LIFE IN LONDON

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LXII, Issue 16, 28 February 1941, Page 4

LIFE IN LONDON

NORMAL CONDITIONS IN

DAYTIME

Judged by the appearance by day there is little to indicate to the visitor to London tha,t the country is at war and the great metropolis has suffered heavy and sustained bombing, states a letter from an English manufacturing firm to its Auckland agents. Everyone moves about just as usual. There are plenty of buses and- surface traffic on the roads, plenty of persons in the streets shopping, plenty of good food and a large variety of it. Perhaps the only visible indication of war is the large proportion of men and women in uniform.

When night falls, it is a different story, the letter continues. The air raid warning may come on probably at 5.30 to 5.45 p.m. Nothing happens at first. People still move on, but the streets are perhaps not so crowded as they were. There is a slowing down of surfacs traffic, but even though the warning 'has sounded a person can still go to his favourite bar or his club for a drink and a chat. Probably in half an hour or an hour's time things begin to liven up a bit, and there is a terrific barrage, and. the intensity of the noise depends how near a person is to the guns. Some of the big naval guns defending London make a terrific noise.

Describing- an experience when large whistling bombs fell close to and shook the building in which he was sitting, the writer said an inspection next morning disclosed several enormous craters, but there was surprisingly little damage to surrounding property, and apparently two persons only were killed. The damage did not interfere with tiie productive or distributive capacity of London in any way, and the incident merely emphasised that the bombing of the civilian population was the most senseless form of warfare that had ever been conceived by man.