RAIDED VILLAGE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 245, 4 December 1940, Page 3

RAIDED VILLAGE

IMPRESSIONS FROM INHABITANTS "WE CAN STICK IT" There were sleepy eyes and brave hearts in our village this morning (wrote a special correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph from a north-east village in England recently). It had been a night of unmitigated unpleasantness. Several hours elapsed between the beginning and the end of the raid last night. During all that time Nazi bombers droned to and. fro with apparent impunity. Uncountable searchlights swept and massed in the moonlit but cloud-rent sky. There was occasional anti-aircraft fire, too occasional for our peace .of mind. A few moments quiet at midnight and then the all-too-inear throbthrob of an engine. At the peak of the cresendo of noise came an" uncanny wail and four simultaneous crashes. The intruder had unloaded four bombs on our inoffensive village. Some house property was hit but the damage was not considerable. No one was hurt. Our actions during the raid differed. but our reactions afterward were identical. Some went to earth in their shelters, other chatted over the garden fence or stayed in bed, according to their degree of caution, foolishness, sangfroid, or what you will. The usual reaction Avas: "It's a nuisance, but we can stick it." There Avas no bravado about it. This morning the mifk was delivered on time, the butcher boy whistled on his round, the evacuated school children played rounders with their teacher on the common, the regulars gathered as usual at the local.

The raid was inevitablj' the topic of conversation, and two questions punctuated the village talk: "*Of what earthly value is the village and why were our defences so quiet?" Theories are legon on both issues, but we are genuinely concerned to know why the gunfire was so desultory and distant while the enemy's machines were over our heads for six hours.