LIFE IN DOVER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 October 1941, Page 6

LIFE IN DOVER

AMERICAN’S OBSERVATIONS SHELLING BY NAZIS. COMMUNICATIONS & SERVICES ‘Maintained. ■ Mr Arthur Menken who left New Zealand a few days ago on his return to the United States of America has just ended two years of foreign corresponding to bring to the world authentic, newsreel pictures of war-torn China, and of Europe and vivid pictures of the Battle of Britain. Before leaving New Zealand he gave certain of his impressions of the outside world to a newspaper reporter. Mr Menken had not long left Great Britain where his last assignment kept him for two months on the cliffs of Dover. From here the story is one best told in Mr Menkens’ own language. “Those people in Dover who felt that they should evacuate had done so early in the war, but the better part of the population remained, carrying on business in such a way that the town maintained a completely normal appearance. There were soldiers and sailors of course, lots of them, and the theatres, movies and stores carried on as usual. Then came the first shells from the big guns the Germans moved to Cape Grisnez just 18 miles away. “They shelled the port, the town, the suburbs. It was haphazard. It was based on the theory of terror that has worked in other countries. Some people left the town, and it was good they did because their presence there was quite unnecessary. Dover had a balloon barrage of 23 balloons. The German fighter planes came over and knocked them down. Folkstone was bombed without balloons. Dover was bombed and shelled despite balloons. The British threw up anti-aircraft. The shooting was singularly ineffective. The Germans bombed me personally on the cliffs. Their shells landed indiscriminately, and in the worst shelling they threw 162 in 4 hours time. Bombs knocked down our hotel, blasted . our press room into oblivion, while British coastal guns roared back their answer. “People were killed and children were maimed; houses went down; homes and churches; offices and shops. But next day life always went on as usual. It seems hard to believe the calm that reigns in Dover when there are no bombs and shells. Sometimes the trains are late; sometimes the water fails. Wires and mails are slow, but somehow through this rain of bombs, the British manage always to maintain the most essential communications and essential services. Food is important and food is nowhere lacking. They may not have their beef one day, but there is mutton or pork or sausages, or something else, and no one seems to mind. “I lived with a railwayman and his family in a tiny cottage. Out of my window under a roof peppered with falling anti-aircraft, I could see the coast of France which now is Nazi Germany. During the last ten nights that I was there my window rattled with reverberations from British bombs on the other coast. It was a terrific show because as far as I could see, from Calais in the north to Boulogne, and further on, far to the south and well inland, the bombing went on hour after hour, and while the bombs were falling, the German anti-aircraft sent up geysers of flaming steel that looked like all the firework displays in the world rolled into one. This was the air force answer to invasion. “Then, when the nights were calm, the R.A.F. would send down, flares—one, two, three or more at a time, lighting the Channel from coast to coast, to see if there was German shipping coming over. Sometimes there would be the Ack Ack fire rising from some point not on shore, but well out in the Channel, and that meant German ships were moving by. Sometimes the flames that we could see from far across the water showed their reflections in our shattered windows. “And so those towns along the Chan-nel-Ramsgate, with its deep shelters, provided by a far-sighted mayor— Dover, majestic under her castle on the white cliffs, and formal Folkestone, which is in the extreme range of the big guns go on with their daily jobs, do their essential work and sometimes clash face to face with the enemy across the waves. While I was there London was bombed, and then I had to go to London. There it was the same fine tragic story. The noble city —noble in spots and sordid in many places—had now become the target. No one was safe. The King and Queen themselves became military objectives and when their home received its bombs, just as the simplest houses in the poorest districts, where poverty is probably as grim as anywhere in the world, the people rallied together with a unity of spirit which once again recalled the struggles that brought together the people of Finland, in their resistance of that other terror. Everywhere I went, streets were blocked off —time bombs lurked in the ruined houses and there were evidences of destruction. , “But London is not flat. People still go to work, struggling through unbelievable difficulties to reach their jobs from distant suburbs. They carry on and then go home at night and at their subway entrances find already the lines of those who need a safe underground spot where they can sleep. And this is urgent, because they know that without sleep they cannot work and without shelter they are not safe. They must remain alive and must keep in condition, and so daily richman, pobrman, beggarman and thief, lie down together side by side with their womenfolk and their children. The class lines of aristocratic England are disappearing. An Englishman’s home is no longer his castle. Today his air 'raid shelter is his home and underground all men are equal. They listen to the simple voices of Bevin and Priestley, rather than the cold accents of more formal speakers, because these men are now symbolical of what is really England —the simple British people who are fighting for their lives. “London is battered, but definitely not as badly as many here imagine. You can’t walk far in any direction without encountering wrecked buildings or streets barricaded because a time bomb has not yet exploded. But with all this, so many buildings still stand that Londoners still have homes to go to, offices to work in, and more than all, the spirit to carry on.” “How do you view the situation as it affects America and American people?” asked the reporter. Mr Menken replied —“Right at this moment each man and woman in beleagured Britain is putting up a fight for every one of us.. They do not want us in the war. If we come in, our every effort must go to provide our own defences. But while America still has peace, we can provide the allies

with the ships and guns, and most important the planes, with which to fight their battle. A British victory is essential to the survival of all that America holds dear. No single thing today is more vital than that the Government and every man and woman in America, bends every effort towards the aid for Britain. My experience will not allow me to believe those who would delude us into that passive folly of thinking that this is not America’s war. It is our war and in my mind there is no doubt that we will soon be in it. The waves that girdle England must bring American aid to the gallant British people to eradicate Hitler’s foul forces from the earth.”