HEROES OF LONDON.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 255, 25 September 1940, Page 8

HEROES OF LONDON.

BRITAIN FIGHTS BACK

COLONEL WAITE’S DESCRIPTION

WELLINGTON, Sept. 25

“I can say England is fighting back; more particularly can I say London is fighting back. There is no defeatism here. Londoners are proving not only that London can take it, but that London can also hand it back,” declared Lieutenant-Colonel F. Waite, M.L.C., gifts commissioner of the New Zealand Patriotic Fund Board overseas, in a talk broadcast from Daventr.v last night.

Colonel Waite, who has been in England for a fortnight, said few articles were rationed and in many cases there were alternatives. One could go into a restaurant and get substantial meals without any food cards and it seemed to him that the meals were cheap. London was so big and the population so large that in proportion the damage done was small, and the military damage negligible. Indiscriminate bombing of closely settled areas was sickening, but the great city carried on and fought back. Colonel Waite described a “dog fight” he had seen over the city in daylight and gave his impressions of an air raid at night He had a bed on the top floor of an hotel and slept like a top on his first night in London, the day of the biggest air raid of the war.

“HELL’S CORNER.”

During three days last week he was over much of the County of Kent and visited Dover, which American correspondents called “Hell’s Corner.” He had inspected six wrecked Messerschmitts, and now had no doubt about the number of machines brought down. British fighters were licking the Germans long before tliev got to London. Colonel Waite described the New Zealand'Soldiers’ Club in Charing Cross Road as a real New Zealand home awav from home, and paid a tribute to the voluntary work of New Zealand women in London who staffed it. "Our boys are ready to meet the Hun,” he said, “and are proud that thev will be able to strike a real blow for England. At present there are not many. New Zealanders in London. They are in the field.”

In the meantime the real heroes and heroines were on the London front, Colonel Waite said. He paid a tribute to the quiet heroism of the women of London, to the women bus drivers, the bomb disposal squads and the Home Guard. The men of the Home Guard were a really formidable and effective force. Many of them were veterans of the last war. Through the hours of darkness they were at posts; “These men will not give ground,” he said, “because they are Englishmen defending their own homes.” .Tie added that General Sir \lexander Godlev was proud to be a member of the guard.