Thursday 12th September 1940

Moved M1 to a rather desolate site this afternoon. Later on the slow convoy arrived – the last people to leave Palestine. “L” truck parked near us. It was nice to see Stevens the signaller and Smith the driver clamber stiffly out. Two steady and independent blokes quite unperturbed by the excited clamouring and arguments of the highly strung M1 personnel. Haven't met Ling, Pond, Hadlow or the others yet but they're here. Chenery hasn't come, he's still in hospital.

Scraps of news, they brought. Tel Aviv has been bombed; that's bugger-all of course. London bombed a few days ago – 400 killed. Today, they say that the air war is getting pretty mad. Nazi planes over Buckingham Palace. Delayed action bombs in Pall-Mall – very amusing! They say London looks as though there has been an earthquake and that Hamburg is in flames and that Berlin has been heavily bombed.

We heard an aeroplane fly over, very low, last night. I sleepily thought that the engine sounds were different from an English planes'. It was an Italian and men of the Argylls, nearby, said they saw it brought down by a fighter some miles to the east. We had an air raid alarm this afternoon – just as I'd got the camouflage nets off our kit and vehicle. The “all clear” sounded soon after I'd put all the bloody camouflage back and scrambled into the trench.

I wrote all today's notes by moonlight! Lovely weather for air raids here – and in England, I bet.