1940-07-04 — Page 12

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BEFORE the "black-out" des-

cends upon, London, there

is a brief period of fading light that is singularly beautiful. It will always remain with me as a memory of this war.

Even buildings of no quality lic 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 Neon lighting or the glare of windows full of things for sale, but of the com- ing of night.

It is a matter only of minutes GREATER VISIBILITY, before this tender moment swift- LOEWY-STYLED INTERIORS, ly passes into the blackness of

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The Strand becomes a long mints that count. for greater canyon of darkness in which comfort and maximum safety.queer gleaming blue things turn

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The

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Thursday, July 4, 1940, Wyndhamn St., Hongkong Telephone: 20015

THIƐ profix "Special the Talegraph" |

out to be omnibuses, Red fire flies trace a quick pattern in the | black velvet, indicating to those wizards of the night, the taxi drivers, that a policeman is holding them up.

Thin red crosses fade into green, and a surge of shadows, only a little darker than the night itself, moves onward to what seem impossible destina-

tions.

AT

July 4, 1940.

H

مر

V. MORTON

writes the first detailed account of

GHQ

of

ARP

Part of the array of maps of London, on which can bo plotted, by *means of coloured pins, every sort of damage.

•

"Current Events" Map, and so, by looking at this map and thor at the Tally Board, it is easy to see how many A.R.P. units are out on a job, and where, and how many still remain unaffected by

defences used to sit before a squared map, anticipating the movements of the enemy. Speak- ing into a tube that hung over- head, he could send up a barrage T such a moment I found from Putney Heath and a flight

a taxi in the Strand. I of pursuit planes from some- All A.R.P. Headquarters in the raid. told the driver to take me to the where else, almost in the same this colossal area are in direct Home Office. I was to be shown breath.

touch with the War Room; to one of the close-guarded secrets

The car stopped in a court- the War Room they must report

IF. for instance, Batter- of war-time London: the War

sca sends the War Control Room of the Regional yard. Dark buildings rose all all air-raid incidents, and from

the War Room they must ask Room an S.0.5. for help during round.

are,"

said my help if they require it, Sitting there in the complete friend. "The headquarters of insulation of the "black-out," the London Region." unable to discover where I was, I was amused to recognise a although I must have passed up building with which I was and down the Strand thousands familiar, but I knew it, as thou- of times in the course of my life, sands of Londoners do, by an- an air raid as a local event: the a quick moving map that records a feeling of fantasy came over other name!

is und by the "Hongkong Telegraph to Headquarters of Civil Defence. "Hero We

Indicate news which is strictly copyright under the provisions of the Telacommuną.

cations Ordinance, 1936. Such news bears the indication "UP"! is received in Hongkong on the date of publication by servo all rights and forbid republicatias, either wholly or in part without previons

the United Press Associations, who re-

arrangement.

Could Hitler

me; and I felt like a ghost travel-

2

ling through dim regions of the Shades.

happenings in

a raid, one glance at the Tally. Board will tell whether rescue units can best be afforded by Wandsworth, Lambeth, Chelsen

ALL other A.R.P. organi- or Westminster.

sations in London sce. The "Current Events" Map is War Room alone sees the whole the rushing about of A.R.P. picture, and is as much con units all over London. cerned with

The "Damage" Map is more Barnet as in Bromley.

static. The yellow (gas) pins, WE stepped into a lift and Invade America?

With some surprise I sensed

descended. There was Linked, as it is, to the Home the red (fire) pins, the blue rather than saw the Thames, a hum in the air like the noise Security War Room, and to all (high explosive) pins, the apple THIS question is asked in the and I realised that we must have below-decks in a liner. I was War Room receives news of all light blue (gas, electricity and the Group Headquarters, the green (dock damage) pins,, the United States with persistence enough come down, to the Embankment told it was the air-filter plant at

and were now approaching the work.

air-raid happenings as they water main) pins, remain on to draw a reasoned opinion from Houses of Parliament.

Pushing open the kind of door occur, and these are at once the scene of damage until the Brigadier-General lugh S. Johnson In an article in Current History.

In a few moments I stepped you see on a burglar-proof safe, plotted on its maps, of which situation is safely in hand. out towards what my torch re we entered a room whose bril- rent Events" Map; the other is Room are: the Officer-in-charge,

there are two. One is the "Cur-

The men on duty in the War The answer he gives is quite definite vealed as a rampart of sandbags. liance for a moment blinded us. the "Damage" Map. -Hitler could not. Every important! It concealed the entrance to the It was a large room shining

the Operations Officer, two Tally military or naval expert in the coun- Home Office in Whitehall, with cream-coloured paint, very At a glance, those maps with Board officers, the Plotting Clerk try regards the claim that Hitler

and clean. The their coloured pins tell you how (who attends to the maps), and "I don't know how you can

workmanlike

could

walls were covered with enorm- many stretcher parties, ambu- their clerks and assistants. ever successfully attack drive in this," I said.

ous maps of London, lit from lances, decontamination gangs,

"Every town hall and A.R.P. America as nothing less than pre-

"S'nothing!" replied the above by powerful electric lamps, repair squads, and so on, are. posterous,

That-being-so, and that being also the conviction of the people of this country, it is scarcely worth while to enter into details, Even If Hitler won the present war, the Germans would be too exhausted to plek a

driver. "S'nack! Get used to it,

y'know. Suppose you blinkin' well get used to anything!"

General, and he concludes with this the Civil Defence War Room; remark:-"If we make reasonable and no one must say where it preparations there isn't a Power or is. combination of Powers on earth that

My first impression was, that working at that moment, and headquarters in the London Re the Royal-Geographical Society also the type of damage that gion has a Control Room, which

has been inflicted.

-is-a-smaller and less complicated. was meeting in the operating

version of the War Room," I was room of a hospital.

The function of this room is told. It was quiet, No one had therefore twofold: to make a

They are all designed so that S our car ran into the ever dared to smoke a cigarette complete picture of airrnid in those running the civil defence A$ featureless night, the there, and the few men, sitting cidents and keep it up-to-date,

In safety from bomba and gas, fresh quarrel with the hightest Power official of the Home Ofice im at their desks in the bright and to keep track of all A.R.P of London may work calmly and pressed upon me the need for light, were as obviously on duty personnel in London; and, if on earth. So says the Brigadier- secrecy. Few people are shown as men on the bridge of a ship, called upon to do so, to move and know exactly what is hap

reserves from an undamaged pening during a raid." zone to one that is in need of I went into the next room, where I saw the organisation MESSENGERS came in help.

and placed telegrams Glancing round this impor- on which the working of the War It is one of several deep-down, before them. They filed them tant and not unpleasant room, Room must depènd. could threaten the Americas against secret places in London where, and wrote busily on forms, I realised that what, at first, our armed opposition."

in a blaze of clectric light and which they gave to the messen- looked so complicated, whom is entrusted the defence behind gas-proof doors, those lo

reality quite simple.

ABOUT twenty girls were sitting at telephones of London keep watch day and

Now and then a man would Two men, called Tally Board and teleprinters. They are the night.

approach the great map of Lon- Officers, were sitting at a long cars of an air-raid as the war don and stick a pin in it. I saw table facing a board whose bril- rooms are the eyes. Elaborate Among such rooms are the him put a yellow push-pin within liant hue was due to hundreds precautions have been taken to nations. It is more than a century Cabinet War Room, where the a hundred yards of my own of differently-coloured push-pina make sure that their contact

this Prime Minister and the members house.

A most enviable position for any country to be in, and that has been America's good fortune ever since she took a recognised place aniong

the

gers.

arranged in groups.

was in

with the network of A.R.P. Will not be broken during an attack on London.

since Abraham Lincoln made boost: "All the armies of Europe, of the War Cabinet would go "Gas," whispered my friend Asia, and Africa combined with a during an attack on London; the from the Home Office. "Yellow Bonaparte for a commander, could War Room and Operations Room pins mean gas! They're having of the military defence; the an A.R.P. scheme in Chelsea to- not by force take a drink from the Home Security War Room, in night. You're lucky,, because Ohio or make a track on the Blue which plans against enemy ac- this is what it would be like in of the London Region, and were for six months, with the excep Ridge in a trial of a thousand years."tion anywhere in Britain are a real raid."

schemed; and the War- Control

80.

in the years between 1914 and 1918 changed the whole aspect of modern

:

age in which we live..

ad on.

THESE pins represent the The girls were reading and entire A.R.P. resources knitting, as they have been doing

Bnge.

"You see the Chelsea scheme

arranged under the names of tion of those times when they have been busy with mock raids. Lincoln was a youth when he made Room of the London Civil De- and deliberately stuck a red pin

The pin man read a message their respective boroughs.

Now and then one would take that boast, but it is a boast that has fence-to which we were travel- a bit nearer my house.

Thus you could see at a glance been justified and is likely to remaining-the G.H.Q. of London's "Fire!" whispered my friend. Fulham, how many stretcher

how many ambulances are at up a telephone and write a mes- A.R.P.

"Red pins mean fire!"

parties at Enfield, how many "Two Incendiary bombs in Aviation in War And Peace] These war rooms must be And in this weird, dispassion repair squads at West Ham, how Sloane Square," I heard repeated bomb proof. They must be in ate room below the London pave many decontamination gangs at in a cool telephone-service voice. War gave an immense impulse to touch with the outside world. ments, with the tinned air Croydon, how many mobile hos- "Near Peter Jones, Message aviation, and the inventive genius They are mirrors in which every humming, I was seized by a pitul units at Paddington; and ends." that was so conspicuously displayed enemy action is instantly re- sense of the utter fantasy of the

flected,

This was one of the most up- During a raid, messages will is still going on," someone ex-

plained. They are brains that instantly to-date sights in London, this pour into the War Room, saying So we left the bright, secret send out orders to fighter planes, quiet room where men chase that so many Fulham stretcher warfare, robbing the seabound coun- to gun crews, to searchlight, to death and destruction across the parties are at work in such a rooms with their rush of filtered tries of their strongest defence and barrage balloons, to anti-aircraft map with little coloured pina; street, so many, ambulances air, and went up and out into

a black, war-time night. almost annihilating distance itself as organisations; indeed, to the If a real air raid took place from Enfield at such a street,

"Few people realise that for n protection against aggression. Re- whole of that intricate network to-day, this War Room would so many decontamination gangs six months something like two- cent air raids are a demonstration at of military and civil units direct the civil defence of Lon- from Wandsworth in such a hundred thousand people have once of the new power that has been trained to defend London from don.

strect; and, as these messages been keeping watch and ward air attack. acquired and a trial of the defences

For raid purposes London is are received, the Operations against the raider, But gelence and

It would be untrue to say that divided into nine, Groups, which Officer will take from the Tally day and night over London," invention have not yet provided nothing like these war rooms has correspond roughly with the Board pins corresponding to the said my friend. "A.R.P. never been seen in London before. Metropolitan Police Area. The units at work, leaving behind on sleeps. If the sirens went at iheans of defeating the bomber except They are all children ́ ́ of, the Northeru, point on the War the board only those units at this minute, the organisation retaliatory raids. Al was be "Opérations Room", of London. Room fudps is at Cheshunt, in that moment unemployed. Would not spring to life, because

“come a never-ending rage between Defence in the last war, a room Herts; the southern includes

the means of offence and defence. in which the commander of the Banstead, in Surrey.

It is alive and waiting. We will at once stick the pins That is London In 1940: a city in the appropriate streets on the on guard..