LONDON DOCKLAND

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 September 1940, Page 7

LONDON DOCKLAND

TRIBUTE TO WORKERS. [BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.] RUGBY, September 17. Mr. R. H. Cross, broadcasting, described his visit to the London docks, and paid a tribute to the dwellers in dockland. He said: “A few days ago, I made a tour of the Port of London, which has been the main target of the German raiders. You will have read about the terrible onslaughts of hundreds of German aeroplanes, which have rained high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the docks. A good deal of damage has been done, and great fires have lit up our skies at night. We have wondered whether anything coul;t possibly survive them. What was the true extent of the damage, the Germans are no doubt wondering, too, and you will not expect me to satisfy their curiosity. “Our fire-fighting men have been quite wonderful. I have seen them, tired out, still working on their hoses. I have seen them going home in their tenders, utterly worn out, filthy dirty, and sleepily seeming to prop each other up, but still full of grim cheerfulness, and ready to crack a joke with the passengers in any car that might overtake them, and more than ready to start off again the moment they are needed. “After days and nights of horror and bombs and flames, thanks to the .wonderful air-raid shelter organisation of the Port of London authorities, there was only one man killed by enemy action within the limit of the docks, and he was in a tin cabin which, by sheer bad luck, got a direct hit; but outside the docks the story is very different, and there is a strange sight in miles of firemen’s hoses running the length of street after street.” “London’s docks are surrounded by a densely crowded area. There are many miles of small streets where hundreds of thousands of London’s poorest people live. Their tiny houses are mostly weakly built. To their everlasting shame, .the Huns poured a deluge of destruction on these unlucky folk. I saw their wicked havoc, I saw the mangled wreckages of these little homes, hundreds upon hundreds of them. I saw sights to bring tears to your eyes. I came back home wondering how man could be so foul, and, also how man could be so brave, but knowing well that here in London, here in England, and here in our Empire, is the spirit that must and shall conquer the powers of evil.”