RAF ground crew at Maison Blanche, Algeria — the airfield outside Algiers where Walter’s world was based in late 1943. © IWM (CNA 33)
Volume 3 begins with a practical note inside the cover: N.A.F. = 200 to £1 (Bank of Algiers). Walter was like that. The diary that follows is the shortest of the three — twenty pages, three months — but it is the one that changes everything.
No. 2 RAF General Hospital stood on a hill just outside Maison Carrée, a few miles east of Algiers. From the front you could see the sea. Walter settled in quickly. He found S/Sgt Price, whom he had known so well. The laboratory was at the end of a long corridor. He organised the cricket club. He got his place in the football team.
“It was not until I started going out with Margaret that Algiers held any interest at all. But with her, it was a different place & I might add a place I shall never forget as long as I live.” Volume III — Walter on Algiers
The Sunday afternoon
One Sunday afternoon early in October, Walter had been playing football. He came back to collect a towel and some soap. Passing one of the sisters’ offices, he saw her sitting at the desk, writing. He went in and asked if she would come to the Sgts Mess dance. He must have looked an awful sight — football kit, hair everywhere. He must have caught her unawares.
She accepted.
Her name was Margaret Notley.
The following week she invited him to a dance at the Y.W.C.A. — which shook him considerably, as he had never expected it. The dance was cancelled; they went to the pictures instead. It was a very enjoyable evening. He realised then that he had formed a great liking for this girl.
December
Concerts, cinemas, theatre, dances, picnics on fine days. His birthday party. Infectious hepatitis — admitted to hospital, asked to go on her ward, out in nine days. Christmas Day: her ward in the morning, two shows for patients and staff, finished at 11.30pm exhausted. A cup of tea in the bunk with Margaret.
Boxing Day 1943 · The final entry
"I was more than fond of her."
Walter Kenneth Stevens · Volume III · 26 December 1943
The page after is blank. He never wrote again.
Margaret Notley — her story
Margaret arrives in Walter's diary as a woman sitting at a desk. She was considerably more than that. Her father was killed at Ypres in 1917. She trained as a nursing sister and served throughout the war. She kept an autograph book — filled by the soldiers she cared for.
Continue to Margaret Notley's section →Walter was not a man who left things unfinished — he was methodical, careful, thorough. The diaries do not trail off. Volume 3 ends on a full page, the handwriting as clear as it ever was, the final entry complete in itself. He simply stopped. Whether this was a conscious decision — that the story had reached the point where it no longer needed to be recorded — we cannot know. But we have the diary. We have the last line. And we have the wedding photograph: both of them laughing on a set of steps in the sunshine somewhere warm. Whatever came after the final entry, it came out well.
Volume III diary scan (PDF) Full transcription (PDF) Narrative version (PDF)