BRITAIN TODAY—A PERSONAL NOTE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 226, 21 June 1944, Page 4

BRITAIN TODAY—A PERSONAL NOTE

Watching And Waiting On

The Home Front EVENTS ACROSS CHANNEL (By James Lansdale Hodson). LONDON, June 17.

This is the tenth day since the invasion of Normandy. It is 10 o’clock in the morning and I sit here in southern England looking at a grey sky, seeing the branches of the trees moving in a wind that might be that of late September. The weather hints at a storm and tempest which, remembering what goes on in France, seems natural enough. A moment ago the silence was broken by volleys of shells aimed at German pilotless aircraft hidden by cloud. Pilotless. We ordinary folk have learnt of these for the first time today. It is a new weapon, doubtless one of the vaunted secret ones. There is nothing as yet to prevent them coming by night or by day, and German aircraft by day over this neighbourhood had become exceedingly rare. And yet—does it sound absurd to you to say that for some of us ordinary people it is a relief to feel that we have an extra danger to face, a relief when kinsmen over in Normandy are enduring as much as mortal man can ever endure and live, and of course not always living? Specially when they are young boys, maybe and men of middle age. Throughout the night we have had intermittent gunfire at these aircraft which fly without men. I go up to lean out of iny bedroom window and watch cascades of red flaming lights moving slowly upward, and long flashes in the sky like sheet lightning, only less intense and more limited in range. But tiredness was stronger than curiosity and it seemed plain that the raid was not heavy: I went back to bed. Spasmodic gunfire in the later hours was not more than an interruption to sleep. This can be only a personal account and an unexciting one with nothing spectacular to record. For the moment I am one of the millions living here in the south of England feeling close to the war in Normandy and yet remote from it too. My neighbourhood, though but a few miles from the centre of a large city, is strangely. empty and quiet. I can walk down roads in the morning or evening and meet hardly a soul; those I meet seem all to be middle aged or old or very, very young. The house is quiet, too. The children are all away: the boy is flying a Stirling; the elder girl is in the W.A.A.F and writing, “I wish I was a nurse —one feels so out of it and wants to do more”; the youngest is in the W.R.N.S. on the south coast, who says, "They’re all in it, poor lambs. Dick was missing four days, but he has turned up now—he hitch-hiked back across the Channel.” (Dick is a Fleet Air Arm pilot), -

Chord of Memory.

They are all wanting to do more. That is pretty general. For there is a deep undertone of sorrow to our pride in what our men have done and are doing. There is agony of mind mixed with a touch of exultation that goes with being back on the French coast. I wrote in 1940, when I wag being evacuated from Brest: “This war will be won or lost on the soil of France.” Four years ago last night I had retreated to that .port. The last 20 kilos were lined with British trucks and ambulances wanting ships. At 10 p.m. I was in the doorway of an estaminet listening to the radio news. A French interpreter turned to me and said: “But you are going on fighting!” I said: “Of course we are going on fighting. What are you going to do?” He said: “We shall have to see,” and he strugged his shoulders forlonly. Next morning on the balcony of the Hotel des Voyageurs I heard Petain say that they had done all they could do and now they must lay down their arms. Three women were crying and wiping their eyes with their fingers in extremity of grief. That day I sailed from France. I said to a French waiter: “We will go on with the fight.” He said: "Of course we will.” A hotelkeeper added: "Even if it is for 20 years.” Well, the wheel has turned-.' ■" ' The panzer divisions which rushed us across France are tasting what they administered. The heavens are ours and not the Luftwaffe’s as then they were. For the moment mine is the ordinary man’s view. I am one of those who is wakened at five or six o’clock in the morning by a fearful roaring in the dome of the sky as though a hundred trains were rushing overhead. There is nothing to see as a rule of these hosts 'of heavy bombers hurrying to France. Occasionally by day and in the sunlight one sees clusters of them very high, sometimes in formation as of ducks in flight moving on their vengeful way, but so far up over the wisps of cloud that you would think they moved slowly in addition to majestically. I am one of those who queue up in the London streets to look at newsreels of D-day and watch with a catch at the heart those diminutive figures tumbling on to the beaches, sometimes staggering and falling, shot down. The lights go up and one sees that .people are close to teairs, and some indeed crying. This is Kent.

I am one of those who buy up the evening papers faster than usual and who turn on the radio oftener than usual. Never have we been kept so swiftly informed. It it overdone —this war reporting? For an old Scots friend who was a private soldier in World War 1 it is. He would rather have something short and use his own imagination. But another friend who lives in Kent thinks differently. He is 45 miles from the coast, yet his house trembles and the door of his bed- '

room vibrates with explosions that cannot be less than 60 miles off, and offer are 100 or 200 more. His belief is that the vibrations travel through chalk. At all events there is no doubt about them. In the last war a house trembled thus, but it was four days before they knew what it betokened. Today they know within a few hours and that, he reckons, is easement for the mind. This is a region of Kent where four years ago the summer skies were streaked with a white sign that men were duelling five miles high, our fighter pilots outnumbered 10 to one, but holding the Germans at bay. On the ground I would come upon a farmer ploughing round an aircraft crashed in his field and not yet removed. That imperturbability of spirit that made men able to abide then is still there. Thus we watch and wait . . . .The sirens are going again to warn us of more pilotless aircraft. They are going to be a nuisance but we shall get over them, I have no doubt. They will make no difference in the end.