Nella Last’s War: A mother’s diary, 1939 – 1945
I meant to copy up the first two paragraphs of the preface because they summarize perfectly, but I’m writing this late and am away from the text. In the late 1930’s an organization known as ‘Mass Observation’ asked hundreds of normal people to keep diaries of their day to day events to be compiled into one record so as to benefit future generations looking back. The same organization also commissioned various polls and questionnaires of the general population. These records are currently held at the University of Sussex and needless to say they provide an important resource for historians and almost every social, economic or political historian of Britain during the Second World War will dive into these records at some point. Nella Last was a housewife from Barrow. Her diary was so complete and of such quality that it was deemed worth publishing separately as a piece of historical literature. It was first published in 1981 and has been recently republished following its transformation into a TV Drama. A very good read for everyone…
posted by Benjamin Nakizo at 2:16 PM
1 Comments:
Nella Last, Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire.
Two sons. The youngest joined the army just before the outbreak of war and her eldest is a tax collector, and hence in a reserved occupation, exempt from military service.
She has a domineering but not aggressive husband. She has spent her life trapped in a traditional house wife role by a traditional but passive husband. Before the war starts she already begins volunteering for work at the local branch of the W.V.S. (Women Voluntary Service). She enjoys the work which is mostly knitting material into useable products, like pillows, bags and dolls. Yet she is very depressed and has trouble sleeping at nights.
She comments on the terrible winter of 1939/1940 which was one of the worst on record for over fifty years. Rationing is a big concern of hers as she tries to feed the household and keep her husband happy. She comments how in the snow people find it hard to commute to work (particularly the shipyard that is the main employer in the area). Also some remote areas find they actually suffer terribly when the roads are closed as there is no way of getting vital goods to them.
What strikes me most is the sheer ingenuity of this women and others like her. In this age of ‘if its broke throw it out and buy a new one’ I find it amazing that she copes so well with so little. Every thing she is given is made to stretch as far as it can while other things are made to do jobs they were never intended to do. She is in some ways helped in this conversion to war thinking by her memories of the last world war in which rationing was introduced. She quickly picks up her old habits of conservation and recycling under extreme conditions.
P30: she talks a great deal about the stress that many of the mothers suffer from as their sons and daughters are away on war service.
P58: It seems the efforts of the WVS increased inversely to the Allied war successes. After Dunkirk for example the place was buzzing with a new zeal to succeed.
P59: British people could listen in to a German speaking radio station during the war, where it was being broadcast from I do not know. But it could be picked up on the west coast.
P63: She seems to put a brave face on everything. In her diary she is so depressed but hints that in reality she is the joker who brightens up the others at the WVS.
P71: Lots of talk of how she had to budget, make worse by the los of income that her sons used to pay her in housekeeping. Her youngest, now in barracks, no longer gives her that money and she has to make do with what her husband allows.
P77: Anger that the Government made no provisions for proper, deep, air raid shelters. This seems to have been a big gripe during this time, expressed in much of the contemporary literature.
P84: She worries that with the advent of the moving picture children have “stopped inventing games and situations”. Someone should throw her an X box.
P91: A sense of slow empowerment creeps in to Nella’s strory. She is more forceful in her day to day activities.
P94: Notes how children that are evacuated to country homes with their mothers are usually more of a problem than those that come alone since they integrate less well into the host family.
P97: She is by far one of the youngest at the WVS. The WVS serves as a sort of therapeutic organization which provides support for the women who lose sons and husbands in the war. A place for emotional support and providing purpose and direction as well as simply providing a basic war function on a material level.
P103: INTERESTING: She supports Hitler’s gassing of disabled people. Typical. I bet she would read the Daily Mail today.
P116: “I’d to remind myself more than once that I was a soldier, and not just a fifty-one year old housewife”.
P123: Nella almost always refers to the fate of solders after U-boat attacks. IMPORTANT FOR MY DISSERTATION?
P133: Not everyone liked Churchill. Nella did, but her son, in the forces comes back from basic training with the opinion that he is a bad leader.
P135: It appears that they may well have bee screening internal post as well. Nella mentions how a letter to a friend needed to be worded carefully as not to alert the authorities. But I think I have mis-interpreted her meaning.
P132: Nella seems well read. She refers to Shakespeare, Huxley and H.G. Wells.
- On Sunday May 4th her house is damaged by a nearby bomb blast. Windows are broken and plaster falls from walls. –
P144: Nella comments on how having children outside wedlock is not approve of by the residents of the town. She herself says that she has few problems with it and all support necessary should be given to the mothers.
P149: She is disappointed that Barrow does not feature by name on the BBC but instead is simply lumped in with the rest of the ‘North-West’ in news bulletins.
P151: It seems that keeping proactive an bus was actually a method of staying sane during a highly stressful time for those on the Home Front.
P162: A character at the ship yards makes a strong case for nationalization of the skilled civilian work force.
P168: Nella finds her own emancipation in war work: “He never realizes – and never could – that the years when I had to sit quiet and always do everything he liked, and never the things he did not, were slavery years for mind and body”.
P176/177: Part of Nellas empowerment comes from her running of a mobile canteen and then later of a full time canteen. She realizes that her ability to manage a household and produce high quality meals with limited resources can be used in the work place to great effect.
P178: Nella hires Gladys as a cleaner for her house, this totally changes my perception of her class status. Most certainly a middle class family, if not middle to upper.
P189: she wants to stop for a rest but remembers a motto: “thee keep on till thee can take off the boots for good”.
P194: She gets passionate, asking WHY now was it that women were finally freeing themselves from social taboos.
P226: The civilians are on the front line, everyone is involved. This is total war, observe: “I felt my hands go clammy and damp, and I put my toy rabbit down. I looked at his foolish little face, such an odd weapon to be fighting with”.
P229: “I wondered if people would EVER go back to the old ways I cannot see women settling to trivial ways – women who have done worthwhile things.” There seems in one sense almost an expectation that the woman’s social standing would improve with war work as it had done slightly after the last one.
P240: People (Nella’s Husband) came to appreciate simple things more than they did. Her husband, who dealt wit blitz victims, became very grateful for Nellas cooking.
P262: The Beveridge Report really was big news. Strangers would chat about it on the bus.
P278: The anti-climax and sheer exhaustion people felt on V.E. day. Nothing at all like the celebrations Nella remembers for the Boer War or the end of WWI.
P282: “when I read the letter from Regional H.Q. and thought ‘Hmph, we will soon all be out of a job’ it was not with any sense of exaltation. It’s been a long and often trying road, but I found comradeship, and it brought peace of mind when otherwise I’d have broken. The knowledge that I was ‘keeping things moving in the right direction,’ in however small a degree, steadied me, helped my tired head to rest peacefully at night, and have the strength to begin again when morning came. I wonder if it’s the same feeling some of the lads have when they think of being demobilized.”
Post a Comment
<< Home