AUSTRALIANS TO THE RESCUE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 228, 25 September 1940, Page 6

AUSTRALIANS TO THE RESCUE

IN EAST END.

"NOW THEY KNOW."

SENSELESS MASSACRE.

SCENES UNFORGETTABLE.

Australian soldiers, facing their first experience of, massed air attack with perfect coolness, have played a courageous part' in the indiscriminate bombings to which London has been subjected, wrote Kenneth official war correspondent with the A.I.F. in England, on September 12. Until this week the Australians did j not realise the actuality of Hitler's war ; methods. They had read of the sense- ! less massacre of women and children, ! but did not think they would see it themselves at close quarters. Xow they know. They have seen women, old and young, deliberately killed before their eyes. They have seen babies maimed before they could walk, and harmless families smudged out among the wreckage of their homes. So they are waiting all the more grimly for the day of reckoning. This is not the kind of fighting they had imagined. They can neither forgive nor understand it. With dull anger, they have helped in the work of rescue and protection, but under their outward calm a flame, of horror and diegust has been lit which will not be easily put out. " Look At The Sky ! " Corporal L. Robinson, of Melbourne, told me that he had been saying goodbye to some relations in the East End on Saturday evening—his last day of leave. On the way back he stopped to talk to a British sailor in the street. " The air was quite clear then," he " Suddenly the sailor grabbed me by an arm. "'Good God! 'he yelled. 'Look at the eky!' "It was like a cloud going over the sun. The eky was dark with planes. The next thing we knew was hell seemed to be coming down in lumps. " There was a terrace of houses opposite me, and I saw it vanish. " Buildings do not blow up in the way I thought they did. They just seemed to lift off ' at the roots,' rise in the air and fall flat. " There were a lot of thumping noises, but you'd be surprised how small the spread of a bomb is. " I realised there was no need to be frightened if a man kept his head. " Just then I noticed a crowd of kids, about four or five years old, running about without a sign of fear. They were siuging out: 'Mum, where's me gas mask V " I found that I was still with the sailor. " ■ Where are you going, Digger ?'" he asked. "Where are you?" I said. " ' Blow going down below,' " he eaid. " ' There's more air on deck.' " " So we stayed ' on deck.' " Just then there was another big thump round the corner, and we both ran down the street where it had happened, because sometimes A.R.P. workers don't get there at once. " There wae a nurse running with us and she had a bag. I have never eeen a woman more game. Somehow, those women seem to loee their fear at a time like that. " But there was nobody I could see that you could call really frightened. " There's nothing fearful about an incendiary bomb.. It's just like those fairy sparkler fireworks we used to wave when we were kids. "The sailor eaid: 'Pinch any buckets you see, we might need them for putting out a fire. . All Wanting To Help. "By this time a lot of other people had arrived wanting to help. The first building we came to, I could hear a girl inside crying as if she had hysterics. It wasn't a building a bomb had hit, but it seemed to have been cracked to pieces by the force of an explosion near it. " All those places are so old that the floor shakes when you sneeze." After describing his own e,fforts, he said: " Altogether I saw about 30 Diggers that night, all helping in the rescue work, and as cool as if they'd been born under bombs.

" Most of them had dumped their tin hate and respirators so that they could get round more freely. " I was proud to be among those boys. They didn't care a darn about themselves. They were just seeing what they could do. I don't think that there was a Digger in London who went into a shelter all night. " That's the first time I've seen our boys iu a crisis—under fire, as vou might say—and if they act like that, I'm glad to be with them." Public Shelter Hit. A typical account of Sunday night's bombing wae given by Sergeant C. B. Forrester, of Sydney. He. returned from leave on Tuesday after having helped in rescue parties all through the raids on Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights. On Sunday night he was passing through the East End to tak« some friends and a child home from a shelter when a bomb fell scarcely 50 yards away. It completely wrecked a big new concrete building with five floors full of people. " The place just seemed to come to pieces,"- said Sergeant Forrester. "Gas and water burst out of it and broken glass whistled in the air like a hailstorm. , I flung myself flat on my face. " Almost -.immediately another bomb hit a wall of concrete left standing. It glanced off at a ricochet—and then the million to one chance happened. It fell clean on top of a "public shelter under the street. The Germans couldn't have done it if they had aimed. " I heard a terrific explosion in the ehelter and ran there as hard as I could. The whole front of the shelter had fallen in, and the entrance was blocked. " A.R.P. squads and firemen were there just as quickly, but we had to use picks, crowbars and pieces of broken metal to lift the slabs of concrete and dig our way in. It took us 10 hours, and we worked like madmen. " During this time the Germane came back and bombed the same place again. They killed four firemen working on the building which had firet been hit. Children Mutilated. "I wish I could forget what I saw and heard when we got into that place at last. It was the ghastliest thing I have ever known, and I've seen all kinds of accidents. I'll never be able to get it out of my mind. " There was no light. Everything was pitch black at first. It was just a kind of black hole, full of groans and screams. " And then, when we. got lights. 1 saw what I can't forget. I counted 32 taken out dead, and others in such a state that it seemed impossible for them to live. There were as many women and children killed as men.

"I dug out a kid about eight years old, and brought him up. He was hugging a wire-haired dog, but he couldut speak—he just went on crying in an awful kind of way. He seemed half dazed, but he as far as I could ftte. " The dog had been hit by a splinter of shrapnel. My friends gave the boy a coat and some warm clothes, because he. seemed to have been rushed to the shelter before he was properly dressed. God knows what had happened to his parent*. I gave him to the police. "' All this time floods of water had been pouring into the place from broken mains, and we were standing up to our waists at times. Two more bombs fell within a radius of 20 yards of the same, place. "1 pulled a great-coat and collar over my head and ears for protection against flying glass. The streets were ankledeep with it. There, wasn't a equate inch of glass left iu houses for 200 yards round. A.R.P. Heroes. " A.R.P. parties and iiremen worked magnificently. Soldiers in the front line couldn't have shown more guts. " 1 carried on, but it was mainly because they did, and I didn't want to give in before them. When the last salvo was dropped 1 ducked behind some broken concrete and the bluet was about 15 yards away. *' "L started at 1 o'clock that night and I couldn't knock off until 1.30 p.m. the next day. But after what 1 had seen, no man could have sat down and rested. Even when I got back, I couldn't eleep for what I had in my mind. I've hardly slept since. "On Monday night I helped in rescue parties again like the rest of the Diggers there. None of them went into shelters the whole, time. My clothes got soaked and torn, and I had. to borrow a pair of trousers to get back in. " People in Australia cairt imagine what it's like. You can't 'imagine a horror like that till you see it. I'd never seen a woman dead with a baby in her arms before. I don't mind seeing men killed or injured. That's war —or what I thought was war, in Australia. But this—it's not war; it's a madman running amok. " Those Gerrilans knew what they were doing. The place wasn't within cooee of industrial or military targets. That's why I can't regard them as human." Sergeant Forrester paused for a moment. Then he said elowly: "I'll never bring back a prisoner in this war."