page 129 — November 1941

Tuesday 4^th

Cold. A good JTC thing—a demonstration of a platoon in battle order. They [visiting soldiers] unpacked the plat[oon] truck etc. and went to positions, then they formed up and all came forward, saying what their respective jobs were. One poor fellow was terribly nervous, with his legs shaking, and besides that he could not speak loudly enough. …  zwr zct zmc

Wednesday 5^th

Guy Fawkes. Ha-Ha … zcl

News—Germans right down in Crimea, 5^th Moscow battle on—mud frozen up. Depressing. A letter from Mommy at last, she’s well but harried with evacuees and rabbits. … zru zwr zfl zev zpt

Tuesday 11^th

All the house but 5 have Pentire plague—acute diorihea [sic]. I went twice before 7 o’clock and 3 times in the morning—general squoogly tummy. zil

In JTC Capt. Shand [probably an old boy] … told us about his experiences in the French business ’40. He was attached to 51^st Div[ision]—4,000 odd survivors from 22,000. He was on motor bikes part of the time, out of 50 cyclists 7 survived—he went into the square of one town to find two lost bren carriers; he found some, but they were German. He got out quick. zlu zwe

[See note]

During silence [5 minutes for prayers every evening, when I normally wrote my diary] Max came in and told me to stop writing this, as it disturbed the others. I had to see him afterwards—he said it was a very selfish thing to do—even if I was an atheist—I ought to let the others pray in silence. Also I’m not humble enough, and he thinks it’s hard for me to be without being a Christian. Silly twerp—Cruickshank and P both said they never heard the pen.  ztc zdw zsd zmb zrl