RAID ADVENTURES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20413, 25 November 1940, Page 2

RAID ADVENTURES

LAND-MINE EXPLOSION HOME WRECKED AT NIGHT ESCAPE OF OCCUPANTS Night-raiding Germans who dropped a Jana-mme uy paraenute into the back garden of a home in Romford, Essex, late one night in October, wrecked the home and injured the occupants, Mr. and Mrs. W. Cowling, but failed to damp their spirits. Mr. Cowling, who is visiting Auckland, smilingly displayed scars on his arms when describing his experiences, and told how the explosion not only smashed his home, but cost him also most of his clothing and £2O he had drawn to pay his income tax. Ashore on leave, Mr. Cowling had not overlooked the possibility of an air raid, and he and his wife decided to sleep downstairs in their eightroomed house. They had no air raid shelter, but thought themselves reasonably safe in their home. “We heard a rustling noise, like newspaper being crushed,” Mr. Cowling said. “Then ■came the explosion in the back garden, and the house simply fell on us. As luck would have it, one door finished against a wall at an angle over us, and stopped most of the building material falling on us. Our fox terrier was blown clean out into the street. “We were both cut by glass,” he continued. “My wife had cuts that had to be stitched next morning. Bits of the house were still falling, but I managed to find my clothes that had had £2O in the pockets. They were blown to ribbons, and so were the banknotes. “We went to an air raid shelter in somebody’s property. The people inside said it was full, but they asked us in and treated as marvellously. That Is the spirit there now. People say to a complete stranger: ‘Come in and have a cup of tea,’ and sometimes if you are lucky you get a whisky. “We had no clothes or money, and I even had no teeth, but when morning came we got fixed up. My wife now lives in a single room in a strange city, but we are both alive and well, even if we have lost household belongings I had collected all over the world.”