Private Second World War private, manuscript diary written by 27 year old Bill Howkins who wears his heart on his sleeve throughout and simply can’t decide whether he’s in love or simply infatuated with 21 year old Mary. Both were stationed at an RAF camp in Cardington, Bedfordshire and the diary offers an intimate window into everyday base life, the human need for normalcy amid conflict and reveals how personal connections and romantic attachment buffers the monotony and stress of military service.
The diary runs to 101 pages and c20,000 words in length. Entries commence on Sunday 28th September 1941. Bill shares his hut with ‘Pat - the young Irish Italian - Alan the civil servant lawyer - Doug the bank clerk- Ray the metal worker’. Early entries record the frustrations of camp life, ‘still nothing to do in the 339 section’..... ‘hanging about here chasing the WAAFS’.
Attempts to enrol on pilot training are thwarted on medical grounds due to poor eyes, ‘if I want to get into the air at all now it must be as a A.G. Not very keen on the idea’. Descriptions of afternoon walks, dances and trips to the cinema with Mary increasingly fill the leaves and by January 1942 Bill admits, ‘I do not want to fall in love again yet and I’m half way to doing it, really bloody silly’. On home leave news about the lads is shared at Winnie’s wedding, ‘Emmett flying (...) in daylight sweeps, Carrington bailing out at 10000 ft. as he couldn’t land owing to ground mist, Josh Bramley killed in night fighting and good old Wilf Crowther and Edward’s flying Wellingtons’.... ‘Made me feel very envious and insignificant’
Bill and Mary hitch hike to London together - Bill stays in Salvation Army hotels and Mary in YWGA’s; they dine at the NZ club; 48 hr leaves allow the pair to visit Bill’s family in Oxfordshire where Mary stays with Aunt Agnes and trips are enjoyed to the Mitre, the Bear Inn, The White Hart and the Taj Mahal restaurant. On the 19th of March 1942 Bill admits, ‘I can deny no longer that I am in love with Mary - damn it’.
Descriptions of squabbles, ‘afternoons of ecstacy’ and passionate encounters accompany more everyday entries which describe Bill’s ongoing frustrations in his role as a clerk, ‘laziness is eating into my system’. On Monday 24th June Bill is posted to Staverton, a drome near Gloucester, prompting, ‘I feel so miserable and empty at leaving Mary’.... ‘I want to marry the girl’.
News from home reveals a cousin to be missing, ‘this bloody war.... heard from home today that Herbert had been reported missing... we all pray now that he is a prisoner of war’...... ’Aunt Agnes for the time being has lost all interest in life’. The couple manage a trip to visit Mary’s family and onto Edinburgh to celebrate Mary’s 21st birthday on August 8th 1942. I
n spite of squabbles (no engagement ring), Bill writes, ‘queer how a woman can transform a mans whole existence’. Entries move between analysis of his courtship with Mary and updates on Japanese atrocities in Hong Kong, the position of the Nazis and the Russians, bombs dropping near Cheltenham and our writer’s socialist ideals, ‘how detestable the smug Englishman is, no wonder the empire is cracking’. No letter arrives from Mary - wartime romance does not run smoothly and Bill reflects, ‘mine is definitely not the temperament for a wartime courtship’. Boredom permeates most days and Bill wishes for more from life, ‘should I be more content leading an arduous life, bleak and perilous ? ’. The last entry is dated September 3rd 1942, ‘if I were a true diarist I should start this entry with something like ‘The Fourth Year of War... here I am talking about our little world when the whole great world is aflame’.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Soft backed, small ‘University Series Manuscript Book’ in very good condition. Handwritten in a neat and legible cursive to verso and recto throughout every leaf. 14 lines written in Mary’s hand dated June 9th 1942. Laid in are 2pp lines of poetry in our diarist’s hand, a single leaf handwritten letter to ‘Bill darling’ from Mary and a b/w photograph of an unknown woman and child. It is yet unknown whether Bill and Mary’s romance turned into marriage.
