To War With Whitaker
The Wartime diaries
of the Countess of Ranfurly

Introduction

When World War II broke out, Dan Ranfurly was dispatched to the Middle East with his faithful valet, Whitaker. These are the diaries of his young wife, Hermione, who, defying the War Office, raced off in hot pursuit of her husband. When Dan was taken prisoner, Hermoine vowed never to return home until they were reunited. For six years, travelling alone from Cape Town to Palestine, and meeting such charismatic characters as Churchill, Eisenhower and a parrot called Coco on the way, she kept her promise.

Biography

Hermoine, Countess of Ranfurly is eighty eight years old and lives in Buckinghamshire. She is also the author of The Ugly One (Penguin £6.99) a tragi-comedy of a dysfunctional aristocratic family which sweeps along like a real life Brideshead Revisited; its eighty four year old author is eagle-eyed but humane: a true Ancient Mariner'

Reviews

'These absolutely spiffing diaries offer a madcap aristocratic window behind the lines of war'
Daily Mail

'Few diaries from any era could be as fascinating…This is truly compulsive reading'
Woman and Home

Extract

14 January 1944

It was cold on the aerodrome this morning. We looked a comic party: Daphne in her white sheepskin coat with a bundle of coathangers under her arm; Arthur Forbes, round as the Michelin tyre man in two overcoats, carrying a couple of dead turkeys; Patrick Wilson, muffled to the ears and already green with the anticipation of flying; myself in my new battledress, holding Coco in his cage. Corporal Robbins and Sergeant Clark, the chef, handed a vast assortment of luggage into the Dakota.

Everyone craned at the windows. Coco wandered about my chair, grumbling to himself. Soon we were over the Western Desert, not far from Alamein. I saw old tanks and trucks and scrap strewn about. Wheel tracks were so distinct the battle might have been yesterday. I saw Halfaya Pass and the railway which only goes to Mersa Matruh; scrub and wadis; black blobs of burnt vehicles; the road to Tripoli. Tobruk looked like a village. Wrecks in the harbour showed clearly through the green water…

The Germans are gone from North Africa and there is no trace of the battles save for a few old wrecks on the edge of the sea and twisted tanks on the land and those wheel marks on the sand. Flash Kellett, Pat Ruthven, Brigadier Kisch and many more are dead. Dan and David and thousands of others are still missing or prisoners. For once I saw the war in perspective and I did not like it at all.