BOMBED LONDON

Evening Star, Issue 23729, 9 November 1940, Page 20

BOMBED LONDON

LISTENING TO THE “ CRUMP ” LESS COMFORTABLE THAN EARTHQUAKE Describing the effect of one particular bomb which dropped on the cinema which formed part of Madam Tussaud’s waxworks exhibition, Mr Harry "burner, in a letter from London to a friend in Dunedin, says: “ The amount of damage is simply appalling, and for easily a quarter of a mile around there is hardly a whole, pane of glass, and this in streets where the windows have been protected by high buildings all round. The bomb seems to have burned half the theatre down and demolished a building alongside as well as the backs of houses in the vicinity and several houses and garages further along. On the other side of the street a big block of residential flats were simply riddled and partly demolished. I have experienced the effects of other bombs. which were considered to be fairly big,: but this must have been either one of those of which the Germans have been bragging or an aerial torpedo. As you know, both the Germans and the British have planes which can carry a torpedo underneath and launch it in water against ships, so it would be an easy matter for them to adapt their ■ bombers to direct these at an objective on land.” “ The daylight raids do not trouble us very much,” Mr Turner continues, “ but it is rather a strain at night to bo sitting inside or in a shelter and hear the roar of planes overhead, the screams of the failing bombs, and then the ‘ crump ’ as it buries itself and explodes close to where you are. You feel rather like a rabibt in a burrow waiting for a ferret to get you. According to how close you are the explosion, the buildings rock as though in an earthquake, and I must say that this is what it reminds me of more than anything else 1 have experienced. But I admit to feeling rather more comfortable in an earthquake than I do. /when these messengers of death come hurtling to the ground.” “One evening,” relates Mr Turner, “ I went to a cinema to put in an hour or two, during which an air raid and a clog fight took place right over the town, with the result that, after the show finished, we stayed put-u v hile the organist played enlivening music to keep our spirits up. The manager told us we were safer there than in the street, but although I did not feel inclined to contradict him, I was not quite so sure about it myself. A bomb dropping through the roof would have made rather a mess.”

“ One thing 1 would like to make clear,” Mr Turner writes, ‘‘ and that is the fact that notwithstanding' rationing, there is no lack of food in- this country, and it is a person’s own fault if he goes short of any of the actual necessities of life.”