Nella Last kept a diary throughout World War Two, under the auspices of the Mass Observation Archive. Her record of events offers a unique insight into one woman's war - on the Home Front. This is the second of two sets of extracts, and is concerned with Nella's views on public events.
Sunday 3 September 1939: Britain entered the war with Germany.
Food rationing was introduced in January 1940. In the opening months of the war the only significant fighting was at sea - where the German navy attacked British shipping. The result was shortages - and many goods became unobtainable. In November 1939 the Russians marched into Finland, and after months of resistance the Finns accepted Russian terms, on 12 March 1940.
Wednesday 13 March 1940: All the brave struggles of Finland - such futile bravery now seems to hang over me like a black fog that shuts out the sun. It's easy enough when things go right, to talk and think of 'God's plan' but so hard to reconcile any plan with the martyrdom of the Finns and the Poles. Kill kill kill, sorrow and grief and loneliness, senseless cruelty and hatred, drowning men, mud, cold and a baffling sense of futility - what a Hell broth.
7 May 1940: The surrender of Norway was announced.
10 May 1940: German troops drove into Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg - threatening France. In Britain the Chamberlain government was about to be replaced by a coalition government led by Winston Churchill.
Saturday 11 May 1940: Churchill visited the Barrow-in-Furness shipyard to see an aircraft carrier launched. Nella reports:
The men in the shipyard were very impressed by 'something' he had. ...One man said 'to stand by him was to feel as if he had more pulses than ordinary men'.
Thursday 16 May 1940: Holland surrendered. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was being pushed back by the Germany army. Nella writes of the friends of her sons - and the days before the war - where she heard their ideals, hopes and plans.
I wonder where Les, Ted and Bill are? Ted never grumbles but in a letter to Arthur - there was a queer hail and farewell. I have the feeling that we will never see him again. The days of mad irresponsible fun are so far away and took place in a previous existence. Such happiness could not be gone for ever and only pain and suffering endure.
Monday 10 June 1940: Italy entered the war.
Friday 14 June 1940: German forces entered Paris.
Saturday 10 August 1940: The Battle of Britain began - as the German and British Air Forces fought for control of the skies. German bombing raids began in earnest in September 1940. During the weekend of 7 and 8 August, nearly 1,000 people were killed in London.
November 1940: Rations were cut - the sugar allowance was now only eight ounces a week, tea - two ounces. The production of crockery, cutlery and toys was severely curtailed as inessentials. On the night of 14 November Coventry was bombed and the medieval centre of the city - including the Cathedral - was destroyed. Many of its houses were made uninhabitable. Over the next few months Birmingham, Southampton, LIverpool, Bristol, Cardiff, Hull and other cities suffered major attacks.
Friday 14 February 1941: With everybody killing and fighting each other. How soon will there be famine over the world? Food and beauty for all in this world, and yet soon none will have the first or care about the second - so wrong and twisted.
In the first few months of 1941, people's diet was the poorest of the war - largely because of Germany's successful U-boat campaign. After March 1941 - with the American Lease Lend Act - large supplies of food came from the US.
British forces had been sent to repel the German's invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. In North Africa, the Allies had been driven back to Egypt and the bombing of British cities reached new heights. At the Barrow shipyard, the aircraft carrier Indomitable, two cruisers, cargo vessels and submarines were being built.
22 June, 1941: Hitler invaded Russia
Japanese airforce attacked the US naval fleet at Pearl Harbor. The next day, the US entered the war.
Thursday 22 January 1942: It makes me shudder to think of the Russians, driven from their homes and their villages destroyed.
Russia wanted the Allies to invade France and thus open a second front. This would force the Germans to move troops away from Russia and thus relieve the pressure on the Red Army. In North Africa, the Allies were on the retreat and had been pushed back to Egypt.
Tobruk has gone - what of Egypt, Suez, and India? Nearly three years of war. Why don't we get going - what stops us. Surely by now, things could be organised better some way. Why should our men be thrown against superior mechanical horrors? If only Mothers could think that their poor ones had died usefully - with a purpose. Valuable lives, time, stores and time - gone down the drain.
October 28 1942: Germans and Italians were defeated at El Alamein in Egypt. Churchill warned, 'This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps, the end of the beginning.'
Sunday 29 November 1942: I listened to Churchill with a shadow on my heart and see the long, hard and bitter road. I thought of the men out East. How long will it be before they come home. It's bad enough for mothers but what of the young wives.
1 December 1942: The Beveridge Report outlined the proposal for the Welfare State.
9 July 1943: Invasion of Italy - the Allies landed on Sicily.
8 September 1943: Italian Government surrendered.
Nella's diary entries are missing from January 1944 to May 1945.
Cliff has returned to England. He was wounded in action in Italy in November 1944. Arthur has married his sweetheart, Edith. They live in Ireland. Russian troops have invaded Germany and the western Allies have driven the Germans out of France and are pushing towards Berlin. The blackout has been lifted but rationing is as strict as ever. The Allies have discovered the concentration camps. VE Day is approaching.
Monday 7 May 1945: When I went downtown, all the shops had got their rosettes and tricoloured button-holes in the windows and men putting up lengths of little pennants and flags. Till at three o'clock, the Germans announced it was all over. As if by magic, long ladders appeared, for putting up flags and streamers. A complete stranger to the situation could have felt the tenseness and feeling of expectation. Like myself, Steve [Howson - wartime friend of the Last family] has a real fear of Russia. He thinks in, say, 20 years or so, when Nazism has finally gone, Germany and not Russia will be our Allies.
The announcer on the wireless said unemotionally that tomorrow was to be the VE Day... we just gazed at each other.
Steve said 'What a Flop, What a Flop'. It was as if a body of psychologists had been consulted. 'Now sort out the events and announcements for us. We want to tell them but with no dramatic announcements, no build-up. We want them to know the European War is over - but not to emphasise it. You know, it's only the first half: we must keep that in people's minds, not let them forget what's ahead.' We felt no pulse quicken, no sense of thankfulness or uplift.
Nella compares the announcement to the:
'wild mafficking' [hysterical rejoicing] of the South African War and the miles of bunting, children's processions, the delirious joy when the Armistice was signed. Emotion is drained out of us - sapped day by day, by news of events and by happenings.
Tuesday 8 May 1945 - VE Day: Nella reports that she felt curious, flat during the day. There is no mention of cheering crowds, and the Lasts spent the day quietly.
Wednesday 9 May 1945: Steve Howson says that already he can see signs of demobilisation being as big a swindle as last time and says anything can be wangled if you are in the know. I thought that the soldiers would all have been looking forward eagerly to demobbing but there is a very negative feeling among those I know and their wives don't seem to find a lot of belief in 'Home soon now'.
Nella's reaction to events during the war:
Sunday 5 August 1945: This war has taught us that man is finished as the deciding factor in future wars. The V bombs [pilotless flying bombs - used against Britain in the last year of the war] showed in a dawn of horror, weapons that no country could leave out of future developments. Just a very few people could smash civilisation in the future, it will not need marching armies.
6 August: Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Wednesday 8 August: Nella was:
...horrified at the atomic bomb business.
9 August: Another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
Wednesday 14 August: The end of World War Two.
At 1 o'clock on Wednesday morning. Nella was woken by:
shouting and noise from ship's sirens and church bells. Then I realised that the longed-for news of peace had come through on the last news. Bonfires have been lit. Rockets and searchlights went up from all the ships in the dock. Sounds of fireworks, shrill childish voices. I feel disappointed in my feelings. I feel no wild whoopee, just a quiet thankfulness and feeling of 'flatness'. I think I'll take two aspirins and try and read myself to sleep.
Tuesday 5 March 1940: Nella Last was a volunteer at the Red Cross Centre, along with mothers who had sons in the front-line.
Mrs Spencer is a polished, well dressed woman with immaculate hair, complexion and hands. We talked of our sons, her boy is on a hush hush boat somewhere. As she packed, I saw her hands and her once beautiful nails were bitten to the quick. Then I seemed to notice her too bright eyes and I thought of all the mothers whose boys have gone to fight and who suffer and I felt pity wrap me like a flame.
Between 26 May and 4 June 1940, the evacuation of Dunkirk was on everyone's mind.
Saturday 1 June: Today in town, there seemed such an anxious feeling and women asked each other eagerly if sons or husbands had 'arrived in England' yet. I heard of telegrams received and, still more so, anxiously waited for.
Monday 3 June: I wonder how many of our soldiers are left - and will be left behind. ...A friend's husband got back and is in hospital down south. His newly married wife wrote to her mother and said that 'he has no wounds but is lying flat in bed and the look in his eyes are dreadful. He did not even speak to me - just looked at me as if he did not know me.
Thursday 6 June 1940: All the mothers at the Red Cross Centre have heard that their sons had made it back safely. I looked at their bright eyes as their heads drew together to talk of precious letters and my heart ached to think that soon mothers would be getting other wires and the brightness of their eyes would dim and never shine so brightly again.
Saturday 7 September 1940: Nella is bid to a funeral - that of a boy that Cliff (Nella's son) had played with.
He was just one of those pilots reported missing. As I stood with the mist hiding all the views of the hills around and the sad looking grey water slipping over the golden sands of Morecambe Bay, I felt misery and pity grip me. I felt I'd seen enough sorrow for one day but when I picked up the local 'Mail', it was to see portraits of two bright faced boys I watched grow up from babies who were reported missing - both pilots.
Wednesday 22 January 1941: A woman and her daughter came to visit Nella. The daughter's husband has just gone overseas for two years.
The daughter's beauty was clouded and dimmed, my heart ached for her. I felt so full of pity, I was speechless.
Monday 23 November 1942: A school friend of Cliff's has been killed in the Middle East. I think of the millions of bereaved parents and wives. My head ticks with the futility. Why should children be born at all if they are to be mown down in the early morning of their bright lives.
Tuesday 3 March 1943: Lad of Nineteen, pilot, reported missing in the raid over Essen. His mother used to brag of his progress in the RAF. Then a faint shadow crept over her face, and when he started operational flying, it was as if she saw the shadow on the wall. She lost her smile. May God pity woman - a poignant cry for us all.
Tuesday 23 March: Nella writes of a woman whose daughter is a WREN.
The daughter's husband has been a POW since Dunkirk. Her daughter loves life and dancing, goes off night after night in a clique of girls and naval men from the Depot. It's been discovered that she can expect a baby within four to five months. Her story is that she knows nothing about it - it must have happened when she was 'tight' sometime.
The mother 'cried bitterly' and her (Officer) father says that she is a slut and doesn't believe her story. Her mother says that she 'doesn't know what to believe'. I said that you must believe her - she has no one to turn to.
Don't tell her that you doubt her story. The poor woman said - 'Her husband - who is to tell him?' I said, 'If it was my girl, I'd find some way to shield her; and that poor lad in Germany should never know till he is back and she can tell him herself. What good will it do to torture him while he is so helpless?'
Thursday 19 August: I look round at faces I have known and loved for over four years. My heart aches (for their) bravery and courage, the 'going on' when only sons have been killed, when letters don't come, when their boys are trained and trained and trained. To go and kill other women's lads, to wipe all the light from other mother's faces.
German bombing raids began in earnest in September 1940. During the weekend of the 7th and 8th, nearly 1,000 people were killed in London.
Saturday 16 November 1940: People in Barrow were dismayed by the intensive bombing of Coventry, for it was a town that many Barrow people had moved to, in times of bad trade.
I have many friends and old neighbours there and no word as to their safety. One woman was very upset because she had refused to let her daughter come home to have her second baby: the mother said she was tired of being put on: and the daughter had plenty of money to pay for attention.
The poor woman was distraught as she remembered her daughters' words about her flat in the shadow of the cathedral. Such a bright clear night - a night of beauty and peace - and not reflect that the silver light will bring hordes of murderers to kill and maim.
Monday 30 December 1940: The face of a little boy came to me. He is here from Liverpool. He saw his mother and two sisters killed, spent seven nights in a shelter - was trapped with an elder sister and lay on her dead arm for hours before rescue - and he is seven. His eyes are frenzied and he talks in stutters. If he falls asleep, he wakes in a lather of fright, shaking and screaming.
Tuesday 25 February 1941: When I came to bed, I thought of the poor women sleeping in tubes and deep shelters, and shuddered. I reflected that if I had grown used to such a dreadful existence, something would have died in me. That's the dreadful part to me - so much dying: family unity, peace to live one's own life, the ordinary decencies of everyday life, hopes and ambitions.
It gives me a fear of the future, and a wonder about how all the boys and men that are left will begin again.
In the first few months of 1941, people's diet became the poorest it had been throughout the war - largely because of Germany's successful U-boat campaign. After March 1941 - with the American Lease Lend Act - large supplies of food came from the US.
British forces were sent to repel Germany's invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. In North Africa, the Allies were driven back to Egypt. The bombing of British cities reached new heights. At the Barrow shipyard, the aircraft carrier Indomitable, two cruisers, cargo vessels and submarines were being built.
Easter Monday, 14 April 1941: One Hotel had gone and a little street. The former and four houses of the latter are just rubble, and no one was saved from them. I could not have believed so few bombs could do so much damage. Bulging walls, gaping windows, crazily leaning chimneys, dirty tired wardens, ordinary citizens in demolition gangs working like men possessed, crowds of quiet, white faced spectators.
Tuesday 15 April: Midnight: Sounds of bombs and waves of planes going over to either the Clyde or Northern Ireland, machine gunning. All making an inferno of sound and the crump of bombs falling in the centre of the town is dreadful.
2am: I wonder if anything will be left of the centre of the town, there are such dreadful crumps. I cannot relax or sit down for every 15 minutes or so we run for cover while shrapnel pours on the roof and bombs dropped somewhere make the doors and windows shake and rattle.
4am: The devil planes must be coming back now - a hundred must have passed over tonight. I think I'd like to cry or swear or something
Sunday 4 May: The Lasts had by now received a Morrison shelter, two feet and nine inches high, with wire mesh sides and a steel plate top. It was used indoors.
A night of terror. Land mines, incendiaries and explosives were dropped and we cowered thankfully under our indoor shelter. I really thought our end had come. Now I've a sick shadow over me as I look at my loved little house. Ceilings down, walls cracked, doors off.
Wednesday 7 May: Nella heard that a friend was killed in a bombing raid on Barrow.
Poor Kathleen has gone - went the other night in that direct hit in Hawcoat Lane. I'm not a melting woman but I felt for one split second that I'd melt and pour out of my clothes. Kathie Thompson - the sweetest and most loveable and only 21 now. We are, indeed, all in the firing line.
There were public shelters in Barrow for only 3,500 people - out of a population of 70,000. As a direct result of the Blitz, 83 people were killed and 330 injured; 10,000 houses were damaged.
As the war progressed, the Allies steadily won control of the skies. However, the Nazis were able to renew the Blitz on London, thanks to the V1 - nicknamed the Doodlebug - and the much more destructive V2 missiles.
Nella was housewife throughout her life, but had made clothes for members of her husband's family, to make ends meet. Throughout the period of her diaries, she was angry at the lack of power of women and felt that in the future, partnership was the answer. Here are some extracts on that theme...
Thursday 8 August 1940: If I could choose, I'd like to be a man when I 'come again'. Men do seem to get the best out of life. All the responsibility and effort, all the colour and romance.
Sunday 10 May 1942: I'd like to be a man and have the freedom to go to the far ends of the Earth, to do things and see places, to go where few, if any, have travelled.
Sunday 1 August 1943: As the war progressed Nella grew in confidence, thanks to her work outside the home.
I'm beginning to see that I'm really a clever woman in my own line, and not the 'uneducated' woman that I've had dinned into me. In the World of tomorrow, marriage will be - have to be - more of a partnership. They will talk things over - talking does do good, if only to clear the air.
I run my house like a business, I have had to, to get all done properly, everything fitted in. Why, then, should women not be looked on as partners. as 'businesswomen'. I feel thoroughly out of time. When one gets to 53, and after 32 years of married life, there are few illusions to cloud issues.
At other times Nella seems to have felt real despair ...
Friday 14 February 1941: With everybody killing and fighting each other. How soon will there be famine over the world. Food and beauty for all in this world and yet soon none will have the first or care about the second - so wrong and twisted.
Saturday 13 September 1941: He was undersized, dirty, tousled and ragged. His poor little eyes were nearly closed with styes and when I touched his cheeks, his flesh had the soft, limp feeling of malnutrition.
Nella worked as a volunteer in the Red Cross Centre canteen. She was from a generation who had lived through World War One. In that conflict, men who hadn't joined up were given white flowers by women as a symbol of cowardice. In that period, there was huge public hostility to the conchies (conscientious objectors), who had refused to fight. This extract shows that while attitudes had mellowed, such men were still treated with scorn.
Friday 12 December 1941: I was taken aback by one dirty soldier, whose leather jerkin showed he was on labour duty. He said 'Cuppa tea, lady and I ain't a conchie'.
I said 'I beg your pardon' and he said 'My mate said if you want a smile and a joke with them at the counter, tell them you're not a conchie in spite of them being in the Labour battalion - they never joke with the conchies - just pass their tea over and say thank you.' We must have shown it plainly.
As Nella was adept with coping with the shortages of rationing, she was astonished to discover during a visit to Blackpool that not everyone had to penny pinch to survive.
Monday 27 April 1942: I cannot possibly find words to express my surprise at the lavish luxury in the shops. There was everything as in peacetime and the only restrictions I saw were the [references] to coupons or the "points" value on tinned goods. Whole roast chickens, potted herrings and cooked sausage.
As the war neared its end, Nella thought that the older generation had done enough damage to the world.
Thursday 12 July 1945: I think that the youth of today could turn round and say to people of 50 to 60. Keep out of our affairs. We couldn't do any worse than you did - two world wars and half the world in ruins. No careers as we expected. No houses to begin married life in.
Look at our maimed bodies and minds. Can we do worse? Can we appease the strong and neglect the weak. Shut our eyes to the cry of ones who saw what was ahead. What worse can we do? Keep quiet and let us work out our own way, in the world we will have to live in.
On the new weapons of war, Nella was fearful, as she realised that they could mean oblivion for mankind.
Sunday 5 August: This war has taught us that man is finished as the deciding factor in future wars. The V bombs [pilotless flying bombs - used against Britain in the last year of the war] showed in a dawn of horror, weapons that no country could leave out of future developments. Just a few people could smash civilisation in the future, it will not need marching armies.
For Nella's reactions to the effect the war had on private events in her life, see War Diary of Nella Last: Part One
Books
Nella Last's War edited by Richard Broad and Suzi Fleming (Falling Wall Press, 1981). This edited version of the diary spans only the wartime years, whilst the original diary covers the years from 1939 to 1965.
The Dock Museum, Barrow-in-Furness, traces the development of the town from a tiny hamlet to a major centre for British shipbuilding.
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