Mrs Hill was very pleased to have the diary translated after so many years. She said that reading it was like finding the missing jigsaw piece in her husband's life. The names on the front page and the boxes around the numbers on the first page were done by Donald when he once tried to show his son Christopher how to translate the diary. However, since he put a box around every 34th letter rather than every 33rd, he clearly could not quite remember exactly how to translate it. The two names which make up the keyword are of course his own name and the name of his then fiancee Pamela.
Some extracts are as follows.
December 23rd . Up early, lucky for me, as a bomb lands on my bed just as I leave the room wrecking everything including my kit. December 25th . What a Christmas day, empty stomachs, tired out, and heaven knows what is going on. At ten am a message arrives saying their is a truce until midday.