ABSTRACT
Towards the end of May 1940 I was able to join my husband in Swanage—a small seaside town in Dorset. There were plenty of unfurnished houses to let and very quickly we settled in our new home, with our daughter Susan who was one and a half years old. Beautiful countryside surrounded us, and after the bleakness of aerodromes in Scotland and Wales the whole group was thankful to find itself in a sunny, warm place at last. Sadly I did not keep a diary during those years in the early part of the war, but I did write regularly to my parents who lived in Bath and the preservation of these letters remind me of the way life was then. Just for a few halcyon weeks life remained calm and bright. We still had a little petrol and could explore beautiful beaches and parts of the Dorset coastline. So far there was little in the way of sea defences and no barbed wire restricted our access to the beaches. I record in my letters how we enjoyed our lunches of fresh fish. ‘The fishmonger seemed quite pained when I failed to order either crab or lobster’. A farmer called at the house twice a week with a large flat basket in which were arranged dressed chicken, brown eggs warm from the nest, dewy-fresh soft fruit and early vegetables. We had a rough patch of ground behind our house. We were the first people to live there and very soon had a vegetable plot, double-dug, ready for planting and we got fine crops.
