The Day We Went to War (23 page)

All over the country, volunteer diarists of the Mass Observation organisation are recording their thoughts and emotions as they listen
to the Prime Minister’s broadcast. Mass Observation was set up just over two and a half years ago. Its aim is to record and report in minute detail, across as wide a spectrum as possible, the thoughts and behaviour of the British people.

11.15am, T
EDDINGTON

‘Clear, bright, breezy – a lovely morning with white clouds in a blue sky after the most violent storm in the night that sounded like a bombardment. Prime Minister at 11.15 . . . “This Country is at War with Germany”.’ (Helena Mott)

11.15am, S
HEFFIELD

A twenty-one-year-old female office worker is listening to the wireless with her parents. It is a glorious morning outside, but the family are glued to the radio, avidly catching every BBC news bulletin. As Chamberlain announces that war is declared, the diarist has a ‘funny feeling inside me, and yet all three stood at attention for “The King”, and I know that we were all in the same mind, that we shall and must win’.

11.15am, U
NNAMED
S
MALL
C
OUNTRY
T
OWN

The diarist here is a forty-eight-year-old schoolmistress. As Chamberlain makes his broadcast, she notes, ‘I held my chin high and kept back the tears at the thought of all the slaughter ahead. When “God Save the King” was played we stood.’

11.15am, L
EEDS

A young housewife writes, ‘The milkman told me about the ultimatum to Germany expiring at 11am. We could eat no breakfast hardly and just waited with sweating palms and despair for eleven o’clock. When the announcement was made, “This country is at war with Germany”, I leant against my husband and went quite dead for a minute or two.’

11.15am, E
SSEX

In her Mass Observation diary a ‘gentlewoman’ records, ‘I had been told by the gardener that an important announcement would be given out on the wireless. It would be either peace or war, and anxiety increased as the time drew near. Then it was the latter. I stood up for “God Save the King” and my little dog got out of her basket and stood beside me. I took her on my lap for comfort.’

11.15am, E
TON
C
OLLEGE
, B
ERKSHIRE

Sixteen-year-old Eileen Donald is an evacuee from Wandsworth. She has just taken her Matriculation exams and hopes to get into the sixth form and then go to university. She came to Eton on Friday, and yesterday was at Windsor station helping with the arrival of new evacuees. With her friends, she hears Chamberlain speak on the wireless, and then goes for a walk on the playing fields of Eton, where the Duke of Wellington is supposed to have said the Battle of Waterloo was won. Eileen thinks to herself how beautiful they and the weather are today and how strange it is ‘to be conscious of so much beauty and at the same time to be so horrified at the thought of war’.

11.15am, T
HE
C
OTSWOLDS

Crispin Tickell, nine-year-old son of writer Jerrard Tickell, is staying at his grandmother’s house on the banks of the River Windrush. Just before Chamberlain is due to speak, Crispin and his brother are called into the dining room to hear the broadcast. Crispin is both ‘vaguely disturbed and depressed’ as he listens to the Prime Minister’s announcement. He thinks Chamberlain sounds so sad. But Crispin’s grandmother calls the Prime Minister ‘a damned fool’, just as she did at the time of Munich last year. She then goes out to snip flowers. Cheered up by his grandmother’s forthright response, Crispin follows her out into the garden.

11.15am, C
ITY OF
L
ONDON

Tom Driberg and his taxi driver have pulled up at a City church to hear the broadcast. Together with the congregation they learn that Britain is once again at war. ‘That’s that,’ the vicar says slowly. Driberg thinks this ‘an extremely, characteristically English way of acknowledging the news’.

11.15am, T
AKELEY

In the village hall, Moyra Charlton’s mother has assembled a group of volunteer helpers to assist with the arrival of evacuees from London. They were due soon after 10.00am, but still have not turned up. Moyra and the others, ‘Women Institute members, farmers, all the good solid Takeley faces’, now listen impassively to the Charltons’ portable radio set as Chamberlain speaks. Moyra’s eyes fill with tears as she looks around and sees ‘those grave, ruddy faces . . . and the golden country outside, with the church in the trees and the harvest not yet in’. But, thinks Moyra, ‘thank Heaven the suspense is over’.

11.15am, G
OLDERS
G
REEN
R
OAD
, L
ONDON

Britain’s leading radio and variety comedian, Arthur ‘Big-Hearted’ Askey, star of the hit show
Band Waggon
, turns on his radio. Arthur has had a hectic week filming and then appearing twice nightly at the London Palladium, and has not had time to catch up with the news. Now, he is shocked to hear the Prime Minister announce that we are at war. As Chamberlain finishes and sirens begin to sound, Arthur looks out of the window to see a patrolling air-raid warden. The warden, on hearing the sirens, manages to blow his own whistle. But then, without warning, he faints on the pavement.

11.15am, C
HICHESTER
, S
USSEX

Pamela Mountbatten, fifteen-year-old daughter of Royal Navy Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife Edwina, is out riding this morning. She has ridden up to the top of one of the ancient burial sites that overlooks the countryside. Knowing that Britain is now at war, she thinks, ‘How
extraordinary
that from now on, and who knows for
how
long, we are going to be at war, with all that that means.’

An air-raid siren situated by a police public call-box. ‘The first air-raid warning symbolised the end of the war of nerves and the start of the war of arms, above all the war from the air.’

11.15am, N
ORTH
C
HEAM
, S
URREY

Sixteen-year-old Iris Cutbush has just washed her hair and rolled it up in pipe cleaners so that when combed it will come out ‘all lovely and frizzy’. She hears Chamberlain’s broadcast and then the sirens. Iris is sure that the Germans are going to use poison gas, so she puts on her gas mask, still with the pipe cleaners in her hair. Mr Cutbush, a 1914–18 veteran, comes in from the garden, where he’s been mowing the lawn. He sees Iris and says, ‘What do you think you’re doing? You’re not going to be gassed. Take it off.’ Iris struggles with the mask, but try as she might, she cannot get it off. Eventually she pulls the mask off, but tears the rubber. Iris now ruefully reflects that it will not be ‘any good in a gas attack after that’.

11.15am, P
IERS
C
OURT
, S
TINCHCOMBE
, G
LOUCESTERSHIRE

Novelist Evelyn Waugh, a Roman Catholic convert, has attended Mass and taken communion early this morning. After returning home, he has breakfast and listens to Chamberlain’s broadcast. ‘He did it very well’ is Waugh’s opinion.

11.15am, L
ONDON

Writer and former secret agent Compton Mackenzie hears the Prime Minister’s broadcast and registers Chamberlain’s ‘tired sad voice’. Last Sunday, Mackenzie returned early from abroad because of the crisis. He is still rather shocked at the way his porter at Victoria Station praised Hitler: ‘It’s a pity we haven’t got anybody as good as him here. What I mean is, look what he has done for his own people. Well, he comes from the people himself. He knows what they want.’
Mackenzie is also surprised to be told by an official at the Air Ministry: ‘We are not going to drop bombs on Germany. We are going to drop propaganda leaflets. Don’t you think that’s a wonderful idea?’

11.15am, C
AMBRIDGE

German Jewish refugee Hans Koenigsberger is a student at Caius College, reading History. He has been in Britain since 1934, but his mother Kaethe only got out of Germany earlier this year. Together with Hans’s landlady they listen to the Prime Minister on an old radio set in the sitting room of his digs. The declaration of war comes as no surprise to the Koenigsbergers. They know only too well that the Hitler is not going to give in tamely to the British ultimatum and withdraw his troops from Poland. But the landlady has retained hopes that peace could be preserved. Now, as she hears that the country is at war, she keeps repeating over and over again, ‘They are wicked . . . they are wicked . . . they are wicked.’

11.15am, G
LASGOW
, S
COTLAND

As Chamberlain delivers his broadcast there is a huge rumble of thunder, and lightning flashes across the sky.

11.15am, C
ROYDON

Twelve-year-old convent schoolgirl Sheila Ward is getting ready to be evacuated as she and her family wait for Chamberlain to speak. Sheila and her brother have spent the morning packing up their books and stamp collections to be stored away ‘for the duration’. Their father has already written out their evacuation labels with their names, school addresses and identity numbers. Sheila’s is CDE 64/5.

11.15am, H
AMPSTEAD

FANY Verily Anderson hears Chamberlain’s broadcast at a friend’s house. From it one can look down on all of London. Hearing the sirens go after the broadcast, Verily and her friends Phyl and Portia
tear upstairs to the top window to see what is happening. From all over the London they can see ‘from the green of squares, the gardens, the parks, silver barrage balloons shining in the morning sun . . . floating silently up into the sky’.

Verily says to her friends, ‘If this is war, it’s much prettier than I expected.’ To which Portia replies, ‘It is the war. The Prime Minister said so.’ The ‘All Clear’ sounds and the girls soon learn that it has been a false alarm. Verily picks up on a false rumour that is soon going the rounds: ‘It was only the Duke of Windsor flying in. He wanted to be there at the start.’

11.15am, C
AMBRIDGESHIRE

In a farmhouse kitchen, trainee Land Girl Edith Barraud listens to Chamberlain’s announcement with farmer Ted and his mother. Edith notes how tired the Prime Minister’s voice sounds. On hearing Chamberlain say, ‘this country is at war with Germany’, Ted’s mother exclaims, ‘Oh Ted, that means war!’ ‘Ah!’ Ted laconically replies. He then gets up and goes out to mix the cows’ grub for the afternoon feed.

11.15am, O
XFORD

Dorothy Bartlett and her family are sitting round the radio set. It has been tuned in for some time when Chamberlain finally comes on the air. Dorothy and the others hear the Prime Minister’s ‘tired, almost exhausted’ voice tell them that they are now at war. After Chamberlain finishes speaking, they turn the radio off and each speculates what the news will mean to them. Already, Dorothy has received an official notification from the Territorial Nursing Service. It tells her to hold herself ‘in readiness for an emergency’.

11.15am, C
HELTENHAM
, G
LOUCESTERSHIRE

Nan Wise, a fifteen-year-old pupil at Birmingham’s King Edward High School, has been in Cheltenham since Friday. She fears today
that Chamberlain is going to let the Poles down, just as the Czechs were abandoned last year. But now Nan hears that the Prime Minister has announced that Britain is at war. She is tremendously relieved that Britain has honoured her pledge, but relieved too that she and her schoolfriends can now ‘settle down to enjoy their new-found world’. She is glad that they will not ‘have to return, tails between our legs, to the old familiar rut’.

11.15am, A
SHFORD
, K
ENT

Schoolboy Rodney Giesler, of mixed English and German parentage, hears Chamberlain’s broadcast and is ‘absolutely inconsolable’ at the news.

11.15am, T
HE
K
ING AND
Q
UEEN
P
UBLIC
H
OUSE
, H
ARROW
R
OAD
, P
ADDINGTON

Peter Coats, a Territorial Army officer in the Middlesex Yeomanry, is going the rounds of his unit’s various posts in Paddington. One of them is located in the vestry of St Mary’s Church, where the actress Mrs Siddons is buried. At 11.00am, an hour before opening time, Coats and his sergeant enter the pub to hear the prime-ministerial broadcast. Coats is a close friend of the Chamberlain-admiring Conservative MP, Henry ‘Chips’ Channon. He does not, however, share his friend’s blind enthusiasm for the Prime Minister. But now as Coats listens to Chamberlain’s ‘sad old voice on the wireless’, he feels sorry for him. Coats and the sergeant start making their way back to St Mary’s when the sirens sound. Coats experiences mixed emotions: slight panic, exhilaration ‘and a desire, at all costs, not to seem afraid’. The thought flashes through his mind that in the space of a few minutes London would be sharing the fate of Warsaw, turned into blazing rubble. Instead, the ‘All Clear’ sounds. Coats has been frightened. But he hopes that he has not shown it. He hopes too that ‘perhaps it would be easier the next time’.