CO129-590-25 Accounts of events leading up to surrender and subsequent treatment of prisoners- etc 23-4-1942 - 28-9-1943 — Page 183

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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/