FLEET STREET BOMBED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23861, 11 January 1941, Page 5 (Supplement)

FLEET STREET BOMBED

THROUGH bomb and blitzkrieg, through fire and explosion by day and night, Fleet Street, home of Britain's newspaper industry, carries on telling the story to the world of the great, Battle of London. One newspaper office, the Evening Standard, belonging tn Lord Bearerbrook, has been bom)«xf. It is not in Fleet Street hut just off it. A bomb fell near the Labour Daily Herald offices in the Covent Garden area; a "dud" incendiary bomb came down outside the Daily Sketch Building, and the New Statesman and Nation office was put out- of business. Dead Wires During Raids But at the moment of writing that is the sum-tola! of tin.' damage. The livening Standard lost not a single edition, though its eompo-ing room was wrecked. It transferred to Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express building and printed there. What the newspapers have suffered from in a inly, however, have been the delays in delivery due to the incapacity of the railway companies to cope with war conditions. Telephones and telegraphs "go dead" the moment an air-

By a Special Correspondent

raid warning sounds, so you can imagine the obstruction in sending urgent news messages at critical hours. Fortunately the Ministry of Information has now secured a measure of priority for press despatches. Many Fleet Street newspapermen have had exciting escapes from the Nazi bombers. One of them I know owes his life and that of his wife to the strength of an oaken, wardrobe which held up the collapsed walls and ceiling of his flat long enough to enable them to escape to the greater security of the rocking hallway. "Likely to Drop Something" Some newspapermen now sleep in their offices —sometimes because their homes have been reduced to heaps of rubbish, sometimes because transporta- ! tion (ihiiiit London has I,<■ ■ onje so slow ; and difficult. Sub-editors "carry on" at tlmir desks • until they are warned by "spotters'' on the rooi that the enemy raiders are | overhead and likely to drop something heavier than a caller °f tvpe. j . Then they go to their underground , shelter with their "'copy." continue to j work there and as ?oon as possible re- | turn to their rooms to put the paper to bed as usual.