TRAGEDY IN LONDON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 November 1943, Page 3

TRAGEDY IN LONDON

CROWDED DANCE HALL HIT BY BOMB MANY PEOPLE KILLED OR INJURED STREET THAT LOOKED LIKE BATTLEFIELD REMARKABLE ESCAPE OF BUS PASSENGERS (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, November 8. Many persons were killed and injured when a dance hall and a milk bar beneath it received a direct hit from a heavy high-explosive bomb during a German raid on London last night. Both the dance hall and the milk bar were crowded. A.R.P. workers and firemen were still digging out victims this morning. Ambulances were continuously removing dead and injured when tractor-cranes hauled the wreckage away. It was the worst raid since the Lewisham School was bombed last January, when 29 children and five teachers were killed. A public house and two cinemas near the dance hall were damaged by blast. The casualty roll was increased by victims from queues Of people waiting for buses after leaving cinemas and also in the damaged public house, which was crowded. An eyewitness described the street as looking like a battlefield, with dead and injured lying in the roadway. The dancers included many servicemen, some of whom were killed. All the customers standing at the milk bar counter are believed to have been killed. A number of persons in the street and others sheltering in a doorway and on a staircase leading to the dance hall were killed and injured. Rescue men worked feverishly, moving a huge mound of rubble under which pedestrians were believed to be trapped. A cinema foyer was used as a dressing station and the foyer of another cinema as a mortuary. Passengers in a crowded bus had a remarkable escape. The bus was picking up passengers outside the dance hall when the bomb fell. A passenger said that the bus seemed to jump a couple of feet in the air. Glass flew everywhere, but only one woman was slightly injured. A gas main burst and a loudspeaker van ordered people to stop smoking. Bombs were dropped on several other places in the London area. Three persons are believed to be trapped in the wreckage of two adjoining houses.