BLIND FURY

Taranaki Daily News, 21 September 1940, Page 8

BLIND FURY

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.

GERMAN RAIDERS BARBARIC ONSLAUGHT HISTORIC MARKS SUFFER

British Official Wireless. Rugby, Sept. 19. Many observers regard last night's raid on London as the most savage yet. The Germans flew lower thanever and took suicidal chances, frenziedly endeavouring to pierce the vast hellish curtain of fire around and over London. They made no effort to seek military objectives, but sought only to unload their bombs as near as possible to the heart of the capital. The chief gain from this barbaric onslaught was damage to objects of historic and worldwide interest, and the devastation of private property. Their would-be "reprisals" have become expressions of blind fury at Britain's resistance. The daily occurrence of people spending the day waiting their release from beneath the debris of razed buildings has been repeated in several districts. Baby Trapped Whole Day. A man rescued from a buried automobile in a West End garage died in hospital. Twenty-five hours after a bomb wrecked a shop rescuers heard faint baby cries. It was a four-months-old child lying in a drawer. The parents and grandmother were killed. Scores clad in night attire extinguished a series of fires which a "Molotov breadbasket" started in a northern residential area. The heaviest casualties resulted from an enormous explosion following the crashing of a raider fully loaded with bombs. Numbers of buildings were demolislied. Rescue parties were struggling all night to release persons imprisoned under-gi-ound when a wall collapsed. The Inner Temple Library, the Public Records Office, the British Museum courtyard, the Wallace Collection courtyard and Peter Robinson's store are among the latest landmarks to be bombed. The majority of the treasures, including the Doomsday Book housed in the Public Records Office, and the museum's treasures, were removed to safety after the outbreak of war. A bomb in a suburb destroyed a Methodist church and five adjoining houses. County Hall Hit. The County Hall, headquarters of the London County Council, was hit by a bomb. The hall's fabric was damaged but civil defence and other services are being maintained unimpaired. A bomb caused a 30-foot ,crater on the terrace nearest Westminster Bridge. Two waitresses were killed and there were a dozen casualties. Among the big London stores damaged by bombs was Peter Robinson's in Oxford Circus. Major-General and Mrs. C. J. B. Hay were killed when a bomb crashed through the roof of a West End hotel and carried wreckage down several floors. The remainder of the 200 guests and staff were not hurt. Those trapped under a bombed school which was the headquarters of the local A.F.'s ambulance services include nurses, fire girls and stretcher bearers. Lord Croft stated that many incendiaries had fallen on the"Royal Hospital at Chelsea. There we'f§t*,no casualties and the buildings were undamaged. A stirring scene was enacted at Central London when a bomb set fire to a famous building. Over 1000 people sheltering in the vaults formed up like a battalion parading and marched in perfect order to nearby surface shelters.