INDOMITABLE SPIRIT

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21195, 19 August 1940, Page 7

INDOMITABLE SPIRIT

CALMNESS IN BRITAIN DEFIANCE OF HITLER GERMAN ASKS FOR BEER (United Press Assn.—Elec. Tel. Copyright) LONDON, August 18 A German Messerschmitt pilot who was forced down in a field in south-east England on Friday jumped out of his machine uninjured and hailed farm workers, throwing up his arms and shouting in English: “It’s all right! What about a pint of beer?” They obliged him at a public house near by, and then handed him over to the local police. The Mayor of a south-west suburb of London which was bombed in Friday’s raids said yesterday afternoon: “The spirit of the people here is indomitable. Many people whose homes are almost wrecked have said: ‘lt will take more than Hitler to drive me out,’ and have gone back to patch up the windows, doors and broken roofs. Even old-age pensioners are among them.” American Amazed An American journalist who visited Croydon after Thursday’s raid expressed amazement at the spirit which the people, some of whom had had their properties destroyed or damaged, were displaying. He had thought he knew the English people, he said, but such a stoic attitude and such resilience of temperament as he had witnessed in the streets of Croydon had amazed him.

The same courage has been shown by citizens of Eastbourne, which was the first town which the Air Ministry officially declared to have suffered “deliberate attack.” A certain amount of damage was caused in this purely residential town and several persons were killed.