Christopher Priest - The Separation

All this talk of war. Few people seem to know that talk of peace is also in the air!

It is being kept out of the newspapers, but through my work at the Red Cross I know for certain that Hitler has made two peace offers to Churchill this week. One was sent by way of the Italian government. The other was passed through the Papal Nuncio to Red Cross HQ in Switzerland. Churchill immediately rejected both offers.

I was despairing and furious when I first heard about it, but I have been having a think.

Churchill loves war. He makes no secret of it, even boasts about it. When he was a young man, ‘eager for trouble’, he pulled strings and even cheated his way into the front line of the wars in India and Africa. His reaction to the disgrace of the Dardanelles in 1915 was to join the British army and fight on the Western Front for several months. It is clear that he sees the present war as a culmination of his passion for fighting.

At the moment, though, Churchill is cornered. No warmonger will entertain an offer of peace while his back is to the wall. He would interpret it as capitulation or surrender, not peace, no matter that common sense would tell him that worse punishment is to come. Churchill undoubtedly believes that he needs a military victory of some kind, before he will talk to Hitler.

No sign of that, so how am I going to feel when England is invaded, as surely she must be? For all my beliefs I remain an Englishman. I can’t bear to think about a foreign army, any foreign army, marching across our land. Thought of the Nazis worsens that imagining by many degrees. B is more scared than I am - better than most people, she knows what the Nazis are capable of doing.

July 25, 1940

Several airfields in the south-east of England have been bombed by the Luftwaffe, with many casualties and a great deal of damage.

The Red Cross is in a state of official readiness. Tomorrow I will be joining three other chaps from our depot and driving one of two ambulances and a mobile field surgery to our South London branch. It will probably take us two days to drive to London, bearing in mind how hard it is supposed to be to get around the country at the moment. It’s difficult to obtain reliable information, but we hear that many roads have been blocked with crude barricades.

It means I shall be going into the front line of the war, an idea I find inescapably romantic and terrifying, although there is in reality little danger of my being caught up in the fighting. All four of us will be returning to Manchester by train immediately we have handed over the equipment.

Of course, it also means that I have to leave B alone here until after the weekend. She is feeling much stronger than she was and says that I must do what I believe is right. There is food in the house for her until next week. Since the weather has been so warm she has been spending more time in the garden. Teaching the child has given her a new-interest in playing and she has been learning new pieces. She says she will be so busy she will hardly notice I’ve gone.

July 29, 1940

I returned from London late last night, after long but uneventful journeys. B was asleep in bed when I arrived, but she woke up. She was obviously pleased and relieved to see me home safely again. We have spent a quiet, contented day together in the garden, as I was given today off work after the trip. In the evening B played me a new piece she has learned, by Edward Elgar.

British fighter aircraft are constantly active in the skies around here. I wish that reassurance was not what they bring, because that translates, I must admit, to their ability to shoot and kill.

I get so confused by the strength of feelings the war induces in me. I write down in my diary what I feel, but in truth I no longer know exactly what I feel. Was it the bump on the head? Or am I simply responding to the changing circumstances, which I would never have predicted?

July 30, 1940

We have to deliver more ambulances to the south, so tomorrow I am once again driving to London. My immediate concern was with B and how she would cope during my absence, but she has assured me she will be all right on her own for as long as I have to be away.

I have spent today packing the vehicles with emergency supplies. We will be setting off to London first thing tomorrow morning.

August 6, 1940

I am still in London after a week. I cannot begin to describe the confusion that the Society is having to deal with, a terrible warning of the chaos that will follow, should hostilities really get going. Every day the fighting seems to worsen, although for the moment much of it is skirmishes between warplanes. The bombing is confined to attacks on military bases. Naturally, the damage spreads far and wide, so civilians become casualties too. This is where we come in. For the last four days I have been driving my ambulance to and fro across the south-eastern counties, acting as a relief to the regular ambulance services. Mainly I am simply expected to be the driver, but inevitably I have to help out with many of the injured. I am learning fast about the work.

I have left a telephone message for B at the post office in Rainow, so she knows where I am and that I am safe.

I am staying at the YMCA in the centre of London. I wondered at first if I might meet other COs doing similar work to mine in the capital, but as far as I can tell I’m the only one. Almost without exception the men here are in the forces, in transit from one part of the country to another. Most of them are only staying overnight while changing trains or arranging to be picked up, so it is difficult to strike up friendships with any of them. The few civilians appear to be merchant seamen, en route to one of the ports to find a berth. It leaves me feeling isolated and wishing I could be at home with B.

At the end of last week, Hitler made a speech to the Reichstag, in which he made public an offer of peace to Britain. German aircraft even dropped leaflets over London reporting what he said:

‘At this hour I feel before my conscience that it is my duty to appeal once more to reason and common sense in England and elsewhere - I make this appeal in the belief that I stand here, not as the vanquished, begging for favours, but as the victor speaking in the name of reason. I can see no grounds for continuing this war. I regret the sacrifice, and I also want to protect my people.’

Whether or not we should believe him was swept aside yesterday, when the Churchill government formally rejected the offer. The war goes on, presumably to Mr Churchill’s deep satisfaction.

August 12, 1940

I am still here in London, torn between my urgent wish to go home for a few days and the growing realization of the emergency the country is in.

I am on duty for most of the daylight hours, dealing with an ever-increasing number of casualties. More and more of them are our airmen, shot down and wounded in the violent aerial dogfights taking place overhead. The authorities constantly warn us that the ‘blitzkrieg’ tactics used in Poland, Holland and France must soon break upon us. That is a terrifying prospect.

Today I managed to speak to Mrs Woodhurst on the telephone. She is arranging for someone to come down from Manchester to relieve me for a few days. All the excitement of being in the thick of the war has faded: I want only to see B again.

August 15, 1940

Home at last, in the uncanny peace and quiet of the Pennine hills. The war suddenly seems remote from me. I

slept for twelve hours last night and have woken refreshed. B certainly seemed pleased to see me yesterday evening and we have had a happy reunion. She woke me this morning at about ten when she put her head around the bedroom door to tell me she was about to catch the bus into Macclesfield.