springs to mind. —LORD CRANWORTH, Kenya Chronicles, 1939 NEWSPAPERS AT HOME WERE STILL GLOATING OVER A SMASHING VICTORY near Messines, southwest of Ypres, on June 7. British miners had spent a year tunneling under enemy lines in order to lay a trail of explosives. When nineteen mines went up at once, ten thousand sleeping Germans were killed, and Lloyd George felt the tremors on Downing Street. But by the last week of July, gloom had again settled over England. Denys, still in full-time employment as Hoskins’s aide-de-camp, waited on home leave until another posting came through. They found everyone talking about food shortages, rising costs, and servant problems. The war had come to London when a bomb killed a hundred civilians, and as there were no air-raid sirens yet, fresh attacks were presaged by a bicycling policeman with a placard around his neck that urged TAKE COVER. The streetlights had acquired masks, and murky evenings contributed to a general sense of cheerlessness. It seemed, to Londoners, as if the war had always been there, and since the end of 1916 they had faced the possibility that it might go on forever.
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