2.
211
a score. The guns seemed pitifully few and woefully inaccurate.
Later I learned that the smoke puffs appear some four or five
seconds after the actual explosion of the shell so perhaps the
gunnery was better than appeared to my inexpert eye.
I was oppressed by a feeling of unreality a feeling which
persisted right through the siege. Many people to whom I spoke
experienced this. The scene was too familiar to form a convinc-
ing background for deeds of violence. Even when it got to the
stage of stepping over dead bodies in the street, the dream-like
atmosphere was unbroken.
Mangled corpses at the entrance to a
building so solid and respectable as the lower Peak Tram station
had no actuality whatever.
That first morning the town had an undercurrent of
excitement.
Strangers exchanged conversation and when I parked
my car two people whom I did not know insisted on discussing with
me the advantages of parking elsewhere: they were full of
chatter about "the angle of bombs" (whatever that may mean) and
the advisability of lowering the side-windows to prevent
splintering. Most of one's friends smiled, even if they had
nothing to smile at, to show that they were not afraid: and
there was an epidemic of slight over-heartiness.
There were constant alarms during the day but no bombs fell
in the centre of the city. People walked about very purposefully
and by the afternoon the majority were in a uniform of some sort,
The streets were crowded with
even if only an arm-band.
processions/