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The Mary Churchill diaries: ‘I heard overhead a throbbing continuous roar and I knew D-Day was here’

Churchill arriving in Normandy after the D-Day landings in 1944 - Mirrorpix
Churchill arriving in Normandy after the D-Day landings in 1944 - Mirrorpix

Mary spends the first half of 1944 with her battery in London. As tensions build ahead of the liberation of France, German bombing intensifies. She also commences an Anglo-French liaison of her own with Jean-Louis de Ganay (J-L), a young Frenchman serving in the Free French army.

Hitler’s response to the Allied landings in France is to unleash his secret weapon, the deadly V1 missile or ‘Doodlebug’. Starting on June 13 and continuing until the autumn, when the launch sites are largely overrun, thousands of these unmanned flying bombs are fired at London and south-east England. Mary now finds herself part of the front line of defence.

In November, newly promoted Captain Mary Churchill joins her father on another journey: a triumphant return to their beloved France for an Armistice Day parade with General de Gaulle.

Thursday February 3 1944

I have just come back from an evening with Papa. We went à deux to see There Shall Be No Night. The first scene was 1938 – back to Munich. In the interval I said: “It takes one back a bit – we’ve come such a long way since then.” Papa said: “I knew what would happen then – and I don’t now – that is the difference.”

The last few times I’ve seen Papa I’ve been struck with his anxious preoccupation with the future – his uncertainty. I know he foresees so much more trouble and grief and struggling ahead of us than we can imagine. Even I, who flatter myself I am aware of current events etc. see how easily I’ve fallen into the lazy habit of thinking to the end of the war and no further.

Wednesday March 1

Alarms at 3:30am, quite heavy gunfire but not from us. How strange it is in the dark dawn padding around the middle of Hyde Park heavily wrapped in mufflers – and overhead stars and constellations and beams and weird lights burst and flicker across the sky – and guns mutter and call and rumble and bark and planes drone. It always seems a little unreal and frightening. And the quiet of when it’s over and people going back to bed and tepid cocoa – and how cold one’s bed has got.

Friday March 3

Date with Jean-Louis... for the first time in three years I felt convinced of a hope for France!

Saturday June 3

Mummie told me the Second Front starts on Monday. I could not begin to describe my thoughts and feelings – but I sat as in a dream all the way to London.

Monday June 5

Waited all day in vain for the great news. What has happened? Dined with William Home and went to party in his battalion mess. Great fun... Got home... threeish. I don’t think I could have been asleep very long – I suddenly awoke, rather chilly – and heard overhead a throbbing continuous roar and I knew D-Day was here.

Tuesday June 6

Rumours were rife all morning till the official announcement. We lived from one news bulletin to the next. In the evening we went to a special service of intercession in the huge, hideous and yet curiously impressive St George’s church...

How can one pray for those in battle? I do not pray for their safety – somehow that would seem a vain prayer. But I prayed that they might not feel forsaken or frightened – or uncertain.

Early that evening we watched more than 400 planes towing gliders lumber ponderously out. What strange and awe-inspiring days.

Winston Churchill pictured on his visit to Normandy with cheering British soldiers - Mirrorpix
Winston Churchill pictured on his visit to Normandy with cheering British soldiers - Mirrorpix

Saturday June 10

After the excitements and atmosphere of Aldershot, Hyde Park is deadly dull – and I’m nearly driven mad by all this footling barrack room competition: ‘What did you do on D-Day, Mummie?...’ It is all quite reasonable really, but I am not and I must own I allowed myself to get terribly out of hand.

Wednesday morning [June 14] came the announcement that Papa had visited Normandy. Oh wow. The news is all-absorbing and tremendous – I cannot even begin to put down all my thoughts and feelings. But my God – how brave men are.

Monday July 3

We have left Hyde Park – full of enthusiasm and a sense of pride and excitement to be going south to deal with doodlebugs – which incidentally have been flopping all over the place – and some quite near W5!

Friday July 7

Night noisy in patches. We had our second narrow escape when about one o’clockish a diver crashed just behind the men’s ablutions. I was asleep and was spared the agony of fright! Rushed out – Molly, poor sweet – nursing her behind [as] she had been on the loo.

Mary Churchill with foreign minister Anthony Eden in London - AFP
Mary Churchill with foreign minister Anthony Eden in London - AFP

Tuesday July 11

Arrived home about 10.30 – Mummie so welcoming. Papa sitting up in bed in his beautiful and brilliant bed jacket. He gave me a peach off his breakfast tray – O wow.

Papa lunched with the King [...] I stayed and talked a long time to Mummie. Randolph is, as usual, a bone of sorrow and contention. He has behaved it seems with such odious unkindness, rudeness and heartlessness to Papa and Mummie. How I hate divisions in a family – for my own small part, I’ve tried to love R for himself – that failed, I’ve tried to love him as part of the family only, a holy thing for me – that’s failed. Now – I know I don’t love him. Indeed I wouldn’t mind if I never saw him again as long as I live.

One could forgive and condone so much – defend and uphold him, but I cannot forgive and forget his awful conduct to Mama – I know he dislikes her, but he is so rude – and then worst of all – he says he loves Papa – seems to claim it as his own particular right to love Papa deeply and yet he does nothing but grieve him and beat him up and treat him with anything but love and tenderness.

It makes me bitter – I know it should not, but he is the only one – to Papa he means more than any number of daughters – if we do well or love him – he is pleased or proud but it isn’t the same. “My son” – O God, what’s wrong with daughters?

Saturday July 22

I’m so happy here – really happy in my work – and feeling very glad that altho’ I was born too late for 1066 and all that – I’m not missing 1944 and all this.

Monday July 24

Lovely day. The church we were to have paraded to – we, unhappily, destroyed, by shooting a doodlebug down on it.

Telegram for Mary from Churchill, dated August 25:

Following message from your father please telephone reply as soon as possible to Private Office. Begins ‘Please send me a telegram through my Private Office telling me about your affairs.’ Stop. ‘I follow the triumph of your guns with lively pleasure. Papa’. Ends.

Mary has written below: I was so terribly pleased when this arrived.

Sunday September 3

Five whole years of war. When it started I knew it would go on for a long time – but I could not visualise it. I said three or five years – and it seemed like saying “eternity”. And yet here we are today – entering on the sixth year. I thought in 1939 – “if the war lasts five years I shall be 22”... It seemed impossible! And now I’m nearly 22, and the five years have passed – it seems now looking back – so fast. And yet they have been wearisome – God knows how weary they must seem to some. But they’ve been tremendous too. Perhaps there lies the secret. They’ve flown these five years to me – and yet – paradoxically they seem a whole lifetime.

Thursday September 28

Gave blood at St George’s – they told me it will be flown to Holland. I longed to say – take more – let me give something for them out there.

Friday November 10

Paris revisited

We left England behind, and then we were over France... two years ago easy tears would have come to my eyes – but today I just gazed at the unfolding countryside – the rivers and blue roofed villages and towns, and felt profoundly so many emotions which would sound so trite and banal if I wrote them down.

Churchill and General Charles de Gaulle at the French armistice day parade in Paris, 11 November 1944 - Imperial War Museums
Churchill and General Charles de Gaulle at the French armistice day parade in Paris, 11 November 1944 - Imperial War Museums

Saturday November 11

It was a lovely day, cold, clear and dry. The crowds were really enormous, and processions were forming from very early on in the morning till late that evening, awaiting their turn to lay wreaths and banners beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

Mummie looked beautiful in her new black hat. Papa and the General [de Gaulle] then arrived amid much cheering and excitement. The sight of the crowds was unforgettable – people had clambered into the trees – and were clinging to the chimney pots.

I then braced up my courage and rang up Madame de Ganay – who sounded charming and said I might visit her. I was charmed by her and her three other sons – dear, dear Jean-Louis – you have a most delightful family. I now long to have five huge sons to comfort my old age.

Sunday November 12

Reception at the Hôtel de Ville. This was the centre of Parisian resistance and played a tremendous part in the Liberation. We walked up stairs and along corridors lined with la Garde Républicaine – and the sight of them in the huge hall where the chandeliers were reflected as pools of light on the parquet floor is something I shall never forget.

Papa arrived and was welcomed by the Préfet de Police. The room, on whose walls were depicted the most bloody and ‘resisting’ events of French history – was full of members of the resistance movement, headed by that dream – M D’Astier. It was very moving. Papa made a great and remarkable speech in French, and I think they all liked it. Then he was presented with the swastika hauled down from the Hôtel de Ville and a dagger. Then we retired and drank champagne

Tuesday November 14

We arrived at Rheims and spent the morning with Gen Eisenhower. I can not get over being in France again.

In the afternoon we flew away over the spacious Champagne country – dotted with war cemeteries and made so lovely by the soft wet lights. I wish I could begin to describe its rather sad beauty. ‘Lord, thy glory fills the heavens, Earth is with its fullness stored...”

And then we arrived back and Papa’s visit to France was over.

Copyright in the diaries © The Beneficiaries of the literary estate of Mary Soames and The Master, Fellow and Scholars of the Churchill College, Cambridge
Selection and editorial contribution © Emma Soames
Editorial contribution © Churchill Archives Centre

Extracted from Mary Churchill’s War by Emma Soames, published on September 16 (RRP £20). Pre-order now for £16.99 at books.telegraph.co.uk or call 0844 871 1514

Part two of three: you can read the first extract of Mary Churchill’s diaries here

Emma Soames will be talking about Mary Churchill’s War at 7pm on Wednesday September 22 at Heckfield Place in Hampshire (heckfieldplace.com/the-assembly)