I am still here in London, torn between my urgent wish to go home for a few days and the growing realization of the emergency the country is in.
I am on duty for most of the daylight hours, dealing with an ever-increasing number of casualties. More and more of them are our airmen, shot down and wounded in the violent aerial dogfights taking place overhead. The authorities constantly warn us that the ‘blitzkrieg’ tactics used in Poland, Holland and France must soon break upon us. That is a terrifying prospect.
Today I managed to speak to Mrs Woodhurst on the telephone. She is arranging for someone to come down from Manchester to relieve me for a few days. All the excitement of being in the thick of the war has faded: I want only to see B again.
August 15, 1940
Home at last, in the uncanny peace and quiet of the Pennine hills. The war suddenly seems remote from me. I slept for twelve hours last night and have woken refreshed. B certainly seemed pleased to see me yesterday evening and we have had a happy reunion. She woke me this morning at about ten when she put her head around the bedroom door to tell me she was about to catch the bus into Macclesfield.
I dozed for a while longer, then pottered contentedly about the kitchen, eating toast, drinking tea and looking through the letters that arrived while I was away. After that I took a bath. Because it is a fine, warm day I stood for a while in our garden, enjoying the sunshine, looking down at the plain of Cheshire, relishing the silence.
Later on in the morning I made an unusual find. I’m still puzzling over what it means.
Some of the furniture in this house was here when we moved in. Among the better pieces is an immense old oak w
ardrobe in our bedroom. (We can’t imagine how anyone got it into the house and up the stairs, except in pieces.) We keep most of our clothes inside it. This morning I was searching around on the deep shelf that runs from side to side across the top, hoping to find an old jacket of mine, when my hand rubbed against something made of fabric, but stiff and round. It had been placed right at the back of the shelf, apparently put there deliberately so it would be hard to find. I had to stretch right in to get hold of it. It was an RAF officer’s peaked cap, complete with badge.
I looked at it with interest, turning it around in my hands. I had never been so close to any part of a military uniform before. The cap was almost new, in excellent condition, with only a couple of small darkened streaks on the inner sweatband to show that it had been worn a few times. I tried it on, experiencing a frisson of something (embarrassment? excitement?) as I did so. It was a perfect fit. I looked at myself in the mirror, startled by the way it seemed to change the shape of my face.
I didn’t want B to find me with the cap, so I put it back where I found it. I have said nothing to her about it, but I can’t help wondering if she knows it’s there.
August 18, 1940
The war has taken a new turn: the German bombers are ranging more extensively across the country, seeking other targets. So far they appear not to be aiming deliberately at civilians, but there have been many reports that some of the German planes jettison their bomb loads as soon as they are attacked by British fighters. As a result, a number of bombs have gone off in the countryside. We have always thought that the remoteness of our house would give us a measure of safety from the bombs, but we are forced to recognize that nowhere is safe. The German raiders appear almost everywhere: we have heard of air raids in Scotland, in Wales, in the London area, in the extreme south-west. Of course, the towns along the south coast are attacked almost every day. Then there is the fear of a parachute attack. For obvious reasons, parachutists will land in open countryside in remote areas. The country is already rife with rumours about parachutists being seen. So far there has been no substance to any of these stories, but with an enemy like Hitler anything is possible.
Shortages in the shops continue and are getting worse.
Tomorrow I have to return to London.
September 2, 1940
Many more days have slipped by, unrecorded here. I am stuck in London, with no hope of a return home for as far as I can see ahead. I had no idea of the sheer chaos war could bring.
Every day I travel to the Red Cross depot in Wandsworth, where I am assigned to an ambulance. With at least one trained medical orderly, sometimes with two, I then drive all day, ferrying victims of the fighting to whichever is the closest hospital.
Like many other married couples, B and I have been forced into war separation. When you find a few minutes to chat to the people you’re billeted or working with, the consequences of being away from home are the most pressing subject. Most people now see their home life as something that is possible only for short periods of time, a weekend snatched from the everyday chaos, an overnight stay while passing through. Almost everyone you meet has been mobilized away from their own districts. Women are on farms or working in factories, while many of the men are in the forces or in one of the support organizations: manning the anti-aircraft batteries, patrolling for Air Raid Precautions, on nightly fire-watching duties, drilling with the Home Guard, on stand-by with the Emergency Rescue teams or working with the fire service. Everyone is on the move, with no permanence or stability. We are obsessed by the threat of invasion, by the air raids, by the battles going on overhead. Every day, they say, the country is growing stronger, is becoming better prepared. Every day that Hitler does not send his invasion forces is another day gained, a bonus, a growing of strength.
I feel no fear. Nobody feels fear. I remain a pacifist but pacifism is not based on fear. Nor is it based on the opposite. Churchill remains in power, leading the country with suicidal defiance, almost taunting Hitler to try his best to destroy us. He was born to fight war. Every so often we hear on the wireless the words that Churchill chooses to say to us. You cannot ignore what he says because of the poetic grace and power with which he speaks his unpretentious and inspiring words. Everyone you speak to is moved by his speeches. I do not know what I think any more. Except the basics, which never change.
Rumours abound: distant cities have been raided, with horrific results, tonight a thousand bombers will be coming to London, Dover has been bombed flat, German troops have been seen in the Essex seaside towns. For a while you believe the stories. Then the BBC news gives another version of events and you believe that instead. I’m fortunate in that the Red Cross is well informed. It is fairly easy for me to establish the truth, or something close to it. So far, things do not seem to have been too bad for civilians.
Shipping and airfields are bombed every day. At night the German bombers fly across all parts of the country, but they are more of a nuisance than anything: the sirens go off in the evening, so that people’s lives are interrupted. Little damage is done. A few bombs are dropped here and there. In places they drop propaganda leaflets, which instantly become objects of derision. You grow tired of hearing jokes about people using them as toilet paper.
So, each morning comes. I take out the ambulance and its medical crew, liaise with our army escort – needed in case we are sent to a crash-landed German plane in which crew members may have survived – then head for the towns and suburbs on the edge of London: to Croydon, Gravesend, Bromley, Sevenoaks. This is where most of the battle casualties are found. We pick up airmen who have been shot down, staff who were working at the factories and other installations under attack, those civilians unfortunate enough to have been injured by a crashing plane or a stray bomb or fallen shell.
Most of the bombing continues to be against ‘military’ targets – airfields, oil-storage depots, factories – but in an increasing number of incidents it looks as if the Germans deliberately cast their bomb loads wide. Houses, schools and even hospitals in the general area of the main targets are being damaged or destroyed with increasing frequency. And as is obvious to all of us, more and more towns are being treated as targets.
At first the bombing attacks were confined to the ports: Dover and Folkestone have suffered terribly, but they are the nearest British towns to the Luftwaffe bases in France and have an obvious strategic value. Then the areas of attack spread rapidly along the coast: Southampton and Portsmouth were bombed. After that the Germans turned on the towns alongside the Thames estuary, the threshold of the capital. What next?
September 8, 1940
It is a Sunday afternoon. I woke up an hour or so ago after one of the hardest and longest days of my life.
I spent the daytime in the usual round of duties, this time in Chatham on the south side of the Thames estuary. Because of its naval yard the town has become a regular target for the Luftwaffe. As evening came I drove back to London, returned my ambulance to the yard in Wandsworth and caught the Underground back here to my lodgings at the YMCA. I had been home no more than a couple of minutes when the air-raid sirens started again. I was summoned back to Wandsworth immediately. Within half an hour a major attack was taking place on the docks and warehouses in the East End. I was there all night, finally reaching my bed at 5 a.m.
September 19, 1940
I can no longer stand it here in London and need a rest. I have applied to return to Manchester.
German bombing tactics have changed drastically. Every night the Luftwaffe bombs London. Occasionally, they send second or third waves to other industrial cities, briefly sparing the capital. The first sirens are heard soon after sunset and the bombing continues, with varying degrees of violence, until well into the small hours. The planes first drop incendiary devices in their hundreds and thousands. They land everywhere – on roofs, in streets, gardens, parks – and almost immediately discharge a burst of white-hot fire that ignites anything it touches. Firewatchers are on duty along
every street and on every tall building that has an accessible roof. Many of the devices are doused with sand before they can do much damage, but there are limits to how many can be tackled. It’s dangerous and difficult work. Not long passes before many dozens of fires are taking hold. Soon afterwards the second phase of bombing begins as the Luftwaffe planes drop high-explosive bombs and parachute mines, shattering the streets and buildings and blasting the already burning debris in every direction.
Many people are killed outright, hiding under the staircases of their houses or huddling in their garden shelters, or if they are caught out in the open. The public shelters are safer, and the deep platforms of the Underground system are safer still. Every night more and more people are said to be moving down to the platforms to sit out the raids. Hundreds of people are injured in every raid. Among those casualties are members of the fire service, the police, the rescue workers, the air-raid wardens, the firewatchers and the ambulance drivers.
I have myself been close to death or serious injury many times. When the night raids began I intended to use my notebook as a first-hand record of what the experience is really like. I felt at the outset that there should be some evidence, some authentic first-hand account, of what happened to London when the bombers came. Someone, eventually, will be called to account for what is being done to this great city. The bombing of cities is clearly criminal. I am a witness; I am here in the thick of it.
But I am always too exhausted after my night-long shift of duty even to feel like lifting the pencil. It is etched in my memory but I have written none of it down. And memory is unreliable: after the first few bombs exploding in the street where you are, after the first few burning warehouses, the incidents run together.
I am already sick of the heat, the explosions, the shock of sudden flares of flame as the incendiaries crash to the ground, the smells of burning, the cries of injured children, the sight of bodies buried in the rubble, the hideous wounds, the dead babies, the grieving parents. I am deafened, half blinded, frightened, angry, scorched. My hair, skin, clothes stink of smoke and blood. I truly walk in hell.