GRIM AND AMUSING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 70, 25 October 1940, Page 5

GRIM AND AMUSING

W/ = produces the extraordinary. Behind the serious news of ghanges and events are many incidents, both grim and amusing, which are apt to be passed over in the official communiques which appear each day. Here are a few, gathered from overseas papers, which have come to hand, During the first big British raid over the German naval station at Wilhelmshaven, a British ’plane fell on the deck of a German warship. It had been brought down by the force of explosion when British bombs exploded the ship’s magazine. The only motor-cats seen in Paris since the German occupation, are those used by the Germans. The French go on foot or on bicycles. Those who can afford to do so, have resurrected their old horsedrawn carriages. Frank Butler, a pressman who was watching air battles over the Channel from the cliffs of Dover, was struck by falling cartridge cases from: the ‘planes of fighting aircraft. Although German ’planes. dived to within 300 feet above the big airport of Croydon during their first attacks on London, not one enemy bomb fell on the station itself, so "rattled" were the German airmen by the anti-aircraft defences. Homes and a perfume factory nearby were demolished. Churchill’s Nickname The "Manchester Guafdian" has christened Winston Churchill "Jack the Jargon Killer," because he insists on less jargon in official letters.

A Royal Air Force pilot made a forced landing near a laundry in England. He was nearly smothered by the kisses of 43 laundresses. A deaf woman tied a length of string to one toe when she went to bed, hung the other end out of her window and arranged with the air-warden to give the string a tug when air-raid sirens sounded. Because of loss of sleep through enemy air raids, a London newspaper seller amused his morning customers by writing across his billboard "Good Yawning!" Messerschmitt ‘planes have been named "Jitterschmitts" by British children. The Busy Beaver An aged civil servant, who had been transferred to the Ministry of Aircraft Production, commented on Lord Beaverbrook’s methods. "You’d hardly believe the appalling state of the office; the place is complete chaos," he told a friend, "Isn't the Beaver producing ’planes?" the friend asked, " Oh, yes, he’s producing them. But my" dear fellow, the methods; they’re dreadful." Sea-gulls now warn Britons’ of approaching enemy raiders by flying inland, but the war has been hard on the birds. When they dive for fish which have been killed by exploding mines and depthcharges, the birds are trapped by oil from sunken. ships. A Cornish woman has made a hobby of cleaning disabled birds, She and her two daughters clean as many as 700‘birds a day. Because of the enthusiastic reception given in Britain to the "Give ’itler ’ell" ‘speeches of the Minister of Labour, Mr, Ernest Bevin, he is considered one of the best bets as the next British Prime Minister.