FACING DEATH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 120, 23 June 1941, Page 6

FACING DEATH

WRITER'S NONCHALANCE LETTER FROM ENGLAND The matter-of-faot yet extraordinarily cheerful manner in which ordinary folk at Home face death daily is strikingly illustrated in the following letter received in the Te Awamutu district from a lady who lives <fiear London. Portions of the chatty paragraphs, which are interlude, d with humour of the Bairnsfather type, are appended:— "Hitler's boy friends certainly like 'mucking about' these parts. But we are used to it now and we have one consolation —it can't get any worse. My biggest moan is when a gasmain goes up and a perfectly good dinner goes west. My husband's sister lost her home on Thursday when a bomb landed in her garden. She only lives a few reads from here and when our house wobbled —also my knees—wo said 'some poor blighter's copped it,' little thinking it was anyone connected with us. Last night I was caught out in a raid just within a few yards of my house, when two huge monsters whizzed overhead and landed on a block of flats just three minutes from here. "So sorry, Mrs Clinch, not to have finished this letter before, but for the last week we have had a house full of people who have lost their homes. "Last Monday at lunch-time we had several beauties come down unexpectedly. One macie a til'teenfoot crater in a friend's garden. "Tell Glare not to worry as we are all still smiling even if our £43 shelter is full of water. Who cares? 'We can buy some ducks, and maybe then we can have some du?k eggs, for we have not seen an egg for two months. '"Say, Mrs Clnich, if you have few buckshee onions send us a few, because they are a thing of the past, and ray better half can't ousli down his war-time lunch without some sort of flavour! I told him yester clay to take a week's notice, but he only chuckled and said, 'You know when you have got a good job.* "Don't let Clare worry about us. We, that is the family, are all well and tough, but Ave croakers are toughest, for we: do get many a dirty chuckle over little incidents that help us over obstacles. . . "Zippee! That will be the day when we: get onions, butter and cheese and a good joint; most of all the bright lights, yet I guess we shall then need blinkers like horses. "Well, it's my turn to do firefighting patrol to-night, so I'd better get some sort of supper to keep our peckers up."