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May
Hill’s Lincolnshire Village Wartime Diaries:
D-Day My
Grandmother, May
Hill lived in Chapel St Leonards, a seaside village near Skegness. Her Diaries
comprised a beautifully written coverage
of the years between
1941 and 1944, abounding with anecdotes about
village life, poems, recipes, her own childhood memories and
comments on the war
and politics.
The extract which follows is
May’s writing on D-Day: The people featured are: May Hill (widowed a few months earlier), Rene (married daughter), Jean (younger daughter), Ron (son, serving with RAF in Italy), Emmie (Ron’s wife), Mrs Russell (Emmie’s mother), Ciss (May’s husband’s niece), Percy (Ciss’s husband), General Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, Archbishop of Canterbury
William Temple, King George VI.
Tues June 6 1944, D.Day 9.30 pm
SECOND FRONT
An
Ordinary Day So, at last the long-talked of Second Front has begun. I have not even given it a new page and that seems a fitting symbol of how it appears to me. What excitement there may be in towns or elsewhere, in the country does not seem to have touched us here. It is just an ordinary day, after nearly 5 years of war it takes a lot to make us demonstrative. I went on with my ordinary work and
made my first toy for sale, a white duck with green wings and yellow beak and
feet. It is for Mrs Russell to give to a baby friend. I must make the rabbit
for Emmie next and try to send an extra one too. Ciss cleaned her pantry and
Rene washed. Jean went to school, indeed she had gone before the announcement. Listening
to the Radio 4000 ships and a great many smaller craft crossed the channel. Great air-liners took air-borne troops behind the German lines. Montgomery is speaking now, a message to the troops of which he is the head. Now a service. Almost 10 o' clock. The Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken and now they are singing "Oh God, our help in ages past." At nine o'clock the King broadcast a call to prayer, not just one day but all the days of crisis. In the news afterwards we heard that all was still going well in France. I fear the "little people" like us would not just go on with this ordinary work. However pleased they may be at the thought of deliverance, at present it means danger and hardship and war. Many will have
to leave their homes and
many I fear will lose their lives. The service is over, a beautiful service,
ending with the hymn, "Soldiers of Christ Arise." At
the End of the Day We
are in bed. A motor cycle has just gone by and a swiftly moving plane. Percy
was with Home Guards last night. I am pleased he is at home next door tonight.
God be with us all those whose sons or husbands or other dear ones have
already fallen in this new front. Be with the wounded and comfort the dying
and those who are afraid. We had 12 letters from Ron to-day - a record. I had
6, the others 3 each. In the most recent one, only a week since he wrote it,
an air mail letter, he says his hopes of return are practically nil. I am
almost pleased much as I long to see him but somehow he seems safer there at
present. I must try to sleep now. The longed for D-Day has arrived.
Deliverance Day, Jean says it means.
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