In her own words: Mary’s wartime exploits
11th May 1941
[The bombing of the Alexandra Hotel in London, where Mary was staying while on leave]
It is a miracle that I am still alive. There are many people dead and dying. Last night was the most frightening of my whole life. Pierre had only just left me around midnight when there was an airraid alert. There was a momentary feeling of trepidation when I wondered whether I should go to the underground shelter, but I decided that I was too tired...
I walked along the corridor to Room 101 on the second floor and went to bed. It became so noisy after a while that I decided to get up and go downstairs. The lounge was almost in complete darkness as I entered . There were, I think, about 20 people there – nobody spoke to me... Then it happened – a whining shuddering like an express train leaving a tunnel – the air shook with a volcanic rumbling, and a marble pillar in the centre of the room cracked like a tree trunk. In the maelstrom of dust, tumbling masonry and splintering woodwork, people were screaming. The walls seemed to burst apart, raining light brackets, mirrors, clocks and chunks of ceiling… I looked up at the front of the Alexandra and I noticed that the fourth-floor bedrooms stood wide open. There had obviously been a direct hit right through the hotel, splitting it in two halves.
17th March 1945 – Louvain, Belgium
Many memories of Ireland and St Patrick’s Day. The ceilidhs of my childhood and the ‘wearing of the green’. The patients sang ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ when I went on duty, most embarrassing! Went to the local Officers’ Club with Bill for dinner. There were several Irish tunes being played by the band. There is little resentment or even comment on Ireland’s neutrality during this war. There were of course dark mutterings from Churchill in the early days, particularly his fears that the Germans might well find well-lit Irish ports very useful. Anyway, there are so many Irishmen in the British Services that most people have forgotten that they are volunteers and that this isn’t their fight.
30th June 1945 – 108 British General Hospital, Brussels, Belgium
The mental suffering of these boys is painful to endure. The aftermath of war can be excruciating for people whose minds have been wounded. It upsets me to see so much ongoing suffering, and I feel strongly that it is all of us who are young now, who must shape the world of the future for ourselves. I am tired of the Churchills and the Pattons of this war who enjoy the power it gives them. It is a game to them; these boys are the victims, heroes today, forgotten tomorrow.
15th July 1945 - Brussels, Belgium
[A visit from her brother Michael, a soldier in the US Army, causes Mary to recall the horror he and his comrades encountered upon discovering the concentration camp at Buchenwald.]
He told me a few months ago in a letter that he had been one of the first American soldiers to stumble across Buchenwald some time in April. He still finds it distressing to talk about that awful place. He described the ‘breathing dead, conditions of indescribable filth, no sanitation, animal misery, the stench of sweat, dirt, menstrual blood and human excreta’. He and the other Yanks, hardened war veterans, vomited over and over
again as they ‘picked out the dead corpses from among the living and piled them in heaps to be taken away for cremation’. The dead looked like ‘shabby bundles of striped rags.’
2nd August 1945 – Louvain, Belgium
[While on active service Mary met her future husband, Malcolm Morris. Her father, a staunch republican, strongly disapproved of her marrying an Englishman.]
There were four lovely letters from M this afternoon. Hope we can have some leave together in September. Am far less worried now about the difference in our age, religious and cultural background. I feel that we have both enough understanding and imagination to appreciate our individual point of view... We are going to make our life together beautiful and interesting and, with God’s help, we need not fear whatever the future may bring...
15th December 1945 – Brussels, Belgium
[Mary’s outrage at the treatment of German PoW in a British camp in Brussels, six months after the war had ended.]
...The condition of these poor German boys is too pitiable for words – despite all our efforts, they are dying of starvation and dysentery. They are too far gone for help. They are just skin and bone – not enough elasticity in their veins to get a needle in for drip feeding. I feel ashamed and angry and depressed... Why has this happened?