3 "As far as the ordinary man and woman, especially those.
who have suffered during recent -air raids, are concerned "there will be no peace until Hitler is defeated." From the most "humble of workers in England to the highest in the land these vere the sentiments that are being expressed throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain today despite all that the Germans shave done to break the moral of Britons as they broke the moral of others. This news was imparted to me a few days ago by a man who had seen Londoners, Liverpudlians, Mancunians and others stand up to the worst that the Luftwaffe could hand' out. He had seen them bombed out of their homes and take it with a smile on their faces. He had seen their fearlessness amid the "frightful din of crashing bombs.
He had seen the Britain that Hitler cannot defeat, It had filled him with pride to be able "to call himself a compatriot of such folks, he proudly told me.
Many and inspiring were the stories he told of the heroism and "unshakeable faith of Britons in their country, whose ultimate victory was rever in doubt. He, foo, as a member of the British Merchant Navy, had faced danger from bombs and torpedoes, but of his own bravery he was loath to speak. Instead he gave me a vivid picture of England as he found it during a month's stay there quiet recently when the German air force unleashed some exceptionally intense raids on London and other centres.
For instance he mentioned a friend of his in London, who had been rendered homeless by the explosion of a land mine dropped by a German plane. This brave fellow, it appears. wes in bed with his wife and young danehter during a heavy raid. Upon hearing the deadly missile drop through the air in the vicinity of his home he immediately flung himself over the bodies of wife and child. Suddenly there was a tremendous explosion and the door of the room came hurtling across the bed, covering all three people. Then down came the ceiling, bricks and mortar. When they were dug out by rescue workers not one of the three people was injured—thanks to the door.
The gas stove was found intact in the middle of the street and, upon its discovery, there happend something that proves such Nazi methods will never beat the British people. The wife shortly before the raid had pliced a rice pudding, which was to te cooked on the morrow, in the stove. Upon reaching the street her first action was not a hys'er'cal me os one would have expected after such en experience—she opened the door of the stove quite calmly and looked to see if her pudding had escaped unharmed. Needless to say it had not.
That family of three was rendered homeless. For weeks that followed they lived at night in one of the shelters but in the daytime the wife hed had the stove put back in its proper place. and she was busy cooking the family meals as if nothing had heppened. And she enjoyed the joke gue afternoon when a genial old gentleman poked his head through a hole in the wall and blandly inform-her that he had come to "toon the planner" as ordered. "You'll find it somewhere in the garden," she told him, "If you can tune it now you're 4 etter than I thought you were."
Then there was the story of the ald naval pensioner. a watchman on ships'in the London docks. His home was near the arsenal at Woolwich. a target the Germans often aimed at but always seemed to miss. He had been bombed out of house and home and had slept for several nights under Silvertown arches, Was he dismayed? Not in the least, Sharp Retort sup) you've gone to live somewhere qilleter now?" he was asked when it had become known that he had secured another house in which to dwell. "Not on your life" was his reply. "I've lived in Woolwich for twenty odd years, and no—Nazi alive li get me out of it."
On the night that my informant's ship docked in London there was a fierce Nazi raid in which his ship was hit and in which the true worth of seafarers in danger was proved. The bomb hit the deck, pierced it and smashed through the cargo in the holds. Luckily it did not explode but for all the crew knew at the time, it might have been a delayed action missile.
There were several men working in the engine room at the time. "Most of them were Britons and some were Chinese. Not one man made any move to go on deck even though they all knew that a missile of sorts had landed below decks in dangerous proximity to where they were working. They carried on with their jobs even though threatened with death Fad the missile. exploded. Luckily it was a dud and did little damage to the ship or the cargo.
At this point another seafarer, who had been on deck at the time, joined in the conversation. When the raid was most intense, he said, there had passed by the ship a lorry land of AFS. workers, all singing at the top of their voices. Their destination was a bombed area in dockland and their song, curiously enough (probably a theme song) "Keep the Home Fires Burning." Before morning came they had been working for hours to put out one of the "home fires" they had been singing about. on in England. You believe London is in ruins and that huge areas have been destroyed. It is not so. Naturally there has been some damage, especially in London, but to wipe out whole city is practically impossible. As soon as houses and streets are bombed the debris is cleared away and builders get to work immediately, clearing away the mess and repairing the damage, for very few buildings are completely destroyed. They are only damaged."
In London the dock areas have suffered badly and so has the West End. In'the Strand, at Trafalgar Square, in Fleet Street, Kingsway and in many other famous areas signs of German frightfulness meet the eye. But life goes on in London as it did in happier times. The buses still roar down Oxford Street in endless S.veams, past many damaged shops and department stores. The trams still run on the Embankment and Cleopatra's Needle is still there to remind one of the victories of the British Army outside the borders of the country from which the obelisk came,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.