TAKE COVER

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 234, 6 November 1940, Page 7

TAKE COVER

j AIR RAID THRILLS EN ZEDDERS IN ENGLAND < r (From the Official War Correspon- J dent attached to the New Zealand j Forces in Great Britain). j "Right!" said the sergeant. "Pile ] in." ] We piled; and as we did so the ( sirens began again: Wooo-00-<oo-o j Wooo-000-00-o Wooo-000-00-o. .1 A quilt of fleecy cloud lay lightly < upon the eastern horizon. From be- ( hind it they came, bombers and | fighters both, headed for London, j and ilying so high as to be but clon- ] gated silver dots in the blue vault ] of the autumn morning. "Just like < whitebait," was- a West Coast .boy's < apt description. < "They're Jerries'. They're Hem- . kels!" i "Rot! Look at the wings. They've , ours!" ' : "There's one coming down. Oh, ] boji He's smoking'." "He's only diving. He's a Spitfire. He's after something! See! He's flatteniilg out. He's climbing now. Look at him climbing!" Burrr-rrr! Burrr-rrr! "There's a burst! (of machine-gun fire). That's otirs. I know the sound. ! I knew he was alter .something." 1 "There they go! Right above us." Burrr-rrr! Burrr-rrr! "He's got him! He's falling! He's j a Jerry!" Pronouns, too,, are ilying ' wildly now. He's on fire! There! He's baled out. See his 'chute opening. What a pity we've started. He's come down right by B Company." But he didn't. We saw him strike —the pronoun now personifying the empty enemy machine. In a stubble paddock, it was: on the sunlit eastern' slope of a gentle rise. The nose drove deeply into the soft earth, Avliich vomited back great billows of fierce, black smoke. Two Hurricanes that had followed him down wheeled to climb again, in search of fresh- prey. Interest turned to the parachute, now blown over our heads and set- ] tling fast on the inland side. , "He won't be long now . . . Won- J der what he's thinking . . . Time ' to get the kettle on: he'll be ready i for his cup of tea in ten minutes." When the swinging figure of the 1 pilot could be picked out with the ' naked eye, we tried to focus a pair 1 of glasses on him. As our ancient < bus, fully laden, rattled along at ; 20 1 miles an hour, all we could see was < a pingpong ball dancing crazily on a blue table. , Anti-aircraft guns barked on the < coast, and we gawked out that side i again. When next we turned to look i for the parachutist, he was down. One more . . . Yesterday at this , time it was two . .. . Very likely this afternoon it will be three . . • Farther along the road, as we presently learned, they have watched four come down this morning, three Germans and one of ours. m » * a So it goes on day by day. The wireless and next morning's papers give us the totals, just as your wireless and your papers give them to you. Since seeing for ourselves what happens in almost every raid within our own range of vision, we have never for a moment questioned the amazing disproportion between the enemy's losses and ours. If fresh evidence AVere required, it is to be had for the looking in every district of south-eastern England. A bent little man turns from his hedge-cutting, wipes the sweat from his brow with a hairy forearm, arid tosses us the information,.before. "We have time to check our .map-reading by a local inquiry. ''Jerry over t'field yonder. Reckon he won't bother London no more." Is this, we aslr him, the right road for So-and-so: and do we take the next left fork. But we are net allowed to interrupt the news bulletin. "Was anothcr'n in churchyard by t'e'rossroads"—hardly a scratch on him until lie hit the stone wall; but they have taken him away to "airy'drome." One that came down in the Broolc Farm on Saturday wasn't worth taking even to a museum. "Blown t'bits" he was . . . Reckon our boys are letting the Jerries at home know there's a war on, too . .. . Plaster* Berlin every night; that's the stuff . . . That's where we should have finished up the last ; war, in Berlin . . . He always had , said that . . . Give Jerry a good • taste of his own medicine . . . Yes, . the next fork to the left would take us there, unless we wanted to go

through the village Avhere the two Jerry parachutes fell in one garden last week. •p* » " With this going on above and about us every day, and with fresh reports every morning of the wholesale bombing of civilian targets in London, the while we ourselves can do nothing to help slop the attack, it is hardly surprising that men are becoming restive. That spirit is riot peculiar to the New Zealand Force. For the moment —and it is a long-drawn-out moment —the passive func tions of civilian and soldiers are reversed; instead of soldier protecting citizen, citizen suffers and soldier can but stand by. In time that position will right itself: nobody imagines that the war can be won in the East End of London, although it may well be that its winning will date back to the unbelievably heroic stand being made there, and elsewhere in the capital, by ordinary men, women and children, who are giving the world the finest demonstration in all history of civic re sponsibility realised and good neighbourliness in practice. Whereas in past Avars the people at home have been rallied and inspired by the courage and achievements of their lighting forces, this tilne the civil population is setting thes tandard for hundreds of thousands of yet untested troops. The Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force haA r e saved Britain from invasion; the magnificent courage of her citizenry in the last feAV Aveeks is both an expression -of thanks to those tAvo Services and an example Avhich cannot fail to inspire the Army when the time is ripe for it to strike.