Review - "Mary Churchill's War"

 As for this review, like many Americans, I am a fan of Winston Churchill. In retrospect, it is amazing that he and Britain were successful in standing alone for a year and a half against Hitler’s Nazis – from Germany’s occupation of Paris in June 1940 until the United States entered into the War after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. That they did was largely because of the confidence instilled in them by Churchill. Mary’s diary provides an intimate portrayal of the man.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Mary Churchill’s War: The Wartime Diaries of Churchill’s Youngest Daughter, 2022

Edited by Emma Soames, Foreword by Erik Larson

April 14, 2024

 

Sunday, 3 September, 1939 – “DECLARATION OF WAR…O God, I thought

I hoped, I prayed that our generation would never see a war and that those who

fought last time would never have to face the ordeal a second time.”

 

Monday, 7 May, 1945 – “Lovely day…At about half past six it was announced 

That Germany had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies this morning.”

 

When the diaries begin on January 1, 1939, Mary, born September 15, 1922, is 16 years-old. When they conclude, September 6, 1945, she is just shy of her 23^rd birthday. The diaries can be appreciated on three levels: One, a portrait of her father (Papa), along with her mother (Mummie), siblings, friends and members of Churchill’s cabinet, from his adoring (and adored) youngest child. Two, the effects of the War on England, as seen by the young Mary Churchill who later served as a captain in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). And three, a coming-of-age story of an intelligent and vivacious young woman who at the start of the War is a typical teenager, but who matures over six-and-a-half years into a thoughtful and respected officer and woman.

 

When the War began, she wrote that she is “determined that the following pages shall contain a true and consecutive record of my life…the life of a girl in her youth.” In the early entries, she is fond of exclamation points and putting important words in capital letters. She fell in love often, as she recounts in her diaries, which prompted Roosevelt’s special envoy to London Harry Hopkins to caution her, in a letter to Ambassador John Winant: “Girls as attractive as Mary should get engaged at least 3 times before marrying.”

 

Of course she was not an ordinary young Brit. Her father was Prime Minister and her mother was the daughter of Sir Henry Hozier and Lady Blanche Hozier. During the War she lived mostly at 10 Downing Street, the Annexe, with weekends at Chequers, the country home for Britain’s Prime Minister. She also traveled twice out of the country with her father, first to Quebec in August-September 1943 and two years later to Potsdam after the War in Europe was over. Consequently, she commented on the politically powerful, like this entry about President Franklin Roosevelt: “Sunday, 12 September, 1943 – To me he seems at once idealistic, cynical, warm-hearted & generous, worldly-wise, naïve, courageous, tough, thoughtful, charming, tedious, vain, sophisticated, civilized.”

 

As an 18-year-old, she enjoyed herself: “Wednesday, 8 January, 1941 – Hospital dance in the evening…Danced a great deal. Oh I do love dancing.” Two years later, the reader detects a change: “Friday, 4 June 1943 – So many thoughts occur to me continually about life. How interesting & thrilling it all is – How can people be bored – and yet I’ve been bored myself sometimes.” And after Hiroshima was bombed: “Friday, 10 August, 1945 – “It strengthens in my mind the conviction that one should expect & hope & pray for very little – except courage. Courage to face & accept & wrestle with life however black & evil.”

 

More than her other siblings, whose lives were disrupted by divorce and cut short by death, Mary Churchill Soames, who died at 91 in 2014, was her father’s (and her mother’s) daughter. And her daughter’s editing of the diaries provides the reader a treat.