CITIES OF THE DEAD

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 22611, 16 May 1945, Page 4

CITIES OF THE DEAD

WAR HAVOC IN GERMANY SURVEY FROM AEROPLANE NEW ZEALANDERS’ TOUR

(Special Correspondent) (Received May 16, 11 ajn.) LONDON, May 15 Imagine acres of roofless licked clean inside by fire and with only the walls standing, walls slotted with squares that once were windows but are now like so many sightless eyes, imagine bomb-bursts that have pulped buildings to heaps of dun brown rubble; factories that are heaps of twisted, rusted girders; and whole areas pocked with bombcraters, some filled with muddy water and others greyish white empty gashes—imagine this and you have a glimpse of the great German cities as they are seen from the air today. This was a picture seen by Messrs W. J. Jordan, S. G. Holland and F. W. Doidge when they flew at 1000 feet from Brussels to Germany and circled Munchen-Gladbach, Dusseldorf, Hamm, Essen and Hanover en route to Celle in northern Germany. Bombers’ Changed Role It was a brilliant, sun-bathed day and overhead floated formations of heavy bombers, soaring over graveyards of their own fashioning, no longer carrying bombs but liberated prisoners of war. In the clear light these cities and the German countryside slid below the Dakota like a technicolour film, bomb-craters in green fields standing out like rashes and the occasional scarlet tiled roofs of a few houses emphasising the rusty brown scabs of bombed buildings over which it seemed a giant hand had carelessly scattered handfuls of sand.

Cities of the dead, they have been called, and that is what they aro—ruins of new Pompeiis killed by the volcano of modern war. Surrounded by the neat, regimented countryside, there is oddly enough, from the air, some semblance of orderliness about them, for streets lined with trees in their summer foliage are still clearly defined. Here can be seen a bent and twisted train lying on its side as though it were left by a careless child, and there stands a shell of a gasometer, a mere husk with its centre filled with a circular pool of dirty yellow water that suddenly winks evilly as it catches the reflection of the sun.

Heart Of “Happy Valley” Acres of houses look as though their roofs had been sliced off by a great scythe as neatly as a knife removes the top of an egg. Occasionally chimneystacks rear up undamaged, but round them is a mash of their factory. The scenes are repeated in each city, the extent of the ruins the more sharply defined by comparison with the placid countryside that laps all round. Each city has some stark brown scab. Essen, for instance, the heart of the air crew’s “Happy Valley,” a prime target of the battle of the Ruhr, is dominated by acres of the broad fiat roofs of the Krupps armament factories, rusty brown and dishevelled. Some of them are mere husks of twisted girders with brown earthen floors sprouting fresh grass. No chimney smokes and few people and fewer cars crawl along the dark veins of the roads.

Industry Great Ash Heap At Hamm are the famous marshalling yards, a great black, gloomy oval striped with rusty rails, with acres of the surrounding land a measle rash of bomb pocks. Hanover is a sheet of dun browh gutted shells of houses standing like so many rusty colanders. Here and there on the flight the New Zealanders did see occasional factories still undamaged and a few chimney stacks breathing smoke. But generally the heart of German industry is one great ash heap. Seeing it from the air, one can no longer be surprised that Germany was conquered and the war concluded within 11 months from the landings on the Normandy beaches.