Part Three - A Long Winter, November 1941 to March 1942

Summary

From early November, there was much routine in Denis's life as a soldier, and in his diary he talks a lot not only about his work (much of it fairly tedious) and the words and actions of his fellow soldiers, but also about radio programmes, music, periodicals and newspapers, news from battle fronts, films, government propaganda, books read and visits to the public library – and since he had opinions about most matters, these too are frequently recorded. The selections that follow omit most of this material and highlight instead both evidence that relates directly to Bedfordshire and those of his experiences that are distinctively coloured by his posting in Bedfordshire – that is, experiences that would probably not have occurred at all, or would have occurred differently, had he been posted somewhere else. A consequence of these editorial principles is that, for the following four months, up to early March 1942, a smaller fraction of the original diary is reproduced than in the other three parts, and that the text of Part Three, although it is the longest part and covers the longest period of time, is presented more selectively.

Monday, 3 November

Back to the job on the sewage soaking-pit. Bomb-disposal boys are now on the job alone – the KRRs weren't there today. But the new thing there was a batch of Italian prisoners who were working grubbing-up spuds just up the hill from us. As none of us knows Italian, and as the prisoners know little English, communication wasn't exactly easy. But I was most interested to note the impact of ‘the enemy’ on our boys. We tried to talk with them, using such internationally-understood words as ‘jig-a-jig’. We’d soon got to the stage of mutual showing of photographs of wives and women. They offered us chocolate and tubes of Rowntrees clear gums in exchange for fags. In fact, I think I could say definitely that fraternization took place.

Coming back to our ‘camp’ fire there were such remarks as this, from a 25-year-old Plaistow electrician. ‘It seems a shame, don't it?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, here am I, f_____ browned-off with being thirty miles away from home – and here are all these poor bastards thousands of miles away from their homes.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘they’re the enemy, officially, aren't they? And this is war.’ ‘Mm’, murmured the browned-off conchie, feeling there was something wrong somewhere.