AIR BOMBING

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 184, 1 May 1940, Page 11

AIR BOMBING

Story Of Experiences In Helsinki A visitor to the eastern. Baltic States during January last has written to a friend in New Zealand, relating bis experiences. The writer was in Finland when war with Russia was being waged. “How different it was to the place I had visited once before,” lie writes. “Altogether I -was in 19 different air raids, mostly in Helsinki and Abo. Aly first experience was a terrible one. About 20 Russian planes came over the city, making a great noise; then bombs were dropped and the anti-air-craft guns started, so that between the three noises we were nearly driven mad. By the time I had been in three or four air raids I got used to them, and, like all the Finns, both men and women, took these visits from Stalin and Co. as part of the. day’s entertainment.

“I can do nothing but admire the Finns. Every day they capture lots of tanks, guns, and ammunition from the Russians. It is nothing to read in the paper that from five to 20 aeroplanes have been shot down. The Russians have good war materials and aeroplanes, but they cannot use them to advantage, and they have proved themselves to be very poor soldiers and airmen up till now. They are desperate, because little Finland Is Showing them up so badly, so now tlie Russians bomb hospitals and farmhouses which have no protection. “It has been the hardest winter they have ever had in Scandinavia and Finland. At present—mid-January— dozens of big steamers are fast in the ice round the west coast of Denmark and in the Baltic. Most of these were bringing coal and coke to these countries. Now there is a great shortage, and the whole population in all the northern countries is suffering from Cold. A new order was issued here (Copenhagen) last week, and comes into force tomorrow. No hotels, blocks of flats, nor business houses may use hot water for baths or washing, and ail centrally-heated buildings must not be warmer than 15 degrees.

“Among some of tile interesting people I have met here are foreign diplomats who had left Warsaw after Hie Germans took Poland. They all had terrible tales to tell about the shooting of women and Children. The Nazis did the same to the Poles as the Russians did to the Finns.”