BOY FIRE=WATCHERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1941, Page 5

BOY FIRE=WATCHERS

INCIDENTS IN EARLIER DAYS. Amongst those who have answered the call for fire-watchers are, it is reported, many youngsters, especially Boy Scouts and members of similar organisations, says the “Manchester Guardian.” Some of them, indeed, have already discovered and helped to extinguish incendiary bombs. This is not the first lime that boys have been employed as “spotters” in war-time, and one instance of their doing somewhat similar work can be found in the story of the long siege of Gibraltar towards the end of the eighteenth century. According to a diary left by one of the British defenders, young lads were employed to watch for smoke from the enemy s cannon so that they could warn workers on the fortifications when to take cover. Two of these boys were so quick-eyed that they could sec the shot almost as soon as it left the barrel of the gun. On one occasion, though, four men had their legs cither blown off or severely injured by a shot that came crashing through the walls. The diarist records that on warning was given because the boy employed "to inform the men when the enemy’s fire was directed to that place” had momentarily turned his attention from the enemy lines to the men working beside him and “had been reproving them for their carelessness in not attending to him.’ Despite such incidents, casualties were small considering the scale of the bombardment, thanks partly to keen-eyed boy watchers. ______