The Diary of Dorothy Priest, August 4th 1915

A year of war and we don’t seem much nearer the end than we were six months ago.

We seem to have got in to the way of living in war time and it would feel quite strange at first if the war were to end suddenly.  Since March 14th nothing very big has happened.  I joined the WVR [Women’s Voluntary Reserve] but I had to give it up because I went to Yardley to teach and so I couldn’t go up to drill on Monday nights.  I passed the Red Cross home nursing exam but they wouldn’t take me as a nurse as I am too young.  The other day the King came to Birmingham to see the various works where munitions are made.  He went to Bournbrook hospital and along Middleton Hall Road and possibly Bunbury Road too, and then, after visiting the Kings Norton metal works, on to Stetchford where I saw him and he got into the train.  He came again the next day (Friday July 23rd) to see the works he hadn’t time for the day before.  This visit was quite unofficial and unexpected and nobody seems to know exactly where he did go, especially on Thursday.

Last Sunday night we saw from the window some mysterious flashes of light in the sky north of Birmingham.  We didn’t know what they were and expected a raid.  Daddy says so women thought that a firm in Streetly was testing fireballs or so some such thing.  I think that must be the explanation.  It is 11 pm now.  I remember the night of August 4th last year, how we all seemed on edge with suspense and excitement and then when we were in bed I heard the shouting in the town.  Things are not turning out just as we expected them, the fleet is still keeping quiet and we all expected to hear of a great naval battle in the beginning of the war.  In both the books by Percy Westerman about war with Germany “The Sea Monarch” and “The Sea-Girt Fortress”, the war is decided at an early stage by a decisive naval victory.  The Germans are only using their submarines to sink harmless British and neutral liners and other such ships, just from sheer wickedness and brutality.  That seems the German idea of war, any sneaky, underhand way they can use, submarines, night raids and poison gases.  The first year has passed what will the second year bring?  Peace or more war?

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