In London's Bombarded
HAVE just spent two hours in Loudon's East End. In case you don't know London, that's where the bulk of her poorest peo- ple live.
Two hours!
1 might have lived through ity years of some of our most glorious chapters in history yet come across less heroism.
And that is all you will get by way of in'roduction to the story I have to tell you.
I begrudge the words to tell you anything that's not in my note- book.
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✡
There's Mrs Halliday.
She was buried in her cellar. They prorded the ruins with a cane until a tug on the cane told them it had reached her.
Then they cut the inner tube of a bicycle and pushed one end down to her
"We're sending you some milke they shouted, thinking that seventy – six - year - old world like nothing better.
a
woman
East End
By Maurice Fagence
Perhaps most
speak that way.
mothers-to-be Dunkirk spirit in London's East
End.
But it doesn't make it heroi.
less
This may not sound so remark- n leg able either. A father with
Soldiers Help
Hundreds of soldiers spending cruelly injured carried his daugh- treasured days of leave in London set out tor the East End when they knew what was happening there.
te to a rescue squad.
There was blood on her face. "If you don't take my daddy,
," she said. you don't take me,'
*
✡
Q
The woman of seventy-odd, a typical George Belcher character, who went to a first-aid post with a broken artn.
"What's the fuss?" she kept ask- "Make it beer, said a faint it in unladylike janguage. "What
voice.
When a local publican bad roll- ed out the barrel, a
somewhat strenger voice said: "What about cheese and biscuits to make meal of it!"
il
Two minutes' work by a Cana- dian soldier with a crowbar, and
she had her cheese and biscuits,
*
An ex-soldier stood in the ruing of his home,
He had made the last payment to the building society on Septem- ber 3. The house was his at last. He looked round at the pile of rubble.
Somebody sympathised. "Aw, what does it matter he sold. "Ĺroperty's nothing. You can repare property."
You couldn't have repaired that property, which he had been pay- ing for twenty years.
But there's none so blind us those who prefer not to see.
None so wonderful, either. This may not some so wonder- ful, until you think it over.
At least fifty of the mothers-to- be in the maternity home that was hit said to their nurses: "I don't cere, as lung us baby is all right."
the hell's the fuss?"
Broken arms are broken arms," said a St. John Ambulance work- er
You know em. They consider their pocket-money wasted unless
it un bandages they spend other people,
for
"Don't talk wet," said this un- Jadylike
"I've been person. through three wars and this sit going to gel me down."
I till prefer to call her a july!
Let us move to Central London, A man who jets out conter-ban- rows to costermongers heard what was happening in London's East End.
Who'll help me to push all my barrows down there” he askrá. "Blimey, I don't care if I don't get Mr back.
་་
He found all the volunteers he wanted.
They set out-like those batter- ed old tubs that sailed for Dun- kirk,
It was two days before they got back. And what work they did in the meantime I can leave you to guess.
There was something
of that
They helped with the work of rescue through days and nights, nights and days.
I spoke to one who had over- stayed his leave by thirty hours. He had helped to save scores,
I told him I'd write to his com- manding officer to explain why he was overdue,
"No."
"[
he said reflectively. don't want anybody to think I'm swanking. And I can do seven days confined to barracks on my blasted head."
1 reserve the right to tone down swear-words as I think 8.
Colonial and Duminion soldiers in particular were touched by the plight of women and children,
They were thinking of their own wives and youngsters,
"He's going to be paid back," they said.
I'll leave you to guess who "he" is.
✡
*
*
I went into a pub. "How much money yer got, mate?" they asked as soon as I got in.
re-
They wanted money for fugres pouring into the school op- posite.
Many a man went in with the price of three pints and found it pint--and would only buy half the comfortable feeling of having done something decent.
Landlords lust custom, yet handed over pound notes to make their losses more real.
A grocer stood in the wreckage of his shop.
He went on serving as if noth- ing had happened.
"It goes down on the account,” he said to each customer.
The wonderful old liar. There were no accounts. They had been destroyed. Nor was he trying to remember.
He was giving everything away. I could tell you scores of stories about the heroism of the A.R.P. people.
There's so much more in my note-book, but I must turn from it for a moment,
bombed preparatory to being taken away in cars and lorries that were being bombed.
They kept on singing. "There'll always be an England."
The note adds:
all
The spirit I observed in these people was the spirit I have aways noticed in them when they are going to Hampstead Heath for Bank Holiday.
This colleague saw hundreds of young men arrive and offer them-- selves for any jobs that might be going.
You
with I have a young colleague, under
know, young men military age,
hair and dapper who spends his well-greased nights doing unpaid A.R.P. work suits. The sort of young men to white women gavo in London's East End and many whom silly hours of his days on the office feathers in the last war.
They were put to lifting heavy. roof looking for Huns.
stoncs and
from huge beams wrecked buildings,
And he has a note-book, Without wasting a word, I'll tell you about some of the things in
it.
He
to
heard Bremen, rushed
and first-aid posts with burns smoked eyes, complaining about the time taken in treating them. that It wasn't
they sought quicker alleviation of their pain, They wanted to get back to the job of fighting the fire as quickly as they could.
severe
This
young colleague saw a young man silting in agony with head wounds, protesting that he was "all right" until the last woman and child had been attended.
Then he fainted with pain. He was ten times worse injured than anybody there--yet "I'm all right" was his refrain.
Holiday Spirit
Another note tells how a Dis- trict Warden stood on a chicken hutch to see how the occupants of the Anderson shelters in a row of wrecked gardens were faring. From a badly damaged shelter Nah, a voice: "Nah, then. then. Lay off them there chickens, mate. I want to sell them when this packet's finished."
came
He mentions the bravery of wo- men ambulance drivers.
"Even when bombs dropped they wanted to use their lipsticks," he observed.
The same note-book tells, how people rescued from bombed to re- buildings were removed
centres that were fugee
being
**
and
Right through the night those young men toiled, till their well- groomed hair was tousled
with dust, their dapper white suits torn, their hands bleeding,
their muscles-in many instances unused to such heavy toll-plead- ing for the rest that their stout hearts refused to confer.
Even when bombs rained round them they refused to give in.
Then there was the young lorry. driver who had been working, in the danger area for twenty hours, but was at last ordered to a point far outside London,
"Have a heart, mate," he plead- ed.
of "I mightn't get a chance getting back."
Much in my own and my col- league's note-books will have to go unprinted. Volumes could be told of the heroism of the people of London's of the mean streets East End,
But you know 'em. You may have seen them only occasionally on a visit to London. You may have served with them. in the last war.
You may have criticised them at times, as I criticised the cock- neys when I first came to live among them-until I realised that real pearls were in their hearts and not on their jackets.
I wish you could have seen them when Hitler tried to smash their spirit in three days.
their
Blimey, they were great!
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