LONDON SCARRED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 December 1940, Page 6

LONDON SCARRED

BY TERRIFIC HAMMERING RESULTS OF NIGHT RAID DEATHS IN HOSPITALS AND ELSEWHERE. SOME IN HOME COUNTIES. (By Telegraph—Press Associaiton—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.35 p.m.) LONDON, December 9. Daylight found London wearing new scars, which were invisible from a distance because of a heavy cloak of smoke from the extinguished fires, but which, on a close approach, revealed the desolation wrought by last night's terrific hammering. Earlier reports gave general details of the destruction to buildings, but after midday news was confined -almost exclusively to the tragically high mortality list. The Germans, as previously, showed special accuracy in attacking hospitals, of which those damaged included a general hospital and a special women’s hospital. Three night porters were trapped under debris, and are believed to be dead, when, a block of hospital buildings was cut in half by explosive bombs. There were two other deaths in the same hospital. A number of elderly patients died of shock when a heavy high-explosive bomb fell in the grounds of another hospital, considerably damaging buildings. Two bombs scored a direct hit on unoccupied parts of yet another hospital. Rows of once smart suburban dwellings lay in unrecognisable heaps of ashes and rubble and cratered roads necessitated ,a diversion of traffic in some areas. Four men sheltering in an archway in a school playground were killed, and a member of the A.R.P. was fatally injured. Bombs demolished shops and dwellings in the same area, killing a number of people. Rescuers were still searching 12 hours afterwards for those missing. Thirty persons were sent to' hospital.

Many are feared to be buried under a block of middle class flats demolished by a bomb. Many casualties occurred in the poorer part of one district, which was severely battered. Two big storage depots were burnt out in a shopping district. The Thames Estuary suffered heavily. A mother and two children, aged 13 and four respectively and a woman lodger were killed, and a father sent to hospital when a bomb destroyed a house.

In the home counties, seven persons were killed and others injured when a stick of high explosives hit a row of cottages in an East Anglian village. Four persons were killed and one injured in south-east England when attempting to examine a time-bomb, which exploded. The Berlin New Agency, says that within two hours after the attack on London. 40 extensive fires could be observed in the Government'quarter and in adjacent, districts. The areas suffering most were northwards of the Thames, comprising the Poplar and Bethnal Green.