Chapter 4: Sorrow and Survival - September 1940 to October 1940

We're back. I'm back. Sort of. Mostly.

I was made redundant from my job back in December, and I remain unemployed for the time being, despite my best efforts. Unfortunately that's left me feeling incredibly directionless, which extended to this blog being put on halt for...THREE MONTHS!?

At the risk of sounding self-important, I decided today, out of the blue, that I feel like this blog - that being this specific section, of Granny's diary - is important for me to continue.

It's a piece of history. There are many slices of this part of history found in books, blogs and documentaries. I feel that this is just as unique and special as any number of them.

Every part of this diary has pieces of it that brew emotions that I don't really know how to deal with sometimes. I feel like that's important, too. Being able to grow emotionally, especially with how emotionally stunted most of my life has been.

If this diary is how I grow, or at least plays a part in how I grow, I'll take it. I need to keep doing this.

So here we are, returning to the Second World War. This time, a very short period of September and October of 1940.

Simply based on that short period of time, without reading onward, I knew that this would be a densely packed, and likely highly emotional time in Granny's life.

She opens with saying that she feels a thousand years old - at only the age of 17. Still, the subtext of what she says is in great form, with mention of "...all my schooling is interrupted", which says so much about her values. She carried those values all throughout her life, all the way through the years that I knew her from child to adult.

We begin this entry, of course, with what is found at the beginning of every chapter - what Granny wrote as a sort of introductory and preceding the dated entries.

As with all that comes after my own writing at the beginning of these entries, everything is verbatim and written as is in the diary.

The only changes I have made is to the formatting to improve readability, with added supplemental images, internet links and other media.

Last year at this time I was a child. This year at 17 I feel a thousand years old. I have been shot at, bombed and watched men dragged off to an internment camp, others plunged to their deaths, and all my schooling is interrupted.

Gordon has gone and sometimes I feel proud and very brave but that feeling is rapidly followed by an awful fear. I hope it does not get any worse. Surely it is not possible.

If we are going to survive this war then everybody must be involved. Uncle Jim who runs and comperes his own amateur concert group in Yorkshire is entertaining workers in the factories as well as the troops stationed in army camps and at various aerodromes.

These factories which are turning out shells, bombs, aeroplane parts, tanks, guns, hand grenades and even torpedo engines, are mainly staffed by women.
In one of them out of a staff of 209 only 9 of them are men.
These factories previously made soap, carpets and even perambulators. Some of the factories work together to turn out a complete aeroplane.
One of the group was a motor factory, another a locomotive engineering place and yet another made motor mowers.
On the East coast there is a factory making the camouflage netting that we have seen so much of round here.

Barbara and I have been helping Jack Guy on his farm. If we don’t get the harvest in then we won’t eat.
It is very hard work and Jack tried to persuade me to take a bit of rest by leading the horses round.
He has a couple of huge Clydesdales called Mary and Louise to pull the wagons round the field. I am terrified of them and their great teeth and enormous hooves.

I can handle a pitch fork now but it still blisters my hands. I can work on the top of the stack to transfer the hay or sheaves from the wagons to the stack but I need an expert to work with me to arrange it so that we don’t end up with a lopsided heap that cannot be thatched.

When I work on the field gathering up the sheaves to put them in ‘stooks’ the thistles in them tear my hands and arms.
All of it is hot and dirty work and I was surprised to hear Vivienne and Dorothy Deacock have joined the Women's Land Army, as when they were in class with me I always thought of them as fragile beauties with their lovely auburn hair and pale creamy complexions.

Jean Baker is another surprising member. I often visited her home where her father is the local stone-mason and funeral director and I wonder what her family think of her choice.
I had expected the farming families such as those of Janet Skinner and Joyce Stevens to encourage their daughters to get into the khaki uniform that the land girls wear.

I don’t think the girls from my form who are now with the government are much better off because most of them are in the Ministries.
Molly Argent is with Home Security, Margaret Johnson and Grace Hodge with Supply, Eileen Wright Air [sic - I believe Granny means that Eileen Wright is with the Air office], and of course my friend Mary Simmons is at the War Office.
Joan Sorge who is with the Ministry of Food is an Old Girl too but she is lucky because they have put her in charge of the local food office so she doesn't have to travel up to London anymore.

There are two members of staff at school every night on ‘fire-watching duty’. Mr Davis wanted Miss Morris to go on duty with Miss Dean but Miss Morris heard from Kingston that, as it is a voluntary duty, she could make her own terms.
She is on duty with Mr Lerigo. Mind you the powers that be have shown their disapproval of ‘Mixed Watching’.

There is only a fire in the mistress’s common-room and about midnight the female has to retire to the cold of Miss Dean’s room while the male continues to enjoy the warmth of the fire. Exploding bombs and fire are not the only hazard for the people in the shelters in London.

The shelter at Balham tube station was flooded by water from a broken sewage pipe, drowning 64 people.
I’m glad that there are only two Underground railway lines which go under the Thames and those have been fitted with special flood gates.
London is so vast that no matter how many bombs Hitler drops there it will never be destroyed.

Some sites are being bombed many times over but having been destroyed in the first instance it is just providing somewhere for more bombs to drop without doing much harm.

It is a much different situation in the smaller cities where a couple of nights of heavy bombing can destroy the whole of their centres.
Plymouth, Exeter, Southampton and Bristol are all reeling from the avalanche of fire and high explosives that rained down on them from the night skies. The bombing raids have extended as far as Lancashire, South Wales, Yorkshire and Tyneside.

I’ve heard that there are Boulton and Paul Defiants operating at Biggin Hill and they shot down a couple of Heinkels.

There are also some new planes about with a secret weapon. They are called Bristol Beaufighters.
They need an experienced crew to fly them, but with an armament of six machine-guns and four cannons they are a formidable weapon.
When Gordon comes home I must ask him how a crew of two manage to operate that number of weapons.

September 9th
The L.C.C. [Blog note: London County Council] are keeping their schools open all the holidays and giving their teachers leave on a roster system. Mr Chapman, who is one of their teachers, came to see me tonight to offer me a job. I have written to Gordon to see what he thinks.
Yesterday they killed about another four hundred people in London and every main line south is blocked by bomb debris.

Blog note: According to https://www.battleofbritain1940.net/0038.html, on September 9th, 1940, the Guildhall (a municipal building in the Moorgate area of London), as well as the Bank of England suffered hefty damage. From the provided link: "In the East End again bombs fell on the dockland area and a number of nearby residential houses were destroyed including a school which was being used as a temporary shelter to homeless families. Altogether, over 400 people were killed on this nights attacks and 1,400 people were injured."

This supports the 400 number that Granny quotes in her September 9th entry.

September 10th
There are some trains running and we managed to get to school. I went to see Taffy to get his opinion about that job. Bill Ellis came to see us.
We have had planes about all day. Sometimes it is difficult to avoid all the debris that falls on us from the sky.
Mum worries about us all but I am glad we don’t go down the shelter in the back garden.

I can get some sleep in my own bed in spite of all the outside racket. In fact it was the All Clear going at 5.50 a.m. that woke me up this morning.
I was talking to Miss Davis about applying for the University in our Maths lesson when the siren went at 12.40 p.m.

I hope I get an opportunity to finish our conversation as she wants me to apply to King’s College London which is where she graduated.

September 11th
We were met at Lingfield station this morning with the news no more school until
further notice. We must report there every day for the latest developments. In the raid yesterday an aerial torpedo fell in the back garden of the house opposite to the school. Fortunately for all of us it didn’t explode! The bomb disposal squad are hoping to defuse it and learn something of the latest German technology.

As I was already at the station I caught the usual train and went out to Mr Callard’s house to get some work. I didn’t realise that he and his wife are so frightened but while he was helping me the siren went.

We all had to go down in the basement where they have a mattress on the floor and sand-bags piled up all round the walls. They sleep down there every night and I noticed every time there was a thud or jolt during the raid he hesitated in his explanations.
Neither of them would let me go when he had finished because the All Clear hadn’t gone.

When it eventually went at 11.20 a.m. I didn’t tell them there wasn’t a train due until 1.55 p.m. or they would not have allowed me to sit at the station all that time.
All the trains that they hear going by their house are going to Edenbridge and there is only the odd one for Lingfield.

When I got home it was very interesting as we had an All Clear at 5 p.m. and a warning at 5.10 p.m. and I could see German planes going in both directions. There were formations coming back from London and formations going in.
Our fighters were getting in amongst all of them.They were climbing and diving, firing at the planes going in to London on the upper level, then blastingaway at those at the lower level which were coming back.
The fighters then levelled out and with a quick roll they turned and climbed back into the sun.

The All Clear went again at 5.25 p.m. so I reckon the last lot of raiders went home by a different route. For the first time today we have lost more planes than we have destroyed. Germans 24 and us 29. They are talking about letting the A.T.S. [Blog note: Auxiliary Territorial Service] join the ‘ack-ack’ batteries to make mixed units.

I expect the women will prove just as good at shooting as they have at everything else, but when I volunteer it will be for the W.R.N.S [Blog note: Women's Royal Naval Service].
Of course Gordon wants me to join the W.A.A.F. [Blog note: Women's Auxiliary Air Force], but it is very difficult to get in the W.R.N.S. unless you have a family connection with the Royal Navy.

I wonder if I could manufacture some relationship with Ronnie Vine? I’m not sure whether I would suffer from sea-sickness but it is very rare for women to go to sea although Uncle Jim knows one woman in the Merchant Navy.

She is a qualified ship’s engineer. She helped get the men out at Dunkirk and has been bombed in the Atlantic convoys too.
Uncle Fred has got women among his gangs of plate-layers too. It seems so long ago that he got me a seat on the Flying Scotsman for that momentous journey when she broke the speed record for a train.

When he met me on arrival at Darlington station I went with him to his office and met some of the plate-layers and wheel-tappers. They had all been involved in ensuring that the rails and rolling stock were in tip-top condition.

September 13th
There were bombs at Dormansland today. Judders Cottages were hit and Daphne
Sheppard is injured. Buckingham Palace has been hit today too.

I have given up going to the crash sites because it grieves me to see our lovely woods, where in the spring, Dad and I gathered pale primroses, shy dog-violets and fragile wood-anemones, have now become the last resting places of so many young men who are blown to pieces when their planes hit the ground.

September 14th
As it’s Saturday they went home early this morning (4.50 a.m.) to have a good
week-end.
11 a.m. No, I was wrong, here they are back again. Perhaps they have come for lunch? They can go away again as fast as they like because we’ve got a cricket match arranged for this afternoon.
10 p.m. We were lucky they departed at 12 noon and did not return until 4 p.m. and very soon it was obvious that we would have to pack it up as things were getting a bit hectic.

In fact a bomb fell in another field of Lyon Farm which is where the cricket field is situated.
The men who were on leave enjoyed themselves while it lasted, but Gordon will be pretty mad with me when I tell him Harry Longley bowled me middle stump with an underarm when I had scored 25.

I did have the satisfaction of doing the same to him with one of those fast under arm breaks that Gordon taught me when I first started playing cricket with him.
When I got home there was a tin of Devon Cream which had come in the afternoon post from him.
I didn’t know there was still any cream being made as we haven’t seen any since the war started.

September 15th
We’ve had a terrible day today. While I was trying to teach my Sunday School
class there was so much noise outside that I could not make myself heard above the din.

In the end Miss Stone decided to send all the children home and I went down the church to practise the organ until it was time for morning service.

I noticed the vicar cut his sermon short today and it was a bit dicy getting home on my bicycle as there seemed to be planes falling out of the sky all around me. There were shoals of bombers going over and large fighter escorts with them.
It looks as if our Spitfires get in amongst the Messerschmitts and break them up so that the Hurricanes can get in amongst the bombers. Park Farm has collected a couple of fighters and there is another bomber down on the farm at Puttenden.

There were a couple of parachutists in the distance and four others, all close together, falling towards a field by the road but Sgt. Hales was already in position so I cycled on and cannot tell whether they were theirs or ours, but as there were four so close together my bet is they were crew from a German bomber.
We actually had an All Clear at 1.15 p.m. but the warning went again at 2.30 p.m.

Henry and Rosetta were down visiting their daughter Pamela who is our evacuee and as soon as the All Clear went at 7.50 p.m. we rushed them up to the bus stop and were fortunate enough to get them on a Green Line heading in the right direction.

Mabel (Gordon’s girl-friend) had also come to have tea with us so while I was with Henry and Rosetta Dad was at the station getting her on a train going to London.
We were only just in time as the warning went again at 8.20 p.m. and I doubt if we shall get another All Clear as the night raids are now in progress.

September 16th
This morning’s papers are full of yesterday’s activity. Apparently the R.A.F. had a
field day. There were over one hundred and seventy German planes brought down yesterday, with two of them definitely hit by Ack-Ack. We lost thirty planes but ten of their pilots landed safely. I wonder how much longer they can keep it up.

There is still no school so obviously that torpedo is proving a nasty job. [Blog note: 'that torpedo' referencing the earlier September 11th entry]
There are also six bomb-disposal men working hard at St. Paul’s Cathedral where a one ton bomb has buried itself twenty six feet deep near the walls.

Westminster Abbey has had a few small panes of glass broken in one of its windows.
Our bombers have been busy too. On Saturday night they gave Antwerp, Ostend, Flushing, Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne a thorough going over as those are the ports the Germans are using to assemble an invasion fleet.

We’ve had four raids today and we were most surprised when during one of them Henry and Rosetta walked in with baby Gordon in Henry’s arms.
When they got home last night their home was just a pile of rubble. Fortunately their friend’s home where Gordon was left for the day escaped.

They spent the night with her and Henry is leaving Rosetta and the baby with us while he goes back to see if he can find anything in the ruins and to complete all the necessary forms to get compensation when this war is over. I can see the Germans are going to have a mighty great bill to pay.

September 17th
We haven’t had much sleep because the All Clear went at 3.10 a.m. and when we
had just got back to sleep the warning went at 3.20 a.m.
It was much more difficult to get back to sleep a second time and the All Clear at 5 a.m. seemed to wake me as soon as I had dozed off.

We have had four raids today but I haven’t seen so many planes about, but a bomb which fell at Marble Arch subway ripped the white tiles off the walls, turning them into lethal missiles which killed twenty people.

September 18th
I’m beginning to think this baby is worse than the air raids as he just screams the
whole time he is awake. He is a little terror and I shall be glad when we can get back to school.

They say the bomb is defused but we must wait until the transporter has towed it away before we can return.

September 20th
We still can’t go to school. I spent most of yesterday out in the pouring rain in the
garden to get away from that awful baby.
Tonight I have come to bed at 7 p.m. and hidden my head under my pillow to shut him out.

I know one thing, if I can’t look after a baby better than Rosetta does then I won’t bother having one. I really don’t know how Mum copes with it.

[Blog note: Granny went on to have two children - my father and his brother. She did an impeccable job raising them both.]

September 21st
Thank goodness we are back at school and I had a pleasant surprise. Against all expectations I have been made Head Girl.
Cliff has been made Head Boy and I know between us we can run a very good team of prefects.
Dad told me that they dropped bombs on Gatwick aerodrome in one of the two raids we had today.

It was very quiet this afternoon so I have been up the village and paid for the papers and bought some stamps at the Post Office.
I’ve got a letter from Gordon, it was written on the 15th.

My Dear Margaret
I’m sitting on the cliffs at Oddicombe Bay. The weather is O.K. and the sea smooth
and blue but the beach is still closed.

It is Sunday afternoon and the three chiming-clocks (there are three churches all close together in Babbacombe) have just struck 14.00 hrs. Please forgive the writing but a gas mask case isn’t the best of writing tables. Also I have nicked my right thumb.

We have a comparatively easy week ahead, last week being pretty stiff. After which we have a really hard time at I.T.W. which is either at Torquay, Paignton, Cambridge or Aberystwyth.
The only thing that is really worrying me is Mathematics. You see it is not that I can’t do the problems but that I require more time than is allowed. I am essentially practical in my outlook as you know. That is why theory comes so awkward.

However, don’t be too disappointed if I only become an airgunner. After all everybody can’t be a pilot.
Although I am not beaten yet but just facing the facts clearly.

Has Clarence Gorringe been called up yet or Bunny Guy? Also has Bunny got tied yet? I shall be terrifically pleased when I can come home to learn all the news and local happenings and changes.
I feel sort of left out when I read of all the action you are getting round your district. Nothing happens here of any importance.

We ought to change places I’m sure you’d love this place. In Mabel’s letter received yesterday she speaks of terrible havoc and chaos in her district.
She says people queue up outside the public air raid shelters every evening waiting for the sirens to sound.
You see the shelters are locked until the warning sounds. From the letter I think her mother is badly affected by the intense anti-aircraft barrage thrown up every night, which mingled with the sound of screaming and exploding bombs, also falling masonry must be rather terrifying. And now I think they are moving or have moved to a safer spot by now.

I am very glad to hear of the success of your schoolmates, let that be an example to you and see you pass your next examination because you are quite capable if you concentrate. I do not know what to say about the job you turned down. It is a very difficult question being war time.

Probably you did the right thing but don’t forget there is a war on and your studies may be seriously interrupted which is a big point in favour of a job, especially at two pounds ten shillings a week.
Although looking ahead that job would not be much use for your future as it does not include science, so I think you’ve done the right thing by staying on but don’t forget to keep at it.

You talk of sending hitler a bill after the war. There won’t be a hitler after this war (small aitches on purpose).
Lots of love from your brother Gordon
P.S. I’m sending this in my next letter to Mum.

Blog note: I was confused at first when it appeared to be perhaps a commentary from Granny about the last part of Gordon's letter just above. "small aitches on purpose," it's written. What could that mean? Suddenly it dawned on me - it's Gordon specifically telling Granny that he is using a lower-case h when writing hitler's name - I'm going to do it now, too!

This is an interesting case of Gordon intentionally not capitalising hitler's name, as to give it less importance. Small resistances in the face of the war, hm?

September 22nd
Dorothy Binns is ill.

My boys were so good in Sunday School today I’m wondering if all these air raids and sleepless nights are starting to drain their exuberant spirits. I hope not, as I quite enjoy pitting my wits against them.

We’ve only had one raid today but they are still here all night and every night.
The siren went early tonight at 7.10 p.m.
I’ve written to Gordon and got on with some knitting.

September 23rd
As I was pegging out the washing for Mum today there was a dogfight going on overhead and I finished up in the clothes basket with the wet clothes when I tried to fling myself on the ground because I thought one of our planes wasn’t going to pull out of a dive.
However he just managed it and fortunately none of the washing got dirty so I didn’t have to take it back to Mum to be washed again.

In school, if the warning is on when we arrive, then the others go straight to the shelters but Cliff and I remain in school with the members of staff on duty until the bell goes for the commencement of lessons when we go to our own shelters.

September 24th
The Canadians are laying a field telephone for the ‘Works’.
Dad says I must be around to answer it until he learns how to use it, as he is really quite frightened of telephones and can never hear anything on them.

I must go up the village to collect some photos to send to Gordon while they are finishing it off.

I hope there will be time for me to call in and see how Dorothy Binns is on my way home.

September 26th
We are having problems in school because of the broken windows. I don’t know what it will be like if the rain blows in them, as at the moment we are having enough problems keeping the pages open at the correct page.

Lizzie gave me some photos for Gordon. They don’t see much of Churchill in Westerham now but these were some they took before the war. We are not getting many raids in the day now so we have had orchestra practice as well as plenty of hockey.

We have had letters from Auntie Lily and Uncle Mick. They are both Air Raid Wardens in Hull and since she told Mum they have tin hats and forces gas masks they must be in quite responsible positions.

Bob (their son) told me he had only a civilian gas mask and no tin hat because I asked him when he was here.
He said that he had learned to play darts at the Warden’s Post to which he was attached and that was more use to him than extra gear which would only encumber him on his bike.

September 28th
We are still getting some raids in the day time so Miss Morris has organised knitting blanket squares while we are in the shelter.

It is a good idea to keep busy when we are in the shelters, but of course I am never in them.
It is a good job I can knit standing up without looking at my work or Miss Morris might wonder at my contribution.
As it is, it is only the shortage of odd scraps of wool that limits my production.

We played tennis yesterday afternoon. I am having trouble getting any homework completed as that awful baby is still with us and howling!

September 29th
Bob Sitford has been called up so now I am left entirely on my own to try and play this organ in church. Mr Callard is giving me a sort of correspondence course.

The only similarity to the piano is the keyboard but there are two instead of one to cope with. I’m afraid they will get the same set of stops for every verse of each hymn, as once they are set I have to concentrate on playing the notes.

I can put my right foot on the swell box to give them a bit of variation in volume but my left foot will hang by its heel on the bar beneath the console bench because I shall never be able to play the pedals. I need to keep my feet out of harms way down there.

It’s far too easy to find you are accidentally playing all sorts of peculiar notes with my feet and there are already enough of those made with my hands. It is difficult to maintain the legato touch. I have completed another pair of socks for Dad. He needs lots of them to keep his feet warm in his wellingtons.

September 30th
There was no warning in operation when we arrived at school this morning so I
was playing the hymn at Assembly when we heard a bomb explode nearby.

There was nothing we could do so I opened up double forte on the piano and the whole school responded with great gusto, singing the last chorus of ‘We plough the fields………’ which was very appropriate for the occasion since it says “All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above.”

Even so we heard the rest of the stick of bombs explode and the plane roar overhead leaving an awful silence as we ended the hymn.
Taffy broke it by saying in his usual stern voice “We will now say the Lord’s prayer.”

On investigation we discovered the bombs were aimed at the chalk pits and the last one to fall has not improved the surface of the boy’s rugger pitch at the far end of our playing fields.
They have been active all day as we have had four trips down the shelters altogether.

October 1st
It has been a lovely fine day and we have had quite a lot of raids but somehow in between them we managed to get in a session of Mass Singing.
We started with the hymns for next week and then went on to community singing.

Dad is drying the sludge and tipping it over into Jack Guy’s field at the back of the ‘Works’ for him to use as fertiliser.
Dad asked me to walk across the couple of fields to the farm to let Jack know there was another load ready for him.
As I walked along a noisy dogfight started overhead, just the usual racket of stuttering machine guns and screaming planes but I had a job to find Jack.
I finally located him in one of the barns. He was sitting on the bales of straw half hidden by his bull which was part kneeling in front of Jack with its head on Jack’s brawny chest.

He had his arms wrapped round the bull’s head trying to cover its ears. As soon as Jack saw me he said “Don’t you dare to laugh Margaret. Tarquin is a valuable pedigree bull and services all the cows around here but he is terrified in an air raid and starts to cry as soon as the siren sounds. At the moment I seem to be eating and sleeping down here with him.”

I was really sceptical until, when it quietened down, as Jack opened his arms and as Tarquin lifted his head I could see the tears oozing out of the corners of his eyes.

October 3rd
The railway lines get damaged most nights and it means some of the staff are delayed. Cliff and I have to organise the prefects to care for their classes until they get to school.
We have decided it will be easier to try to teach the classes rather than merely sit out the front and try to keep them quiet.
We will each teach them a subject that we are studying at ‘advanced level’.
The fourth forms will be the most difficult to control so Cliff and I will take those.

It won’t do them any harm to have an undiluted diet of science and maths for a bit.
It is almost impossible to get any Chemistry or Physics practical completed.
We have no sooner got the experiment organised than the siren goes and we are feverishly turning off all the bunsens and electricity before dashing out to clear the top and bottom corridors (our duty) before making for our shelter.

I have tried to get on with some theory while sitting on the steps of the shelter but I usually manage to grab the wrong text-book in my haste and there is nobody else in my shelter doing A-level science from whom I can borrow one.

When I got to Oxted station this afternoon one of the porters told me that the Messerschmidt I saw come down this morning narrowly missed the buildings at St. Michael’s School. It’s made a mess of their lacrosse pitch but all the girls are safe.

Since we seem to be back to the shelters again Mr Callard tried to organise an orchestra practice down one this afternoon.
It was great fun, since we can’t get the piano down there I sang my accompaniment.

The raid was still in progress when it was time to go to the station and as Mr Callard came to see us safely on the train I left the others in his charge and dashed into the shop to try and find a pair of knickers which Mum couldn’t find for herself in the village.

Mr Charman was at Lingfield station with the dust lorry so I got a lift home. Mum has asked me to wave a handkerchief from the train window as we go by to save her the extra half-hour of worry waiting for me to cycle home.
She is going to stand by the fence and wave a teacloth so that I will know she and Dad are O.K.

October 5th
We are having to eat our dinners in the trenches. We move over to the boys’ trenches for them because they are nearer to the kitchens. I am with Mr Callard in Tenchleys trench and between us we dish up the dinners when they are sent over from the kitchens.

Uncle Arthur has just brought in some pieces from the ‘Me’ that crashed behind the ‘Works’. [Blog note: On advisement from a friend of mine very well versed in the terminology of many kinds of military history, Granny mentioning the 'Me' would haver been referencing a Messerschmitt plane specifically].

We are now so used to the bumps, jolts and noise of planes droning over that unless a bomb falls very close to us we manage to sleep at night until the All Clear wakes us up.

Goering and his Luftwaffe are pretty persistent but he will find he cannot get the better of us as we are prepared to just hang on until he wears himself out.
We are still trying to get ourselves organised but when we do he will know all about it, as we shall not forget what he has been dishing out to us these last months.

We’ve had a letter from Gordon. He says Alan Jarret is at the training wing with him so now he has met one of the boys who was in class with me.
I remember once telling Gordon about Alan’s wonderful china-blue eyes and their devastating effect on all the girls.

Wonderful news today. Rosetta has had enough of air raids and has arranged to take the children to Cornwall. At last we shall be without that dreadful screaming baby.

Mary Simmons has got scarlet fever. I hope that isn’t the beginning of an epidemic at the War Office.

October 6th
There were a lot of boys in class at Sunday School today. On my way home I called in at the Binns and found Dorothy is better.

We had a vicious raid on the way home and I saw Syd Chantler hop off his bike and hop into the ditch. It was unfortunate that it was full of water.
When I reached him and stopped to help him out he said it was better to be wet than dead and it is time I learnt to find shelter when they come in low with machine guns blazing.

Barbara burnt her hand while picking up still hot bullet cases in the garden and Dad is mad because shell splinters have wrecked his cabbages and machine guns stitched up his best rose trees.
He thinks the fruit trees will recover but the chrysanthemums are a sorry sight.

Uncle Redge had dinner with us as he has come to thatch all the stacks.It is important to make sure they are all protected from the rain. He is one of the few ‘thatchers’ in the three counties (Surrey, Sussex and Kent). He is listed in the special categories and I hope the age restriction never reaches high enough for him to be called up. He is Dad’s youngest brother and has always lived on a farm.

On the parade ground some of the Sergeant Majors are very derisive about such men who don’t know their left foot from the right and call out ‘straw foot, hay foot’ to them. Perhaps they should remember that Uncle Redge and his friends have other skills. I know the farmers think he is much better than a vet and certainly he can cure their animals.

October 7th
Barbara came on the train with me this morning as she has to go to the school dental clinic in Oxted because the one in Lingfield has been taken over as a First Aid Post.
She was telling me about her new school friend, Joan Le Coq, who arrived with her mother last August from Jersey.

Her Dad is a Jersey man and when the Germans occupied the Channel Islands he had to stay to keep things going because he is a policeman.
The last time she saw him he was fixing a white flag to their house. Her Grandmother is Mrs Clarke who lives by Granny Warner’s shop in the Star Cottages.
They are still hoping to get some news of her Dad from the Red Cross.

I’ve got a streaming cold but I did manage to get round to see how Mary is and take her a few flowers that Dad had salvaged from his garden.

October 9th
The roads are getting busy again and I am having a job to sleep at night because the tracks of the tanks and bren carriers make a heck of a noise.

We now have a field gun in the ditch by the side of the house.
It was being towed by a Canadian lorry when it slewed round for some reason.

As it seems to have been abandoned there Barbara and I couldn’t resist the temptation to go out there and pretend we were firing it at the bombers during the last raid.
Needless to say Dad was furious when he realised where we had gone and hauled us back inside.

I have started to knit a spencer for Great Aunt Ada as my cold is worse so I’d better stop indoors and do something useful.

October 11th
Mr Mumford and Miss Jenkins were married in Reigate Registry Office yesterday. Mr Callard let that slip when he came to our trench to help me with my Physics. He and Miss Morris were the witnesses.
I am surprised because I think of Mr Mumford as an old man, but I expect it is because his hair is grey as in ‘Hearts Are Trumps’.
I discovered he has a marvellous sense of humour.

Mr Callard is specially pleased with my hymn playing and I am improving with the organ too.
It is the Psalms that I find so difficult. He tells me to learn the chant and read the pointing but I can’t do that so I try to learn the pointing and read the chant.

Miss Morris is very pleased with my hockey too. I scored three goals this afternoon and she thinks I am a very good captain of the team.

October 13th
We had lots of activity yesterday but today there has only been one raid so I have
been at the church practising.

I walked from the church to the station to meet Mabel who came to tea and I showed her the gloves that I have just finished knitting for Gordon.
We made sure we put her on a train for home before seven o’clock as the siren goes any time after that for our night time raid.

October 15th
We had a letter from Gordon yesterday and an air raid at dinner time. They have altered the method for serving dinners.
Now they dish them out in the kitchens and send over a piled up stack of plates with covers in between.
I take off a cover and pass the plate down the trench, returning the covers for the next lot.

Like Miss Morris Mr Callard prefers to sit well inside the shelter, so when a plate came over with an extra large helping on it and instructions it was for Mr Callard I quietly put it on my seat and passed an ordinary meal along for him.

I am just as hungry as him.

I’ve started on a scarf for Gordon. The forces are allowed to wear gloves, socks or scarves knitted by friends and relatives, provided they are made in the correct colours.
The Red Cross have the patterns and if you like they will issue you with wool to knit for their ‘forces comforts’.
I want Gordon to have something I have made so we will spare some of our coupons to get the wool.

The All Clear went at 6.10 a.m. this morning and not long afterwards there was a knock at the back door and we found Gertie and her elder sister Frances standing there.
They looked dreadful and only had their handbags and a dispatch case in their hands.
Their faces are covered in little black spots which are specks of dust that the blast has blown deep into their pores.
I suppose eventually that they will work their way out but I wonder if it is painful.

When we had taken them inside and sat them down they told us their block of flats was totally demolished by a land-mine in last night’s raid.
They were buried in their basement until the Civil Defence had dug them out and put them on the first bus to us this morning.

In school Taffy has decided we must get an education of some kind so there is now an imminent danger system.
There is a watcher at a suitable point and if they think the bombs are getting too close they will sound a klaxon.
The senior students will stay in the downstairs corridors during a raid and have normal lessons and if we hear the klaxon we are to fling ourselves under the desk at which we are working.

I suppose we listen to the teacher with one ear and for the klaxon with the other and that way there is nothing left to hear any screaming bombs or stuttering machine guns.
We’ve made up a double bed for Gertie and Frances in the sitting room, as when the siren went for the night at 7.35 p.m. it was pitiful to see the effect it had on them. They feel much safer downstairs.

I much prefer to be upstairs because when I draw my curtains back I can keep an eye on what is going on from my bed which I have moved underneath the window.

October 16th
The All Clear went at 5 a.m. this morning and although it woke Gertie and her sister, after I took them a cup of tea in bed they went back to sleep and when I checked on them before leaving for school they were sleeping peacefully and, as we didn’t have a raid until 3.20 p.m. they're looking much better tonight after sleeping most of the day.

I am still feeling ill with this cold and I must look awful because Mr Callard wouldn’t let me stay for orchestra practice and suggested I went home and got some sleep before our friends arrived for the night.

Pamela Lovesey is in hospital as she was blown off her bike on the way to school. I’ve received my application forms from London University but I don’t feel capable of filling them in at the moment so I’ll go to bed.

October 17th
I’m beginning to think I can’t cope any more.

The sirens went at 7.10 p.m. last night and no All Clear until 6.10 a.m. which meant I got some sleep but we’ve had a Physics test today in amongst the the air raids at 9.20 a.m. to 10.10 a.m., 12.40 p.m. to 2.15 p.m., 3.15 p.m. to 3.45 p.m. and having just left Oxted Station 4.10 p.m. to 5 p.m.

We had only just got over that one when the siren went again at 6.50 p.m. and since we’ve no All Clear it will last all night.

Cliff’s house was damaged by bombs falling near it last night and he is not at school today.
I hate being on a train in an air raid. It is not that I am afraid of dying but of showing myself up in front of the others.

There are bombs in Dormans Park but Dad has been up to check the sewage works there but there is no damage as the bombs fell in an open space.

October 21st
We have had a rough night and one bomb landed so close it lifted my bed off the floor and when it landed I could not put on my torch because the curtains were not drawn across to cover the windows.

I put out my hand to find my head was on a level with the floor boards and the bed swayed every time I moved. At that moment they started dropping incendiaries so the room was soon lit up and I could see the leg of my bed had gone through a floor board.

I rolled out of bed and, dressing hurriedly, went out to help Dad with the stirrup-pump, sand and long-handled shovel, as we didn’t want to be lit up like a Christmas tree.

I had visions of them setting that coal-dump on fire and I saw what could happen to even the tiny fuel tanks when the engine shed caught fire about five years ago.

It would certainly be curtains for all of us as when those bombers see a fire they pour all their high explosive bombs into it.