Barbara Anslow's diary: View pages

Mrs. V. Evans, aged 40, died today.

((She became cyanosed after an operation in the camp hospital and died.
She would probably have survived had our supply of oxygen cylinders had not run out then.  She was such a cheery person, and a great entertainer on the Stanley stage.  I wrote a poem in memory of her, what she might have said at her own funeral:

Well I'll be blowed! What, all these people 
Come to see me put away?
Left their queues and chores and cooking?
(And it's such a rainy day -
Not a day you'd do your washing,
Never get it dry for weeks;
Yet what can you do when you have
Just two pairs of flour-bag breeks?
Why've you all got hankies with you,
That's what I should like to know.
Big ones too, that means more washing;
How that Welfare soap does go.)
Look here, don't tell me you're crying,
Weeping for the likes of me!
Goodness gracious, well I never!
I don't call that tragedy.
After all, I'm no spring chicken
Though I'm game for much more fun;
There's younger folk than me been taken,
Fair's fair, when all's said and done.
I've had my youth, and then a husband
(Nicest chap you'd ever meet) -
Yes, we lost our little girl – but
While we had her she was sweet
It's this crowd I can't get over,
Half of Stanley must have come!
Still. I s'pose it makes a change, a
Funeral breaks the old hum drum.
Well, I think it's time you're moving
Back to work, and laugh and chat;
And listen, don't waste time on crying
Over me: I'm gone – that's that. 

Sadly, her husband died a POW in Kowloon.))

Birth of Norval Willerton, a brother for George and Anne

Sir Vandeleur M. Grayburn died in Stanley Prison. His body was given for burial 3 days later.

F.P. Lenfestey died on his 57th birthday,

Kenneth Antony Davis born, a brother for Kathleen and June.

Brooke Himsworth born. ((Nice to see him in the 2011 HK gathering photos))

Margaret Ruth Cook born. (South African)

J. Copland, a little Scotsman, died today.

T. Donaldson died. He was an old Marine Engineer, who always talked about sailing a ship again.

Fiona Kinlock born.

T.V. Harmon died. He might have lived had a proper cystoscope arrived in camp.

Roy Francis Denton (aka Wright-Brown) born. ((His mother Ivy (nee Thirlwell)  had given birth the previous year in camp to Camille Tweed, who only survived for 2 months.  There was an older sister Betty aged about 4 years.)) 

G.S Rodger died.

My 25th birthday.

Mrs. L. M. McGowan died today. She knew she had cancer, but refused to go into hospital, or let her 2 children Betty and Jackie know she was terminally ill, until they had left camp for repatriation to America.

C.B. Younger died today.

((Other notes about December 1943:

In December 1943 we were rehearsing a 'farewell' concert by the children (whom we thought were soon going to be repatriated) which we put on in the Prison Officers club just before Christmas: recitations, choir numbers, and a short play 'The Room in the Tower' which we had adapted from the original (don't know who the author was).  Bill Colledge polished up the play which went very well, with Anneke Offenberg, Kristine Thoresen, Yvonne Blackmore, Rose, and Nita, though there was a last minute headache because  the day befire the performance, Anneke forgot to collect her little brother Arnold's milk ration so her parents forbade her to take part.  We frantically rehearsed Nita in Anneke's part the next day, when  Anneke's exam results came through and were so good that the parents relented.  Anneke was even better in the part of Lady Jane Grey awaiting execution as a result of all the crying she had been doing.

Father Meyer wrote a religious play for Christmas 1943, I had a very small part, as the wife of a character played by Hans Lourenz.  Mr Concannon was directing, practically from a sick bed.

We burned a fire in our room on Christmas night – there was not much in the way of extra food, though an ounce or so of margerine per head etc. came in.

Children's tableaux in the grotto, with Sally Leighton (4) as Mary.))

Jeanette Clark born today.  Her parents had allowed their 2 older daughters, Valerie (3) and Margaret (1) to be adopted in camp by a missionary couple, the Thomases.  ((More of them in 1944 diary))

Col. Matthews died.

Daphne Esther Culver born, her parents were married just before internment.

Mrs Grace Rose Smith (75) died.  She was blind.

Mabel and I were digging a garden on our tiny allotment on the ex-football ground, when Mabel fell over the edge, 16 feet on to the concrete slope leading to the hospital.   She arrived at the feet of Dr. Hackett, and Nursing Sisters Mrs. M. J. Staple and Miss I. Warbrick ((who were blood sisters)).

When I got down to Mabel, she was conscious but dazed, half-sitting on one side, being tended by Dr Hackett etc. I raced to hospital to get a stretcher, and saw her taken to the hospital.  She was wearing grey slacks (once Dad's trousers), an old converted shirt of Clifton's, her red white and blue jumper and Welfare shoes; also her best mosquito net camp-made pants which (and she was most disgusted) they cut off her. Then I ran to find Clifton - her new boyfriend - and my Mum, who was playing bridge with the Tribbles.  Olive heard about it while in the water queue.

There was a blackout that night, but somehow Professor Digby and the others worked like Trojans to see to Mabel.