A child’s war diary, Part 2

Hitler plans to invade the Soviet Union. George, aged 10, listens to Lord Haw Haw.

May begins with a concerted effort to create a new vegetable garden. George does not say that this is a consequence of food rationing which by this time has been in place for more than a year, but it seems likely.

Jack, the gardener, has been cutting out beds from the grass at the bottom of the garden. George has been helping.

”Planted three rows, spinach, four lettuces, one parsnip one beetroot.

On Sunday, the 18th of May, he is particularly interested in the arrival of a “new motor-mower”.

”Puffed wheat. Fried bread. Jack commenced to grease it [the mower]. Then couldn’t get the knives low enough. Couldn’t start it. Got it going at last and watched Jack mowing lawn. Had my hair washed. Read the Tower of London. Meat. Veg. Fruit pie. Watched Jack mowing bit of lawn. Had ride in wheelbarrow. Watched him water plants. Read papers and T. of L. outside. Tea. Watered my seeds. Listened to Hi! Gang. Read T. of L. Bed.

It must have been a big lawn if George was able to watch it being cut, then get his hair washed, read a book and have his tea before returning to watch the job being finished. Hi Gang! (as it should be rendered) was a show on the BBC Home Service. It was a comedy programme, first broadcast in 1940, which made fun of Hitler and the notorious Nazi propagandist, Lord Haw Haw.

Three days later, George notes “spinach showing”. Good to know. At the end of the week he is taken to a military display.

”Wallingford War Weapons opens. Went in on bus. Watched a procession. Listened to a speech we couldn’t hear. Looked at some Army Lorries and tanks. One silly kid shut itself up in a tank. Listened to a band. Saw some soldiers doing some wonderful physical [illegible] tucks. Returned.”

All very diverting. But I suspect that the thing which actually fires his imagination is the book he has just started. He reads Oliver Twist during the day and again just before bedtime. I cannot be sure that this is his first Dickens novel but it won’t be the last.

My dad read and reread Dickens all his life. My sister and I got A Tale of Two Cities when I was four or five. Much of it I didn’t understand at all, but parts are still vivid in my mind - the aristocrat’s house with the stone faces on its exterior which seem to offer some sort of mute commentary on his fate. The women knitting as the guillotine falls.

But I have to confess I have not continued the family tradition. My sons have not been subjected to the great Victorian story teller’s enormous tracts of prose.

The 3rd of June is replete with incident.

“Corn flakes. Poached egg. Filled in this diary and watched J. getting into a much-too-small nurse’s outfit. Went for a long walk. Toad-in-the-hole. Plums. Did a drawing. Tea. Waited. Walked up to Stotts and back with Bar. Mrs Stott gave J. some chocolate and biscuits. Lucky beggar. Haddock. Listened to news. Played ‘crazy’. Bed.”

It’s the first time George has mentioned listening to the news. In fact, this was the day clothes rationing was brought in. No doubt that would have been a news item. Also on this day, Hitler met the Japanese ambassador to Germany and informed him of the imminent invasion of the USSR - one item which would not have been on the BBC. No one in Britain, indeed no one in the USSR would have known anything about it. Operation Barbarossa, a major turning point in the war, began less than three weeks later. Meanwhile George was playing “crazy”, by which he means the card game, crazy patience.

“Watched Jack standing on his head and other things like this” - with a small illustration to prove it. This is the highlight of Sunday, the 29th of June.

“MY BIRTHDAY” is how Sunday, the 6th of July announces itself.

”Went into Bar’s room and opened presents (mostly books). Shredded Wheats. Sausages. Waited. Got in car and went to Nuffield Common. Settled down and had lunch (Pork Pie. Tomatoes Strawberrys and cherrys). Bar read David Copperfield to us. Moved somewhere else and had tea. Walked round and found two dead sheep. Walked back to car. Returned to Park End. Watered plants. Read “Wonder book of soldiers”. Bed.

It sounds like a blissful day. Who wouldn’t enjoy “Strawberrys and cherrys” (sic) with their mum and little sister, followed by a reading from his new favourite author. And yet George seems quite unmoved by it all. The only thing which hints at any feeling of happiness or comfort is the phrase, “settled down”.

But I shouldn’t really be surprised. My dad rarely showed emotion. He had a sharp sense of humour and could do jollity - especially after a couple of drinks. He sometimes exhibited a sort of cold fury, but displays of affection were rare.

There was one which I was told about but did not witness myself. It happened in 2003 when I had been sent to the Middle East to cover the start of the war in Iraq. On the phone to my wife, he asked her, “Why does he do it to us?”. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was crying. That memory, second-hand, remote, means a lot to me. I did not ask him about it - far too embarrassing.

My dad died in 2017 and I will never know if he enjoyed his eleventh birthday.