1941-03-15 — Page 13

Saturday,

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

March 15, 1941.

11

Shall

Never Forget

INVASION By Reginald Foster "LOOK at those ships

-seven of 'em--

what are they?" From

the cliffs of Dover I looked again. I saw eight, then nine, then ten. Sweeping my glasses round the French coast, more than 30 grey ships could be seen lined up, and I have since heard that the actual number was more than 70.

On this page, noted newspapermen whose comments, reports and photo- graphs regularly appeared in the “Hongkong Telegraph” last year, pick from their crowded memories of momentous events the 1940 ex- periences that impressed them most.

ON A MAY DAY

By F. G. H. Salusbury

THE thing I shall never forget is a day--an especially lovely summer day in Belgium, Saturday, May 11. It provided my first experience of a German bomber.

We had been up through Oudenarde and Brussels to a vague contact with the still invisible German troops,

I

"DAPHNE"

By Wallace King

MET her at Dun- kirk, at the end of May. Like myself, she had just managed to keep ahead of the Nazi hordes which were pour- ing through Belgium, and was trying to reach England.

Small and pretty, she still looked well-groom-

ed in spite of the ghastly

Confidence was in the air, though the roads were thick with refugees -refugees in cars, and carts, on foot and an bicycles, tins swishing through trek she had made.

the dust in their heavy rubes, old people supporting themselves desperately I mentally named her

by the tallboards of farm carts.

On our reton, near Alust, the sky seemed suddenly dark with the

The Bache was after the railway line.

It was a big German thunder of engines.

convoy.

German

A hundred yards down the road, we met a policeman "Are you by any chance a doctor, monsieur?" he asked.

"Daphne" and classed

Twelve hours later we were

He was leading a man by the hand, and the man's face was a mask among 150 British refugees-- of blond).

Just us, for me, had become the face of that lovely summer day.

SYMBOL

mostly women and children--on board one of the ferry bouts

CHAMBERLAIN which in peace time carried pas

We stopped our car. I crouched against an orchard wall. The machine. reared overhead, and I saw the bombs fall-one, two, three, four, five, six her as one of the orna- in a steep line, like the trench of a stair. I rushed to the tele-

Then they exploded: and, as they went off, a Belgian farmer scrambled mental but useless type

of woman. phone with confused out of a ditch near me shaking his fist, and screaming his hate of the thoughts at the back of my mind that this might be (as it was an invasion more that anything might happen in the next hours that I might not be able telephone at all.

But at least I could tell the office something unusual was afoot.

By Ritchie Calder

to IT.

By Maurice Webb

NE scene stands out in a year of

events memorable

West-

songer train coaches between Dunkirk and Folkestone.

was in London's worst bombed ONE:

That night Dunkirk was bomb- Brea, Street after street had been reduced to rubble. A grey mist of nifaster. More clearly than anything ed for the first time and the dried clay, which had been churned else I recall the bewildered, broken Captain ordered us down to the

Mr Chamberlain rising hold. out of the craters by burst malus, feure of hung like a miasma aver a district as slowly from his seat on the Front Bench to pass from the House of

For nearly eight hours the At the corner of a shattered street Commons ifter the result of the divi there was a man, lanky and lean- sion on the Norway debate a few harbour was bombed and jawed, wandering through the ruins, days before the invasion of Holland chine-gunned. Great fires lit with only stray cats for company.

With me was a member of the Government. We hailed him, and we

dead as Penpeli.

This I did. By then all sorts of things were talked.

and Belgium.

ma-

"This was a moment which belongs up our ship and bombs dropped History. For marked the end all around us, rocking the huge of an epoch in our affairs.

There had been two days of vessel like a rowing bont. sizzling, searching debate in which

happening. German oh, just exploring the wreck that had the Government was assailed from

German convoy. ·

I

What was he doing back there?

been his home to see if there was at quarters.

Before the House divided we knew Where was his family? Gone to that those in command of the Govern-

about the result;

was How wrong I

about "Daphne:" All night long, with bombers were bombing anything worth recovering.

the German planes zooming and Dover, long range guns

his married daughter. He was living ment machine were seriously con diving overhead, with the air constantly vibrating with explo- were in action against in a ser under the way in the The Teller's marched in, and the sions and the crack of machine-

going to his work

Agures WETE

announced. With gun bullets, I never saw her the slowly disappearing docks,

How did he eat? Well, he just nominat majority of over 400, Mr managed somehow. Bread and Chamberlain could get only 81 more flinch or falter. cheere at the pub, mostly,

votes than those who were against All through those terrible So it went on, a story of quiet en- hir

him. Driving into Dover,

durance, of nights ander bombard- The Premier slumped in his sent. hours she moved about in the found my hotel and at of a job of work to be done. In the sudden silence which preceded gloom; reassuring a frightened of a home that had once been brisk the cheers of the jubilant minority, aged woman here, making a was that! he knew what we all knew-that he child comfortable there, fre number of buildings and cheerful and now

He was almost tou patient.

had reached the end.

a quently climbing down to the much 1 aduire Say Can't

The Tories stood und started -around-had-been-heavily ar

you said the member of the low-faint cheer-s-their-Leader-left-them-boilers to heat up.food for the

It's ernment. "How do you stick It? Looking round with a puzzled and dozens of babies. almost too much to expect."

Pained expression, as if to find some- "That's all right, monte," replied the one who would say it was all a mig Then the dreadful dawn, the Then, suddenly, every docter with a grit. We're all in take, he passed Mr Speaker's Chair,

tugether, ain't we?n

his voice never to be heard again at acrid smell of countless fires

polluting the air.

She was busy thing calmed down.

Sometimes I have had doubls of it, Westminster. when i have seen doors slammed on As he disappeared from view there carrying tea around. That afternoon, which had he- the likes of his. But when I want passed away one of the most bitterly gun for me with quiet reading on fresh confidence in the future which controversial periods in British poli- the cliff's, I saw as much as any belong to the people, I remember him, tical history.

bombed.

civilian has of Hitler's invasion

flect.

That day, on September 11.

how

THE STRAGGLER.

By A. J. McWhinnie

Dear "Daphne." She gave me my first picture of the mag- nificent courage of the women of Britain to-day.

After another night of horror we sailed for "somewhere in England."

"This is all wrong!

But- H.B.'s all right!"

"BRITAIN DELIVERS THE Goods"

WE CARRY THE STOCKS DO YOUR PART

SPECIFY

When we got to the barrier at ALL BRITISH BUILDING SUPPLIES

and the days that followed, will WE were being shelled in the Straits of Dover. We'd had nearly three

wars of it always be among my memories—

He was the skipper of a little thousand-ton Swansea collier, struggling days of great air battles, when in the convoy with which he simply couldn't keep pace.

Through glasses up on tile destroyer's bridge we watched him leaning the station she could not find we saw hundreds of German

comfortably on his own bridge, a grey cloth cap un his head, a pipe in his her ticket, and I was surprised bombers held off by our few mouth.

to see her get flurried and ner- lighters. For days I was chas- Shells were bursting all round him. But he just went on smoking.

Another 1,000, miles an hour shell from Cap Gris Nez roured past us, ing parachutes and watching sending up treat mountains of dense, black smoke where the collier was planes crash.

a second before.

"My God, they've got him!" someone groaned. The smoke cleared. The collier was still there babbling serenely along. not think we The skipper took his pipe from his mouth, spat into the Channel, made the terrible nights

thumbs up sign to us. realised it nt the time.

It

was the Britain. I do

First Battle of

LEAP FOR LIFE

Then he went on smoking,

By Bishop Marshall

QIX a.m. in the Arctic Ocean one jump-to safety, or certain Son June morning.

I

street.

YOUH.

Before it could be found in some crevice in her handbag "Daphne"--who had braved two of incessant bombing without turning a hair

burst into tears!

GOOD CITIZEN By Mea Allan

rubble p

pow was Timmy

raised to feathery pink tongue. A grey Tim- ruy, that had once been ebony black.

his

on

WAS bombed. And the six Ever since he was a kitten he'd been death. Each man was to carry of us who had been strangers, nervous. But animals aren't allowed.

Poor Timmy. The British destroyer steamed his own kit as he jumped. I had though sheltering together in the

- When dawn struggled grey and: full-speed ahead through the full kit and a heavy and valuable same basnient, immediately be- cold along the river I came up to the

came friends.

street again. No northern-most fjords of Norway camera outfit as an extra.

use going to the out into the open sen, her decks

The bomb fell only a few yards flat. There was nothing there 'but One man leaps. He missed ant lined with 400 officers and men has crashed into that wild, while from us, and when we crawled out dust.

I came to Pat's house. Timmy's and myself, the official photogra- formed gap between the two boats. into the open, through a jungle_of

No, he hanga under the plank by his smashed doors and blasted walls, Pat home.

"Micow!" I heard. pher.

Anger-tips and is hauler aboard the and I just stood and gazed at the And there, sitting on the rubble, We were evacuating Norway, troopship by two pairs of strong chapeless wreckage of the little and Nature was kind, for the arms. gale and the mist meant that we It is my turn. A voice at my side Pat's home was under were. safe from German says, "Wait, for it, siri" I am waiting, heap, and her hand lightened And Timmy was licking the dust off, bombers.

through it seems an eternity before mine.

and had only paused to say good the voice adds, "It's only one jump, One girl said: "My winter coul- morning. After eight hours' steaming

down just back from the cleaners!"

could have wept. Instead, I we saw the troopship which was you know, for if you fall

Pat-- said: "I got a new pair of laughed-perhaps a shaky sort of to take us back to England. I leap and feel that I have over shoes only yesterday." All I could laugh, for denth had not been for And now Nature was striking done it, that 1.shalf land in the sea think of was a new egg-beater, Dway Inat night. Timmy licking back. The seas were so heavy on the other side of the troopship. Two shillings it cost. And that himself clean! As unconcerned as if that it was impossible to tie up our strong arms shall haul me up lings. How

But I am only just there, and those was what I was mourning-two shil- he sat by a growing hearthside in- silly!--when hundreds stend of on à cold heap of bomb- alongside the troopship, and and throw me on to the deck like a of pounds would not cover the loving rubble. plank with a flimay rope was freshly caught

kindness and years of gifts and Timmy does not know what a good put out from a hole in the I feel that whatever else happens sacrifice that made up the treasure citizen he is. But when you come

my

little home.

lo speak of London in the Blitz and steamer's side-and we were to me during this war, and a lot of

But the woman who lived in the the smiling courage of women and rising and falling about 18 feet has happened already, I shall remem-

ber that leap, and the few seconds basement of Pat's hours stood and children that matched a madman's every few seconds.

before it, when I am n very old murmured: **Timmy..

I wish I pray you think of Timmy, We could obviously make only man.

I'd brought Timmy to the shelter, ton.

there.

nedr

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