UNDAUNTED CITY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 22 April 1941, Page 6

UNDAUNTED CITY

MANCHESTER’S ORDEAL BOMBS AND FIRES SUFFERING SURMOUNTED “On the night of Sunday. Decembe. 22, 1940, ‘they’ came to Manchester,” I writes Stuart B. Jackman, describing in I the “Manchester Guardian” the city’* ordeal by German bombs and fire on ; that terrible night. “When they came jto Manchester it was dark and very | still. The city was sleeping, somewhat fitfully, in'the peace of the early evenI ing.

“The first crash brought the city to its feet with a start, only to fall back again blinded by the glare of fire and deafened by the roar of guns. Manchester as a city of flame and thunder. The great fires burned like torches, and the old places went roaring up to the sky in a torment of heat and smoke . . . NEVER THE SAME AGAIN “All day Monday the city licked its wounds and fought its fires. All day the people stood on the outer rim of the city and stared with grey eyes at the horror of the day, at the scorched walls and shattered windows, at the broken masonry and blasted brickwork. And with the night they came again. “Manchester is slowly getting on its bruised and battered feet again. But there are a lot of changes. There is much of Manchester that will never be the same, that has been destroyed for all time, that will never be resurrected. Perhaps it is as well, for it really was a terribly inconvenient city and out of date in its planning. NEW PROBLEMS AND NEW HOPES “Against the sky rise the gaunt walls and broken gables of the city’s oldest firms. In the hollow by the river the broken Cathedral raises black Gothic arms to heaven in a gesture of mute suffering. Some of the streets have been cleared and re-opened, and down these flows the busy life of the city, going grimly on its way, looking and mending, assessing and condemning. The trams are still running and the Manchester folk are still there.

“ ‘They’ left us our Machester courage and our Manchester doggedness, left us our umbrella and our smoke and soot. Left us, Manchester people, a little paler, perhaps a little more determined, but still essentially the same. To-day we go into the city with our new problems and our new hopes; tonight we will come home on our usual tram, with our umbrella neatly folded, our paper, and our cheery chatter with the conductor. We still have these things. We are still Manchester."