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A GENTLE WAR
DECEMBER 1st — 10th 1942

During his RAF posting at Predannack Airfield in Cornwall my father, Kenneth Crapp, kept a diary. The diary runs from October 27th 1942 — June 7th 1944 and the first 4 month extract is included below. It shows an unexpectedly tranquil aspect of war — quiet background work on a somewhat isolated airfield, where an interest in birds and nature was undoubtedly ‘a saving grace’.

Tuesday, December 1st
Mostly messing about with accs all day.

Spent a few moments at dinner break on a visit to Poltesco. The sky was a wonderful blue, and the sun warm, and great swarms of flies rising from the banks of the decaying seaweed. What a feast for the redstart, I thought, but I could see no sign of it. I did see a white wagtail, though. However, in the next little cove, after a careful search, I detected a bird catching flies, and the sudden ducking movement after it had landed it revealed its identity — the redstart was still here in December.

Beveridge report on social insurance out this evening — a most important document.

I got a closer glimpse of the swans this evening — they have black beaks and the cry is different to our tame mute swans. As I watched, a man tried to shoot them, but they got away, I’m glad to say.

Wednesday, December 2nd
Considerable excitement getting a trailer over a stretch of boggy moor. The trailer had stupidly been left there until a building was built in its way — hence the trip over the moor and the deep ruts dug by the lorry pulling it out.

Rode in mail van to Truro, sitting on top of sacks of letters: it’s no wonder they get crushed sometimes. Doors not securely fastened and care was necessary. A policeman in Truro told me that Bernetto’s bus did not run late on Wednesdays to St Columb Road, but only on Saturdays.

Read a bit of the newspaper reports on Beveridge’s document: he proposes abolition of the Assurance Companies, family allowances, one payment to cover all risks from unemployment to death, even a funeral grant, a Ministry of Social Security, at a cost in its first year of £697 millions. Opposition will come from the powerful assurance companies, reactionaries who will cry that we can’t afford it (money being our master and not our servant) and this lot will include many who will stand to benefit by the scheme, and from those who think it removes the incentive towards personal effort. It’s a most thought-compelling document. I shall study what I can of it closely.

In the bus to St Columb Road I spent some time saying to myself in Morse, passages from advertisements and was surprised to find how easily it came back.

For the last mile of my walk into St Columb, I had a lift in a car driven by my old schoolmaster. He’s now organising and running the Army cadets in the area. Dad tells me he took me to Cardiff in August 1912, so my memory of the trains I saw there at the front of the house must be just about my very earliest.

Thursday, December 3rd
A round of calls — Mrs Lawrey made me laugh with her opinion of Sir W Beveridge — ‘He must be a very clever man to do all that, and then get married at the same time’: she gave me a loaf of home-made bread to take back and I ate a huge apple there.

Uncle Jim thinks the Beveridge report a wonderful scheme, but costs too much.

Auntie May has not been well and was in bed when I called. I saw only Joyce, who now has an American officer attached and went to church on Sunday with 5 of them.

The road to Watergate is closed and all the houses at Mawgan Cross are being torn down. This war has caused the despoliation of large tracts of countryside.

I left St Columb on the station bus at 4.30 with a horde of noisy school children at the back and I caught the 5.15 from Truro to Falmouth.

In the Falmouth bus four youths were teasing the conductress. When she said something about Predannack I asked and found she’d been in the NAAFI. One of the lads said ‘That’s our parent ‘drome’ and up cropped the subject of the ATC. ‘Yad, kids!’ the conductress sneered. ‘Yes’, said one of the boys, ‘We’re kids until we’re 18 and then they want us. We can get oranges until we’re 18’.

At Carleon spaghetti on toast for supper and the usual amusing gossip. To Uncle’s satisfaction I did up the join in the cable to the electric heater with insulating tape.

Pleasant ride back in the starlight with a rear lamp that wouldn’t stay on because of a loose bulb. Best news of the day — Bob is in a prison camp in Italy.

Friday, December 4th
Birds singing yesterday — song thrushes, robins, dunnocks, wrens. Today in a much colder wind from the south east, robin, a dunnock and some linnets singing.

Yesterday I identified from a bird book at home the swans on the pool here as whooper swans. From the same book — our own birds that sing in winter need to do so for territorial reasons; all the visitors have no such need to sing.

Heard Brian singing this

Mary had a little lamb
She also had a bear
I’ve often seen her little lamb
But I’ve never seen her bear

Saturday, December 5th
So much clearing up to do this morning that I had little time for reading, though I did some of the first crossword puzzles in Penguin book I now have.

Mistle thrush singing. At Carleon saw several goldcrests, a company of ringed plovers at the water’s edge, wagtails white and grey — and the black redstart.

For some days now the wind has been from the west or south west or north west and wet spells have been much more frequent. It’s mild though and there are still goodly displays of flowers, especially gorse. Red campion, hogweeds, meadow buttercup, various speedwells, scarlet pimpernel, daisies, corn woundwort, even honeysuckle can still be seen.

Sunday, December 6th
Tale of the cookhouse — an airman complains to another of the Sunday dinner. Messing Officer appears and asks what was the matter with it? Airman temporarily embarrassed and officer asks ‘Don’t you like mutton?’. The first airman recovers and mutters ‘horse!’. ‘Yeh! and they forgot to take the saddle off!’ adds the second airman.

Music Circle this evening — Rachmaninoff’s Concerto in F sharp minor: Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony: Forest Murmurs and Good Friday music from Parsifal by Wagner.

Monday, December 7th
Adjustment of the buzzer here is so critical that there is the faintest movement between a short circuit and the point at which it will not operate. I left it working but with the cover off.

Leave position left unclear after my rival had seen Mr A. H talks of giving and taking: it seems as though I do the giving and he’ll take. To suit him, I’ve given up 2 days with Betty, because I didn’t want to be awkward and obstinate. He’s given nothing, unless I’m careful I shall lose what I want.

Douglass Reed’s ‘All Our Tomorrows’ is intriguing. Since re-armament began in 1935, why could Sir N Henderson say that at the time of Munich there was no gun nor Spitfire to guard London: and why hadn’t we the weapons to defend ourselves: and why hadn’t we the weapons to defend ourselves in 1940. What happened to the money that we paid in taxes that we might re-arm. He suggests that we supplied Germany with arms.

This war, he says, was more difficult to bring about then to prevent.

Tuesday, December 8th
Recent items not noted. A lizard found lying the sun on December 2nd — very sluggish: petasites fragrans in bloom, and a few sprays of the lovely winter jasmine. Counted up to 14 song thrushes in full song between Penhale Crossroads and Helston station. Despite a drizzly day, I was lucky in my ride to Helston and the one back.

Uncle C in a café, is most entertainingly rude to a lady who is no more than a chance acquaintance. She plays up to him.

Lady ‘Good morning, not a very nice day.’
Uncle ‘‘No, nothing bright about it — at least not until we met’ and he smiles impishly.
Lady ‘Oh! how nice!’
Uncle ‘I’ve been thinking that out for sometime and wondering who to try it on!’
Lady ‘I’ll have to put you down in a corner of my will. You’d like that’.
Uncle ‘It all depends how much you leave me. Will it be soon?’
Lady ‘Come now, you don’t want to push me off yet. I’m getting on, I know, but then 32’s not very old is it?’

With her grey hair and her wrinkled eyes she was comic as she said this.

Two more anecdotes from uncle:-

1) At his first speech he had to second a motion, so he said: ‘I’ve been asked to speak, though I’m not a good public speaker. They want me to cap this motion so I cap it’ — and he seized a cap, dumped it on his neighbour’s head, and sat down.

2) At a football meeting at St Columb, he said ‘I’ve been asked to speak, though I don’t know why. They tell I’m the club’s biggest supporter’ and he glanced fondly down at his tummy and sat down amidst delighted laughter.

From Russia the news is that the Russian attacks are slowing up the Germans counter-attacking: in Tunisia an armoured battle is in progress at Tebourba and each side now seems to have more planes: air superiority has yet to be decided and it will then decide the battle.

It’s significant that critics now begin to clamour for a bigger effort against the U-boats. On Sunday a force of British and US bombers raided the Phillips radio works in Holland. The place was wrecked. We lost about 12% of our planes.

Even yet, the bombing offensive against Germany is not continuous nor heavy enough.

Wednesday, December 9th
To Kynance this afternoon because a fierce gale was sweeping in great seas.

Gale warning issued at the camp 50 — 60mph — to judge by the noise here it is a lot faster than that.

Thursday, December 10th
Gale raging more than before, with rain quite horizontal. At 3.30 the gale is even worse and the rain as bad. The two 60 foot posts are straining so that I fear they must crash. Already a rope sustaining an aerial is broken and flaps dismally in the storm: it is caught high up in the tall mast. Fortunately the aerial itself still functions.

Uncle C told me last week that an acquaintance of theirs told them that only one sixth of the cheese made here was being used. I find confirmation in a recent paper where the Ministry of Food devotes a whole advert to the need for taking full rations. ‘For example, eat your 8oz of cheese every week’.

Gale still raging when I went to bed. Chap on the main beacon says that once he was ready to phone up the FCO to ask for a bearing, as the van was almost airborne.

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