ANOTHER MERCILESS ONSLAUGHT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21818, 22 November 1940, Page 5

ANOTHER MERCILESS ONSLAUGHT

East Midlands Provincial Town Battered United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received November 21, 9.47 p.m.) LONDON, November 20. PURSUING the policy of selecting one provincial town as a target and concentrating a merciless onslaught on it, German raiders to-night battered an East Midlands town. Wave after wave flew towards the target shortly after dusk and met intensive ground fire on the way till they reached the town, where terrific explosions occurred almost every minute for hours. The only persons venturing into the streets, except the homeless who were forced to brave the storm in a pitiable pilgrimage for shelter, were members of the Auxiliary Fire Service, battling with the flames, and members of the A.R.P. forcing their way through wreckage for those who had been trapped.

Several of the raiders received a terrific hammering from the ground as they swooped on a south-west coastal town. The barrage was so intense that the raiders did not drop bombs, but scurried out to sea to elude the wall of bursting shells. Attack On Birmingham The people most heavily bombed m a Midlands town went to work normally this morning. There was no sign of hysteria. Transpoit was almost normal. The fire-fighting services, although sometimes under a hail of bombs, succeeded in coping with fires which at one time lit up the town like daylight. Over 50 shopping premises were wrecked. One heavy calibre bomb which fell in the middle of the shopping thoroughfare, caused a crater almost the width of the road and brought down all the surrounding buildings. The evacuation of the homeless was quickly completed. Mobile canteens were rushed to places where needed.

An official German statement said that 500 ’planes dropped 450 tons of bombs over the Birmingham district last night. The raid lasted 10 hours. Coventry was also attacked in order to complete its destruction. The funeral of the victims of the raid on Coventry was held to-day when 172 were buried in a common grave. A Dornier dropped 20 bombs in the residential area of a south-east town this afternoon. A bomb demolished four houses in an East Anglia town and killed a man, his syife and child. A large steam crane was assisting in the efforts to dig out a number of those buried when a block of Council houses in London was demolished last night. Goering’s airmen added another famous Wren church to their victims when they almost demolished St. James, Piccadilly, with a bomb which fell in the forecourt recently.