THE CHINA MAIL, DECEMBER 24, 1940.
GREATEST TRAGEDY OF LONDON RAIDS
By HILDE MARCHANT
THE GREATEST BOMBING TRAGEDY IN THE WHOLE OF LONDON HAPPENED ON SUN-
PETAIN'S
DAY NIGHT. A BOMB OF TREMENDOUS SIZE APPEAL
HIT A BLOCK OF FLATS, TRAPPING MANY PEO- PLE IN THE BASEMENT SHELTER, BURYING THEM UNDER THEIR OWN HOMES.
I looked in this gaping hole in a London street, and thought that, under this heap of rubbish and stone, innocent lives had ended.
vator
was
Above, a huge automatic exca- drawing
the away wrerkage of homes that buried people under the tumbstone of their own lives--chairs and pans and blankets, things they had used a few hours before, mixed among the tumbled masonry
The wardens, stretcher bearers, resele parties had worked through the night. Every half-hour or so they heard a murmur below, and sometimes they dragged a breath of Ife from it
I saw one man being lowered into an ambulance with his leg twisted.
was
And I
told of a couple who stood weeping on the pa- vement for their only son-and then suddenly in the darkness a child was put in their arma cry. Ing. "Mummy, Daddy."
a
A doctor crawled through the debris in the early hours of the
morning and gave morphia to wumen half-buried. Nurses stood by him and helped the rescue- workers as other people were brought out,
They tended wounds there on the spot, bathing and dressing the injured, though guns were going
on around.
The Odd Chance
A child was found wandering over the debris, choked with dirt and falling, not knowing where
she was.
A woman came out, dazed, and with her face slashed; she stayed for hours guiding the men working on the debris.
It was a good shelter, reinforced and deep. Bul with that odd chance of a hundred, the bomb smashed and closed the exits. The water and gas pipes broke,
When the rescue parties arrived they tried to clear the entrances, but as they made а tunnel, masonry collapsed and filled it.
They went on digging.
The organisation round this ruin was magnificent. Everything that could help was
The at hand. workmen and wardens-the soldi- ers of London - went on as bombs slapped around them. They work- ed all through the night raid.
When I arrived, I saw a pic- ture that will stay in my mind all my life. There was a group of men in blue dungarees, stand. ing over a deep hole, tapping the bricks,
They walled in silence. Then como answer came, so they dug again.
They rescued fifty-seven peo. pia.
1- wondered what sound you would send to show where you were, when your life' hung on it.. The answer that came was: "We're still breathing,"
It was like those hideous nights at a pithead when a murmur from: the depths revives the 'crowa around. The ambulance drew in us the men lifted another living soul from the debris. It was b
woman.
Debris On Shelter
A man in the rescue "squad wiped plaster out of his eye and took a breath, and said: "I'd like to ring 'hla ruddy neck, only it's
too quick a death for him.". "He'll'
get worse."",
is.
No need to sa who
A girl in a Salvation Army canteen made was for the work- ers, day and night. She stood In her van on the edge of the pit, às the stretchers passed by, areths' dürfänt
making*tau
bunazad
· Italicat fa
who had been in the adjoining His people behaved very shelter. well. Heavy debris fell on their shelter, but they marched out and went right away, so the rescue workers could huve a clear field.
The people who escaped from the flats were greatly shaken, yet one man i met put his wife in an- other shelter and went off to his job in the afternoon,
"What am I to de?" he said. "] can't help here, and I can help in my job
I cannot forget, what I saw those bien whispering into the ruins. I felt that a new Cenotaph had gone up over the ruins. shall not forget.
CHRISTMAS
1940
We
FOR THE RE- AN APPEAL, STORATION OF "IMPAR- TIALITY, FIRMNESS, DISCI- PLINE AND HONOUR" IN ALL RANKS OF THE FRENCH CO- LONIAL SERVICE, WAS MADE BY ADMIRAL PLÅTON, MIN- ISTER FOR COLONIES, YES- TERDAY.
duty
In a circular to colonial gover- nors, Platon urges: "In the exer- eise of your authority let all your acts be inspired by the which devolves on all Frenchmen to take part with vigour and confidence in the work of national rehabilitation laid down by Mar- shal Fetain." Reuter.
WEATHER REPORT
The Royal Observatory reports that the anticyclone over North China is increasing in intensity and extending southward,
The depression has deepened very considerably, and is passing into the Pacific to the enst of Hokkaido.
Pressure remains relatively low over Tungking.
The
NOW IN STOCK