LONDON TAKES IT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 226, 23 September 1940, Page 5

LONDON TAKES IT.

JOKES UNDER BOMBS. TEA AMONG THE CRATERS. LONDON, August 30. An old man tucked a rug round his wife as she sat on a bench in a London schoolroom. A few hours earlier they had been bombed out of their home. "There now, mother," he said, making her comfortable. "You alius said you didn't have enough schoolin.' Now's your chance." In another part of the school two old women were being given a cup of tea. "Nice, ain't it, Martha?" said one. "Savin' our ration." That was the incredible spirit of Londoners. That school, filled with aged [ people, with men, women and children, all driven from home, was as cheerful as a church soiree (wrote a "Daily Herald" reporter).

Now and then a tired child would squall. Or there would be a bump and| a squawk as a venturesome boy or girl came to grief on the vaulting horse. An incendiary bomb had chipped the coping stone of a church and flared up| in an alleyway between it and an! adjoining house. , 20 Feet Away. "Laugh!" said a young wife whose husband by prompt work with a stirrup pump had helped to dispose of it. "I| couldn't help it. You'd have laughed, too. if you'd seen people rushing out of their houses in pyjamas and nightdi esses." "You can't blame thorn for being a bit scared," I reproved her. I "But that's what made it so funny,"! •'he said. '"They weren't scared. Thev were all rushing to put out the fire, lit : was like a fancy-dress party." '"Ever see the like?" said Mrs. F.l' Rodgers to me. "They've been joking! like that for hours. Everybody's been' ( so kind. The A.R.P. peopie have been i marvellous. They got us out. and they;] made us happy and comfortable." "Look at my mother-in-law," she said. 1 ; indicating a grey-headed woman, who <

was chaffing her neighbour. "Yon wouldn't think a bomb had dropped 20 feet from her last night. "

j "There were eight of us in a shelter meant for five. My boys were asleep. When the bomb exploded they didn't make a sound. "We had heard the Germans coming over. We could hear the roar of the engine as though it were diving on top of us. . "We just linked hands and prayed— prayed as never before. The bomb thudded and exploded. The shelter didn't even shudder. "When it was quiet there was another thud, and we got a shower of debris. It was my cat Tarzan coming home before morning for the first time in his life. He jumped into the shelter entrance and scattered the debris." Over Craters. Even more remarkable was the story of another young wife. Mrs. Shonk, next-door neighbour to Mrs. Rodgers. "It was the second time for us," she said to me. "We were staying on the outskirts of London during the first raid and we had to climb over two crater* to get out then. Last night I climbed across another to make a cup of tea after the raid.

"A friend, my husband and mvself were watching the bomber being chased by a British 'plane. When it got over our heads it seemed to dive down on, us and suddenly let go its bombs. "My friend and I dived back into the shelter and were flung through the entrance by the force of the explosion. We were inside, but my husband was hanging half in and half'out. I thought he'd lost his. legs. "I dragged him in.

Sound Asleep. "My four-year-old boy was asleep on | the bench at the back" of the shelter. : The explosion flung him on the floor. I pic<e.-l ntto up a:d p-it r.iti ..o ;be bni.ii 1 again—still sound asleep. "I was mini'.!? a two-year-'jM h.i!iv I for :t« motluT. The child was a-'.eep in her cot :.i ihe FA*>l;?r and ne\er 1 wakened. "Outside the shcl:or wa= a "Ofl w.dc 1 Tater. gsrj.-ns had !*een bl n> n into one. My rose arbours had jjene. So had a nice crop of tomatoes. "The roof of the hoinip suffered. Uvt a lame mau in hfj in iht top Hm v came down unhurt, i

"Our only casualty was one of -anr canaries. He was ]."» years old, and the two younger ones were trill aliva. Our budgerigars were singing with excitement—quite unhurt."

From a high buildin** in Centra! London I had seen this bomb explode. I had also watched another raidar Tet loose a load of incendiaries. Firr* spurted like jetc of a gas ring one after another. I found the road which had caught these bombs. They seemed to nave picked alternate shops, and one had «et fire to a Woolworth stors, opposite a fire station. The store was gutted, but next door Mr. Jacks, the fruiterer, and his wife were serving their customers as tiough nothing had happened. "My husband was In bed—on the other side of the wall from Woolworths. I couldn't waken him. It needed a £<• to do that," said Mrs. Jacks. Silver Load. Every fire had been localised by prompt A.R.P. work and most shops were doing "business as usual."

I had also seen a bomber caught ia the apex of two searchlights. A silvery "'something" dropped from it down the searchlight beam. It was a load of incendiaries on another part of London. They had fallen like confetti and almost as harmlessly. I found school children playing "ring-a-roses" round a dent in their playground. An incendiary had landed but although it was in the same street as their homes, they had been punctual at echool that morning. That was how the men, women and children of London took the riid. I had seen the same spirit, the «-aine cheerful comradeship, once before —m the men who came back from Dunkirk.