September 22nd 1939

Friday September 22nd

The lull still continues. We are waiting, but do not know what we are waiting for.

Russia and Germany have divided Poland between them, but Warsaw still holds out despite everything.

I heard today from Dickie that Frank Westwater* went down with the Courageous. So the “gain giving” that used to trouble me so much at Cambridge, the horrible fear that I should have to see my contemporaries march away and never return, has been realised. This is only the first.

I wonder what we have done or failed to do that has merited so bitter a penalty. It is just three weeks today.

*A quick Internet search shows that Frank Lorimer Westwater, who studied Mathematics at Emmanuel College as a contemporary of Lorna's at the University of Cambridge, did indeed go down on the Courageous. However, he survived. See records for 17th September listed at World War 2 - Casualty lists of the Royal Navy and Dominion Navies. Westwater followed a career in Astronomy, was awarded the OBE in 1954, was Secretary of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy (IOTA) 1967-9, and died in 1969, thirty years after Lorna wrote this diary entry.