The British Mass Observation Archive was set up in 1937 as a project to encourage everyday English men and women to write down their thoughts and observations. Nella Last, a 49 year old housewife with two grown sons in their 20s, joined the project in 1939, as World War II began. The Mass Observation archive collected diaries from 500 ordinary English observers and by all accounts Nella Last’s were among the most compelling.
Nella Last lived with her husband in Barrow-in-Furness, an English ship-building town that was bombed repeatedly by the Germans during the war. Over the course of the war, Nella worked as a volunteer in the local service member canteen, helped at the local hospital, and eventually she helped to manage a second-hand shop whose proceeds benefitted Red Cross packages for POWs. In terms of war service, Nella’s talents seem to lie in her ability to keep up her spirits and the spirits of those around her. She was a good manager of people and a good cook, using her talents to cleverly make-do with the food rations available and she was crafty, seeming to always be knitting sweaters and socks and making stuffed toys for children that sold well in the second-hand shop.
As she records her observations, it’s clear that Nella Last found that she very much enjoyed writing. She participated in Mass Observation longer than most, writing from 1939 to 1965. Her journals of the war years were eventually published in 1981. During the war, Nella had all the concerns of a mother her age: anxiety about her sons, fear of the blitz, and the sadness of watching her friends and her community cope with the losses of the war. She was also working outside her home for the first time in her life, as a volunteer, but increasingly aware of the power of her labor.
The personal purpose Nella felt in her work seemed to re-inform her whole sense of the world and her place in it. These reflections were powerful to me from an historical point of view. I know that participation in war work in the 1940s fueled the feminist movement of the 1960s and in Nella’s writing was a practical example of how that work outside the home changed women. In particular, Nella’s ability to use her cooking skills and clever ways in the face of scant resources is much-appreciated in the soldiers’ canteen. Nella has cooked for her husband for all her married life and reflects that he rarely offered any appreciation of her ability and talents. During the war, she finds that she likes to be appreciated. She lets her husband know this.
Nella’s thoughts on motherhood and her sons’ making their way in the world were also informative to me. More than seventy years later than Nella, I too am living life without my child at home. As I read of Nella’s worries about her sons as they fought in WWII, I experienced my first weeks with a child away at college. Like Nella, I want my son to make his way in the world. Like Nella, I am proud of how he has grown up. Unlike Nella, who worried about her boys in a war, I had the comfort of a much-loved child being away but in the relative safety of college. The perspective was a powerful reminder of my blessings and of the centuries of mothers before me who have had to endure the horror of sending their sons to war.
There was so much in this book to both enjoy and reflect upon. Nella Last participated in the Mass Observation Project because she was an ordinary woman. But in both her thoughtful writings about the world of war and her observations about the role of women and mothers within it, she is extraordinary and a reminder that there is so much to be found in the stories and history of regular folks.
