CLEARING DEBRIS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23759, 12 September 1940, Page 9

CLEARING DEBRIS

LONDON ACTIVITY SEARCH FOR VICTIMS HIGH-SPEED EFFORT By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received September 11, 7.10 p.m.) LONDON, Sept. 10 Mountainous clouds of black smoke hung over London this morning (Tuesday). Police guarded the entrance to all affected areas, pending the fixing of barriers. The streets were filled with dust and smoke, and ambulances and demolition waggons still raced along the roads. Rescuers over a wide area were still searching the buildings for victims.

Between 18,000 and 20,000 civil defence volunteers are working in shifts, in addition to contractors' employees, at high speed in an effort to clear the debris and restore normal conditions in the bombed areas.

Many bodies have now been recovered from a school in East London which received a direct hit by a bomb on Monday night. Some persons extricated from the mass of twisted girders and debris were still alive, but died on the way to hospital. Rescuers in many parts of London worked at extricating the people from collapsed houses while the bombers were overhead. There were most distressing scenes, not only in the East End, but in areas far to the westward. "It is not the fires and the damaged buildings which upset us," one A.R.P. worker said, "but the sight of little children with gaping wounds, others killed outright, people screaming amid the flames, women frantically trying to save their babies and men searching for their families."

EFFECTS STUDIED RECKLESS BOMBING. NON-MILITARY OBJECTIVES ORDEAL TO BE ENDURED British Wireless LONDON, Sept. 10 Newspapers to-day give considered opinions as to the reasons for, and the effect of, the indiscriminate bombing to which London was subjected on Sunday and Monday nights. Nobody who saw yesterday where bombs had fallen on London could believe that the Germans tried to confine their aim to military objectives, states the Daily Herald.

The Times says there is every reason to suppose that these attacks will continue nightly for some time, and the civil population in London must steel itself to endure a repetition and perhaps even an intensification of the ordeals it has already undergone.

After drawing attention to the difference between British and German raids, and the fact that the British objectives had been military targets, the Times says the German air force has failed altogether to reveal the precision of the British Air Force. Their attempts to find their targets in daylight raids have been hurled back with such devastating loss that those tactics seem very to be suspended. Instead, they have flown over London at such great heights that, whatever their orders or intentions were, nothing like a systematic bombardment of military targets is attainable.