DAMAGE TO HOUSES OF POOR PEOPLE

Southland Times, Issue 24235, 19 September 1940, Page 8

DAMAGE TO HOUSES OF POOR PEOPLE

TERRIBLE ONSLAUGHTS BY GERMAN RAIDERS (British Official Wireless) RUGBY, September 17. The Minister of Shipping, Mr R. H. Cross, broadcasting, described a visit to the London docks, and paid a tribute to the dwellers there. “A few days ago I made a tour of the Port of London, which has been the main target of German raiders,” he said. “You will have read about the terrible onslaughts. Hundreds of German aeroplanes have rained high-ex-plosive bombs and incendiary bombs on the docks. A good deal of damage has been done, and great fires have lit up our skies at night. We have wondered whether anything could possibly survive them. What was the true extent of the damage the Germans are no doubt wondering, too, and you will not expect me to satisfy their curiosity. “Our fire-fighting men have been quite wonderful. I have seen them tired out and still working on their hoses. I have seen them going home in their tenders utterly worn out, filthy,

dirty, sleepily seeming to prop each other up—biff still full of grim cheerfulness, ready to crack a joke with passengers in any car that might overtake them, and more than ready to start off again the moment they are needed.

' “After days and nights of horror and bombs and flames, thanks to the wonderful air-raid shelter organization of the Port of London authorities there has been only one man killed by enemy action within the limit of the docks, and he was in a tin cabin which by sheer bad luck got a direct hit. But outside the docks the story is very different and there is a strange sight in miles of firemen’s hoses running the length of street after street.

“London’s docks are surrounded by a densely crowded area. There are many miles of small streets where hundreds and thousands of London’s poorest people live in tiny houses, mostly weakly built. To their everlasting shame the Huns poured a deluge of destruction into these unlucky folk. “I saw their wicked havoc. I saw the mangled wreckages of these little homes, hundreds upon hundreds of them. I saw sights to bring tears to your eyes. I came back home wondering how man could be so foul and also how man could be so brave, but

knowingAvell that here in London, here in England, here in our Empire is a spirit that must and shall conquer the powers of evil.”