War Diaries (May 4) (nonfiction)
Diaries
Nella Last: May 4, 1941
A night of terror, and there are few windows left in the district—or roof tiles! Land mines, incendiaries and explosives were dropped, and we cowered thankfully under our indoor shelter. I've been so dreadfully sick all day, and I'm sure it's sheer fright, for last night I really thought our end had come. By the time the boys come, I'll be able to laugh about it. Now I've a sick shadow over me as I look at my loved little house that will never be the same again. The windows are nearly all out, the metal frames strained, the ceilings down, the walls cracked and the garage roof showing four inches of daylight where it joins the wall. Doors are splintered and off — and there is the dirt from the blast that swept down the chimney. The house rocked, and then the kitchenette door careered down the hall and plaster showered on to the shelter. I'll never forget my odd sensations, one a calm acceptance of 'the end', the other a feeling of regret that I'd not opened a tin of fruit salad for tea—and now it was too late!
I'm so very frugal nowadays, and I look at a tin of fruit longingly sometimes, now that fruit is so scarce—but I put it back on the shelf, for I think we may need it more later. Looking back, I think the regret about the fruit salad was stronger than fear of all being over.
- Diary of Nella Last - Nella, her husband, and their son lived in Barrow-in-Furness, a shipbuilding town targeted by German bombers in April and May of 1941 during a series of air raids known as the Barrow Blitz, and it was amidst these harrowing events that Nella penned this diary entry
