I’ve owned a copy of this book for several years, but have only now got around to reading it.
It’s a war book with a difference. It’s not about the military campaigns and battles. It’s a woman’s diary, written during the 6 years of the Second World War, but not edited and published until 1994.
The diarist was Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly. She married her husband Dan in January 1939, knowing that war was likely if not inevitable. When it did break out in the following September, Dan was posted with the Sherwood Yeomanry to the Middle East. Hermione was determined to go with him, even though it was ‘against the rules’ for Yeomanry wives to accompany their husbands. But she was an accomplished stenographer and typist; and more to the point, a woman with the stubbornness and perseverance to take on the military bureaucrats and jobsworths who tried repeatedly to get her sent back to England. She made herself indispensable to a succession of generals and other leaders, who were happy to ignore the ‘rules’. She became not only their secretary, but a ‘fixer’ for all kinds of hospitality, accommodation.
Dan was captured in the North African desert and spent years in a prison camp in Italy, before escaping and eventually making his way back to Allied-occupied territory. Hermione, meanwhile, though she was only in her 20s, was eventually recognized as having “the highest woman’s job in the theatre” (of war). She records meeting kings, prime ministers, senior military officers, film stars, and others. It was six years of unremitting hard work, flying backwards and forwards around the Mediterranean – when she was afraid of flying, and frequently air-sick. Six years of fun and enjoyment of new experiences, which she records with a keen eye. Six years, too, of anxiety for Dan, and for the outcome of the war, especially during the years of Axis victories and advances in North Africa and Eastern Europe. The tide eventually turned, of course; but through it all there is hardly any hatred of the enemy.
Towards the end, there are many details which we don’t always find in the more military histories of the war. I wasn’t aware of the problems in many places, when countries were finally liberated from enemy occupation, of acute food shortages, raging inflation, and fighting between former partisan factions, communist or democrat. Noting the mounting air supremacy of the Allied air forces, and the huge bombing raids on Germany, Hermione grieves over the suffering and the level of damage and casualties being caused. After the second atom bomb was dropped was dropped on Nagasaki, and the war finally ended, she notes:
Walking back to the office, with paper cascading from office windows and swirling in gusts along the streets, and people on the roofs and balconies singing and shouting, I felt terribly sad. It is so wonderful that the Second World War is over, and no wonder people celebrate, but what we have all done — to defend ourselves and to win the war — is too frightful for words.
And Whitaker? Whitaker was Dan and Hermione’s faithful butler, who insisted on accompanying them to the Middle East and Mediterranean, and was a loyal and amusing friend throughout the time.
WAR! What is it good for?
Godspelled 