1940-06-15 — Page 10

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VES-MR. JIGGS IS HERE-YES- WHO? MR BUCK WHEAT? YOU SAY YOU WANT HIM TO COME RIGHT OVER TO THE CAPITOL YEG-I'LL SEE THAT HE GOES RIGHT OVER:

THE CAPITOL ISN'T THAT GRAND?

WELL-I SUPPOSE·

HAVE

140 GO-

THE CHINA MAIL, JUNE 15, 1940

LONDON'S SECRET A.R.P. HEADQUARTERS

}

BEFORE the "black-out" descends upon

London there is a brief period of fad- ing light that is singularly beautiful, It will always remain with me as a memorv of this war.

Even buildings of no quality lle against the sky in an heroic way. Old scenes look so new that one gazes at London with fresh eyes, conscious not of the vulgarity of Neen lighting or the glare of windows full ot things for sale, but of the coming of night. It is a matter only' of minutes before this tender moment swiftly passes into the blackness of the jungle.

|

whose brilliance for a moment blinded us.

It was a large room shining with cream- coloured paint, very workmanlike and clean. The walls werd covered with enormous maps of London, lit from above by powerful elcc- tric lamps.

My first impression was that the Royal Geographical Society was meeting in the operating room of a hospital.

4

It was quiet. No one had ever dared to smoke a cigarette there, and, the few men, sitting at their desks in the bright light, were as obviously on duty as men on the bridge of a ship.

Messengers came in and placed telegrams before them. They fled them and wrote busily on forms, which they gave to the messengers.

The Strand becomes a long canyon of darkness in which queer gleaming blue things turn out to be omnibuses. Red-fire flies trace a quick pattern in the black vel- vet, indicating to those wizards of the night, the taxi drivers, that a policeman is hold-great map of London and stick a pin in it. ing them up.

I saw him put a yellow push-pin within a hundreds yards of my own house.

Thin red crosses fade into green, and a surge of shadows, only a little darker than the night itself, moves onward to what scem Impossible destinations.

. At such a moment I found a taxi in the Strand. I told the driver to take me to the Home Office. I was to be shown one of the close-guarded secrets of war-time London: the War Control Room of the Regional Headquarters of Civil Defence.

Sitting there in the complete insulation of the "black-out", unable to discover where I was, although I must have passed up and down the Strand thousands of times in the course of my life, a feeling of fantasy came over me; and I felt like a ghost travelling through dim regions of the Shades.

With some surprise I sensed rather than saw the Thames, and I realised that we must have come down to the Embankment and were now approaching the Houses of Parliament.

In a few moments I stepped out towards what my torch revealed as a rampart of sandbags. It concealed the entrance to the Home Office in Whitehall.

"I don't know how you can drive in this,"

I sold.

"S'nothing!" replied the driver. "Get used to it, y'know. Suppose you blinfrin* well get used to anything?”

As our car ran into the featureless night, the official of the Home Office impressed upon me the need for secrecy. Few people are shown the Civil Defence War Room; and no one must say where it is.

secret

It is one of several deep-down, places in London where, in a blaze of elec tric light and behind gas-proof doors, those to whom is entrusted the defence of Lon

dan keep watch day and night.

Among such rooms are the Cabinet War Room, where the Prime Minister and the members of the War Cabinet would go dur- ing an attack on London; the War Room and Operations Room of the military de- fence; the Home Security War Room; in which plans against enemy action anywhere in Britain are schemed; and the War Con- trol Room of the London Civil Defence-to which we were travelling-the G.H.Q. London's A.R.P.

of

These war rooms must be bomb proof. They must be in touch with the outside world. They are mirrors in which every enemy action is instantly reflected.

to

They are brains that instantly send out. orders to fighter planes, to gun crews, searchlights, to barrage balloons, to anti- aircraft organisations; indeed, to the whole of that intricate network of military and civil units trained to defend London from air attack.

It would be untrue to say that nothing like these war rooms has been seen in Lon- don before. They are all children of the "Operations Room" of London Defence in the last war, a room in which the comman- der of the defences used to sit before a squared map, anticipating the movements of the enemy. Speaking into a tube that hung overhead, he could send up a barrage from Putney Heath and a flight of pursuit planes from somewhere else, almost in the same breath,

The car stopped in a courtyard. Dark buildings rose all round.

"

**The

"Here we are," said my friend.. headquarters of the London Region."

I was amused to recognise a building, with which I was famillar, but I knew it, as thousands of Londoners do, by another name!

We stepped into a lift and descended. There was a hum in the air like the noise

·below-decks -in' a ́liner. I was told it was the air-lter plant at work.

Pushing open the kind of door you see on a burglar-proof safe, we entered a room

YOU BET YOU'LL‚GO-IT'S WONDERFUL-HOW WE'RE MEETING THE VERY BEST PEOPLE IN WASHINGTON-

I

YOU WON'T MIND IF N HAVE MY

DINNER THERE WILL YOU.

MAGGIE?

Now and then a man would approach the

"Gas," whispered

the my friend from Home Omco, "Yellow pins mean gas! They're having an A.R.P. scheme in Chel- sea to-night. You're lucky, because this is what it would be like in a real raid."'

The pin man read a- message--and dell- berately stuck a red pin a bit nearer my house,

"Fire" whispered my friend. "Red pins mean fire!"

And in this weird, dispassionate room be- low the Lendon pavements, with the tinned

By-

H. V. MORTON

air humming, I was seized by a sense of the utter fantasy of the age in which we

live.

This was one of the most up-to-date sights In London, this quiet room where men chase death and destruction across the map with little coloured pins.

If a real air raid took place to-day, this War Room would direct the civil defence of London.

For raid purposes London is divided into nine Groups, which correspond roughly with the Northern point on the War Room maps is Metropolitan Police Area, The

at Cheshunt, in Herts; the southern Includes

Banstead, in Surrey.

All A.R.P. Headquarters in this colossal area are in direct touch with the War Room; to the War Room they must report all air raid incidents, and from the War Room they must ask help if they require it.

All other A.R.P. organisations in London see an air raid as a local event: the War Room alone sees the whole picture, and is as much concerned with happenings in Barnet as in Bromley.

Linked, as it is, to the Home Security War Room, and to all the Group Head- quarters, the War Room receives news of all air raid happenings as they occur, and these are at once plotted on its maps, of which there are two.. One is the "Current Events" Map; the other is the "Damage" Map.

At a glance, those maps with their colour- ed pins tell you how many stretcher parties, ambulances, decontamination gangs, repair squads," and so on, are working at that mo- ment, and where they are at work; and also the type of damage that has been in- Alcted.

The function of this room is therefore two- fold: to make a complète picture of air raid Incidents and to keep it up-to-date, and to keep track of all A.R.P. personnel in Lon- don; and, if called upon to do so, to move reserves from an undamaged zone to one that is in need of help."

Glancing round this important and not unpleasant room, I realised that what, at first, looked so complicated, was in reality quite simple.

Two men, called Tally Board Officers, were sitting at a long table, facing a board

whose brilliant huc was due to hundreds of differently-coloured push-pins arranged

groups.

in

These pins represent the entire A.R.P, re- sources of the London Region, and were arranged under the names of their respec- five boroughs.

Thus you could see at a glance how many ambulances · are at Fulham, how many

(Continued on Page 11)

2:

By George McManus

HELLO - BUCK-

TH' WIFE GOTË YER CALL AN'

HERE I AM -

CAPITOL

CAFE.

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