1940-12-24 — Page 25

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- HIT A BLOCK OF FLATS, TRAPPING MANY PEO-

DAY NIGHT. A BOMB OF TREMENDOUS SIZE

PLE IN THE BASEMENT SHELTER, BURYING THEM UNDER THEIR OWN HOMES.

looked in this gaping hole in a London street, and thought that, under this heap of rubbish and stone, innocent lives had ended.

P

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.

Above, a huge automatic exca- who had been in the adjoining valor was drawing away the shelter. His people behaved very wreckage of homes that buried well. Heavy debris fell on their people under the tombstone of shelter, but they marched out and their own lives. chairs and pans went right away, so the rescue and blankets, things they had used | workers could have a clear field. a few hours before, mixed among the tumbled masonry.

The wardens, stretcher bearers, rescue parties had worked through the night.

Every half-hour or so they heard a murinur below, and sometimes they dragged a breath of life from it.

1 saw

one man being lowered into an ambulance with his feg twisted.

"What am I to do?" he said. "1 can't help here, and I can help in my job

I cannot forget what I saw those men whispering into the And 1 was told of a couple ruins I felt that a new Cenotaph who stood weeping on the pa- had gone up over the ruins. We vement for their only son-and¦ shall not forget, then suddenly in the darkness 2 child was put in their arms cry- Ing. "Mummy, Daddy."

સ

A doctor crawled through the debris in the early hours of the morning and gave morphia to woman 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. But 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 Д tunnel. masonry collapsed and filled it.

They went on digging.

The organisation round this ruin was magnificent. Everything that could help was at hund.

The 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 walted in silence. Then como answer came, so they dug again.

They rescued fifty-seven peo- ple.

I wondered what sound you would send to show where you were, when your life hung on it. The answer that came wòs: “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 as the men lifted another living. soul from the debris. It was a woman.

Debris On Shelter

A man in the rescue squad wiped plaster out of his eye and took a breath, "nind" zaid: "Ta like to ring his ruddy neck, only it's too quick a death for him. He'll

who the "he"

get

Army

for the work- She stood edge of the

passed by,

ving ourrant

d to a shelter marshal

CHRISTMAS

1940

FASCIST FEARS DE GAULLE

Many French Civil Servants. teachers and students are taking part in propaganda in favour of General de Gaulle, according to the former French Communist Ïea- der Dorict, who in 1936 foined the Fascists,

He now atlacks his former com- rades in the "Emancipation Na- tionale" and expresses fear at their propaganda.

"The Communists and others who during the war favoured paci- flism and defeatism suddenly pre- tend to patriotism and are now the war on wishing to continue the side of De Gaulle," he writes.

"These disguised patriots, in reality Communists, are inventors of the lie that the bourgeoisie wished and caused the defeat of France to establish a Fascist re- gime.

"Their propaganda is daily in- creasing and is a national danger as their whispering campaign. is to be heard everywhere, finding more believers."

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