THE CHINA MAIL, JUNE 21, 1941. · BLOWN UP, HE THOUGHT AS HE FELL-
SQUADRON GOT
IS NOW 101
"WILL IT HURT?... TWO, SCORE
LONG WAY... ANNOYED"
STANDING 40FT. above the ground on a bridge connecting the two top floors of Lambeth Hospital, Auxiliary Fireman Jack Read was helping to deal with a fire in the roof. Bombs had been falling around. Then one crashed beneath the bridge, hurling Read high into the air until he could see the roof beneath him.
The rest of the story Read jotted down in his diary in hospital:
"I am hurled upwards through the air at a terrifying speed. At the top of my flight I seem to be stationary for a second. I am con- scious of a brilliant Right from the exploding bomb and in this instant I see the bridge breaking up underneath me.
“] Imagine—_____”
"Kirby (the officer-in-charge) is flying through the air and the light is playing on his polished brass epaulettes. There is the roar of the explosion and the rumble of falling bricks and masonry. Then it is dark.
"I begin to turn over and over
SENSED
DANGER, DEATH
STRUCK
When a Spitfire squadron shot down two ME 110's.it rais- ed its bag of enemy aircraft to 101.
The squadron leader, who brought one, down, made his sixteenth confirmed kill.
NAZI PLAN TO INVADE RUSSIA
Reports received in London suggest that Ger- many has completed pre- parations for the invasion of Russia.
She has constructed fresh forti- fcations behind those already built along the Russo-German as I fall. I know that I have a As he kissed his wife demarcation line in Poland and a series of underground aerodromes long way to drop and I imagine and two babies good-bye running south of Warsaw in the that I shall be killed when I reach the ground. I let my body during a raid, Able Sea-direction of Radom and possibly
to the limit of the Polish plain man Sydney Williams According to the Budapest had a premonition that his home in a north-west town would be bombed.
go limo because I think that by doing this I will possibly avoid violent fractures.
"I wonder how much it is going to hurt. There is still a loud rumbling of falling debris and
foel my forehead become moist against the wind as some- thing grazes the skin,
Though he had to rejoin his ship, ne almost decided to miss the midnight train, so strong was his belier that his home would wrecked: But duty came
"It seems that I have already be been falling a week. I begin to first. feel annoyed-annoved at the thought of dying before this war is finished.
"Turning Crazily"
1
Soon after he was on board came a telegram telling him the house had been smashed
and his seven week old baby Phyllis, whom he had just seen for the first time, killed.
"All my life I have watched civilisation in revolt: first creen- Little Sister Unhurt ing, then a stampede. It would have been so interesting, so ex- Mrs. Williams told the "Daily citing.
Mirror": "Sydney was home on leave as I had "In a small way I had hoped, compassionate to be part of the great change, been ill He told me about his but here I am turning crazily premonition.” over and over and falling towards The baby was sleeping down- my doom. I am annoyed.
stairs with her two-and-a-half- "Then I realise that these feel-year-old sister, Sylvia, when the ings are stimulated by very sel- bomb fell. Groping in the dark, fish motives, and I console my- Mrs. Williams lifted a heavy beam self that at least I have lived to' and scraped away the debris. see the turning point in civilisa-rescuing Svivia almost unseratch- tion. That in itself is something. ed, but the baby was dead,
"Then I wonder again how hard the ground is going to be. "I am conscious of the fact that
I have stopped falling. There is
a pain in my left arm, but I just can't think that I'm alive.
"A piece of debris, a door-
of the Swedish correspondent "Sydsvenska Dagbladet," a state of the highest alarm" exists in Eastern Europe and the Russian frontier defence is being streng- thened.
German troops, it is stated, the west, are streaming from
been transferred come having from Holland, Belgium and France.
In the Radom district notices have been posted by the German. to the effect that 43 named villages and hamlets must be evacuated. The list is supplemented by a further 21 names of places to which refugees muy not go.
The reason for th's evacuation order is reliably stated to be the extension of underground hangar and the line of fortification pro- jected along the Warsaw-Radom railway line.
Move Against Russia In some places the work started last winter. Villages and estates were forcibly evacuated.
The Germans have already pulled down cottages. People who failed to Icave after this were beaten, including women, old men and children: • The construction of these mill-
works ary
can be directed James Vin-against no other country than cent, fifteen, of Essex Road, į Russia. This area is too remote
BOY EVACUEE HANGED
Kenneth Charles
I:lington, with his
mother at to be a base for bombing opera-
frame or something, lands across Cherry Hinton Road, Cambridge, tions either in the Mediterranean my chest, but its full force is was found hanging
taken by the debris that is on either side of me. I welcome the twinge in my chest.
** Must Be Alive"
"I must still be alive, I attempt to raise the debris. but my left arm will not respond to the im- pulse. My right arm is active, and I manage to get up and walk to- wards a group of dim lights that are appearing in front of me. : ...".
Read was carried into hospital. The diary entry ende "I go off to sleep after paying
the
my prayers for the first time in
years."
That was four months ago. Now Auxiliary Fireman Read, aged 27, is back at his post.
Extracts from the diary are ̋ap-
·
pearing in a news-letter sent by the American Outpost in Britain
to their friends at home.
FOUR WOMEN DIE IN MERCHANT NAVY
The names of: four women--a chief stewardess, an assistant and two nurse stewardesses are included in the Merchant Navy: casualty: 1st.g
The majority of the casual- tles were Indians, of whom many were firemen, saloon boys, ste- warda,trimmers, general ser- vahts and bar" boys.
shed there.
in e garden or in the western areas where
German machines operate.
CITY'S RAID DEAD LIE IN ONE GRAVE
THOUSANDS OF WREATHS were placed near the coffins of victims of Coventry's recent air raid, when they were buried in a common grave.
Three separate services were held. The Bishop of Coventry, Dr. Mervyn Haigh, addressed members of the Church of England; Father Simpson con- ducted a service for the Roman Catholics, and the Rev. Fraser Cunningham represented the members of the Free Churches.
At the close of the three ser- address of sympathy with those vices buglers sounded the Last who had lost their loved ones, Post..
We said: "The only way out of the Then thousands of mourners ruin by which so many are sur” Aled past the huge grave and laid rounded lies in continuous struge wreaths and bunches of flowers gle, sweat, and toil, sacrifice and on the edge.
- suffering.
Women Break Down.
We must be active, strong and courageous in the struggle that still Tes ahead of. 28.
Many women braka""""down The Very Rev. R. T. Howard, and, sobbing, had to be helped Archdeacon and Provosts) of away. Others, distracted, threw Coventry, told the "Daily Mirror"
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