Diary of Phyllis Bethel of Topsham Devon

An account of her travels with her husband and her daughter Marion from Wiesbaden in Germany and the Second World war in Topsham Devon as written in her diaries between 1929 and 1953.

21st April 1941 London attacked again

No raid for us but poor London was attacked again. We had war pudding yesterday, sago made with half milk (it is rationed), half water, Sucron (in place of sugar) Lemon O (in place of lemon) there is also Sugar O and Onion O.
Mr Truman saw a German bomber brought down in flames at midnight, just back of our house, way off on the horizon. later it was learnt two of the crew escaped by parachute, one was only a boy of 17 on the point of collapse. Marion has composed the following verse on her literary mother...
When my mother's genius burns,
And the electric button turns,
When the light is lit, cause of writing fit,
Then I cannot sleep,
The disturbance is too deep!
In fact Marion is suffering from Beryl-itis, a new kind disease, the germ of which develops in our house! She expects me to write a chapter of my book Beryl every day and read it to her. The leaves of the chestnut tree are beginning to unfold and the plums are in full blossom, but weather will not settle. Big Ann said today. "They say if you can stand the English climate you can stand anything" A little girl we know here aged 5 and called baby Marion has mastoiditis and has had to operated on in a Birmingham hospital they so often get blitzed in that city. A self evacuated lady from Bristol with a great Dane and two Dachshunds, just came past and said in Bristol they get so used to bombardment they just go to bed as one cannot do anything anyway. She said noise of AA guns was worse than noise of bombs.

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