HOUSEWIVES' CALMNESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 215, 10 September 1940, Page 10

HOUSEWIVES' CALMNESS.

COASTAL AIR RAIDS. Housewives are playing a key part in the coastal town air battles in Britain, states a correspondent of the "Sydney Morning Herald.'' All those interviewed in one day said it was- their duty to remain to rook and care for their husbands and children and their neighbours whose homes were blown up in the daily air raids. They are most resentful of published stories suggesting that they are leaving towns pushing iprams loaded with possessions. British women are as unafraid as the men. "We are in the front line, too," they said. For the nightly raids they move the children's beds into the air raid shelters, where the children spend the entire nigh', undisturbed. Dover housewives caught in the streets reduce their wasted hours by forming a shopping club. When the all-clear siren sounds one dashes to the greengrocer, another buys meat, a third .attends to the groceries, then they pool all provisions. Women have learnt to distinguish between the noises of machine gun, cannon and anti-aircraft lire. They are not anxious when the dull crump indicates a bomb. Everyone takes the children everywhere lest they are caught in the streets and prevented from getting home. Mothers and children looked bored and unanxious. An hour after one air raid a street of tileless and windowless houses looked like a scene from "Gulliver's Travels." with every man sitting on a windowsill nailing on linoleum or three-ply to replace the missing tiles or glass, or to eover the shrapnel holes in "the walls.