19th October 1940

Went over to Lt. Horkesley with Mabbitt and a girlfriend. We got all the brasses removed from their matrices and assembled the figures roughly in order to see how much was present. There is a good deal more than one could have hoped for, seeing the condition of the building.

Worked there all day. Could not get bread and cheese at the Rose and Crown so had to go down to Nayland. None there, so had tomato sandwiches and tea, very good. When we got back to Colchester had tea at Rose’s café.

Mabbitt takes a very gloomy view of the state of London, and reckons another 3 months will see the end. He considers that the place has no military value, and is only being made so much of for purely sentimental reasons. Unfortunately, owing to the problems of evacuating its remaining 6 or 7,000,000 inhabitants, it is not a very easy place to abandon.

Mabbitt is working in the Ministry of Supply, and is a very level-headed person, though perhaps rather pessimistic. There was quite a lot of air activity round Nayland during the afternoon.

When I went down to Bourne Mill tonight, there was an Australian soldier there. We got talking, and he told me that the majority of the Australians had some good reason for leaving Australia.

There was an alarm tonight at 7.15, and heavy gun-fire S. of the town. Two girls from a farm at Little Horkesley were the only persons to come into the shelters. They told me that 17 bombs had fallen on their farm, in three lots, and they had also been machine-gunned. They did not seem in the least scared. (This was Bull’s Farm, Lt Horkesley).