THE HELL THAT WAS CALLED DUNKIRK.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3135, 18 September 1922, Page 2

THE HELL THAT WAS CALLED DUNKIRK.

(By Lieut. Gordon Maxwell, R.N.V.R.) My first sight of Dunkirk was* characteristic. Darkness had already set in as the destroyer approached the dim black outline: of coast, when there suddenly broke on the air a. loud and weird moaning. The remark of one of the crew gave me the olue as to what it was. "There goes old Mournful. Now for the ruddy fireworks." The "-fun" soon began. It was opened by a Hash and a roar, followed by a fusillade of bursting shrapnel high above ue. Flash followed flash and roar followed roar in quick succession, and the bursting shrapnel seemed continuous, while above all the voice of the famous Mournful Mary (an old lightship siren) kept up a moaning obbligato. It was an awful but a fascinating (sight. I had been in plenty of air raids in England, but nothing equal to this. To know what an air raid is really like one must have been at Dunkirk. We could' distinctly hear the whirr-whirr of the Gothas overhead, and before long splashes' in the water told us that we were in danger of being hit by stray shrapnel from our own barrage. Then, all at once, with a. roar and a burst erf flame shooting high into the night, some building in the docks caught fire, to add intensity to the weird night effects. For about an hour the "fireworks' were kept up, with little intermission, and then a strange silence, doubly intense by the contrast, hung over all. and save for the burning building all was cjuiet again. There were times when Dunkirk was subjected to an air raid, a bombardment from the sea and one from the land also going on at once, when it was truly a city of dreadful night. There was hardly a street without soem shattered house in it: sometimes half a dozen were practically razed to the ground, while nearly all bore scars. Windows were boarded up everywhere, and glass once broken was never replaced ; in many cases sacks and rags were used in place of wood as a protection against the weather, and yet the life of the town went on somehow. I remember very vividly a walk in the midst of a long-range bombardment. It was a city of desolation, and one felt like walking through a town of the dead. Every now and then a bang from somewhere around and a curl of black smoke above the houses would announce a, new arrival. There was not a soul to be seen in the streets, for on these ocacsions, and every night, Dunkirk was a city of troglodytes. Cellars were open to all, and most had a red Hag hung outside, and the notice "En cas d'alute" pasted on the wall. Yes, Dunkirk in those days was exciting and perhaps "unhealthy," but it is unforgettable.