RAIDS ON LONDON

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20525, 8 April 1941, Page 12

RAIDS ON LONDON

DOCTOR’S EXPERIENCE PEOPLE’S FORTITUDE Experiences of the blitzkrieg in London are contained in a letter received by Mrs. P. R. Cook, Masterton, from her son, Lieutenant L. G. Cook, R.A.M.C. College, London. The following is an extract from the letter: — “As regards this blitz I can honestly and sincerely assure you that all you have heard about the people of London and other bombed cities is not only perfectly true but quite inadequate. They arc unbelievable. The cheerful man in the bus will tell you he has lost a home, a business, or everything he possesses, but he is not so worried about that as is his determination that we must and will win this war. They say they can take it. They can and do—and this is no propaganda. From your distance you cannot possibly have the remotest idea of what it is like to have bombers over practically every night and every whistle or high-pitched sound might be a bomb.

“The other night a couple of explosions shook this place and we barely had time to lie down. I went out to see what had happened, accompanied by my valet. We found that one of them had landed nearby in the ground floor of some workmen’s flats. Tiie people in the upper storeys usually went down to the ground floor flats during a raid. Well, I pulled out five—a married couple and their child and an elderly couple—all dead. I was there fairly soon, but the A.R.P. people were there before me. They are the heroes of this war, they and the firemen. You’ve got to be out to see them on the job to really appreciate what they are doing every night. By next morning 28 bodies had been recovered. I think that every man who will not go to the war should be taken round to a job like that. It should cure him.”