FACING DEATH

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4429, 23 May 1941, Page 4

FACING DEATH

WRITER’S NONCHALANCE. LETTER FROM ENGLAND. The matter-of-fact yet extraordinarily cheerful manner in which ordinary folk at Home face death daily is strikingly illustrated in the following letter received in the Te Awamutu district from a lady whb lives near London. Portions of the chatty paragraphs, which are interladed with humour of the Bairnsfather type, are appended:—

“Hitler’s boy friends certainly like ‘mucking’ about these parts. But we are used to it now and we have one consolation it can’t get any worse. My biggest moan is when a gas-main goes up and a perfectly good dinner goes west. My husband’s sister lost her home on Thursday when a bomb landed in her garden. She only lives a few roads from here and when our house wobbled—also my knees—we said ‘some poor blighter’s copped it,’ little thinking it was anyone connected with us. Last night I was caught out in a raid just within a few yards of my house, when two huge monsters whizzed overhead and landed on a block of flats just three minutes from here. “So sorry, Mrs Clinch, not to have finished this letter before, but for the last week we have had a house full' of people who have lost their homes. “Last Monday at lunch-time we had several beauties come down unexpectedly. One made a fifteen-foot crater in a friend’s garden. “Tell Clare not to worry as we are all still smiling even if our £43 shelter is full of water. Who cares? We can buy some ducks, and maybe then we can have some duck eggs, for we have not seen an egg for two months. “Say, Mrs Clinch, - if you have a few buckshee onions send us a few, because they are a thing of the past, and my better half can’t push down his war-time lunch without some sort of flavour! I told him yesterday to take a week’s notice, but he only chuckled and said ‘You know when you have got a good job.’ “Don’t let Clare worry about us. We, that is the family, are all well and tough, but we croakers are toughest, for we do get many a dirty chuckle over little incidents that help us over obstacles “Zippee! That will be the day when we get onions, butter and cheese and a good joint; most of all the bright lights, yet I guess we shall then need blinkers like horses. “Well, it’s my turn to do firefighting patrol to-night, so I’d better get some sort of supper to keep our peckers up.”