‘D-Day’ – An Extract from May Hill’s Diaries in ‘The Casualties Were Small’
People in this extract:
May Hill, Rene (married daughter), Jean (younger daughter), Ron (son, serving with RAF in Italy), Emmie (Ron’s wife), Mrs Russell (Emmie’s mother), Ciss (May’s husband’s niece), Percy (Ciss’s husband), General Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, King George VI.
Tues June 6 1944 D.Day 9.30 pm SECOND FRONT
An Ordinary Day
So, at last the long-talked of Second Front has begun. I have not even given it a new page and that seems a fitting symbol of how it appears to me. What excitement there may be in towns or elsewhere, in the country does not seem to have touched us here. It is just an ordinary day, after nearly 5 years of war it takes a lot to make us demonstrative. I went on with my ordinary work and made my first toy for sale, a white duck with green wings and yellow beak and feet. It is for Mrs Russell to give to a baby friend. I must make the rabbit for Emmie next and try to send an extra one too. Ciss cleaned her pantry and Rene washed. Jean went to school, indeed she had gone before the announcement.
Listening to the Radio
4000 ships and a great many smaller craft crossed the channel. Great air-liners took air-borne troops behind the German lines. Montgomery is speaking now, a message to the troops of which he is the head. Now a service. Almost 10 o’ clock. The Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken and now they are singing “Oh God, our help in ages past.” At nine o’clock the King broadcast a call to prayer, not just one day but all the days of crisis.
In the news afterwards we heard that all was still going well in France. I fear the “little people” like us would not just go on with this ordinary work. However pleased they may be at the thought of deliverance, at present it means danger and hardship and war. Many will have to leave their homes and many I fear will lose their lives. The service is over, a beautiful service, ending with the hymn, “Soldiers of Christ Arise.”
At the End of the Day
We are in bed. A motor cycle has just gone by and a swiftly moving plane. Percy was with Home Guards last night. I am pleased he is at home next door tonight. God be with us all those whose sons or husbands or other dear ones have already fallen in this new front. Be with the wounded and comfort the dying and those who are afraid. We had 12 letters from Ron to-day – a record. I had 6, the others 3 each. In the most recent one, only a week since he wrote it, an air mail letter, he says his hopes of return are practically nil. I am almost pleased much as I long to see him but somehow he seems safer there at present. I must try to sleep now. The longed for D-Day has arrived. Deliverance Day, Jean says it means.
Ron, forever in May’s thoughts (© AE Wrate, Skegness)