MEDITERRANEAN CONTROL

Evening Star, Issue 23698, 4 October 1940, Page 5

MEDITERRANEAN CONTROL

STILL IN BRITISH HANDS INCREASING VOLUME OF SHIPPING LONDON, October 3. The Ministry of Economic Warfare Spokesman disclosed the hollowness of Italy’s claim to control the Mediterranean and even seriously interfere with British trade in Levant. Some convoys are ablo to traverse the Mediterranean, and regular and steadily increasing trade is passing to and from the Suez Canal, through the Rod Sea, past Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. Italian submarines and planes are powerless to check it. .Britain since July has imported tens of thousands of tons of magnesite from Greece for making bombs, and the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation has imported vast quantities of dried fruits from the same source. Timber came from Rumania, dried fruits and other goods from Turkey, hemp and flax from the Balkans, cotton, cotton seed, lime and phosphates, and onions from Egypt. The cotton shipments in the first sis months of the year were above the average. Cyprus sends asbestos and iron pyrites. Increasing quantities of potash are being imported from Pales r tine. Britain is carrying on a large export trade with these countries. Egypt gets coal, oil, fertilisers, timber, metals, and machinery safely, although, according to enemy propaganda, British trade in the Near East is completely stopped. RESCUES FROM RUINS SPECIAL SQUADS' GREAT WORK GRAPHIC STORY OF “TOUGH JOB" (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 2. The story of what “ tough jobs ” mean for the Bridlington A.R.P. rescue squads was told in a broadcast by Mr Thomas Alderson, of Leeds, one of the first recipients of the George Cross. “ About our worst time,” he. said, “ was when two five-story buildings got a direct hit. We were called out and found them in ruins. Planes were still about and bombs were crumping in the distance. We searched around and found the basement door partly uncovered in one house. The walls were still standing, and did not look very safe, but we started at that basement door. We cleared it. Nothing was too small to move, and I passed bits of brick, plaster, and wood back along a chain of men till w-e managed to get inside the ground floor. The joists had collapsed and tvere jammed between the basement wall aud the floor, and this had given protection to four people in the corner. There was a big farmhouse table in the middle of the floor. It had partly collapsed and half was supporting beams and smashed walls from the floors above. Lying on my side I began to work a hole over the table, keeping a wary eye on unsafe debris and passing bricks and rubbish back along the chain of men. CHILDREN TRAPPED. “At last there -was enough space for us to slide four people head first into the hole over the table, swing their legs round and pull them backwards through the basement door. A boy and a girl were still left badly trapped under heavy joists towards the centre of the basement. The table had now to be carefully broken «p and removed, and again the debris was passed out, bit by. bit. There was not room to use standard A.R.P, jacks,, so I called for motor car jacks, and with these managed to raise the main joist a little. It started to crack, but by jacking immediately underneath the crack I raised the joist still further. RESCUE EFFECTED. “ By this time the cellar was filling with coal gas and water appeared to bo rising on the floor. The boy and the girl were in severe pain, so I called a doctor to give an injection. We had to work them free from the joists and slide them out, but at last, after four hours of hard work with shaded hand torches as the only means of light, it was done. Planes wore still humming overhead, but I had been too busy to notice them.” Alderson, who is works supervisor of the Bridlington Corporation, has been training workmen in rescue work for the past two years.