25th April 1945

Wednesday
Beautiful day, slight frost early.  Confused tormenting dreams.  Spent morning in the Library, and the nprepared draft of report for the Annual Meeting next month.  This afternoon Mrs Munday sent £3.3 for Edwards’ testimonial, bringing total to just over £20 – not quite £1 for each year he has been here!!

This evening went to the sewer excavation in the Vicarage paddock.  At the W. end there is a burst layer, with bricks, stoneware sherds, oysters, and fragments of stone, apparently late 17th century.

The foreman of the job told me that he was in the Suffolks at Meanee Barracks in 1904, and remembered the murder of Maude Lewis.  He also remembered the great “invasion” manoeuvres, and saw von Kluck and his staff there.  He sleeps in the wooden hut on the site, because beds are impossible to find in Wisbech.  His wife had been bombed and buried in London, and he had had “three fine sons” killed in the war.  In the air-raid a picture of Jesus was unharmed.  This impressed him enormously.

Very bad ‘plane crash near Bury St Edmund’s yesterday morning.  Glorious moon tonight.
 
This evening a wonderful Hogarthian scene in Norfolk Street – a girl of about 15, half undressed, was standing in a doorway screaming filthy obscenities at two Yankees who were retreating hurriedly, while an elder sister tried to pull her back.

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