NO SIGN OF PANIC.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 251, 5 August 1941, Page 8

NO SIGN OF PANIC.

ENGLAND DURING BOMBING. BUSINESS AS USUAL THE RULE. A graphic account of life in England under the air blitz is given by the head of a big electrical engineering firm :m a letter to Mr G. R. Alderton, of Wellington, dated December 18 last. “We had the daylight raids first, and after a few of them, instead of taking cover, I could not prevent my family from looking at the frequent spectacles from om- lawn on fine days in August of a fight going on up in the blue,” he writes. “The sight w r as certainly spectacular, with occasional shell bursts, German planes falling and pilots coming down in the distance by parachute, looking like little spiders which lower themselves on a strand of web. At the factory our men and avomen all took shelter in concrete dugouts, and wasted quite a lot of time' for .five w r eeks on end, there being up to seven raids a day. We are rather near some objectives, so have to be watchful; hut iaoav wo only go beloAV if our own spotters see the enemy nearly overhead, and Ave have not lost more than an hour a Aveck during the last tAVO months. . “We cannot yet do night work, lioavever, because of the glass factory roofs, Avhich can he brought doAvn by our oavu shrapnel. These are being replaced by other covering, but that cannot be done at once, as it takes time noAvadays to get labour and materials. You can imagine that it is not easy to work beloav sheets of glass. The Night-Raiding. “The night-bombing started later. My house is on the principal route to London from France, and the first plane came OA’er one night about August 25 at 10.15. We Avere outdoors, and thought it Avas British till it started machine-gunning doA\m the searchlight beam at the local A.A. site 120 yards away. .After that it gradually Avorsened, and up to now Avell over 500 bombs liai r e fallen in the local boroughs and fields. We have no shelter at home. My Avife is a native of the tropics (British West Indies) and, though English, has not yet even become acclimatised to our Avipters. This makes.a dugout impossible, so avg will stay in tho house in the usual way, * xcept that one weak ceiling is reinforced. We go about our business at home quite normally. “It Avas rather disconcerting at first, as one cannot locate planes at night, and there is always the feeling of the SAVord of Damocles hanging o\ r er. But one gets used to most things, and we eat, read, go to bed, rise and shave to the accompaniment of engines, bombs, and gunfire. It is necessary to sta; under cover, because of shrapnel, most houses having slight scars. “There are amazing spectacles at times from our AvindoAvs. The houses get shaken at times, but the nearest bomb-hole is 800 yards aAvay. We reckon it is a heavy raid Avhen there is a Jerry over every fn r e minutes, and a light raid if one every half-hour. Sometimes tho raids last from dusk. to daAvn and sometimes they leave off about midnight. Machine-Gunning of Bricks. “Nothing has yet fallen on the "a> tory, though there have been somnear; but between it and the nearest large toAvn (not- London), there is a sewage farm of 300 to 400 acres. On it are roAVS of about 000 brick-heaps, say 1000 a heap, to stop planes carrying troops from landing. The' Jerries seem to take this for a, camp, as the bricks look like i-oavs of tents, and they haA r e sunk more than 200 bombs into it, and have machine-gunned the bricks. The latter, being British, arc unperturbed. “As in tho last Avar, the tube railways got a bit choked, largely Avith tlie not-quite British, shall avo say. The alien part- of the population lias less stability-it seems. Among ourselves there is no outivard sign of anxiety, and the word ‘panic,’ Avhich Goobbols has used, is merely fantastic. We are much too pig-headed. Our Avorries are just the usual ones of labour and materials, and getting, things done as in peace-time. “1 hope this has given you some idea of lioav avc are faring, and that you Avill not have your oavu peaceful nets affected in that Avny.”