SCARRED CITY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 158, 31 March 1941, Page 6

SCARRED CITY

London Still London Despite Damage CHARACTER RETAINED A Londoner’s impression of the air raid damage in the centre of the city is given in a letter received in Wellington from a woman whose home is in Golders Green, a suburb of London. Writing on January 27, she said she had visited the City the previous day for the first time since the air raids began. As the spirit of the people rises above their adversity, so does the spirit of the place cling to the bricks and mortar, she says, each ancient street still retaining its character. “The West End isn’t nearly so badly damaged as is the City,” states the writer. “To me it wasn’t real seeing it like that. It was so unnaturally quiet —no buses, practically no cars and no hurry or bustle anywhere; just a few sightseers strolling round; civil and military repaii gangs dealing with cables and so on deep down in ropedoff craters, and, permeating everything, everywhere the overpowering smell of wet charred wood. “We got the tube from here to Moorgate and walked toward the Bank of England and the Mansion House. Everywhere at street corners the lampposts and barriers across the streets were ‘decorated’ with pieces of cardboard, tied on or tacked, giving hastilywritten instructions for communicating with this company or that; great blocks of familiar buildings simply not there or else burnt out; churches mere shells (and there are so many beautiful old churches in the City)—l don't know how to tell you better than to say it was like walking in a nightmare. Cathedral Breathing Defiance.

’ “The only bright spots were that, in spite 2f what you might call the details being missing, the whole somehow remained and retained its character. It was still London! St. Paul’s still stands firmly, though pitted with scars and though the buildings each side of it, and those on the south of the Churchyard too, are total wrecks. It is good to see the dome and the spire standing there breathing defiance, so to speak. We couldn’t get near the Mansion House and Royal Exchange Corner, for a bomb had landed only a few nights ago right in the middle of the road—so near and yet so far, None the less, it was pretty disastrous in another way. for it penetrated the subway of Bank Station and many lives were lost, people having taken refuge there.” The writer continues by remarking that life has become very different from what it was and that it will obviously not return to its old way for a long time. English people have adapted themselves marvellously to the changed way of living. “If Hitler thinks he can scare the Londoners into giving in he's got another guess coming.” On the whole no! I.Y has suffered from lack of food, because if one commodity was a little scarce there was generally something else to replace it. The writer refers to a relative, a munition worker, who works 12 hours a day seven days a week, his only day off for many months having been Christmas Day. Some workers took Sundays off, but it reduced one's wages and was a practice not regarded favourably by people who said workers on the home front should be on dpt.v every day as the ffien of the forces were.