*
1 September
Tilda came round with the twins. She is in such a state, worried to death about what to do, and berating herself for not having decided earlier. Florence’s and Jack’s schools have both been requisitioned for other uses in the event of war being declared and not even I can bury my head in the sand now that Poland has been invaded. War will be declared any minute and the children must be got out of London. I think Tilda has left it too late to make private arrangements and will have to go with her children wherever they are sent. Robert has already told me that there will be chaos in spite of attempts at preparation. He says no one is co-ordinating the coming evacuation and that the government will be forced to depend on voluntary organisations who are not used to planning and coping on this scale.
2 September
Spent the day making blackout blinds for our windows, then went to Tilda’s to help her make hers. She has so many windows and had not nearly enough material and the best we could do today was the children’s bedrooms and the kitchen. Luckily, most of her windows also have wooden shutters, though when we tested them it was to find they are not nearly tight-fitting enough and chinks of light will definitely show through. But if Tilda and the children are to leave, as they must, and Charles expects to have to be on duty at the hospital on twenty-four-hour call, it will not matter because the house will be dark anyway. After we’d done our best with the windows we collected the last of the children’s gas masks. Florence and Jack have had theirs for some time, but the twins, being so small, have had to be specially fitted. It was so pathetic watching their darling little chubby faces disappear behind that horrible rubber, even though the masks were Mickey and Minnie Mouse ones. Connie was good about it but the boy howled.
3 September
Oh God, it has happened, war declared and no hope any more, and yet I still cannot believe it. Why has it happened again, so soon after all that nightmare which went before? If only women were in charge, such a disaster would never have been allowed. There is no good news at all. Already a liner bound for Canada has been torpedoed by the Germans and sunk somewhere off the Hebrides with more than a hundred people drowned. Tilda had thought of sending Florence and Jack to cousins of Charles’s in Canada, but now she will not dare let them try to cross the Atlantic.
4 September
Tilda is leaving tomorrow, without knowing her precise destination. Children under 5 are supposed to be accompanied by their mother, but Florence and Jack are going with their respective schools which means of course that the whole family will be split up at this worst of times. I think she should try her mother-in-law again, but she says there is no use. Mrs Routledge only has a small cottage in Blockley, in the Cotswolds, and Charles’s sister Joan and her children have already moved in. She wept, and says she feels so responsible for the mess they are in and that she ought to have thought ahead. She must pull herself together and pack for the children. I helped her, she was in such a muddle. She said how efficient I was, and capable, and then asked me if I would go with her, but I had to point out that I was not entitled. Then I suddenly thought how well qualified I was to be a helper for the WVS. Robert said only last night that they are desperate for experienced people to help with all the unaccompanied children.
I left Tilda and went straight round to their head office and enrolled, and the minute my status (unmarried, childless) and my occupation were noted, I was welcomed with open arms and given a uniform, etc. I am to report tomorrow to an assembly point at Liverpool Street Station to go with a party of forty East End children to I know not where. I raced home to pack a bag for myself, and then back to Tilda’s to tell her and to wish her luck, and we both agreed to write to Charles at the hospital because he will always be there. Then I went out and stocked up with some tinned food, just basics, to leave for Robert. When he came home he was more relieved than anything to hear what I had done, since leaving me in my present state was something he had been dreading. He had been going to urge me to go with Tilda if possible before he reports for duty in three days’ time. We had a very solemn last meal, I mean last for who knows how long, together. Strangely, I don’t now resent his joining up. It seems right, or if not exactly right I don’t care about it. It isn’t that I don’t care for him, but I don’t seem to care about anything. I will be glad to have a purpose again even if it has come about through such a terrible event. Robert, I think, feels differently. He said there were a great many things he wanted to say but he didn’t know how to say them. We were both very quiet.
7 September
There is so much I want to put down here, so much to write, especially when for months there has been so little, but I hardly know where to begin. The chaos has been indescribable in spite of everyone’s best efforts. Liverpool Street Station was pandemonium when I arrived there, as instructed, on the 4th. Hordes of people, most of them children with mothers, and no one knowing quite what to do. They were all from zones selected as essential for evacuation, so of course these were the poorest areas near the docks and gasworks, and most of the children in a pitiful state. It was my job, together with three other WVS volunteers, to check that every child had a label attached somewhere to its clothing with its name and age and London address on. Some of the mothers had done a good job and sewn labels onto their children’s jackets – and these were the children with bags or little suitcases packed with their essential belongings, also labelled – but there were far more with no marks of identification and no possessions. It wasn’t that I was surprised, knowing how these families lived and the panic they were all in, but still it was a shock to come across tiny mites literally sewn into their shabby clothes. I only discovered this when I gently asked one little girl if she had any clothes with her and she said, bright as anything, I’ve got them all on, Miss, and she showed me the bottom of her jacket where underneath a jumper appeared, and, underneath that, the edge of some undergarment, and then she demonstrated with pride how it was all sewn together. She was called Amy and was 6, and there was no sign of any mother. This was a blessing, because the mothers slowed everything down and many of them were naturally very emotional and set the children off crying. The noise was appalling, what with the crying and the trains coming and going and the loudspeaker announcements all of which were incomprehensible. There were no clear rules about adults travelling with children. Children under 5 were the only ones meant to be accompanied by an adult, preferably their mother, but this wasn’t strictly enforced because, in those conditions, it couldn’t be. The trains were bursting with children, and every time one drew out of the station, there was a great wail from the remaining throng and frantic wavings and shouts of goodbye. A siren went off about midday and though it was a false alarm it terrified everyone and made the war feel real, and, in an awful way, once the siren had stopped, the boarding of trains was more orderly, because fear quietened everyone in the end. I don’t know how many hundreds of children and mothers we sent off that day, but it seemed like millions.
Then the next day I was asked to go with one of the groups to East Anglia (I was told our destination but the evacuees were not) to help with settling them into foster homes. The train went so slowly, stopping and starting all the time, and to my horror I realised even as we were drawing out of the station that because it had no corridor, we had no access to any lavatory. The inevitable happened within the first hour. The small children wet themselves and the older ones had to be persuaded to use a hastily improvised po, which was a biscuit tin one of the two mothers in the carriage had packed sandwiches in. If any of we three adults had needed to relieve ourselves, I don’t know what we would have done. What a scandalous lack of foresight on someone’s part, but then I suppose far worse indignities are to come.
It was a hot day and though we had the window let right down (and that was dangerous, with all the children wanting to hang out of it) it was stifling and of course smelly and all the children were thirsty and we hadn’t enough water with us. It was a nightmar
e journey, and no amount of singing and clapping games could make it anything else. We were so very glad to arrive in the country and everyone brightened up and looked eagerly for a reception committee who would welcome us and take us to homes where we could wash and be fed. There wasn’t one. There had been some mix-up and the WVS had not been told in time, so we arrived to find not a soul there. I and the other WVS members on the train had a quick conference and agreed that while one of us should go into the stationmaster’s office and telephone HQ the rest of us would line the children up and start walking in the direction of the village (we could see a church steeple). There was always the chance that our hosts would be waiting in the village. The children quite liked the walk and made no fuss. The hedgerows were a mystery to most of them and they kept stopping to pick the bright red hips, which they promptly tried to eat, in spite of warnings, and discovered tasted horrid. It was only a walk of about twenty minutes and when we got to the village we parked ourselves on the green and waited. We’d been there about ten more minutes when there was a sudden flurry of activity. Two cars arrived bringing local WVS women and at the same time doors opened all around us and the inhabitants came to inspect us. After fulsome apologies, we were led to the village hall where a trestle table was set up and lists produced and the process of settling our charges in began. What a business. The WVS woman in charge, a Miss Mallinson, called out names and the village women came forward and she checked her list and then children were chosen. It was a painful system. The better dressed and cleaner-looking children were of course picked first, leaving the real ragamuffins, especially the boys, standing exposed as undesirable, which I’m sure they perfectly well realised. Two little boys, who I swear were under 5, though they said they were 6, and who had no mother with them, stood for ages. No one would have them. One farmer’s wife said maybe she could use them on the farm – were they strong? But to my relief Miss Mallinson said no, they were not, couldn’t she see that, and the farmer’s wife lost interest. I ached for them. They were so stoical, standing there being stared at and rejected. Neither of them cried. One of them yawned repeatedly and the other whistled, to show, I suppose, that he didn’t care. Eventually, rather ashen-faced at the prospect, the vicar’s wife swallowed hard and took them. I came back to London late that evening, wretchedly aware of how unhappy some, maybe most, of the children would be, and thinking about Tilda and wondering how she had fared.
8 September
At WVS HQ today, helping with the paperwork. Phone call from Daphne before I left home – she has joined the WAAF and is loving it. She is going to be trained to plot planes, or so she says. She sounds delighted, as though she was enjoying the prospect of a party not of enduring a war. I suppose there will be plenty of young women like Daphne, who will see this war as exciting and a chance to do something different. She asked if I am going to join up. I said I’d never thought of it, believing I’d be more useful in the WVS. I don’t know what has happened to Daphne. She used to have such a sense of purpose. Well, this war will certainly restore it, in an awful way.
9 September
It is strange being in London when so many people have left. No bombs have been dropped so far, but there is an atmosphere of apprehension. The streets seem quiet, though buses still run. All the theatres and cinemas are closed, but most shops are open, though many of them have boards across their big plate-glass windows. No word as yet from Robert, but Charles phoned an hour ago, just as I got home, to say that Tilda and the twins have gone to his mother’s, after all. His sister insisted there was room for them all. I feel so happy about this. Blockley is as safe as anywhere can be, and however crowded the domestic arrangements, Tilda will be out of harm’s way. Perhaps she doesn’t know how lucky she is but, having been on that train, I do. Charles says nothing much is happening at his hospital yet, and in fact his work-load is lighter for the time being, with all the patients able to be moved already evacuated and no new ones admitted, so that the wards can be prepared for casualties. Not much news on the wireless. Only the Home Service seems to be broadcasting. I read all evening, a novel by Elizabeth Bowen, but I couldn’t get into it – their lives seemed so irrelevant, my mind kept wandering to the evacuees and those two last little boys. I thought of the vicar’s wife taking them home and trying to do something simple and obvious, like giving them a bath, not appreciating that they’d almost certainly never seen a bath never mind got into one. They’d be horrified by her wanting to undress them, and she’d be horrified to discover they had nits in their hair and all kinds of skin infections. Will all this be good for them? I suppose that’s the way to look at it, but it is hard to believe.
*
Millicent works with the WVS until June the following year, mainly concerning herself with the evacuees and their placements. She doesn’t say where Robert has been posted, only that his regiment is the Manchesters and that at the moment he is safe and comfortable but bored by his administrative job. By January 1940 two fifths of the children and nine tenths of the mothers have returned home, convinced that London is safe after all because there has been no bombing. But what was called ‘the phoney war’ ended in the spring. Food rationing begins in earnest, and Churchill forms a National Government. Then, after the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk at the beginning of June, the war really hits Londoners.
26 June 1940
THE FIRST AIR-RAID last night. It was such a lovely night. The moon was full and everything seemed so peaceful and harmless that the shock was all the greater. I was asleep when it began, at about one in the morning, and I could not at first imagine what the noise was and thought I was dreaming. But then the thundering grew louder and the screech of the sirens nearer and the house seemed to shake, and I realised, my God, we are being bombed. I got up, pulled on my clothes and lit the candle I have had ready for months for just such an emergency, in case the electricity was cut – not that it was but I didn’t dare press the switch until later to find out. I went down the stairs, with my heart thumping, convinced that the walls were shuddering, and then I didn’t know what it would be best to do. I opened the door into the garden and saw the whole sky blazing with flashes of brilliant white light and further over to the east hung a great smoke cloud ringed with red. I thought I might make a dash for it, to the Armstrongs’ shelter next door, which they had invited me to share, but the noise of the bombs seemed to fade and I thought I would look foolish going there if the raid was now over, which in fact it was. I learned this afternoon that the bombs dropped were nowhere near us, so I don’t know how I can have felt my house shake, but I swear I did. When I went back to bed, I saw I had left my gas mask on the dressing-table – how careless. There is a Gas lecture at the Town Hall tomorrow and though I was not going to bother to go to it, now I will, and I will even stay for the respirator drill practice following it.
27 June
Very busy all day helping with the bombed-out families. Nobody was killed, but the impact of the bombs brought down the roofs, and in some cases the back walls of the adjacent houses, and the families had to be rehoused. They had already been evacuated last September but they’d hated the country and most came home at Christmas and now they don’t want to leave. I would have thought being bombed would make them want to hurry back to the safety of the country but no, they all had tales of not being welcome there and the food being ‘funny’. They had nothing to do and were looked down upon and their accents were mocked. We gave them sandwiches and tea, and those who had fled without clothes were kitted out, probably in better garments than they’d left behind. The atmosphere wasn’t at all as anyone might have anticipated, there were no tears or signs of distress, but an air of excitement and even of congratulation, that the Jerries hadn’t got them and never would. I don’t think many of them realise how grave the situation is and if I hadn’t started to listen to the wireless regularly I don’t think I would either. London has seemed so quiet: it has been impossible to think there is a war on.
6 July
Met Charles today, at his house. It is the first day he has been home since Dunkirk. He looked exhausted and it was easy to believe he hadn’t had a proper sleep for weeks. His hospital has taken some of the wounded and, though it is not his field, he helped attend to them because there is a shortage of surgeons. He said it was frightening being plunged into such work and he’d been desperately trying to remember what he’d learned as a student but never practised. He had never done an amputation in his life but had to do two within the first day. The men arrived in a pitiful state with their uniforms soaked in blood as well as sea water and the nurses had to cut them out and had a tough job doing it. He has been doing a course on burns, as well as everything else, to be ready when the real bombing starts. He said I’d better get myself out of London before it does. But the usual arguments still hold: I am of use here, if not as much use as Charles, and I am single and childless and have no real justification for fleeing. In fact, I have been given the opportunity to go to America at the end of this month, accompanying the first batch of children to be sent there, but I have said no. I find growing in me, to my surprise, a real sense of patriotism and of duty. If Robert were here, he would be incredulous. It is so strong, this feeling that I want to do something more meaningful than WVS work. Driving, maybe. I hear ambulance drivers will be needed. Or should I join one of the forces, like Daphne?
Diary of an Ordinary Woman Page 25