Dark
He said there were two things he didn't like about this war and the way he was treated in it. He said the anti-aircraft guns made they couldn't him thad because hit anything. He said he'd watch- He ed them and watched them. wanted to see a German 'plane 'it and never 'ad, even though he worked out on the docks all day. And as to his own treatment, he told us he demn well wanted a fin hat. He said a bloke could do
piece or that piece of 'im, but he without a leg or a decor this couldn't do without 'ls knob, He. said he didn't see why the govern- ment couldn't give 'im and the other fellows that worked out on the docks steel helmets. Neither could Hilde nor I.
Like almost everyone, he put in his Anderson shelter himself, An Anderson shelter is made of heavy galvanised cast iron, the kind you sometimes see on warehouse roofs. It is about 4 by 8 feet square and 5 feet high, the top being arched to a circle. It is set up half sub- merged into the ground and then and are piled around sandbags over the top of it. Many people plant gardens on its roofs, flower gardens. It has other sandbags piled around its entrance, I climb- ed down into the little man's shel- iter. I could just get in. It had a confcrete floor. He said cement was hard to get but he had a friend who could mix it and all the peo-
for women, but
Ho
When
everybody around
comes out and we get together and go from one shelter to another to see if everybody else is all right,
yorubulary. Possibly it's because! the idea of not having a room of the Clippers might bee's own to sleep in every night used, but as the most ser- ious rupture of communi- cations has occurred be- tween the British Isles and points East of Suez, Extrudes of the number who slept
Australia
and in shelters, public and private
We swung off to one (India,
side to varied from 50 per cent to 95 per
avoid it and the pencil beain of our headlight picked out a figure Hong Kong included), it cent. The only thing you can bend everything was all right and sure of is that very few sleep nor-
lying on the edge of the curb. We got out and went over to it. Ple in the neighbourhood got what cement they could and he and his in their awn rooms own beds
It was a dead policeman. A red-friend went around and fixed up of Even leaving out the fear
I think it's this quality of keep-headed policeman. He had been as many floors as they could. His being out during heavy raiding
There shelter was quite dry. There were You must also realise the difficultying their fears to themselves while young and good looking.
It was candles stuck on a little shelf and gaging Imperial atten- of moving about a complicated city they are afraid they talk about it was no one else around.
like London during a black-out. plenty afterwards-that's the most very quiet. You could hear water some odds and ends of clothing all important part of what the Eng- bubbling under the car. The bomb hung up. He said he had taken the, There are taxis that cruise
They had broken
bedding out to air it. night, but they are few. Few also ish call "behaving well." are the buses and the trains and have it whether they are cockneys flashlights and stood looking down
in the East End or cabinet minis- at the policeman, not quite know- He told us he had sent his wife the tubes. It was, for instance, al-
ters. They do not transmit their ing what to do next. Presently and his son and daughter to the teers to one another the way some
there were footsteps coming rapid- country, but his daughter, who together natural that, when I had a radio talk to dictate during my
a young lady other peoples do. And when peo-ly toward us. Two air raid ward- was the older, had come back and with some people. ens. They made no commént. First was staying recond week and
And another public stenographer came to type ple transmit their fears to each
several policemen | down the street. it for me and the work went on other the result is panic and any one and then
came from another street. They married daughter was around the without either of us noticing the thing can happen in a panic. When
me until suddenly the maid came they don't transmit their fear they looked at the dead policeman, but corner with her husband. He said,
business and did not move him. We shifted un-"Ain't no place in and drew the curtains for the go on about their black-out. Ben and I should offer presently aren't afraid any more. easily and walked back to look in they don't like to be away from
the crater. The bomb must have home and they come back." her our couch to sleep on. And she should debate for some minutes
hit just ahead of the car and the said his was a good shelter and he her room-mate
car rolled in where the pavement slept very well there. But a lot of had been. For it was hardly them were bad unless you had a ginal system that have before deciding
might be worried and she dido't
The fear that I'm talking about scratched. While we were looking good floor and knew how to fix been retained is next toj mind taking the bus anyway.
is the unreasonable fear produced an ambulance or a truck rolled up it so the rain didn't come in.
Ben Robertson asked him if he You must realise what it does to by noise and the imagination. How behind us, some men got out, went nil, for it happens, more
where the warden was was in the shelter when the borgb often than not, that mails convention to take in first rela- a soldier who is under fire and is over to
and liable to be killed in action feels standing over the casualty. They dropped across the street. He said, then acquaintances
It shook quite a bit. routed via America or finally strangers who were bomb- I know only from books. But I lifted the dead policeman onto the "Oh, yes.
am interested in the
stretcher, carried him back into But," he said, "I'm not afraid be-
And no Canada by surface crafted out. And you must also realise was and
one said cause I have it fixed so I can get important other kind of fear, because that is the darkness. the - perhaps
tool with which
anything. The ambulance or the out the back end if the front end reach Hong Kong in ad- thing of all-that when the night the principal
Hitler has conquered st is full of noise no one wants to be Adolf
morgue wagon or whatever it was caves in." I said, "What do you do vance of the air mail.
alone. The presence of other hu- much of the world. It's the Bri- went off into the dark. The ward- when a bomb drops near you? Do
lisher's ability to cope with it and
ens and the policemen were in man beings is comforting.
you go out to see what happens?" that
conference over how to get the He said, "Well, you see, we have It is recognised
I think the only time I was real to survive it and to learn that it's
got a kind of a system. the drastic curtailment of ly all out frightened-literally a headache and not a fatal disease car out of the crater. Down the part of my street we could see another ward-
there's a hit I came in that's an important
the British will en bringing a red lantern to mark the air mail services and panicked--was when
alone one late afternoon and Ben, confidence that the loss of the speed asset who was to join ine, did not show withstand and survive Adolf Hit-it. was, to some extent, in-up for several hours. It was the ler, and there's absolutely no ques- night a new and still larger gun tion that they survived the ferri- evitable, however irksome moved into the park opposite. I fie dose he gave them in Septem- the car about my not having had it may, at the same time, was told it was a six-inch navy ber and are flourishing under the a close one in ten days in London. In the first gun. It began to go off right after dilute solution which seems all he One of the men said, "Well, if it
administer had to happen, I'm glad it hap have been.
The first alarm. I went to watch is currently able to
pened where you could see it. This my bathroom-darkroom.! now. instance, at all events. from
There was a storn over London The two weeks that I was in is just routine. I think there must I think the Now, however, the outlook and the wind howled through the London were what are called quiet be a bicycle about
It was no They are quiet because policeman was going home on it for the future can be seen open window. Sheils from the gun weeks.
burst directly overhead, so that 1 Hitler has no control over the air when the bomb hit." in clearer detail, the re- ducked each time, sure the shrap- of England in the daylight and be- longer a joke that I have the ex- establishment of swift, nel would fall where I was. If it cause night bombers work best in perience of having a bomb go off London people, working out ways But the the full of the moon when they can near me. The face of the dead to look after each other like that. reliable communications did, I heard none of it.
crash of the gun was first deafen- steer and guide their bombs by policeman with the red hair stayed Ways that had nothing to do with between Britain and the ing and then suddenly terrifying. the reflection of the moon on the with me. That and the suddenness government rules or regulations
I bolted the window and went in
water and the rivers and lakes of with which it happened and the or even volunteer ARP wardens. East must appear as a
to read the and tried
evening England. The moon was
on the silence that was around it after Just people looking out for each
other. it happened: I began to feel anger matter of increasing ur- paper. The gun kept crashing and
wane when I arrived. All of a
rising in me. I stayed acutely an- crashing and crashing.
I know what it can be like when gry at the people who had killed gency.
sudden it came-a terrific desire to get to some other place in a the moon is full, because the three the policeman for several hours, One of the lessons for hurry. I went out and rang for the days just before I got to London Then, like being afraid, the acute
included the worst night bombing
part passed. the future is that British elevator. It was about 8:30.
As I got in a very elegant old of the war so far. So I saw Lon- control and British cap-dame came down the corridor and don right after ital must alone be res- got in with me. The gun went off. nights and the people I talked to had just been through these nights, She said, "What was that?"
blocks around there were little ponsible for maintaining freckled elevator man said, "That From the point of view of personal and wedged it out. I brought it wasn't deep. But for blocks and frame houses battered and win- Imperial air communica- was me, ma'am." She said, "Well, experience I have identified this
dowless. It was very depressing to walk down the empty, uninha¬ tions. A long period of re- I wish to heaver. you'd told me it distinction: that the difference be- was you. You've been scaring the tween a quiet night and a rough that on a construction and over-life out of the." When I got down in London is simply
- We laughed when we came to bited streets.
The little man who lived in the haul will inevitably follow to the lobby people were standing rough night if you move about the
land mine had gone off. Because Anderson shelter halted suddenly, escape per night; on this war. It has been around talking and going into din- city streets you will have at least a place in the East End where a
ner quite normally. I knew what one narrow
the little man we had found out and grunted with disgust. "There. is: at least one bomb
side his Anderson shelter had been see," he said pointing to the sky urged that the opportu-I wanted to do. I wanted to go that
down into the boiler room, get into will whistle down and explode so perfect we swore he had been Why can't they 'it im?" We all nity should then be seiz-
where I within a half a block or a block
Information. We should have had ruder. The plane could not be ed to make every altera- couldn't hear that damn gun. I of you sometime or other. Where- planted there by the Ministry of stopped. It was a lone daylight thought if I did, when Ben came us, going about on "quiet nights," the dialogue on a sound track to seen but its exhaust, crystallised tion necessary to bring in he would be ashamed of me, I while there is the same raiding,
it like a pollywog's tail as the pilot Empire air lines to as high said nuts to myself. The gun went the guns and the lights and the use with the film, "London Can in the cold upper air, wagged after
off a couple of times more and planes, the bombs they drop are
He was a tough little cockney twisted and turned. Half the anti- a state of efficiency, util- shook the revolving door, It made so scattered that in fourteen nights
the sign reading AIR RAID I had only two small bombs drop and he drove a switching engine craft guns in town seemed to be His after him. Puffs of white smoke ity and security as pos- WARNING Dap. I said to myself, within a block of me, one in the along the Liverpool docks. sible. In the air, whether "Look here. You've decided that park outside my window-after Bttle house and garden were on broke above and below him.
"There! There!. Now why can's in the sphere of civil or if you're going to be hit you're learning to sleep through the naval the edge of the area the land mine
going to be hit. If you play it any guti, its whistle Woke me wide had devastated beginning half a they 'it 'im?" the little man kept military activity, Britain other way you're sure to lose. awake just before it hit and the block away houses by the hun saying over and over again, get has to make considerable Like changing your stake gam- other on a road along which we dreds were uninhabitable. Direct-ting more and more excited. I bling" I said to myself, "You may were driving back to town from ly across the street from him a found I felt exactly the same way. leeway. Something can be cared, but you know very night flying Held. There were bomb of 250 pounds maybe 500 The German kept twisting and even now be done to re- well that the odds of a bomb hit- four of us in a closed Woolsey pounds--had blown a hole in a turning. He was going home to
ting you are approximately seven car. The gears on the Woolsey garden and wrecked the house be wards the south and when last seen
pums were sul pursuing Fiy dress the balance.
"or eight million to one," I went werd noisy and we had heard nothing it;
a corner and curl up
A
its three worst
There had been some joking in
"Then after we have checked and to be sure the entrance hasn't up on everybody's being all right caved in and they can't get out.
we go back into our 'oles." (An other time, talking about a friend. he used the sentence, “And every
his ruins.") evening about 5 'e goes 'ome to
Hilde said it was typical
of
He showed us almost with pride where the land mine had hit. It
had touched no building, coming down in a yard near a factory, There had been several automo- I had picked up a
piece of the biles there and they were squashed shell. I found it with my flush-in as if Gibraltar had fallen on light imbedded in the pavement them. Characteristically, the cruler
home with me.
Anderson Shelter
Take It."
i