It is decidedly cooler this morning, wind E or S.S.E. but bright. Yesterday was warm but the wind was cool. Father planted nearly half allotment with potatoes. Today D.O. [District Officer] comes at 11 o’c and Father is on watch at 2. p.m. so will get no more in today. It is very vexing. He is stoop-holing them, as he thinks to plough them in would bring up rough clods again. I am still very shaky and very nervous. I got no sleep until Father came home. He will be at home two nights now so I shall be better I hope before he is out again.

[Aside: Sun. May 16. Ger. Dams Burst]

The bombing and bursting of Mohne and Eder dams was successfully! carried out by RAF on Sunday night. Since then another one has been bombed but I did not get the name on the radio. It is expected to do us a great deal of good in the war effort against Ger. it must be terrible to be there now with day and night bombing and now these burst dams. There must be an appalling loss of life.

This morning it was announced that well over 200,000 prisoners were taken in Tunisia. Think Italy will be given a chance to draw out of the war. I shall be pleased when we hear from Ron again. I am wondering if he will be moved and if so where to, I fear not to England, probably further away. I hope Sybil has heard from Frank since the war ended in N.A. She will be anxious.

Rene washed a few clothes for me yesterday, she had done her own before she came. Has colour washed her bed room but thinks she may give it another coat as this is pale blue and it was cream before. We saw Beauforts and fighters return from bombing a convoy off Dutch Coast Monday 17 afternoon. Ron has had letters from John Meldrum and Jeff [Pearson]. Jeff gets 48 hours leave to Cairo and is expecting 10 days at Alexandria. He seems to be having a high old time. Answered Mrs Leivers letter last night. She has rheumatism badly in her hands and wrists, but seems very happy amongst her grand-children. Jean and I sampled “stuffed chine” at breakfast, very nice too. Jean had 2 helpings. Father not up yet.

‘Stoop-holing’ for planting was stooping, making a hole and dropping seed potatoes in.

The ‘Dambusters’ raid was carried out from RAF Scampton, near Lincoln, by 617 Squadron, flying Lancaster bombers, under Wing Commander Guy Gibson.

Have you read an introduction to May Hill & family (includes photographs) and explored ‘The Casualties Were Small’?

It is more than a month since I wrote in my diary, and quite a lot of interesting things have happened. I have been busy with visitors and cleaning, and a few days off now and then with asthma and so neglected my entries.

At the new moon in April the wind, a great gale, was N.W. veering N and at the 8 o’ clock spring tides two days later, piled the seas up in the narrow entrance to the Wash, of which the Point is like one doorpost. It was the biggest tide, at least the highest waves I have ever seen and the biggest on this coast for 40 years or more. It burst the bank at old Capron’s and flooded the Marsh as far as Cousins, surrounding their bungalow to a depth of 4 ft. Altho’ the tide was beating at the bank by 8 o’clock summer time (6 GMT) and broad daylight, they carelessly locked up and never went out to look if it was coming in. Granthams went to warn them but could not make them hear so concluded they were not at home and it was not until the water suddenly rose round their feet that they found out. Fortunately there are bedrooms upstairs so they retreated up there and were rescued by boat next morning. Emily L was here for week-end and we walked down on Sunday night to look at the Marsh. It looked very desolate with its bombed bungalows surrounded by water.

A terrific amount of damage was done all along the coast. I watched it from my bedroom window, Jean and Father went to the box. The water came over each side of it. It was a magnificent sight, even the bit I could see over the Point. Still I could see right across the Wash. Glorious rolling green waves, galloping white horses with flowing manes and tails racing towards the land. In the gap between sea-horse and gun-house huge plume of gossamer spray like white smoke would suddenly go up 50 feet in the air then race with the speed of an express train to the shore. Huge walls of brown water rose 50 feet out of the sea then caught the N.W. wind as they broke. The spray was blown back a white veil for 40 or 50 yards as the wave galloped over the wild water to the shore, spreading all around it a lacy white train, like a dusky bride all robed in purest white. Far in the west from behind the wrack of flying dark rain clouds the slim moon peeped now and then as if afraid to look on the wild waters, she had made her pact with the wild North West wind to raise.

Emily stayed from Sat. until Mon. Then Grandma came on the next Thursday and stayed until Tuesday. She was not very well and nervous and wanted a change. She seemed very content and I hope it did her good.

Mr Capron was the pig breeder and soft fruit grower who lived near the edge of ‘The Marsh’. See 19 Dec. 1942 and Village Map.

Mr and Mrs Cousins, whose bungalow was in ‘The Marsh’ area, were believed to be the couple who had previously lived at ‘Granby’ in South Road (see 5 Nov. 1941).

The ‘gun-house’ was the existing concrete emplacement, upon which the Coastguard watch-box had been re-sited in the previous year (see 4 Sep. 1942). The breakwaters in the vicinity would have contributed to the visual effect described.

Have you read an introduction to May Hill & family (includes photographs) and explored ‘The Casualties Were Small’?

Sunday morning the last day of January, a wild wet day blowing a gale from S.E. and heavy showers of rain. Ashley’s field at the back of our house is almost water-logged. If it doesn’t soon dry, it will be very serious as the autumn sown corn will rot in the sodden ground, and most, if not all, of our wheat is sown in the autumn. If our harvest is a failure what shall we do for bread next winter if this continues? We think we may be getting a bit more master over the U-boats but they are a very serious menace at present. We are shipping wheat to India now. I think we as a people must have a large faith in providence. We either have a lot of faith or a lot of confidence, perhaps a mixture of both. Ron says they get no bread only biscuits tho’ there is no shortage of food. We had a letter on Thursday. I am afraid he won’t get my air-graph very quickly as no air-mail is accepted for N. Africa at present. There is an Air Mail Letter Card from John Meldrum this week again, I am enclosing it in today’s letter to Ron who says John’s APO [Army Post Office] number is the same as his. If that is just for N.A. there is a possibility that they may meet sometime. Ron has received the snaps of Rene’s wedding and Sprogg and Father sent on Dec. 13.42. Our letter was between 3 and 4 weeks coming this time. Ron had had a chill and been to M.O. [Medical Officer], said it was bitterly cold and he did not get warm until in bed. It was Sunday night and he was writing in bed and was quite warm then. He says hardly anything about Xmas only that they had pork and not a bad time considering conditions so I’m afraid it wasn’t a very “Happy Xmas”. When we have finished fighting in N.A. which may be soon, I wonder if he will go further away still.

Yesterday we bombed Berlin twice during the day. It is terrible, and were over Ger. again last night. It cannot, must not, go on, this wholesale murder is not war but destruction. In fair and open fight we can pray for our side to win and we do, but bombs and fire appal us and choke our prayers. We have sorely mismanaged this world given to us to rule for God. May he turn the hearts of all men towards Him that we may live in peace and destroy the Evil one who is having so much of his own way now.

Father and Jean are not up yet, suppose I had better call Jean. She has a bit of homework to do yet and it won’t be fit to go to Chapel I think this morning. It is Fa’s day off, but he has to take Mr. Walker to W[illoughby] Stn this afternoon, he is on 36 hours leave. Sprogg has just come in, don’t know where he lodges but is not wet. Of course the windows are open at Corbie so he can get in there if he wants to, a lot of R.A.s came to Canning’s houses yesterday, but we have none so far, tho’ a Cpl called one day to inquire which were Corbie and Red Tiles.

Houses built by John Henry Canning on Sea Bank Road (nearer to ‘Lenton Lodge’ than those on Sea Road) are probably meant here. See Village Map.

Have you read an introduction to May Hill & family (includes photographs) and explored ‘The Casualties Were Small’?

Another book of scraps

From our doings of everyday

Odds and ends of trouble and strife

And happenings grave and gay.

Just over three years ago, I started to keep a little diary. I thought I might get tired of it but I still write fairly frequently and sometimes it comes in useful to refer to. Early in the first book I recorded that Tony [Hill] was missing. He has never returned and now his mother has gone too. Peggy his wife is a Land Girl. Now Ken [Hill] is missing and another mother (both widows) is bearing the same trial and anxious waiting for news.

Tony Hill with mother Rose and wife Peggy, c.1939

I hope we have a letter from Ron today. We had so many letters from him before he went abroad. It is 2 weeks now since we had one, but of course that is not unusual. We have really got Libya at last and now for Tunisia, then I suppose the great strife will really start. I wonder if we shall see more of it here, certainly some of the country will, at least I fear so. We may not survive it, no one can say they are safe now, whether they are in the forces or factories or quiet homes. Quiet! The terrible raid last week when the school at Lewisham was bombed and machine-gunned shocked us all. 42 children and teachers killed and many more badly hurt. Balloons were down for work on them, they say it was necessary and nobody’s fault, but when the planes came in they thought they were not heading for London. Some of them did go, but sirens were not sounded, otherwise children would have been in shelters. Why do we not always be ready? Of course they say we lose so much work when sirens are sounded that they don’t want to do so unless necessary but children must not pay for misjudgement. Churchill and Roosevelt have met in Africa. I had been wondering where Winston was these days. Wrote to Amy last night. Made Dennis a pair of pyjama trousers.

The first (undiscovered) Diary was believed to have been started in January 1940.

Tony Hill, May’s nephew, went missing and was presumed to have died, aged 24, in active service in the RAF, on 21^st February 1940, as a flight sergeant pilot of a Wellington bomber (38 Squadron). His aircraft failed to return to RAF Marham, Norfolk, from a mission searching for enemy shipping in the North Sea. He was honoured in the village war memorial and one at Runnymede. He was the youngest son of Will’s brother, George (who died in 1931) and Rose (whose death on 2^nd November 1941 had been mentioned in May’s diary entry of 11 Nov. 1942). Tony, his mother Rose and wife Peggy (née Truman) are shown together in the photograph which was probably taken around 1939. (Some information is from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Casualty Register and from ‘Royal Air Force Bomber Command Losses of the Second World War, Volume I: 1939-1940’ W.R. Chorley, first published 1992, Midland Publications; later (2nd Edition) Classic Publications, 2013.)

Ken Hill, Tony’s cousin, was also serving in the RAF when reported missing (see 1 Jan. 1943).

The school at Sandhurst Road, Catford, in the London Borough of Lewisham, was bombed on January 20^th 1943. May expressed her feelings about the tragedy in her poem ‘Bombing at Noon of School at Lewisham’.

Churchill, Roosevelt and de Gaulle were meeting at the Casablanca Conference which proclaimed the aim of  achieving ‘unconditional surrender’ of the Axis forces.

Dennis Raynor was the nephew for whom May had made pyjamas.

 

Have you read an introduction to May Hill & family (includes photographs) and explored ‘The Casualties Were Small’?