STAFFS ORDEAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 282, 27 November 1940, Page 8

STAFFS ORDEAL.

NEW ZEALAND HOUSE.

WORK DURING AIR RAIDS.

Sleepless and hollow-eyed, the staff at New Zealand House are enduring what the people of Britain are enduring, and like the gallant British people they are carrying on with their appointed tasks in the face of Hitler's almost unceasing rain of bombs, sav= *>- ' I • Led by the High Commissioner, Mr. ' \V. J. Jordan, tlwv are standing up to the horrors of total war and are doing their j<>!> willingly and well. Mr. Jordan is directing the important tasks of hiti office in spite of a hail of bombs, one of which recently forced him to order the evacuation of New Zealand House.

New Zealand House has already carried on through 12 months of war, and the High Commissioner and his staff have never yet failed in any particular. Every night since war began a picket of at least two members of the High Commissioner's staff sleeps at the office, in addition to the housekeeper and his family. Members of the staff take this duty in turn, a week's tour of duty. They do it as a duty. Mid-September Ordeal. On Wednesday night, September 11, a time-bomb fell through a building just at the back of New Zealand House in the Strand. To say it fell is scarcely accurate. In the last war bombs were "dropped" by aeroplanes, and came down vertically. To-day, with the far greater speed of bombers, bombs are hurled forward at an angle of almost 45 degrees, making them like aerial torpedoes. It is far more fearsome. One of these bombs was hurled on an oid Maiden Lane building Whind New Zealand House —late at night. The picket on duty at New Zealand House heard it and at once reported the occurrence. On this occasion the police told the picket and the housekeeper they must leave the building. The same instructions were given to all living in a radius of about 7~t yards around the bomb-hit ! house. The picket before leaving had 'phoned the High Commissioner and all his senior officers of the occurrence, and had stated that the office could not be tenanted until the bomb burst. This news was received while heavy bombing was going on in London and it®, suburbs. Staff Carried On. Nevertheless, in the morning Mr. Jordan and several members of his staff met at the New Zealand Forces Club in Charing Cross Boad, which is only about five minutes' walk from New Zealand House.

This building had also been threatened by a time bomb which fell in an empty office suite opposite three days before. The bomb had gone off the previous day, and no damage had been done to the club, though the building opposite had been badly mutilated an<l now rears five storeys of a ghostly frontispiece to the skies. To say that the road was soon cleared of glass and debris is to state a commonplace of these days. W hat work could be done by the High Commissioner and his staff without the aid of papers and records was done that day. Ihe mail was obtained direct from the post office. That night the bomb at the back of New Zealand House exploded. This information was 'phoned to the High Commissioner and the senior members of the staff, who turned up at the office at their due time next day. Only Minor Damage. There were some officers who were late, not because they had been up all night under a bombing strafe—though all of them had been for some nights pa-st—but because transport was hindered by "enemy action." Those living south of the Thames were most seriously hampered, only one railway bridge being available. To come into the Strand from Croydon, for instance took from 8.30 a.m. to 11 o'clock—a normal journey of only half an hour. They found New Zealand House was almost intact. The bursting bomb had hurled heavy timber and tiles from the stricken building up on to the roof of its seven storeys. Ihe glass dome up there was hit and fragments of slate, brick and concrete had broken one or two windows down the sides and littered the roof and ground with debr' But Xew Zealand House had a miraculous escajie, and it was possible to carry on work.