SPOTTING BOMBS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21818, 22 November 1940, Page 9

SPOTTING BOMBS

WATCHERS ON ROOF TOPS (From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON, September 21. When a German night bomber scored a hit on the store of John Lewis, in Oxford Street, London, 16-year-old Albert (“Bonny”) Bondfield was having his first spell as a roof-spotter. He reported on the A.R.P. ’phone to the shelter: “A bomb has fallen on the East building. And listen—here’s another whistling down.” “Bonny”—so called because he is chubby and cheerful—-stayed spotting while three bombs landed on the store and set it ablaze. His only injuries are four blisters. “We drew lots for which watches we should do on the roof an hour at a spell,” he said, “and when Mr Dines and I drew the time we did I thought it was the perfect time, because the last bombs near us came down then. While we were waiting for our relief, there was a scream. We threw ourselves against the sandbags, and then a bomb hit the building. Mr Dines ’phoned down about it, and I climbed down the ladder on to the roof to make a more detailed report. I had just time to get against the sandbags when another bomb landed. I ’phoned that down just as another whistled by. I put the ’phone down quick and clutched the sandbags. They came away in my hand from the blast. Then we found the ’phone was dead. The fire was getting near, so we thought we might go. “We climbed down the iron ladder and got into the building. The floor was all covered with broken bits. We went through a door that had been blown out and got to the basement. A fireman had been hurt, so 1 went for the ambulance and then fetched a doctor from Harley Street. We gave the girls in the shelter a pick-a-back through the water from the automatic fire sprinkler. They were more scared of being dropped in the wet than of the bombs.”