大象传媒

Extracts from a diary
Joyce was 17 years old in the summer of 1939, living at home with her parents and brother, Kenneth, in Bancroft Avenue , North London. He was studying at Imperial College, Kensington, and she was working at home to take the Matriculation exam. She decided to start keeping a diary to improve her essays and to record what appeared to be a looming crisis.

1941
Saturday 19th April
Another big blitz on London tonight-just before the news a warning went. Gunfire was terrific.... a familiar swishing noise ... incendiaries ... and clicking noises as they hit roofs. Looking out at the back I saw that the Dudleys (next door neighbours) had one in their back garden. In front, the road seemed to be full of them.

Miss Metcalf opposite had a hole in her roof which was glowing ominously. Daddy and Ken, with tin hats on, rushed across the road, and after hammering on the door, were admitted politely by the maid, and were able to extinguish the bomb in the loft before it did any damage.
Meanwhile I rushed over the road with a bucket of water and was able to refill Jean Goschalk's - and take over pumping for her, while Mr G. sprayed a bomb in the Metcalf s front drive. On our right a bomb glowed under a sandbag. Our bomb kept sending up showers of sparks. When it was out we followed Mr G. up the road to a house which had a front bedroom alight - as we approached a couple of H.E. bombs swished down and we threw ourselves flat in a nearby flower bed. When we got into the house a short queue was stretching up the stairs with buckets, stirrup pumps, and some without anything. The bomb was said to be out so we left the house to look for more problems..... the sky was lurid over towards Woodside Avenue , guns seemed to split the sky and planes were flying low. Things quietened down after that....

About one o'clock we went to bed in the shelter.
Sunday 20th April
Today everyone tried to sort out their buckets.
One of the bombs last night fell on the railway just near the tube tunnel (East Finchley). The big fire we saw was from St James' in Muswell Hill. We drove round to look and only the stonework was left.

Monday 21" April
The sorting of buckets continues - we got one from Mrs Pendrill - we've got the right number now. She had a nasty incendiary bomb - it trickled into her hot air cupboard and set all her clean clothes alight.
Sunday 26th April
This morning Daddy and the Home Guard had a battle along their Thames front.
We went to church in the evening - to the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Road where the City Temple is holding it's sevices (since it was burnt out during the fire raid last Sunday). A small hall crammed full; the choir and Mr Weatherhead stood on the platform; we were in a funny little gallery. There were no hymn books - only little leaflets, and the choir had no gowns - only Leslie had his, someone had managed to rescue it.
We went down Greys Inn Road on the way - there were some terrible bare patches down there - just one or two walls standing.... almost takes the breath away to see it. We passed Wallis too- burnt to a shell - also the Church next to the City Temple (which is still standing but all the inside gone).
Churchill broadcast before the 9 o'clock news . He explained why we hadn't done better in Greece - also telling us to expect worse. He also thanks the U.S. for all the help they were sending us and he ended up with the following lines :
"For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When the daylight comes, comes in the light.
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright."
Quoting Arthur Hugh Clough from "Say not the struggle nought availeth".

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