FIRE BOMBS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22615, 31 December 1936, Page 9

FIRE BOMBS

USE BY THE REBELS EYE-WITNESS' NARRATIVE TRAGIC SCENES IN MADRID The use of fire bombs by rebel airmen in their attacks 011 Madrid was described by a representative of the Daily Express in a despatch from the Spanish capital on November 19. He said : Flames burst out in three of Madrid's greatest buildings to-night —the 15-storey telephone skyscraper, the palace of Duke Alba Carlo and the Central Market Hall. Between SO and 100 shells fell among the houses of this thickly populated district. Bombers dropped their loads all round. The terror was complete. Before a calcium bomb set, the front of the telephone building alight a shell had already smashed a corner of it. Girl operators carried on at thejr switchboards while shrapnel shattered the windows. I have just been along firelit streets to the Puerta del Sol. I found militiamen struggling to rescue famous pictures from the Duke Alba Carlo's palace. Shrieks of the Injured A few streets 011 I saw Verey lights falling from aeroplanes on the Central Market, then came bombs—incendiarv bombs. The raiders apparently used the blaze to guide them, for as I stood watchine tire devour the vast hall two more bombs whistled out of the darkness. They scattered the firemen, pulled down a house 50yds away and brought a rain of debris falling all round. From close by came the shrieks of the injured. I ran past homes of wailing to a spot where militiamen stood guard over a deep bomb crater. Two wrecked trams lay in the centre of the square. Earlier I had watched the bombardment from the telephone building, where I was waiting to put in a call. Just opposite a smoking hole was torn in the roof of the Gran Via Hot-el. Passers-by were struck down as they ran for shelter. "fan Caught by a Shell Defying the order, "Away from the windows!" I saw a man below caught by a shell on his way to a friendly doorway. Afterward there was just a red stain on the pavement. Another man ran out when a "dud"' shell fell in the square. He picked it up in his arms and carried it away, fondling it as though it were his child. People were hurrying along with bundles of bedding. Others were throwing bedding from their houses into the street. Stacks of furniture stood about pathetically waiting for their owners to collect them—some time. This morning I called at the office of the Defence Committee. A slim, dark-eved girl, wearing high-heeled j shoes With a blue overall, a dandy little ! revolver in her waist-belt, on her wrist j the latest thing in bracelets—a leather j strap set with glittering brass cart- j ridges—sa£ down at a typewriter and ; looked at my passport. Then she tapped out a pass entitling | me to "circulate freely in Madrid and among the troops of the. centre." Perilous Trip to the Front I could have walked to the front, I and quite a short walk, too, but the : Scottish ambulance men offered me a j lift to the battlefield at the Casa del Campo, the former royal park across j the Manzanares River. Hardly had we got past the first barricade —paving stones built in thick wall across the road —than three of Franco's Junker bombers zoomed overhead. % The ambulance stopped, and we all leaped out and took cover behind the barricades, while shrapnel flew about and a bomb crashed on a house somewhere near and broke all the windows around. We drove off again, but got only a few hundred yards before another visit from the bombers forced us to cover right by the side of a dead mule. Then on past more barricades to the last one manned by soldiers in shoddy caps, past the northern station converted to a fortress with sandbags in open windows and barricades at all angles. Desolation On All Hands Tho station building was not j damaged to outward appearances, in j spite of heavy shelling and the bomb- j ing, but all around was desolation, j telegraph wires hanging limply from | broken poles, shell craters in the road. ! Even here there were still civilians, i I saw an old woman carrying a bundle j and stealthily leading a small child i by tho hand beside a wall. Then past the wide gates into tho I park, through a hail of shrapnel to ! the forester's whitewashed lodge, which , is the emergency dressing station of i the Casa del Campo. Wounded were being carried in from the front, a few hundred yards away. The first was .a grey-faced young soldier with a hole in the back of his tunic, another in front. He had been shot through the lungs. Tho next had been v hit in the body, a third in tho head. Pall of Sickly Sulphur Smoke

While their wounds were being dressed, bombers flow overhead; this time they made their way across to the other end of the front, the University City, over which there was hanging a pall of sickly yellow sulphur smoke. It was there that the real battle for the mastery of Madrid was being fought. A battle of houses. The insurgents from their stronghold in the Casa Velasquez were being continually harassed by the machine-gun (ire of the Government forces in the surrounding buildings of the settlement. The insurgent airmen were trying lo dear a path for the advance of their men.