Chapter 7: Entertainment and Endeavour - March 1941 to July 1941

Hello everyone, Luke here.

We're back with the next chapter of the diary after about a month away. A month between posts I think is a lot more do-able, compared to every single week.

Something a little extra also - I had the great pleasure of meeting the woman responsible for this diary becoming available in the format I have it. Her name is Kathy McKee - my father and got to meet her, her husband and their family in late September.
They very kindly welcomed us into their home, and we spent a few hours talking about granny, our relationship with them, and just how all this happened (more details in this post - The WWII Diary of Margaret Head)

As it turns out - this diary (as written by my granny, Margaret Maton nee Head) - was typed up by granny in the 1980s, printed and bound with string and between slats of cardboard.

Granny gave copies to a number of people, including a close friend of hers - Shirley. Shirley, at some point, showed Ms McKee, who thought - as she told us "this cannot be something that isn't shared" - to which Ms McKee then put together as a digitally accessible file. After that, it was shared with my family and I - thus this blog was born.

The diary was submitted (with permissions from my father and his brother - my uncle), if I remember correctly, to a war museum in Woking, England - though the specific name I don't know. I'll edit this once I learn the specifics.

Content warning: Child death. If you don't want to read about that, please skip the April 23rd entry.

It has taken eighteen years for my parents to lay the foundations for my life and I was interested to read that in 1923, the year that I was born, it was first noticed that there was settlement of the old Waterloo Bridge.
It was not until 1936 that permission was granted for a new bridge to be built.
At the time the new bridge was the finest illustration of the great economies of weight and space that could be effected by using reinforced concrete as the constructional material.

The new bridge has almost twice as much road area as the previous one, but it has less than three-quarters of its weight.
The long spans and shallowness of the parabolic arches were attained by welding an apparent tangle of steel reinforcement inside the concrete.
All the Portland Stone on the outside was put on afterwards and the joints made vertical so that, if the bridge sags appreciably with the weight of the traffic crossing it, the stone will not crack but open up along these joints.
The shaping of the bridge leaves a large amount of room for navigation on the river.

Contrasting with the eight 20 ft. wide piers of the old bridge there are four 2 ft. 3 in. piers for the new bridge.
These new piers are supported on a platform of reinforced concrete 27 ft. wide and 6 ft. thick resting in the river bed.
The settlement of the piers is allowed for by having twenty three-hundred-ton hydraulic jacks placed between the arches and each pier.
These jacks can raise
the bridge by the amount of settlement, thus avoiding cracks and consequent weakening of the bridge.

When viewing the bridge from the Embankment you can see a twin girder construction with cross-girders above, which relieves the tunnel effect of the wide arches.
By calculation it was found that with certain loads crossing the bridge the cantilever where the bridge joins the land would lift.
To stop this, 540 tons of iron are attached to the cantilevers at either end of the bridge to keep them down.

At the start of the war, after nearly four and a half years work, the structure was nearly completed so they hastily attached improvised hand rails and are going to replace them after the war.
The war has interrupted the building of my character too and I hope that my character has been sufficiently reinforced to withstand everything that the future has in store for me.
With all the intensive bombing of London I am wondering if this bridge is going to be there for completion and whether I shall be here to see its completion. At least there isn’t any wood in it to burn so it will have to be several direct hits to totally destroy it.

March 5th
It was the first performance of the play tonight. Mum and Mrs Binns came to see it and enjoyed it very much.
I enjoyed myself on the stage, playing an old lady wearing a purple dress and high comb, skewering a grey wig. This comb holds a mantilla in place.
If I am not careful I shall lose that mantilla in one of my head-shaking, foot-stamping frenzies.
Mr Franey took some photos of us and I bet if I show them to my children one day they will never pick out their Mum.

March 6th
Both Mr Denholm and Mr Lerigo congratulated me this morning on a superb performance.
Mr Callard says he’s coming again tonight to see me as he reckons it is as good as going to the West End theatre.

There is no black-out in the class rooms so we have to use Miss Dean’s room as a green room.
She did not like the way we cleared it up last night so Cliff and I were ordered to shake her carpet and do the dusting this morning. We are having much too much fun to be worried by her tantrums.
We managed to drop the carpet ‘accidentally for the purpose’ in a puddle while we were shaking it outside.

March 8th
I’ve written to Gordon with all the details of my acting career. I bet he has a good laugh over the fate of that carpet.
We made eight pounds profit and so we can give three pounds to the school charities fund and send another three pounds to the Red Cross. We must keep a couple of pounds for the club funds.

Mr Chapman has been to offer me a holiday job with the London County Council.
His London school is evacuated to Copthorne and they will need extra teachers for the holidays.
He cycles there each day so I can go with him on my bicycle but I expect we shall need to leave an hour for the ride as I bet he doesn’t tear along and I shall have to go at his pace.

March 11th
Some bombs fell on Langford’s Farm at Ardenrun yesterday. That is the closest they have fallen to us as their fields adjoin the ‘Works’. One of Mrs Binns’ daughters, Josie, fell down the cellar steps at her home in Hastings because they have lots of ‘hit and run’ raids on the south coast when no sirens sound.
She was trying to get her three children out of the line of fire and was lucky not to have broken any bones.

We have a new Wimshurst machine in school. It is the first bit of new science equipment to arrive for Physics since the war started.
We had to assemble it ourselves but I learnt quite a lot about electrostatics while I was doing it.

We are not having any examinations at the end of this term but members of staff can devise their own means of testing us.

I am sorry as I need all the examination experience before tackling my Higher School Certificate.
All the interruptions that we have had have blown any chance I might have had of gaining an exemption from an Intermediate Bachelor of Science examination.

March 17th
I think the Girls Games Cup could be within Tenchleys grasp this year because this week we have beaten Detillens 5-1 and Grants 2-0 at hockey.
I scored six of those seven goals and it could be all the raw carrots that I eat in place of the sweets that I miss so much.

We used to have chewing gum and oranges for the games but now Dad always gives me a bunch of raw carrots for my team to eat at half time.
The Ministry of Food tell us that they are good for night blindness but in spite of my phenomenal consumption I’m still a blundering idiot in the dark.

March 19th
Apart from the nagging fear for Gordon and the others involved in the war my life is quite good at the moment.
I have passed my medical for King’s College and found a stamp album and birthday book for Barbara’s birthday which is on April 4th.

Not only was I awarded my hockey colours but at their presentation Taffy gave a little speech.
He said “It is the first time in the history of the school that any of our sports teams have won every match and this achievement is mainly attributable to Margaret’s inspiration and captaincy.”

For a minute I was quite taken aback but I recovered in time to say “Anything that I have achieved is thanks to the unfailing patience and instruction of Miss Morris.”
I hope that she was gratified by the spontaneous applause from the school when I mentioned her name. She may be called Moggie and feared by all of us but she is a wonderful teacher and everything she does is for our benefit and, if I ever qualify as a teacher, then I just hope I can be half as good as her.

I am not very fond of playing netball and have never managed to put the ball through that hoop, but today I played quite a good game as Centre and we beat Detillens by 23-9.
Cliff and I have been given permission to organise a boys versus girls hockey match for the school to watch on the last day of term before breaking up for the Easter holidays.
I hope neither the weather nor the Germans interfere as it should be a great entertainment.

March 20th
There was a very bad raid on Hull last night. They have not mentioned any places on the wireless but the King and Queen have gone there to be with the people in their trials.

Mum is very concerned because her younger sister Lily is a Chief Air Raid Warden so she would be out in the streets the whole time.
The Jerries have been having a good go at London again too with plenty more people being killed.

March 26th
Mum has got a letter at last from Hull. There is a photo in it for her.
It was on the front page of the newspaper and shows Auntie Lily curtsying while she is shaking hands with the Queen.

Bob has not been called in yet so he is still a messenger boy.
In his letter to me he says he was away for a couple of days for ‘attestation’ and on arriving about ten miles out of Hull there was no way to get any further by train because all the railway lines were out of commission.
He decided to hitch a lift and was only a mile down the road when he realised he had hitched a taxi.
However, it all turned out all right because the driver knew Bob didn’t know he was hitching a taxi, but as the driver was on his way home he was pleased to have Bob for company.

March 28th
We had a couple of raids today but now the school no longer dashes into the shelters when the siren goes.
Instead we carry on lessons in the downstairs classrooms and corridors while outside a a ‘spotter’ waits with a klaxon at the ready.

Now they are not in constant use the shelters have been improved with much better ventilation and lighting as well as some form of heating.
I happened to be doing a Physics practical examination so I had to stay upstairs in the laboratory as I couldn’t leave my experiment.
Mr Callard kept the laboratory door and the fire escape door in the corridor wide open so that if the klaxon went we could scramble down to the ground.

As that was my last test for the term I’ve borrowed a book to read.
It belongs to Cliff and he has been urging me to read it all the term.
He also warned me to make sure my Mother doesn’t see it because it is all about SEX. It is called ‘No Orchids for Miss Blandish’.

April 1st
I’ve finished the book and returned it to Cliff. I thought it was a load of rubbish and much preferred ‘Gone with the Wind’.

Cliff and I have been playing an April Fool joke on Mr Callard.
We have glued up his cough sweet tin which he keeps in the laboratory drawer.
I wish we could see his face when he finally prises it open to find the few odd screws we have put in there to ensure a rattle.

We’ve had two letters from Gordon. He has completed his solo flight within a week and has sent me some African stamps and snapshots of Victoria Falls and other places of interest.
He thinks he might be home in August.

There was another letter from Hull for Mum and they had another bad raid three nights ago.
Only an hour after Bob delivered a message to the Air Raid Control’s Headquarters it got a direct hit which killed most of the people there.

Mum knows the corner of Ferensway and Spring Bank where it was situated and it is very near to Scalby Grove where Granddad is living with Auntie Lily.
She is most distressed at the thought of the threat to her relatives’ lives and the destruction of her girlhood city.
The city centre is virtually wiped out.
The filing section on the fifth floor of the Education Offices is now in the basement and most of the other administration blocks are in the same state.

It is astounding that the statue to William Wilberforce near the docks is untouched, while the rest of the city is in ruins.

April 7th
We had a telegram from Gordon today to say he has been made a sergeant.
There were two letters as well and in one of them was a studio portrait of him for Mum’s birthday present.
It is in colour and he has grown a moustache which makes him look like cousin Albert.

This afternoon when I called on Aunt Fan to see if she had got any eggs for us I had a look at the unexploded bomb in the field opposite to her house.
There wasn’t much to see as they have removed the percussion cap and fuses.

Allan Fuller is on leave and has been to see us.
He is a bomber pilot but we didn’t ask him about his operations as I expect he is anxious to forget them for a few days.

We had heard that Mabel’s Mother was ill but when she came to tea today she told me that her Mother had attempted to commit suicide because all the raids have turned her brain.
The doctor has arranged for her to go into care and Mabel is going to join the A.T.S.

Joan Le Coq also came to tea with Barbara and they have still heard nothing about her Father.
It is horrible to know personally families that are suffering so much from this war.

April 20th
The raids are very bad during the night again. There are some new incendiaries known as ‘flaming onions’.
They look like falling balls of flame and can be quite frightening when you see one coming towards you for the first time.
I expect we shall get used to them soon. I think I was blasted awake every hour last night by something and the All Clear didn’t go until 5 a.m.

Bombs fell at Crowhurst church, Haxted Mill and Chartham Park.
All of them were in fields so that was a few less for the Londoners.
On the wireless they reckoned there were at least five hundred bombers over but twenty four of them were shot down.

Gertie arrived this afternoon, having left Frances with their married sister in Chelsea.
They lost their second home last night and she thinks the next one must be outside London as Frances is beginning to show signs of cracking.

Dad reckons the safest place is Devon or Cornwall.

April 21st
I had a letter from Gordon this morning with two pounds in it for my birthday present so Gertie went to East Grinstead with me to buy a tennis racket.
I have been saving for the last seven months so was able to get a Slazenger that cost two pounds, seventeen shillings and sixpence.

Since Grants beat Detillens in the last netball match of the season Tenchleys must beat Grants at tennis next term to win the Girls Games Cup.
That is a formidable task as Audrey Baker is the captain of Grants and Miss Morris says if there wasn’t a war on she could have entered Audrey as a Junior for Wimbledon.

Skip this entry - April 23rd - if you do not want to read about child death.

April 23rd
My pleasure in my tennis racket was very short-lived because there is an appalling
tragedy at Guy’s Farm which has driven everything else into the background.
I have just returned home from there to tell Mum the full story.

Gwen (Jack’s wife) thought that Tony, their four year old son, was with Jack’s mother in the main farmhouse and it was not until Jack came home for dinner that they realised he was missing.
Jack found him in the horse pond but he was face down and quite dead.
This is the first time I have seen somebody that I cared for dead.

The victims of the war are bad enough but that little waxen face looks like the effigies on the top of the Cobham tombs in Lingfield church.

I cannot reconcile it with the chubby-cheeked little boy chasing the geese round in the farmyard.
I keep thinking that only last week I heard Jack shouting at Tony to leave the old gander alone or he would get mad and peck a lump out of Tony’s ear.

With all the death and destruction going on around me I thought I had accepted death and suffering but I am shaken to the core and I cannot see why a little child should have his life snatched away before he has had a chance to look at this world.

It is so terrible that I cannot cry but I am living in a sort of stunned state without taking in anything that is going on around me.

Continue reading here - April 28th - if you skipped April 23rd content

April 28th
In Gordon’s letter he mentioned that he had not received any letters from us so I expect they are all at the bottom of the Atlantic. As we do not want him to think we have forgotten him I have been to the post office and sent him a telegram from all of us.

We started school again today and it is my last term. I don’t know whether it was thinking about that or because of the other things on my mind but I managed to play the wrong hymn at assembly.

Gunner, another upper sixth former, is in hospital with food poisoning so I am not the only one of us feeling groggy.

I was so tired that I asked to be excused from orchestra practice.

May 8th
Bob Barrulet came into school to see us. He is in the Air Ministry and not liking it at all.

Mr Franey had just pinned up the proofs of the photographs of the play so he cheered up when he saw them and Cliff and I told him about our antics with the carpet.

We had a gas-mask drill which meant I missed a Chemistry period which I can ill afford.

On the way home I found some saccharin in Boots and four Crunchies in the sweet shop near the station.

At the moment all the school dinners are cold ones because there is no fuel available for cooking.
Fortunately I like salads but the sandwiches are a bit of a bore.

May 16th
I caught the early train this morning so that I was first in the queue at Howard’s cake shop.
During the hour that I was waiting for it to open I got quite a lot of knitting done and Mum was pleased with the cakes that I managed to get for her.

We’ve had three more letters from Gordon and he has passed his ‘Wings’ examination.

This afternoon to lift the gloom all the sixth form went to the pictures at the Plaza. It was a jolly good film called “All This and Heaven too”.

I’m glad I decided to go with the rest of them. London’s taking a terrible battering again.
There is so much debris on the line that both Fenchurch Street and Waterloo Stations are closed.
At Charing Cross Station there is an unexploded parachute mine hanging from the rafters and at Victoria there are four unexploded bombs.
Paddington and Liverpool Street have received direct hits and since St. Pancras, King’s Cross, Cannon Street and Euston have all been damaged the only main line station that I can think of still in operation is Marylebone.

There were more fires and this time bits of charred paper fell in our garden from them. They have destroyed a lot of books at the British Museum and they called the moon on May 10th a ‘bombers moon’.

The House of Commons has been burnt down for lack of fire watchers and there was an awful conflagration at the Elephant and Castle.
They say there were nearly 1,500 killed and about 2,000 seriously injured.At the last count there were 25 Wren churches destroyed.

I hope that Gertie and Frances are safely out of it because the thought of them joining the ranks of the dead and injured frightens me.
They are still talking about drafting the A.T.S. into the Anti-Aircraft batteries.

Bob Payne, the postman’s son, is home on leave, he is a radio mechanic in the R.A.F.

May 28th
I have two letters, both of which trouble me.
The first one is from Mabel. She has jilted Gordon and married a serviceman on her station.
She does not say whether she has written to tell Gordon and I don’t know how I can tell Mum about it.
I think I had better wait for an opportunity to get Dad on his own as he will know what to do.

The other letter is from London University. I thought I was taking my Physics and Chemistry practical examinations in the school laboratories but I have been told to report to Imperial College which is in Exhibition Road, South Kensington.

While I was reading that letter there was an air raid in progress and I don’t know whether I am more frightened of the examination or having to take it in central London during an air raid.

May 31st
I’ve been awake most of the night with toothache but I am more cheerful today because we have had a letter from Gordon telling us he has got his ‘wings’.

On the news we have sunk the Bismarck so we are celebrating these events by eating a month's sweet ration all in one go.
Dad is tucking into a Cadbury’s peppermint cream. I have a Mars, Barbara has a bag of dolly mixture and Mum a bar of her favourite Nestle’s Bourneville chocolate.

We are trying to forget that the Bismarck sank H.M.S. Hood between Iceland and Greenland and in those icy waters only three survived of the complement of 1,300 men and 90 officers.

That man Hitler has a lot to answer for but there is a rumour that his envoy landed by parachute in Scotland so perhaps he has had enough of this senseless slaughter.

At last the Americans have joined in but it needed the sinking of half their fleet in a place called Pearl Harbour to persuade them.

Author's note: The attack on Pearl Harbor in fact took place on the 7th December 1941. I don't know what happened here with granny's writings, but her dates are certainly far off for this event.

In regards to his "envoy" landing in Scotland, this is 'the flight of Rudolf Hess.' Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a leading member of the Nazi Party, and appointed Deputy Führer to Hitler in 1933.
Rudolf was concerned that Germany was going to fight a war on two fronts - and desperately tried for a peace treaty with the UK - ending up in Scotland on the 10th May 1941 to try and meet with the Duke of Hamilton.
He was instead captured by British authorities and held until the end of the war, standing trial at the 1946 Nuremberg trials. He was convicted of crimes against peace, and conspiracy with other German leaders to commit crimes.

June 6th
We now have double Summertime and this afternoon we played tennis even though the siren had gone.

The planes were very high but we kept a good ear out for the klaxon.

I am going up to Lingfield church tomorrow to see Gladys Penfold married.
She is marrying somebody called Weeden and I think he is in the Navy.
At one time she was Gordon’s sweetheart and I carried notes between them.
It is a shame that things haven’t worked out so well for Gordon as they have for Gladys as they both got engaged about the same time.

I have been elected tennis Captain and Rosalind Ibbotson is my vice-captain.
I think I will make Rosalind and Audrey Baker the first couple for the team.

Rosalind and her sister Gillian are always quarrelling so I will make Gillian my partner then she can say she is playing with the captain and Rosalind can say she is first couple.

At the same time it will give a boost to Audrey’s morale as she was only elected to the committee.
Once Gillian settles down we can make a good couple as she can control the back of the court while I leap around at the net, although if necessary we are able to reverse these roles.

I have had a talk with her and we are not going to tell anybody, but our ambition is to break the devastating combination of Miss Morris and Mr Callard in the Staff versus School match at the end of the year.
They have never been beaten and the nearest anybody has come to winning the proffered sixpence from Miss Morris was when the Moulding sisters paired up a few years ago.

June 26th
The Higher School Certificate examinations started today.

I could do this morning’s Physics paper but this afternoon’s was awful.
As soon as these examinations are over I must train hard for the Athletic Sports, as I am hopeless at both high jump and netball shooting.
I must excel at the other events to stand any chance of getting the Victoria Ludorum.

On one end of the mantlepiece is Gordon’s Victor Ludorum and I want to put mine on the other end.

June 29th
It is Gordon’s birthday today. He is twenty one and I am breaking my heart because I am not able to share it with him.

Oh my beloved brother, may there be somebody to give you a good time on this day even though I cannot be there with you.

July 9th
I had my last examination today and I am glad to get it over as they have all been pretty awful and there have been air raids most of the time.
Then Mrs Fuller had a telegram to say Alan is missing believed killed and to top it all Dad is ill which means that I have more to do at the ‘Works’.

In one of the air raids during the dinner hour we saw a German parachutist coming down a little further up Bluehouse Lane so a couple of the boys grabbed their Student Training Corps rifles and marched him off to the Police Station.

At least that was quite exciting for them.

July 12th
We beat the Old Students 62-37 at tennis today.
Alan Jarrett played cricket for the Old Students and at tea time he sat next to me to hear all the news of Gordon.

Alan is really quite devastating in that uniform with its new white wings and his intense blue eyes and charming lopsided smile.
I could very easily fall in love with him and I think Gordon would approve.
There are only two boys in that family and his older brother Ronald is in the Army.
I think Alan said he is in the Royal Horse Artillery.

July 22nd
We beat St. Michael’s at tennis today and that is quite an achievement.

My strategy certainly paid off because in the first group of matches their first couple beat Audrey and Rosalind, but thinking they had coped with our best players they relaxed in the next group of matches and were unable to recover from our early advantage.

Gillian and I had already beaten their second couple and Rosalind and Audrey had no problems with them either.

The four of us have all been awarded our tennis colours and Taffy remarked that it was unusual for four out of six members of a team to get their colours.

July 24th
This is a really great day for me.
Gillian and I are going to frame our sixpences.
Although the score was 6 games to 2 that does not reflect how close a contest it was.

Nearly every one of those games had several deuces to play through and in the end it was youth and fitness that defeated superior technique and experience.
We were playing long after everybody else had finished their matches but the school did not disperse as everybody enjoyed the battle.

On Sports Day I won that Victoria Ludorum too and that was just as close a contest.
I needed the one extra point awarded for breaking the record at long jump to pip Doris Butler for it.
Tenchleys won the Sports Cup as well as the Girls Games Cup so I will leave school tomorrow in a blaze of glory.

I have no idea what the future has in store for me and sometimes I wonder if there is any future at all, but just at the moment I will enjoy what I have today.