Full text of "The City That Would Not Die The Bombing Of London May 10 11 1941"

See other formats

940-9302 C69c

Collier, Eichard $490
The city that would not

rMa* 4-.lno hnmh-inp" of London*

940,9302 c69c

Collier, Eichard $4., 50
The city that would not
die; the bombing of London,
May 10-11, 1941. Button
E1959J ./ *v

KANSAS CITY, MO PUBLIC LIBRARY

THE CITY
THAT WOULD NOT DIE

The Bombing of London
May 10-11, 1941

By RICHARD COLLIER

Illustrated with
Photographs and Map

The night of May 10, 1941 began like
any other night. London had endured
many months of siege. Bombers and
night-time raids were common, almost
nightly, occurrences. There was nothing
to set this apart as the night on which
the German Luftwaffe would launch its
all-out attack on a London already weak-
ened by months of struggle to survive the
Blitz. Determined to bring the capital to
its knees once and for all, the Germans
poured everything they had on the city.
In twelve fateful hours 1436 people were
killed, 1800 seriously injured, 2200 fires
started; yet, somehow, London managed
to withstand the terrible onslaught. On
the morning of May llth the last wave
of bombers returned to Germany leaving
behind them a city of smoldering ruins,
but one still standing as a triumphant
symbol for the rest of the free world.

Here is the taut, minute-by-minute ac-
count of that night of hell. It is the story
of Churchill and Hitler, of German and

THE CITY THAT WOULD NOT DIE

By RICHARD COLLIER

CAPTAIN OF THE QUEENS

(with Capt. Harry Grattidge)

TEN THOUSAND EYES

THE CITY THAT WOULD NOT DIE

The Bombing of London, May 10-11, 1941

THE CITY

That Would Not Die

THE BOMBING OF LONDON

May 10-11, 1941

RICHARD COLLIER

New York

E P Button and Company Inc
1960

FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES 1960 BY E. P. BUTTON & Co., INC.
Copyright, , 1959 by RICHARD COLLIER
All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

FIRST EDITION

No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who wishes to quote brief passages in con-
nection with a review written for inclusion
in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-12579

To those

who wondered

what It was like

and to those

who knew

jt Bookmobile FEB 1219B8

The spirit of the English people
enables it to carry through to
victory any struggle that it once
enters upon, no matter how long
such a struggle may last or how-
ever great the sacrifice that may
be necessary

-ADOLF HITLER

The worst attack was the last
WINSTON CHURCHILL

CONTENTS

Chapter Page

ONE "Go Down to St. Paul's, Boy" 1 3

TWO "You Don't Need Gloves Over England" 24

THREE "Sir, The Beam Is on London" 3 3

FOUR "There's That Nasty Man" 45

FIVE "Why, It Must Be One of Ours" 65
six "Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast" 79

SEVEN "Another One In, Another One Out ..." 101

EIGHT "I Wouldn't Have Joined if I'd Known" 1 1 6

NINE "An Order's an Order Tonight" 149

TEN "Don't Let Them Drop Any More" 176

ELEVEN "You Will Never See Another Sunrise" 213

TWELVE "How Many Are You for, Mate?" 229

Facts about May 10-1 1 255

Acknowledgments 259

The Eyewitnesses 267

ILLUSTRATIONS

Facing Page

1. Albert and Gladys Henley, Mayor and Mayoress of

Bermondsey 32

2. Marguerita Stahli outside 48 Turney Road, Dulwich 32

3. Post Warden Stanley Barlow, G.M., with Warden

"Sam" Ekpenyon 33

4. Mrs. Margaret Daley 33

5. Jimmie Sexton and his son 33

6. Field Marshall Hugo Sperrle 64

7. Leutnant Martin Resier, Luftwaffe 64

8. Hauptmann Albert Hufenreuter's Heinkel 3 65

9. Men of an R.A.F. Squadron walking to their planes 65
10. Goodge Street, near St. Pancras Station 96
u. Heart of a conflagration: Fetter Lane 96

12. St. Clement Dane's on fire 97

13. Ruins of the Salvation Army Headquarters 97

1 4. The Temple 128

1 5 . Toppling buildings in Queen Victoria Street 1 2 8

1 6. Ludgate Hill with St. Paul's Cathedral in the background 1 29

MAP

Pages 10 and n

THE CITY THAT WOULD NOT DIE

LONDON

1. Here Great Blitz began. West Ham.

2. Here Herbert Milk took charge. Belgravia.

3. Here Albert Henley died. Town HaU, Bcnnondsey*

4. Here was Fields' Candle Factory. lambeth.

5. Here Stanley Barlow saved nine lives. Gt. Portland S&

CHAPTER ONE

"Go Down to St. PauFs, Boy"
8 A.M. 12 noon

PALE morning sunlight flooded the back bedroom of No. 48
Turney Road, Dulwich, South London, and Marguerita Stahli
awoke. It was 8.30 A.M. on a May morning, yet as she hurried
to the kitchen to cook breakfast, Marguerita shivered. Over-
night the wind had veered northeast; people said later they had
never known a spring so cold.

As Marguerita spooned a soft-boiled egg she leafed through
the morning papers propped against the teapot: a quick peep
at The Daily Telegraph, a longer browse through The Daily
Sketch Aunt Maud called it "The Clean and Clever." This
morning, though, the Sketch's headlines were routine "RAF
WIPE OUT IRAKI AIR FORCE." There was no food for
thought in the dateline either Saturday, May 10, 1941.

It was now thirty-five weeks since the all-out German air
bombardment of London had begun, and already it was routine,
too, that the City was in a state of siege. For nine months Mar-
guerita and 6,000,000 other Londoners had eaten breakfast and
worked and gone to bed each night under threat of invasion
from the greatest army on earth, encamped across the English
Channel less than a hundred miles from Buckingham Palace.
Already, too, it was plain that Saturdays and Sundays were
assuming a sinister significance in the calendar of Reichsmar-
schall Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe. Eighteen weeks tomor-
row since Sunday, December 29, when the square mile of the

The City That Would Not Die

City of London burned like a haystack. Three weeks to the day
since Saturday, April 19, the heaviest raid to date, when 400
bombers made the two-way trip.

Now the raids were spread more widely apart, each raid
planned as a deathblow. And tonight the moon would be full
for the first time since Good Friday.

But on this Saturday morning none of this mattered too much
to Marguerita Stahli. Moonlight meant mostly what moonlight
should mean to any twenty-five-year-old girl who is sHm,
dark, and lovely. It was the weekend, Aunt Maud, with whom
she lived since the death of her father, a naturalized Swiss, was
away until Monday, and she was in love. Tonight, with luck,
her fiance, Leading Aircraftman Windsor Neck, might arrive
on special leave from the north, a precious forty-eight hours
prised from the RAF.

Moreover, there was two days' freedom from the offices of
the Church Missionary Society, where she worked as a short-
hand-typist, shopping to be done, a fire to be lit. Rex, her
black-and-white fox terrier, was pawing at the door, frantic
for his walk. There was much to plan; a week's living to cram
into two days.

So by 9.30 she had donned an old weatherproof and was
pedaling to the shops on the Raleigh bicycle that Windsor
had taught her to ride. At this hour the streets of the great
gray capital were full of people. In long, gently-grumbling
lines they queued interminably for fish, bread, sweets, a slender
Sunday roast even tomatoes at is. 6d each. After eighteen
months of war, the keynote was a proud shabbiness. Men wore
old fawn raincoats and suits that had gone unpressed for
months. The women wore head scarves, fur-lined boots, and
lisle stockingslike Marguerita they kept silk stockings for
night and Sunday wear. And like Marguerita many wore their
hair short hairpins were hard to come by.

The streets, too, were shabby. You could not now walk
more than a block without the war striking home: brick sur-
face shelters, blasted windows, clocks without hands, mounds

"Go Down to St. Paul's, Boy"

of yellow rubble. Moving from queue to queue along Herne
Hill, Marguerita Stahli could even smell the bombing on the
wind: a poisonous, always-present tang of damp plaster, coal
gas, and blue London clay.

Already it seemed an old war. In the sprawling slurnland
of London's East End poppies and buttercups made bright
splashes where the tiny yellow-brick houses had toppled in the
winter's raids. Youngsters whooped through the ruins as cops-
and-robbers or foraged for relics; twice that morning Bethnal
Green's Town Clerk F. R. Bristow had to shoo off urchins
with shrapnel to sell. Most London boroughs now held too
many relics in perpetuity for owners who would never know-
gold Alberts, dentists' drills, St. Christophers without number,
forty ignition keys found in one man's pocket.

On this spring Saturday most people, like Marguerita Stahli,
were planning nothing more complex than living another whole
day. Over the hundred square miles of the County of London
the mood was one of grim union, a union congealed by the
blood of 1 8,000 Londoners who had died to date. Not many put
this into words. But somehow on May 10, 1941, it was ac-
cepted that the street where you lived or worked was also the
battlefield where you could die.

Most people, like true Britons, talked more of the weather
and the spring flowers. In Kensington, Mrs. Isabel Penrose-
Fitzgerald, a diplomat's wife, made up her diary for the Friday:
"The chestnuts are just coming into bloom and Hyde Park is
full of daffodils." Mrs. Olive Smith, a mobile canteen driver,
thought the wind in Bayswater cut like a knife but the apple
blossom was "a glorious cloud of shining whiteness." As after-
thought Mrs. Penrose-Fitzgerald added: "There's very little
news the Germans must be preparing something."

Few were so curious. Down at Fields' Soap and Candle
Factory, in the lee of Waterloo Station, the talk was all of that
afternoon's Football Association Cup Final Arsenal v. Preston
North End at Wembley Stadium. Most, as Londoners, favored
Arsenal's chances though no one was surprised when little

The City That Would Not Die

Jimmie Sexton, in the packing department, announced that he
was working overtime instead. True, he was fire watching at
the factory that night, but he would have stayed around any-
way. After his flat had been bombed back in September, Sex-
ton had sent his wife and son to the country near Cambridge.
Now his camp bed was alongside his bench in the factory
basement, his world reduced to a few square yards.

Sexton, a pink-cheeked leathery little Cockney from Lam-
beth Walk, with an explosive way of talking and gray twin-
Iding eyes, was popular enough around the factory but a mys-
tery man. He rarely mixed or took a pint with the lads just
worked endless hours of overtime in the hope of one day sav-
ing enough to furnish a new home. At the 1 1 A.M. canteen
break he even took an old carrier bag, like any housewife, and
set off for the street market called The Cut to do his weekend
shopping lamb chops, a pound of sausages, potatoes, spring
cabbage, tinned apricots.

Now that the world had turned upside down, Jimmie Sexton
was like many a Londoner a man living on memories. They
flooded back to him as he jostled through The Cut this Satur-
day morning of how thirty years back he had shopped for
Mum in this very market and of how Different life had been
then. A solid Cockney family of fifteen brought up by Dad on
one golden sovereign a week; Mum's steaming bowls of giblet
stew; wedding parties when aunts, cousins, and neighbors
washed down plum cake with sweet port and fish and chips
with nine-gallon casks of beer.

That family life had meant everything to Sexton so that to-
night he was more than ready to mount guard on the factory
roof within a hundred yards of Waterloo Station a priority
target if a raid came. The overtime would mean a few more
shillings for his family.

Sexton, though, had less fears of a raid than of being bored;
his young brother Bill, who lived in the basement with him
and usually shared his fire-watching turn, was spending this
weekend with his wife in Hertfordshire. In any case, the pros-

"Go Down to St. Paul's, Boy"

pects of a raid seemed remote. The Germans must realize by
this time that they could not reduce London by bombing.

Even lacking inside information, most Londoners shared
this feeling. If there was more conscious courage, now the first
exaltation had died, there was still a grim certainty of victory.
When one Jeremiah in his repair crew that morning predicted
ultimate defeat, Telephone Engineer Reg Matthews growled:
"Go down to St. Paul's, boysee them tombs and banners.
We've never lost the last battle yet."

At Fighter Command Headquarters, Royal Air Force,
twelve miles north on the Hertfordshire border, Air Marshal
William Sholto Douglas, chief of fighter defenses, was in the
same soberly confident mood. Today was one of odds and ends
a chat with Captain Riiser Larsen, chief of staff of the Nor-
wegian Air Force, a matinee at the Haymarket Theatre and
the air chief's personal aide, Flying Officer Bob Wright, had
hopes of finishing work earlier than the average 9 P.M.

As the chunky, forceful Douglas puffed at his pipe and
rattled off dictation in the big pile-carpeted room overlooking
the rose gardens, there seemed no reason why he shouldn't. If
the Germans did plan a raidand as yet there had been no
advance warningDouglas could call on only four night-
fighter squadrons equipped with air-to-ground radar. But to-
night, by 6. 1 5 P.M., the moon would be at the full. Under those
conditions, Douglas could throw twelve squadrons of day
fighters, Spitfires, and Hurricanes Mark II into the battle. These
might do a lot of damage on a calm, clear night with the moon
well above the horizon.

As Douglas had put it to his chief administrative officer,
Air Vice-Marshal Hazelton Nicholl: "For months the weather's
been so foul it looked as if God was fighting on Hitler's side,
but now it looks as if we've got the problem of the night
bomber licked."

If the problem was licked, there were plenty remaining as
none knew better than Miss Mary Shearburn, secretary to
Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Today The Old Man was

The City That Would Not Die

almost tractable which always showed that things were worst
and even growled less forcibly about the inevitable crackling
paper makes when inserted into a typewriter.

As always when the moon was full he was a long way from
London-at Ditchley Park, the eighteenth-century Oxfordshire
mansion of his friend Ronald Tree, the American-born social-
ite. Although Churchill himself scorned personal danger, those
close to him were taking no chances. On a moonlight night
both 10 Downing Street and Chequers, the official country resi-
dence of prime ministers, could prove too tempting a target.

Already Churchill had demolished an Englishman's break-
fasta man-sized sole, ham and eggs, a mountain of toast, and
jam. Now, elbows propped on a rubber pad, Cuban cigar go-
ing well, he was once more fighting the war diving into the
special brown box reserved for top-secret papers, rumpling
through communiques and dispatches, dictating to Mary^ Shear-
burn. An anniversary message to the Belgian premier; an
"Action This Day" memo on fighters for the Battle of Egypt;
a longer note to Roosevelt on training pilots in the United
States.

On the face of it, American Lend-Lease was the one star
shining on a dark horizon. Greece was already lost and the
bombers were pounding Alexandria. In North Africa Rommel
had forced the British back to Sollum. The lion-hearted Yugo-
slavs, on whom so many hopes had been pinned, had been forced
to give in. There was news from the Atlantic front and all of
it disastrous almost two hundred merchantmen sunk in April,
more than double January's total and rising steadily.

It was a year to the day since the old warrior had taken office,
a year since he had promised his people nothing but blood and
toil, tears and sweat, and from a slogan this had become the
unvarnished truth.

This morning London was a city of slogans. Never for
twenty-five years had the people been so exhorted, cajoled.
Its streets were loud with hoardings and posters "Don't Be a
Food Hog" . . . "Careless Talk Costs Lives" . . . "Give a Woman

"Go Down to St. Paul's, Boy"

Your Place in the Shelter." Minister of Home Security Herbert
Morrison's slogan "Go To It! " flashed across at least one build-
ing in every block.

And lately a new slogan had won pride of place "Britain
Can Take It!" The City's seeming invincibility had more than
just strategic significance now; if London died, a legend died
with it. To Churchill and the War Cabinet the whole steady
drift of American opinion toward more active involvement
made it imperative to keep that legend alive.

To all this the average reaction was purest Cockney, a per-
verse refusal to dispense with a sense of humor. Novelty men
in the Strand were selling buttons, "I've Got a Bomb Story,
too!" The East London Tabernacle had a placard displayed:
"If Your Knees Knock Together Kneel on Them!" Only the
incidents that had people excited showed how near the bone
things were. For Barnes Businessman Jack Lippold it was a
red-letter day he'd managed to buy twenty Players' ciga-
rettes and a bar of chocolate. In Hampstead Mrs. Monica Pit-
man thought a bath in five inches of tepid water worth a line
in her diary.

Outsiders, too, felt a nip in the air that had no connection
with the weather a kind of tingle of expectancy. Lieutenant
John Hodgkinson, a young army officer, was arriving in Lon-
don for the first time since the raids began. Unconsciously, as
he left Euston Station, he squared his shoulders: he was in the
front line.

Dr. T. Mawby Cole, a businessman who dabbled in the
occult, arriving from the north, felt it for different reasons. A
month back he had predicted to an astrologers' conference that
"something staggering" would happen on May n. The last
time the planets had been grouped like this, with the sun,
Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury grouped in
Taurus, directly opposite the moon in Scorpio, had ushered
in an era of blood and slaughter: the onset of die Thirty Years'
War and the persecution of the Huguenots.

Despite the inner tensions, old habits died hard. As always on

The City That Would Not Die

a Saturday morning, for instance, Mrs. Margaret Daley was up
early in her flat on Brighton Road, South Croydon, twelve
miles from the City's center, polishing her parquet till it shone
like plate glass. A motherly, carefully groomed woman in her
forties, Mrs. Daley was tonight working an ambulance driving
shift at the local St. Augustine's Depot no sinecure if it came
to a raid, for Croydon was a factory area. Yet the habit per-
sisted, and Mrs. Daley was setting about her parquet just as the
nuns in the Convent of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, at Mayfield,
Sussex, had once taught her.

Blitz or no blitz, she wasn't easily satisfied; it would be noon
before she was finished. But there was a real satisfaction in
watching the soft glow steal through; it was the family cottage
at Mayfield all over again, with her mother, a laundress, la-
dling the steaming soapy water into a zinc bath on the kitchen
floor before scrubbing all nine children from head to foot.
Then the ritual of Sunday best: white dresses, white calico
drawers, starched white calico aprons trimmed with blue
ribbon and hand-goffered frills. All her life cleanliness had
come next to godliness, and Mrs. Daley was a woman close to
God.

Eighteen months back she had been a waitress making good
tips; now, she was an ambulance driver earning 2 a week,
but something that she couldn't resist had impelled her to join.
If it came to the risk, God would protect her Mrs. Daley
knew that and she could no longer stomach serving expensive
dinners to overfed people when she was needed more elsewhere.

Now that Bernadine, her fourteen-year-old daughter, was
evacuated to the country, driving an ambulance helped her to
feel right with the world and helped her to forget the grief of a
marriage that had ended in separation. Only one thing nagged
gently at the back of Mrs. Daley's mind this Saturday morning:
the indefinable feeling that she had yet to see the worst havoc
a blitz could wreak. With one half of her she craved action
so much so that in the long, uneventful hours at St. Augustine's
Depot she was the only one who never groused at Ambulance

"Go Down to St. Paul's, Boy"

Chief Harold Lock Kendell's habit of pressing the "Action
Stations" buzzer to keep them on their toes.

Of course disappointment crept in when no action followed
but even scampering for the big converted Chrysler to show
you were ready gave Mrs. Daley the sense of having something
to do. She fretted to be busy, to be needed; on May 10, like
millions of other Londoners, she had already plumbed the un-
glamorous truth a blitz could be terrible, but it could be bor-
ing, too. Often for weeks on end there was only that mock
summons to break the tedium. Mrs. Daley had seen routine
casualties, but nothing that had been too much for her.

The paradox was that if the siren so much as sounded she
was so terrified she could scarcely speak. The fear of being
bombed and buried alive had paralyzed her ever since a strange
wartime nightmare when the walls of her bedroom seemed
to close slowly in on her like a medieval torture chamber. Yet
somehow she couldn't give up. The desire to be neededjust
as her daughter had needed her, as Bernard her husband had
needed her once seemed to triumph over the fear.

Even if the blitz was over, many people felt this overriding
impetus. Even in peacetime Albert George Henley, mayor
of the dockland borough of Bermondsey, had been one to help
others; now his whole life was a dedication. When the raids
were on, he was without sleep for nights on end; working up
to his knees in water, pulling away broken glass and wreckage
until his bare hands streamed with blood; collapsing with sheer
fatigue. He slept in the mayor's parlor at the Town Hall,
often starting work still grimy from the night's raid; ate his
Christmas dinner in the Control Room to remain on tap, then
more work on his Air Raid Distress Fund until the siren drove
him back to the street. Near to pneumonia he had even worked
on from his hospital bed and was back at his desk in ten days
flat.

A heavily-built, slow-spoken docker's son and a stanch trade
unionist, Henley seemed to live for the smoky riverside borough

The City That Would Not Die

where the air was always heavy with the smell of hops and
salted hides.

The morning of May 10 was no exception: an hour's gar-
dening before breakfast then back to the mayor's parlor,
paying out money from his Distress Fund. Gladys, his wife, was
out on welfare work this morning; usually she was always at
his side to write out receipts and help fit out the homeless with
clothes from the basement. It was painful work a sad, shuffling
queue of people who had lost everything, but Secretary Leonard
Corder noted that everyone who went into the paneled parlor,
gay with the carnations that the mayor loved, came out look-
ing brighter. One old woman went in sobbing bitterly; she
came out hooting with laughter, the mayor's arm around her
shoulder.

And Henley had a busy afternoon ahead, too a tea party
followed by a long social evening at a local warden's post.
Gladys hadn't seemed keen on going but Henley had promised
to put in an appearance and he had never been known to break
his word. Once, as mayor of the much-bombed borough, he
had said: "I am the proudest man living." The kind of thing
that mayors too often say, but coming from Henley it had rung
true.

Meanwhile, the radio and the midday editions of the even-
ing papers carried cheering news to all Londoners from Min-
ister of Labor and National Service Ernest Bevin. "Night fight-
ing," he opined, "becomes as expensive to Hitler as day fight-
ing did a year ago." There seemed cause for jubilation, even a
little complacency: in the first nine nights of May, 90 German
bombers had been brought down over Britain.

A hundred miles away across the English Channel, at Vannes,
in Brittany, Hauptmann Friedrich Karol Aschenbrenner was
looking at the sky. He was squadron leader of Kampfge-
schivader (Group) 100, nicknamed "The Fire Raisers,' 7 a task
force of 20 German bombers whose crews, noted for their

"Go Down to St. Paul's, Boy"

skill and daring, were all hand-picked officers. As pathfinders
their function was to spotlight the target for the bombers of
Air Fleets Two and Three with thousands of chandelier flares
and incendiary bombs. Hence Aschenbrenner's study of the
sky, for much depended on the weather. Despite the sparkling
sunlight there was still plenty of low-flying cloud; the fore-
casters didn't put the visibility at much above six miles.

Until late afternoon, then, he must possess his soul in patience,
although this wasn't easy. If the weather cleared, his orders
for tonight were to set London on fire.

CHAPTER TWO

"You Don't Need Gloves Over England"
8 A.M. 12 noon

THE raid had been planned only ten hours before and then
almost as a whim. At midnight on the pth a tea party was still
in progress in the main salon of the Berghof , a white-painted
chalet-style retreat perched on the Obersalzberg high in the
Bavarian Alps. The twenty-odd guests, gathered in the dark-
ened room around a leaping pine-log fire, were a mixed com-
pany: Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, head of the Ger-
man Armed Forces High Command; Hans Baur, a former pilot
of the Lufthansa airline; Fraulein Eva Braun; Dr. Otto Diet-
rich, press chief; Obergruppenfuehrer Julius Schaub; Minister
of Labor Robert Ley and his wife.

Their host over the teacups: Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, Chan-
cellor of the German Third Reich.

The tea parties had become almost routine now; the Fuehrer
had suffered so long from insomnia that almost no one else in
his close circle was allowed to get much rest. And tonight, in
the cold, small hours of May 10, the pattern, didn't vary. No
smoking by order, but endless cups of tea and coffee served by
S.S. men in white mess jackets; the Fuehrer continually leaping
up to riddle the fire with a poker, toss on fresh logs, or fondle
Blondi, his pet Alsatian bitch. The others slumped on wide,
low-slung settees, grunting occasional agreement, but more
often lost in private thought, watching the firelight play on the
bronze bust of Wagner or glow delicately on the Botticelli
nude above the mantelpiece.

"You Don't Need Gloves Over England"

The talk, as always, was a monologue. Already the Fuehrer
had delivered homilies on, religion^ politics, vegetarianism, how
to train dogs, Furtwangler's merits as a conductor.

Around 2 A.M., as he'd often done before, Martin Bormann,
Hitler's bull-necked personal secretary, tried to liven up the
proceedings. He said everything pointed to the British needing
another sharp lesson. Obviously Air Marshal Sir Arthur
Harris, chief of the English Bomber Command, now thought
he could bomb German cities with impunity, and it was notice-
able that Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe did little to prove him
wrong. On the Thursday night the RAF had sent almost
four hundred bombers, its largest force ever, to pound Ham-
burg, Bremen, Emden, and, above all, Berlin, at one and the
same time. What, if anything, asked Bormann, did the Luft-
waffe propose to do about it?

Then Baur, too, jumped in. For months now the policy had
been reprisal heavy raid for heavy raid. The City of London
fire raid of December 29, to pay the British back for bombing
Berlin over Christmas. The heavy raid of April 19 as an equal-
izer for the RAF's shock-punch attack on Berlin two days be-
fore. If these latest raids weren't followed up, too, the German
High Command was going to look pretty small.

More logs on the fire, more cups of tea. Both Bormann and
Baur could see that tonight Hitler was going to need some con-
vincing. It wasn't that the Fuehrer didn't agree in principle
but to bomb London again in force seemed to fly in the face of
his own decrees the top-secret "Operation Barbarossa."

On June 22, one hundred and fifty divisions, German, Fin-
nish, and Rumanian, supported by the massed bombers of Air
Fleets Two and Three, were to launch a surprise all-out attack
on Russia. So far as England was concerned, the order was to
fly limited priority attacks Channel convoys, industrial targets
like the Rolls-Royce Aero-Engine Works at Hillington,
Glasgow.

Now the interest quickened. Others in the circle Colonel
Schmundt, Hitler's chief A.D.C., Professor Morell, his doctor

The City That Would Not Die

could see that tonight Bormann wasn't giving up. Just sup-
posing the British had some inkling about "Operation Barba-
rossa"? Wouldn't a raid at this time serve as a powerful red
herring, a suggestion that the blitz was continuing in full force?
And Baur chimed in a masterly piece of counter-strategy
which only the Fuehrer could have conceived.

It wasn't that either of the two mischief-makers fully be-
lieved in the plot they were hatching. But Bormann particularly
derived a tremendous kick from seeing the Fuehrer change
his mind and knowing that he was the man who could bring it
about. Moreover, it was nearly 3 A.M., everyone was tired and
bored, yet nobody had leave to retire before the Fuehrer him-
self. And there was a certain amiable malice in indirectly prov-
ing to Goering (who lived nearby but was never invited ex-
cept on business) that Bormann and Baur stood better with the
Fuehrer than the chief of the Luftwaffe himself.

It was probably Baur, Hitler's personal pilot and rating high
on the list of favorites, who swung the balance. He said, as he'd
said before, that the Luftwaffe were reluctant to attack Lon-
don because they were afraid. And if they failed to make the
target and return without a night fighter shooting them down,
that showed their lack of skill. Why, he himself would do the
job and pull it off in an antiquated Junkers 52, the good old
three-motor troop transport that was now obsolete as a bomber.

It was a tired old boast and one that never failed. Hitler be-
gan to shake with anger. The failure of the Battle of Britain,
die long-drawn-out blitz to make Britain sue for peace, these
were attributable to Goering's incompetence and the cowardice
of the Luftwaffe's pilots. Around dawn, when the tea party
broke up, it looked to Bormann and Baur as if the reprisal raid
was on.

It was indeed. At 8 A.M. that morning General Hans Je-
schonnek, chief of staff to the Luftwaffe, had just reached his
office in the Wolfsschanze (the Wolf's Redoubt), Hitler's
highly fortified headquarters deep in a pine forest near Ros-
tenburg, East Prussia. At once the telephone rang. It was the

"You Don't Need Gloves Over England"

private line from the Berghof and Hitler was wasting no words:
"There has been another attack on Berlin. We are staging a re-
prisal raid on London. What is the availability of aircraft?' 7

Jeschonnek called for the bulky file labeled Schlacht gegen
England (the Battle against England) and had the answer with-
in minutes: "Almost forty-three hundred, Fuehrer. Over
twenty-three hundred of these are available for a large-scale
attack."

Within an hour Jeschonnek had the machine clicking into
action. First, a check with General von Seidel, the chief quarter-
master, on the supply of aircraft fuel and bomb tonnage. Next,
a call to the chief of Air Fleet Three, Field Marshal Hugo
Sperrle, at his Paris headquarters the Hotel Luxembourg on
the left bank. Jeschonnek said merely that the Fuehrer had
ordered a raid on London and Sperrle would know what to
do reminding him that the bombers of Field Marshal Albert
Kesselring's Air Fleet Two were also available to him. Kessel-
ring and his Chief of Staff General Hans Seidemann were this
morning already in Warsaw. But to keep the projected assault
on Russia dark, not even Kesselring's corps commanders knew
this. Nominally Kesselring remained in command of Air Fleet
Two.

Jeschonnek hung up feeling that the staff work for the raid
had been left in good hands. A monocled giant of a man, and a
passionate devotee of the fleshpots, Field Marshal Sperrle knew
most of what there was to be known about large-scale air at-
tack. As commander of the famed "Condor Legion" in the
Spanish Civil War, he had perfected the technique which until
September 1940 was the pattern of all bombing low-level
saturation attacks which could reduce a city to a spawning mass
of rubble in thirty minutes.

Since that date, though, Sperrle had been evolving a new
technique: the creation of maximum chaos by a mingled non-
stop rain of heavy high explosives and incendiaries. In the great
City of London raid, the bulk of the explosives had been
dropped at the tail end, primarily to hamper the Fire Service.

The City That Would Not Die

Sperrle now saw this as a mistake. It was probable that the
heavy stuff when dropped late caused firebreaks as often as it
impeded firemen.

The field marshalwhose motto> was "Is there a foe that
bombing cannot break? "thought tonight was as good a time
as any to put the new technique to the test.

His one regret was that Hitler, for reasons unknown, had
contemptuously thrown out his scheme to make the blitz fool-
proof by first concentrating all-out attacks on the RAF r s
fighter fields. To Sperrle, this made no sense. If Sir Arthur
Harris had concentrated all his bombers in hitting often enough
and hard enough the twenty airfields from which the blitz
was launched, Sperrle had a sneaking suspicion that the blitz
might never have taken place.

Both Sperrle and his Chief of Staff General Karl Roller,
viewed this morning's order with mixed feelings. It was small
wonder. On the one hand, the standing orders for "Operation
Barbarossa" fly attacks but spare aircraft and crews as much
as possible. This morning a complete turnabout: send all avail-
able aircraft.

And it wasn't the first time that it had happened by a long
way. A few weeks back a meticulous plan for bombing Cardiff
had been shelved at the eleventh hour the Fuehrer wanted all
available aircraft diverted to London. (Later, General Koller
was to cite "Inconsistent and arbitrary orders by the High
Command" as one of the prime reasons why the Luftwaffe's
blitz failed.)

Sperrle and his chief of staff hashed it over. Plans for that
night already included sorties against a number of coastal tar-
gets: Hartlepool, Middlesborough, Plymouth Docks and Wey-
mouth, and one inland low-level mission, the Longbridge Steel
Rolling Mills at Birmingham. But if the Fuehrer said all avail-
able aircraft, that meant using about a quarter of their total
strength say 5oo-plus.

The one factor that seemed ideal was the moonlight night.
So far as Sperrle was concerned, indiscriminately plastering a

"You Don't Need Gloves Over England"

target through low cloud was no way to bring a city to its
knees. The answer was a full moon with Hauptmann Aschen-
brenner's K.G.ioo further lighting up the target to make Lon-
don as bright as a circus arena. To Sperrle the primary con-
sideration was always that the pilot should see his target;
when a Nuremberg tribunal absolved him of terror bombing,
the court broke into spontaneous applause. The fact that a
night fighter might see die pilot at roughly the same time was a
calculated risk. His crews knew him as "The Killer."

Allotting the targets came nextit took the field marshal
and his aide no more than twenty minutes. Before the first
heavy raid of September 7 the planning conferences had some-
times lasted hours but by now it was routineat both the de-
livering and receiving ends. First, as usual, would go Haupt-
mann Aschenbrenner's K.G.ioo, to act as pathfinders over
the marshaling yards and docks of West Ham, to begin with,
then, following the silver ribbon of the Thames, west beyond
Tower Bridge. Each Kampfgeschwader (Group) had its own
section of London, with targets allotted to its wings some
squadrons of No. 53 Wing to head for the Victoria Docks area,
across the river from Woolwich others to concentrate on
Stepney, north and west of the U-bend that marked the Isle
of Dogs; No. 55 to make for the same U-bend and then head
due north to plaster Millwall Outer Docks and West India
Docks; No. 28 Wing to set its sights on the tall chimneys of
the Battersea Power Station, which supplied power enough for
a city of 600,000 people.

So it went, until London was neatly divided into three and
the teleprinters at the Luxembourg Hotel began clacking out
the basic operational orders to the commanding officers at
twenty airfields in northern France and Holland: to Colonel
Finck commanding K.G.2 at Cambrai; to Colonel Stahl, com-
manding K.G.53 at Lille; to Colonel Rath at Eindhoven, Hol-
land, where K.G.4 was based.

It was a question of working fast. Heights had already been
laid down between 9,000 and 16,500 feet but there were still

The City That Would Not Die

a thousand details to settle: loading, take-off time, weather
reports. Colonel Stahl, commanding K.G.53, directed one
wing of 20 to take off from Vitxy-en-Artois at 11.30 P.M., an-
other wing of 20 at the same time leaving Lille. Colonel Rath,
commanding K.G.4, decided that some of his planes, allotted
to the area around King's Cross Station, should load up, as al-
ways on moonlight nights, with naval parachute mines.

Along with the urgency went a sense of fatalism. At the
Castle Maria Kerke, near Ghent, an aide commented that
moonlight made it tougher for the crews. "Ah, well," sighed
General Paul Deichmann, chief of staff to No. Two Flying
Corps, "You can't destroy a wasp's nest without getting into it."

At midday on the roth the crews picked to fly had no more
idea than Londoners that a mission was afoot; they, too, were
more concerned with enjoying the sharp spring weather. At
Vendeville, a small village near Lille where the air crews of
No. 5 Wing, 53 Group, were quartered, Hauptmann Albert
Huf enreuter used his connections with an army unit to borrow
a horse. As the plans neared completion, Huf enreuter, oblivious,
was cantering blissfully through the woods above the village,
pleasantly lulled by bird song.

Not that the prospects of a raid displeased him. Aged twenty-
five, tall and rugged, with the swarthy good looks of a man
from the Harz Mountains, Huf enreuter was one of the Luft-
waffe's best observers and wasn't unaware of the fact. A peace-
time officer, he was equally a trained pilot though with less
operational experience than some for much of this war he had
been flying a desk in the German Air Ministry until he begged
for an operational transfer. Now, after 20 missions, Hufen-
reuter felt he knew most of the navigational answers. He had
a kindly if patronizing contempt for most of the young conscript
pilots that he'd worked with so far.

Leutnant the Baron Walther Von Siber was too busy to
think far ahead. All this morning he was having the hundred-
and-one afterthoughts of a man packing his bags: chasing his
orderly to rescue some shirts from the laundry, writing out

"You Don't Need Gloves Over England"

luggage labels for tomorrow, on the Sunday morning, the
baron, a stocky twenty-five-year-old Austrian with sleek fair
hair, was posted to Warsaw. The baron had no suspicions as to
why; his group was due for transfer and he imagined he was
being sent ahead because he had some knowledge of the terrain
from the Polish campaign. He had permission to travel via
Vienna, where his parents were living, and the prospect of a
family reunion was good.

Once the thought of a mission did enter his mind, and the
baron, who had flown 122 missions, decided privately that he
would make three trips that night to complete the record num-
ber. He had picked his own target, too, whatever the briefing
orders might be: Buckingham Palace. Whoever succeeded in
flattening that was in line for a Knight's Cross from Goering
himself and Von Siber was an ambitious man. And a man whose
ambitions had been sorely disappointed. In eighteen months
as a bomber pilot Von Siber had taken fierce pride in his skill,
the way he identified and pinpointed military targets strictly
according to the book. Then came a bitter scandal Intelligence
had charged that the baron deliberately bombed a passenger
train, defying Goering's explicit order that only goods trains
were eligible for strafing. For two months he stayed in close
arrest, awaiting court-martial, until, by pure fluke, an agent's
report from Britain had vindicated him.

Von Siber, who had always known it was a goods train-
no passenger train was ever as long accepted the loss of senior-
ity philosophically. But the fact that they had doubted his judg-
ment never ceased to rankle.

It was different with Leutnant Martin Reiser, who was
also booked to fly this night. A veteran of 103 missions, Reiser
was already, at forty-three, older than most of the crews, and
lately he had felt an unbearable sense of strain. The medical
officer had told him that his heart was affected and added, at
the same time, that tablets must be the answer there was only
one score on which a man could be grounded now. Reiser asked
what this was, and the doctor replied quietly: "Death. You

The City That Would Not Die

know how short we are of trained crews." After this Reiser
was always joking about being "the oldest man in the Luft-
waffe," but he had come to accept that it was only a matter of
time before he was killed.

At the Castle Roland, an old sixteenth-century chateau at
Villacoublay, Versailles, Reiser got up late, enjoyed a leisurely
bath and breakfast, then sauntered down to look at the bee-
hives. The hives had been a fixture at the castle when the
squadron took over and Reiser, a slightly-built, sleepy-eyed
Bavarian who smiled a lot, had become the self-appointed
squadron apiarist. Before lunch he took advantage of the sun
to get a few color snaps of the cypress tree outside his bedroom
window. Back in Bavaria, Maria, his wife, who was carrying on
the family restaurant, would appreciate these.

The prospects of a mission that night weren't really on his
mind. In the officers' mess, over a beer, a youngster did raise
the topic, complaining that the summer flying kit had been
issued too early; this cold ate into a man's bones. Reiser, re-
membering the bursting flak over London, grinned wryly:
"Son, you don't need gloves over England." Everyone laughed,
then they drank up and went in to the officers' mess known as
the Casino for lunch. It was just a little after 12.15 P - M -

Above. Albert and Gladys Hen-
ley, Mayor and Mayoress of Ber-
mondsey. The Worthing Herald
Right. Marguerita Stahli outside
48 Turney Road, Dulwich. The
photo was taken only a fortnight
before she was buried alive.

Above left. Post Warden Stanley
Barlow, G.M., with Warden
"Sam" Ekpenyon, the Nigerian
he befriended. Courtesy: Stanley
Barlow

Above, Mrs. Margaret Daley.

Left. Jirnmie Sexton and his son
photographed at the outset of
the war. Williams 3 Pioneer Stu-
dios, London

CHAPTER THREE

"&>, the Beam Is on London"
12 noon 5.20 P.M.

JUST as though Field Marshal Sperrle and his plans had never
existed, Mrs. Daley went on polishing her parquet, Marguerita
Stahli snapped on Rex's leash for a pre-lunch stroll, Jimmie
Sexton, in Fields' basement, finished crating another load of
shaving sticks for the army.

At Fighter Command Sholto Douglas departed for lunch at
his flat nearby. Minister of Home Security Herbert Morrison
settled for a quick snack in the Members' Dining Room of the
House of Commons the Cup Final kickoff at Wembley was
timed for 3.30 P.M., and Morrison planned an afternoon's re-
laxation.

Now that Saturday noon had come there was a true sense of
holiday in the City war or no war, the British weekend re-
mained an institution, a cherished interlude that no Briton
would relinquish easily. And from now until the end of sum-
mer the weekend would be prized more eagerly than ever; only
a week back, for the first time in British history, the govern-
ment had brought in the new double summertime. By moving
the hands of the clock forward, the people could magically
enjoy two whole extra hours of light each evening a fact
which had not gone unremarked by Field Marshal Sperrle.

If some grumbled that London was not what it had been, it
was still good enough for most. In Trafalgar Square the foun-
tains were silent, Eros was a shrouded mound of sandbags, the
railings had gone from Green Park, but it was a world of en-
chantment to the supporters of Preston No<rth End, after jour*

The City That Would Not Die

neying 200 miles from Lancashire to cheer the home team.
Blue~and-white rosettes in their buttonholes, they roamed the
streets and jammed the pubs only the rattles, now used to
signify gas, were missing from an otherwise prewar scene.

Down at The Lion, Angel Lane, West Ham, Publican Bill
Barker and his wife Audrey had been on the run since 1 1.30
that morningseveral times Barker had to tell his cellarman,
"One-Eyed Alf," to lay on a new barrel. Some of the demoli-
tion workers, earning 12 to ^15 a week, were drinking
pint after pint of sweet brown ale, although Barker knew they'd
switch to double rums long before he called "Time" at 3 P.M.

Many in the pub this lunch time no longer had any house
or any bed outside a shelter, but there was still a cheery fatal-
ism. One family party was spending pound after pound of the
compensation money the local council had paid out for new
sheets; as if in irrefutable proof that this made sense, the hus-
band shouted, "What use are sheets? We've no house to sleep
in." Once the talk turned to Hitler, but there was little enough
bitterness. As a market woman who had lost her fifteen-year-
old son explained to Barker: "I couldn't hate him, guv'nor.
Hate's all he's got to work on."

In the West End, too, people thought more in terms of
pleasure. Lieutenant John Hodgkinson was arriving at the
Haymarket Theatre with Diana Riviere, a dark, attractive girl
who worked in advertising; like Sholto Douglas they had stalls
to see the new young leading man Rex Harrison and his wife
Lilli Palmer in the Broadway hit No Time for Comedy. Mar-
jorie Felton, a pretty nineteen-year-old, had just entered the
Queen's Hall in Langham Place, St. Marylebone, and was al-
most too excited to speak. This afternoon, in the famous sea-
green-and-gilt concert hall, Sir Malcolm Sargent was conduct-
ing Elgar's Dream of Gerontiw, and this was Miss Felton's
first concert.

At Wembley the scene was gay enough for peacetime new
green turf to replace some scorched by an oil bomb, new gate-
posts to take the place of blitzed ones, the martial music of the

"S/r, the Beam Is on London"

Irish Guards' Band drifting nostalgically on the cold, still
afternoon. At 3.30 P.M. the tightly packed crowds on the
benches saw the game begin a thrill-a-minute aifair with Ar-
senal winning a penalty and missing it within the first three
minutes. And three minutes after that, when Preston scored
for the first time, a roar like a shock wave traveled far over the
packed stands. For 60,000 people Goering's war had ceased
to exist.

Many people found consolation in old, well-loved routines,
and the war was a long way from their minds. On Sydenham
Hill old Mr. Reginald Harpur, a retired electrical engineer,
tut-tutted over his allotment rain was badly needed now and
sparrows and linnets had been plucking the hearts from his
young cabbages. Edward Morris, who kept the dairy restau-
rant in Upper Thames Street, near Blackfriars Bridge, took
his wife for their usual stroll along the Thames Embankment.
"Look/' remarked Mrs. Morris, "how low the ride is this
afternoon." The tide was indeed going out; several feet of
sticky black mud lay between the river and the bank-side
wharves.

Some gave family affairs priority. In Hammersmith Mrs.
Edna Clarke, an auxiliary fireman's wife, was packing a suit-
case; her husband didn't finish duty until breakfast time on
Sunday, so she was off to keep her mother company. Edward
Penrose-Fitzgerald, the diplomat, and his wife Isabel, took the
train to Esher in Surrey where their four-year-old daughter
Sarah was evacuated. Beatrice Hynes, an Acton girl, was talk-
ing over tomorrow's wedding arrangements with her fiance,
Munitions Inspector Thomas Sinden. Miss Hynes had settled
on a blue crepe-de-Chine dress trimmed with white and a pan-
cake hat made of fresh flowers; the one thing on her mind that
afternoon was marriage.

In Lisson Grove, the tenement quarter of St. Marylebone,
Mrs. Rose Simons, a plump, amiable housewife, was almost
wishing she had never heard of marriage. In her kitchen was a
luscious fruitcake with white icing and candles that she'd

The City That Would Not Die

bought for three-year-old John's birthday on the Sunday, but
the little boy had got wind of it, as youngsters will, and was
giving her no peace. Why did he have to wait until tomorrow?
Why couldn't he have a slice now? In vain Mrs. Simons tried
to explain that it was considered bad luck. By 4 P.M. John had
got his slice of cake along with his afternoon milk.

For some it was business as usual, but it helped to take the
mind off sterner things. Stoke Newington's town clerk, Ernest
Bedford, was working overtime it was the last day in the
quarter for the payment of rates. At 36 Friday Street, in the
shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral, Mr. Alvah Qatworthy, a sixty-
year-old linen manufacturers' agent and a Baptist Sunday-
school teacher, was tidying up his stock. The heavy raid of
three Saturdays back had brought his business to a standstill,
but on Monday, God willing, he would start again. As he got
his samples together, silver-haired Mr. Clatworthy hummed a
hymn tune and reflected how in these grim times fewer and
fewer people wanted Duchess sets or art needlework or tap-
estry cushions.

Others had no chance to forget the war for long at least.
The clock in the Operations Room at Fighter Command
showed exactly 4.3 1 when the London sector of the great con-
trol map of England glowed yellowa "preliminary caution"
warning. It was too mundane now to cause any excitement
a lone raider was nearing the coast, twenty-two minutes' fly-
ing time from London but, as usual, the news was passed to
the General Post Office. From London's 136 telephone ex-
changes the news was passed to more than eight hundred
warden's posts.

At Post Dz, St. Marylebone, Post Warden Stanley Barlow
was already on the spot inevitably, thought those on duty.
Not that Barlow tried to hog the limelight he preached re-
sponsibility and making and sticking to your own decisions
until his wardens knew the refrain by heart. But somehow he
had a nose for trouble, and if a big "incident" developed, Bar-
low was always in the thick of it. Aged thirty-five, Barlow

"Sir, the Beam Is on London"

was a slightly built man of medium height; tense, meticulous,
a chain-smoking perfectionist, he had just finished his studies
as an accountant when war broke out. At times his temper could
flare like magnesium, but he would take chances that other
post wardens ducked some needing moral rather than physical
courage. Every other post warden had ducked the rumpus that
might arrive from taking on "Sam" Ekpenyon, a law student
and a Nigerian chieftain's son. Barlow had taken him on, and
things had gone smoothly from the start.

Despite this Barlow was respected, not liked, by most of his
wardens. They nicknamed him "The Fuehrer," but he did not
mind. He wanted results, not popularity. Few, in any case,
were aware that Barlow was approaching a crisis in his life.

The crisis was physical fear, an enemy which was latterly
giving Barlow as hard a fight as Hitler's war itself. This fear
was worst when the nights were silent; even April 16, which
had shaken him, had not been worse than the aftermath of
one incident in New Cavendish Street he had supervised on
and off for a fortnight while the rescue men dug out bodies.
And on one night patrol since a shutter banging in the May
wind had sent him rushing to a basement, scoring his nails into
his palms to keep himself from screaming out.

That same raid had flooded Barlow's basement flat to knee
height, so that now he shaved in friends' flats and slept in cor-
ners of the post, but this worried him less. The son of a Non-
conformist minister, his whole childhood had been furnished
rooms and sudden movesa rootless, insecure life. Only re-
cently he had told one warden: "I have no friends but Fve be-
come hardened to that. Acquaintances, yes, thousands, but not
one real friend. When I was a kid you swore eternal friendship
to chaps, you blubbed your heart out when you left, but you
never saw them again, let alone the town."

On May 10 nothing of this showed in his face as he stood in
the basement of the solid concrete building on Portland Place
and checked the members of the new shift on duty* At 8 P.M.
there would be another shift to check and they would share

The City That Would Not Die

his vigil until morning. Meanwhile he had to deliver a training
lecture at six, check on the dozen shelters in his area at eight,
and in a long evening try to filch two hours' sleep. So he waited,
lighting one cigarette from another, for the "yellow" warning
to change to "red" the danger imminent, that marked the
wailing of the siren. It was the same with post wardens all
over London.

But nothing happened, and at 5.05 P.M. the telephonist told
him "White message through." The intruder, whoever it had
been, was probably just scouting for coastal shipping.

Few but the post wardens had known about it and fewer still
would have cared. At Wembley a disappointed crowd was
milling through the stadium gates: after forty fast-paced min-
utes the game had dissolved into a scrambling kickabout ending
in a draw, only Fairbrother, Preston's goalie, showing much
form. Things had gone better at the Queen's Hall, where Sir
Malcolm Sargent, dapper and smiling, acknowledged wave
after wave of applause along with singers Webster Booth and
Muriel Brunskill. The London Philharmonic piled their instru-
ments in the band room and prepared for a quick one in The
George over the way.

But pretty Marjorie Felton and her friend Sheila Gardner
didn't jostle to the exits with the rest Marjorie hated crowds,
so they hung back, taking their time. Suddenly the vast hall
was empty and Marjorie Felton exclaimed involuntarily:
"Look, we're the last people here." Miss Felton had no gift of
prophecy it was just that the sight of the historic hall stand-
ing silent somehow awed her.

But it was no time to stand and linger. In the London sky the
barrage balloons still caught the gold of the sun yet the after-
noon was quick; a chill breeze stirred the chestnuts in Regent's
Park. Today a man would need a coat in the evening hours.
The people went home to take tea. Mrs. Daley, who had spent
the afternoon window shopping in Croydon High Street, had
tea by the fire. Then she went to the bedroom and laid out her
uniform for that night's duty. Jimmie Sexton, at a trestle table

"Szr, the Beam Is on London"

in Fields' canteen, was drinking his tea the way he liked it,
sweet, strong, and orange colored, from an enamel mug, and
chewing over the Cup Final result with Albert Fey, another
fire watcher. In Dulwich Marguerita Stahli had a merry fire
crackling in the grate of the big, old-fashioned living room-
Aunt Maud still favored ferns in brass pots and velvet table-
cloths. As she drank a solitary cup she told herself she had
probably been foolish to expect Windsor at all.

All over the City people surrendered themselves to the age-
old ritual of Saturday-afternoon tea: a quiet room, the magic
of firelight, the benison of a hot drink.

And nowhere was it more of a ritual than at the Alexandra
Hotel, Knightsbridge, overlooking Hyde Park Corner. In the
starker world of wartime London the Alexandra was still an
oasis, a reminder of more gracious days. True, the proprietor,
Mark North, had spent more than fifty thousand pounds
modernizing the old hotel that had been die town mansion of
Princess Alexandra of Denmark before she married King Ed-
ward VII. But the atmosphere was still Edwardian, the world
that John Galsworthy immortalized in The Forsyte Saga%
world of rigid, uncomplicated values, which held its own
opinions on good furniture and silver and liked 4 per cent for
its money.

The porters wore the royal crown on the lapels of their
royal-blue livery and even in this time of staff shortage Mark
North insisted that each employee furnish three references.

As they took tea in the Residents' Lounge on this sharp,
sunny afternoon, the talk, inevitably, was of the past. Mrs.
Alice Woods, a sprightly sixty-year-old, talked of the times
before her widowhood, when it was good to be the wife of a
wealthy Irish landowner. As Mr. and Mrs. James Murdoch of
the piano family joined in the circle, Mrs. Murdoch, a former
Gaiety girl, recalled their lovely house in Regent's Park and
her priceless collection of porcelain, wrecked by a parachute
mine.

When Mrs. Frances Morgan and her daughter Daphne got

The City That Would Not Die

back from Queen's Hall, the talk turned to great concerts and
conductors Chaliapin, the leonine Sir Henry Wood, all the
distinguished names that the old hall had known. The easy
hotel-lounge small talk of people who know one another just
so well, and who don't, by tacit agreement, extend the inti-
macies beyond a certain point.

Not that all the residents were minded to sit back and take
life easy. At seventy Mr. Andrew Verdie still put in a bustling
six-day week at the family electrical engineering business near
Victoria Station, relaxed by playing a whirlwind thirty-six-
hole game of golf -with a handicap of nine. A six-footer, with-
out a gray thread in his dark, wavy hair, the old Scot was a big
favorite with the Alexandra staff.

Today had been just an average day for himmostly de-
voted to plans for the future. Tomorrow he and his son James
were making a day of it at Eastbourne by the sea; although a
widower, Mr. Verdie kept the family home going for the
mellow years of his retirement. And on Monday, as he had al-
ready told James, he planned to lift some policies; he didn't see
why his family shouldn't enjoy them right now.

As he strode into the Alexandra at teatime that day he was
thinldng of the rich, full years ahead. Then, scorning the lift,
he took the three flights of stairs to his room without puffing.
It was good to be fit, better still to be alive.

Along the corridor, in the five-room private suites, Percy
Straus, a leading chartered accountant, talked with his wife
Blanche of their pleasant home at Chislehurst in Kent the
shortage of servants had brought them to the Alexandra
eighteen months back. Close at hand General Josepha Hallera,
minister of state in General Sikorski's Polish Government, was
lost in reverie; today was the twenty-third anniversary of the
Battle of the Dnieper, which he had fought and won against
the Germans. The old general was one of the few who found
that day's weather "warm, very close," but Dnieper had been
a battle fought on horseback in snow and rain.

"Sz>, the Beam Is on London"

At Castle Roland, near Versailles, the Germans prepared
to fight another grimmer battle in calm white moonlight.
Along with his fellow officers, Leutnant Martin Reiser was
taking tea by the lounge fire when the wings commanding of-
ficer, Oberleutnant Speck, came in. "It's London again to-
night."

"Are you going?" Reiser asked when the mild murmur of
interest had died down.

Speck said no. He had been picked for the special low-level
mission that often went hand in glove with large-scale attacks:
command assigned the target, but the pilot could choose his own
take-off time, bomb load, and type of plane. The one condi-
tion: not more than 60 per cent cloud.

The others were envious. Speck had drawn the Longbridge
Steel Rolling Mills at Birmingham and planned to take off at
8.30 P.M. before the moon rode too high, hedge-hopping from
the English coast. Such missions were riskier but they carried
much kudos in the Luftwaffe of 1941.

Speck brushed this aside. He was having trouble with his
observer, who operated the bomb sight clumsily next trip he'd
pick a man with a surer touch. An orderly was sent for the non-
commissioned crews, billeted in another part of the castle. Then
the vast chart of East London was unrolled on the big central
table. "Come on let's get the briefing over."

Unorthodox, perhaps, but by now most knew the map by
heart a quarter of Reiser's roo-odd missions had been over the
capital. So this afternoon it was a mercifully swift briefing
compared with that endured by some wings. For the take-off,,
the 25 planes that made up No. 9 Wing of 55 Group were due
airborne at 11.16, a three-minute interval between planes..
Crews should be alerted a good half -hour before.

Glancing around the table, Reiser checked his own crew of
three present and correct Feldwebel Adolf Schied, the
pilot, a tall, dark man with a Roman nose; Uberfeldwebel
Lorenz Hiiber, the mechanic; last, short, sturdy Leo Schu-
derer, the wireless operator. Since No. 9. Wing was short on

The City That Would Not Die

personnel, tonight they would carry no gunner one less life
to risk in case of attack. Reiser knew he could rely on these
men hadn't they, without even blinking, agreed to fly three
missions during the April 19 raid on London, in honor of
Hitler's birthday? In the paling dawn light they had flown up
to bomb Croydon, and that when they were dog tired, too.

Speck rattled off the briefing. Don't lose sight of the U~bend
of the Isle of Dogs it marked the Millwall Outer Docks to
which they were assigned. Watch the heavy flak from the
battery the British had sited there, and above all watch it up
the Thames estuary; from Sheerness on to London the river
was a series of ominous red blotches marking the main batteries.
Not that the flak would trouble them too much at their allotted
height, 10,000 feet; the bigger problem was night fighters.
Searchlights were not much problem either each bomber now
had a thick coating of lampblack that absorbed the beams.

Pilot Adolf Schied mentioned the one drawback to this:
crew members could no longer stencil a minute white fish on
their planes after each mission. They called these kleine pische
small fry. There was a chorus of assent; it had been a cheer-
ful way of affirming that London raids were very routine
indeed.

Speck made his final point: the stack of the McDougall
Flour Factory, which "Lord Haw Haw," the British traitor
William Joyce, had christened "the packet of Woodbines"
was a landmark to help fix the farthest point north. The allusion
meant nothing to the crews, but they called it "Woodbines"
just the same.

About five, when the briefing broke up, someone made the
same flat forced joke that came with every such mission: "One
third-class return to London, please."

Reiser took his charts to his own room, slumping by a pine-
log fire to pore over finicky calculations. Wind a maximum
1 2 miles per hour. About eight tenths cloud earlier on but clear-
ing fast now; the forecasters predicted "calm and fine with
slight mists."

"Sir, the Beam Is on London"

If all went well, then, a take-off at 1 1.16 would bring them
to the French coast in forty minutes. Another eighteen minutes
to the English coast at Southend. Then sixteen minutes from
the English coast to London. With luck they would be over
the target at 1 2.30 A.M. ninety minutes after the raid was under
way. After that a lot would depend on his own accuracy as a
navigator and even more on the accuracy of Hauptmann
Aschenbrenner's pathfinding.

The same thought was in the mind of Leutnant General
Willy Haenschke, the Luftwaffe's senior signals officer, in
northern France. Toward 5.00 P.M. he contacted Oberleutnant
Karl Fiebach, who had command of all ground-control stations
on the coast: "We should be testing the beam."

Fiebach agreed. Disconnecting, he made priority calls to the
stations selected to lay tonight's guide beams Station Anton,
near Cherbourg; Station Berta, near Calais; Station Cicero, near
Fecamp. Tonight these powerful radio beams were to be laid
on a southwest-to-northeast axis, the two satellite beams in-
tersecting the main "X" beam, Anton, over the industrial sub-
urb of West Ham.

If Aschenbrenner's "Fire Raisers" rode the tone zone of
beam Anton from Cherbourg, a complex receiver inside each
plane would register both points of intersection. The second
intersection marked zero hour without any need for tricky
navigation.

The device was by no means perfect but it was accurate
enough. Haenschke knew the British could pick up the beam
but not their method and he knew they would try to jam
it. But it was a cat-and-mouse game with uncertainties on both
sides the British would know a raid was planned, but what
then? London was a big city. West Ham could be only the
beginning.

Moreover, other stations along the coast were laying decoy
beams, crisscrossing over other sectors of the capital. So no one
could be certain where the bombers would strike first, or
which beam to jam.

The City That Would Not Die

At 5.10 P.M. Fiebach rang back. The beams were laid. They
were making necessary realignments for wind, but it looked
as if everything would go according to plan.

The news was being shared. At Fighter Command Head-
quarters, London, Squadron Leader "Dickie" Richardson,
the Filter Room's junior controller, got an urgent call from
No. 80 Wing, the RAF's top-secret monitor unit at Harrow-
on-the-Hill. Now, at 5.15 P.M., Richardson began making a
series of routine calls to Fighter Command's Sector Ops
Rooms, the Gun Ops Room of Anti-aircraft Command, to
Naval Ops at Rosyth, to the General Post Office, to London
Fire Service Headquarters by the riverside at Lambeth.

At Lambeth the phone rang in the annex to the main con-
trol room, the office of Deputy Chief Officer Major Frank
Jackson, and the major answered. Richardson, after identify-
ing himself, said only: "Good afternoon, sir. The beam is on
London."

At 5.17 P.M. Chief Superintendent Augustus May, in charge
of Home Office Fire Control, Whitehall, heard Jackson's voice
over the wire: "Mr. May, this is Major Jackson. I want a
thousand pumps closed in on London tonight."

CHAPTER FOUR

"There's That Nasty Man"

.2 077 P.M.

CHIEF Superintendent Augustus May was flabbergasted. In
thirty-two years' service he had never before heard such a re-
quest from the chief of the former London Fire Brigade.

Minutes before Jackson rang May had had warning that the
"X" Beam was laid on London; the news had come from Wing
Commander Warburton, Fighter Command's Home Office
liaison officer. Yet before the size of the raid could even be
gauged Jackson was asking for a thousand pumps the pro-
fessional's word for fire engines.

He now told Jackson: "Sir, that's impossible. I'm down to
bedrock because of Liverpool and Hull. I'll just have to do the
best I can and ring you back."

As supervising officer of Home Office Fire Control, May
had to see every town in Britain adequately covered in event
of a fire blitz. It was a nightmare task. On the Friday night it
had been Hull, all its riverside quay gutted; for seven nights
on end Liverpool the City was near to cracking. Supposing
tonight's raid wasn't a fire raid? Supposing bigger raids blew
up against the northern ports once May had drained them dry
of engines? Yet even convoys traveling by moonlight would
need to take the road now if they were to arrive in time.

A quick check on the maps showing strength returns then
May rang the regional fire officer, Commander Sir Aylmer
Firebrace. A handsome, aloof former naval officer, Firebrace
was attached to Herbert Morrison's staff to mobilize all the
fire brigades in the immediate outer London region, outside
the hundred square miles of Jackson's jurisdiction.

The City That Would Not Die

"Sir, I've just had a call from Major Jackson. He wants a
thousand pumps closed in on London tonight."

"What are you doing about it? "

"I can't let him have a thousand, sir. The most I can let him
have is 750."

"What are you going to do with them?" asked Firebrace,
and May already had the answer: "I propose to concentrate
them on strategic points around the capital" Firebrace ap-
proved: "Let him have as many as you can." His own staff was
already alerting outer London engines with 1 60 closing in to
the eastern sector alone.

In the underground control of the Fire Service Major Frank
Jackson tried to anticipate the worst that could happen. No
man was better equipped to do it. After twenty years' service
with the old London Fire Brigade he was worshiped by all
who knew him; even the communist-dominated Fire Brigades
Union had christened him "Gentleman Jackson." They loved
everything about him his urbanity, the gentle smile even when
things were worst, the same unhurried, courteous approach to
all comers. "To some senior officers," one fireman recalls,
"ordinary firemen were cattle. Major Jackson would walk a
hundred yards out of his way to say good morning to a fire-
man swabbing down the floor. He would remember his name
and details of his family."

Tonight Jackson foresaw many problems which it would
have been hard to detail over the telephone. But most of them
boiled down to a simple mathematical fact: in the hundred
square miles governed by the London County Council, who
also ran the Fire Service, there were 1,270 fire appliances. An-
other 1,242 in the outer London region making 2,512 ap-
pliances in all.

It was an impressive total yet on December 29 all those
appliances in action, with 300 reinforcing pumps from the
provinces, were not enough to check the fires that Hauptmann
Aschenbrenner had lit. Even a medium fire might now warrant
a ten-pump call, but on April 16 most of the 2,200 fires that

"There's That Nasty Man"

raged had needed 30 apiece. Hence Jackson's heart cry, for
if the beam was on London, time was of the essence.

Already Jackson could see his own mobilizing staff getting
down to business at the six-bank switchboard, led by the jovial,
hard-swearing Superintendent "Shiner" Wright and District
Officer Ernest Thomas. First task was to alert the chiefs of the
City's five fire-force districts and their divisional deputies. At
Knightsbridge Station, headquarters for the southern division
of Westminster, Superintendent George Bennison got the call:
"Looks like a dirty one tonight, George." At Whitechapel,
covering one third of the City of London and all the East End,
Chief Superintendent Harold Norman heard: "Better keep
your eyes skinned tonight, Harold boy."

It was enough. Within minutes the fire chiefs were changed
into full working rig blue serge uniforms with heavy leather
belts, leather fire boots, steel helmets, and oilskins at the ready.
Superintendent Bennison rang his watch room: "Look, no
pumps on light exercise or anything hang on to all you've got."
At Whitechapel a sub officer wanting three hours off found
Harold Norman unreceptive: "Nobody leaves the station until
further orders." The London Fire Service were ready for
action.

Almost nobody else gave action a thought. On this clear
evening of double summertime the sun still lingered and the
City was in carefree mood. Where a few months back people
hastened to dine at six, the three-week lull had set the dinner
hour back to the peacetime level of 8.30 or even nine. There
was a greater willingness to risk dining out, as if, despite the
portents, people were willing themselves to believe the blitz
was over, turning the clock back to 1939.

There were many places where this illusion held good. Not
only the Savoy, but die Dorchester, in Park Lane, whose gas-
proof shelter was bolstered by twelve feet of concrete; the
brochures claimed, "Experts agree that the shelter is absolutely
safe against even a direct hit." And there were also Hatchett's
in Piccadilly, the Ritz Bar almost opposite, the Berkeley, where

The City That Would Not Die

the younger set went. There were still good bands to set the
feet of young bloods and their girl friends tapping: the Savoy
Orpheans with the American Carroll Gibbons at his white
piano; Jack Jackson with his silver-toned trumpet at the May-
fair.

And there were still, despite all, the staff who knew their
customers. They had served them prewar and knew how they
liked things done. At Lansdowne House the waiters knew the
Prince von Stahremb erg whom they called the Bonnie Prince
Charlie of Middle Europe would arrive with an even lovelier
girl than last night. Head Porter Chamberlain, at the Savoy,
doggedly refused promotion from the Embankment entrance:
it was the door that Winston Churchill always used. Mr.
Bonesi, at the Berkeley, had installed pink satin curtains in his
air-raid shelters. It was the same all over the West End.

Even in quiet backwaters such as the Alexandra, which was
unlicensed and certainly no place for a wild party, the tradi-
tion held. Hall Porter Frederick Willis knew how General
Josepha Hallera, the Polish minister of state, thought that
Willis looked like Bismarck. "How is my friend Bismarck?"
the old general would inquire several times a day, and Willis
always played along.

At the Alexandra these little personal touches were part of
a tightly knit world that still, in May 1941, tried hard to stem
the tide. For instance, Night Porter Charles Mattock knew that
old Lady Banner kept herself to herself and liked her chair set
well apart in the lounge. In the same way, Headwaiter Joseph
Larnock knew what store Percy Straus, the accountant, laid
on snowy table linen, and how Paymaster Rear Admiral Martin
Bennett, normally a genial man, hated breakfast-table chitchat.

As usual, no one at the Alexandra was dining late 7.30 was
the fixed, immutable hour. Apart from the discreet clinking of
cutlery there was litde sound in the lofty ivory-painted dining
room with its marble pillars and blue-and-gold carpet. Many
were lonely people dining alone: Mr. T. Blake Butler, a de-
scendant of the Ormondes of Kilkenny; Rear Admiral Bennett;

"There's That Nasty Man"

Andrew Verdie, who had failed to persuade his son James to
spend the night the young man pleaded a dinner date, promis-
ing to pick his father up for the Eastbourne trip early on Sun-
day. The men wore dark suits, a concession to formality, the
women printed silk dresses and velvet bridge jackets. In the
almost religious hush people gave themselves up to enjoying the
food Chef Theo Kummer had graduated under Escoffier and
his sole in vermouth and veal escalop Alexandra were justly
appreciated.

Upstairs something strange was afoot. Next to General
Josepha Hallera's flat, on the first floor, stood a large confer-
ence room with glass-paneled doors; it didn't belong to the
general's flat but was set aside for his convenience when he
conferred with his adjutant. General Hallera had no need to
use the room to reach the main hotel lobby, but on this night
by chance he did. As he entered he was intrigued to see two
officers in naval uniform bending over a large map.

To cross the room the general had to pass within feet of
them close enough to know that they were speaking voluble
French and to see that the map was an air-flight atlas of Lon-
don and district.

Neither man looked up, but still the general didn't like it.
Nobody had warned him that the room was likely to be in use,
and what would French naval officers want with air-flight
charts? Going on down to the lobby, he ran into a British
colonel and told him what he had seen. "Are they English or
not?" the colonel asked.

The general was almost certain they weren't, so the two men
went back upstairs to the first floor. Now the conference room
stood empty. The officers had gone.

Back in the lobby General Hallera contacted his friend
"Bismarck"-Hall Porter Frederick Willis. Willis had no
knowledge of any officers other than British nationals staying
in the hotel. And no one had sought the necessary sanction to
use the conference room.

The three men discussed it uneasily for a little, debating

The City That Would Not Die

whether or not to call in the police. Somehow the thought of
starting a false-spy scare and looking ridiculous made them
think twice; there probably 'was a rational explanation. In
the end, as usually happens, they did nothing. The general
went back to his flat troubled by a premonition he couldn't
define.

Few others dining early had such premonitions. The Penrose-
Fitzgeralds found things almost too quiet in the dining room
of their Kensington service chambers, although sometimes Mrs.
Fitzgerald couldn't believe her eyes. The proprietress was serv-
ing dinner in full evening dress and long white gloves.

Lieutenant John Hodgkinson and Diana Riviere made plans
for a traditional English dinner. From Diana's flat behind West-
minster Abbey they rang Simpson's-in~the-Strand, famous for
its trolley-borne roasts, to inquire about saddle of mutton.
When a voice assured them it was on they set off by taxi only
to find it was the one item missing from the night's menu.
Hodgkinson registered his protest, so the headwaiter went away
to return holding a very small pantry boy by the ear. "This,
sir, is the culprit. He misunderstood when he answered the
phone."

The lieutenant was so contrite that he told them to forget it
and please to let the boy off. As they settled down to succulent
chops and beer in silver tankards, Diana, woman wise, mused
that the lad might hold down his job for this very purpose.

At 48 Turney Road, Dulwich, the meal was already over.
An hour back Marguerita Stahli had almost given up when
suddenly the doorbell pealed and Windsor was there, clad in
heavy Air Force greatcoat, his forage cap bearing the white
flash of an air-crew cadet. After the six-hour journey he seemed
all in, and Marguerita thought with a pang of how he had
wanted her to come to Blackpool instead, and have a good time.
But she was due in the office first thing Monday, and you had
to balance a free-leave pass against the cost of the fare. So while
the youngster relaxed by the fire Marguerita fixed supper-
cold ham, potato salad, stewed fruit.

"There's That Nasty Man"

Afterward they just sat on the sofa, holding hands and talk-
ingit was six months since they had seen one another and
there was a lot to be said. About their engagement they had
planned to buy the ring in Blackpool over Christmas but some-
how Aunt Maud had not wanted to be left, so there had been
no meeting, and still there was no ring. About old friends in
the office, for Windsor had been on the administrative side of
the Church Missionary Society before joining up. About how
tough the wireless operators' course was proving, so that all
of them at Blackpool wondered if they'd ever get through.
About cycling, which was the hobby that had bound them to-
gether, and of the rides they'd had in the summer before the
war how once, in Kent, they had cycled through a village
called Pratt's Bottom and Marguerita had refused to credit
that such a place existed.

It was the usual half -sleepy conversation that young people
in love will make before a warm fire, and it was memorable
only because this was the last night on which they would ever
discuss these things.

By Waterloo Station the warehouses of Fields' Soap and
Candle Factory were cold, silent caverns grouped about the
half -acre of stone yard. Jimmie Sexton, cooking sausages in
the empty canteen, thought for a moment of going to join the
other fire watchers in the basement of the north building, where
Fire Guard Chief Bill Wilks had his control point. But there
were more candles to be crated yet; with luck they would have
a quiet night and he could work on undisturbed until midnight.

The little Cockney didn't resent the fact that life was now
a seventeen-hour working day. Not once in forty years had
he ever taken a holiday; times had been too tough. A week off
stretched on the parched grass of Southwark Park, yes, but
never a trip to Brighton or a crossing on a Boulogne steamer.

Working for his family had always been his hobby, like
his dad's before him; he could remember the paydays of child-
hood when his mother put on a clean dress and white apron and
the children lined up in the kitchen while Dad solemnly laid

The City That Would Not Die

that one gold sovereign in her lap. His father, still living with
his daughters "south the river," as he called it, had been a grand
man to know a post office engineer, fiercely proud of home and
family. Once he had even chased the landlord out of the house
because the man had walked in without knocking.

He wanted to bring young Jim, his five-year-old, up like
thatif there was ever again a chance of getting a home to-
gether. On this Saturday night Sexton had no doubt that Britain
would win the war, but how long was it going to take? His
basic wage was only 2. n. od, and only by working over-
time every night of the week could he put by any savings. It
did not occur to him that there were other jobs where he might
earn more. Fields' was an old-fashioned firm, years behind the
times in some ways, but they had given him a job in the slump
of the thirties when no one else would and it seemed only right
to stay. All the five Sexton boys had worked there at one time
or another. Young Jim could do worse when his time came,
though he wanted something better for him}\t could make
something of himself, perhaps even get an office job.

He felt a sudden voiceless yearning for all those fathers of
families in the miles of slate-roofed houses south of Waterloo
who this night had their wives and children with them Mr.
Sexton's voice is still shaky as he recalls it.

At 7. P.M. by the canteen clock he washed up knife, fork,
and enamel plate, tucked the stub of his unfinished Woodbine
behind his ear, and trudged back to work.

Hauptmann Albert Hufenreuter felt a sense of relief. The
news that No. 5 Wing was to fly did not arrive with Leutnant
Reiser's wing at Villacoubly, but did arrive at 6 P.M. After a
light meal he and his fellow officers piled into an open truck
and jolted the fifteen-minute journey to the airfield for their
briefing.

There was more ceremony here than with Reiser's outfit-
more young and inexperienced pilots for one thing, and for an-

"Therms That Nasty Man"

other No. 5 Wing was booked to do more than pound the
docks. Around 7 P.M. they jammed into the Briefing Room,
squatting on hard benches while the Group Commander Colo-
nel Steinweg used his pointer on the big wall map of London.

"You can branch out from the Isle of Dogs," Steinweg told
them. "Use it as a landmark and work westward." He showed
the center of the City, with St. Paul's as a landmark; due west
was the bridge spanning Ludgate Circus, the one railway line
in the whole capital connecting North and South London. It
was known to carry heavy munitions traffic day and night.

This rated as priority, as did all the river bridges running
south from Tower Bridge Southwark Bridge, London Bridge,
Waterloo Bridge, though not in. use to traffic, Westminster
Bridge. The darkened mass of the Houses of Parliament was a
good landmark for this one.

The other targets Huf enreuter knew almost by heartthe
Elephant and Castle road junction, because it was the main
artery of South London, where all bridge roads met; Waterloo
Station; almost all the warehouse property flanking the river
between Tower and Westminster bridges.

For the Londoners living near these targets Huf enreuter had
the same feeling as many other men in his wing. His job was to
destroy industrial property but he had no hatred for the people
as such, and no desire to kill them any more, he supposed,
than did the RAF pilots who came over to pound Hamburg.
He never doubted that the German cause was just; eventually,
he knew, London would have to crack and Germany would
win. But like all the others, he felt a sneaking admiration for an
enemy who could take punishment like this and keep on taking
it and somehow manage to survive.

Hufenreuter's job tonight was to navigate his pilot, fair-
haired, blue-eyed young Richard Furthmann, on to the Step-
ney City of London boundary, but the other targets were
good alternatives if cloud blew up or the fighters got too active
in any particular region.

And as Steinweg talked, the room grew quieter, as if this

The City That Would Not Die

possibility was now sinking in. Near Hufenreuter someone
muttered: "All right, then, we go but what happens to us?"

The same thought niggled in everyone's mind. At the half-
hour met session the forecaster told them, "The latitude north
of London has no more astronomical darkness." Pilot Richard
Furthmann didn't catch on, so Hufenreuter translated: there
would be no real darkness all through this night.

Furthmann said nothing, but both men were thinking the
same. Moonlight, a wonderful boon a year ago, was less wel-
come now. If the night fighters came up off the ground, the
Heinkels would be sitting ducks.

Nobody was really scared, but somehow these last-minute
preparations were always tenser than the real thing. And there
were still more headaching details to come the distribution of
light signals for identification purposes, codes for the wireless
operators, up-to-the minute data on changes in radio beacons.
Next they drew parachutes and picked up some simple flight
rations chocolate spiked with caffeine, dried raisins, pep pills.
When they got to the dispersal hut, Hufenreuter, as always,
went the rounds, asking who didn't want theirs. He collected
them to send home to his parents in Quedlinburg, below the
Harz Mountains.

Leutnant the Baron Von Siber had more to do and was enjoy-
ing himself. His bags were packed, in the afternoon he had
managed a few hours' duck shooting from a punt; the dinner
had been good the claret he had himself brought from Bor-
deaux. And the baron, a self -avowed efficiency expert, had
organized the kitchens on a round-the-clock basis so there
would be a good meal when they got back. Von Siber was one
of the few fliers that night who thought so confidently in terms
of getting back.

At 7 P.M., as wing leader and technical officer, he was al-
ready at Vitry-en-Artois airfield making the round of the
crews. His stern edict to the 30 pilots of No. 3 Wing, 53 Group:
keep rigidly to the altitude of 12,000 feet plus. To minimize
the risk of collision each wing had its own allotted altitude

"There's That Nasty Man"

and time span over the target, each plane a specified quarter-
hour interval to find the target and deliver its bomb.

By 7.30 the crews of the 370 planes slated to make the first
sortie had been briefed. There were still three hours to go, but
they knew now what they had to do.

In London the predicament was different: people checking
on duty, an air of quiet watchfulness, nobody really knowing
what to expect.

At Warden Stanley Barlow's post the mood was typical. As
he checked on the 8 P.M. shift at Post Dz, St. Marylebone, Bar-
low was glad to find some of his best wardens on duty, but he
didn't necessarily contemplate having to call on them. One by
one they trudged in, slinging their tin hats on the pegs, collect-
ing mugs for a brew-up of tea: "Sam" Ekpenyon, the Nigerian
chieftain's son; dark, enthusiastic Winnie Dorow, a young
Jewish tailoress just out of the training stage; pretty fair-haired
Annie Hill, who by day worked in a garment wholesaler's, and
Motor Mechanic Charlie Lee; full-timer Jim Grey; Joan Wat-
son, the hairdresser; and Eileen Sloane, a handsome woman who
often ran the post on her own.

Lately Barlow and Miss Sloane had been seeing a lot of one
another and the ripening friendship was the subject of a lot of
good-humored ribbing.

There was little of that tonight. Despite the lull, Barlow was
in a prickly moodsomehow the thought of how that banging
shutter had frayed his nerves was eating at his self-confidence.
He rousted one warden so long over a minor breach of dis-
cipline that the post suddenly went a shade too quiet. Finally
"Sam" Ekpenyon muttered: "Give the bastard a cigarette,
someone." It broke the tension; Barlow himself joined in the
laugh.

^ It was early yet, and a few started a game of darts to kill
time, others settled to poker. But there was plenty to do before
the night was out. Some bunks had been broken in one of the
shelters; a woman had reported for die fifth time that her Aus-

The City That Would Not Die

trian maid was sending smoke signals to the Germans; Barlow
himself must check with the marshals of each of the dozen
shelters.

Meanwhile, he sent Wardens Patricia Arden and Elizabeth
Burger on a house-to-house check. The nightly census wasn't
infallible; the post area, close to Euston Station, was too color-
ful a checkerboard of contrasts. In these high, narrow streets,
which smelled of spice and dust, fashionable clinics rubbed
elbows with garment warehouses, luxury flats loomed over lace-
curtained Cypriot dining rooms, red-brick tenements hung
with washing backed on to gleaming office blocks. Time and
again people went away for the weekend or invited friends to
stay without letting the post know. The census was just the
best method of trying to find who was sleeping where, a guide
to rescue men and wardens if a building got hit.

Seeing Winnie Dorow check on duty, Barlow tried to think
of what it was he had wanted to tell her, then gave it up it had
somehow slipped his mind. At 8.30 he set off on his rounds;
even if the night stayed quiet he would be prowling on and off
until dawn. He checked and rechecked each street and alley
as he would have checked a ledger, unable to settle but taking
comfort from swift visual impressions that all was quiet.

Most people's evenings were scarcely more spectacular. God-
frey Clarke, a North London corn chandler, was listening to
the radio the Cockney comedians Flanagan and Allen had a
catchy jingle about the failure of the blitz:

We've 'won it, we've done it,
We've beaten them at last
Up in the air . . .

At Clubland, Camberwell, the youth club formed to save poor
children from the streets, the Reverend Jimmie Butterworth
rehearsed a drama class in Jowrney's End. And there was a dance
on, too; most town halls had a dance of some kind tonight,
with tea and buns for the ladies, pale ale and sausage rolls for the
men.

"There's That Nasty Man"

Much the same at Corbett's Lane wardens' post, Bermondsey,
where Mayor Albert Henley and his wife Gladys were the
guests of honor. Now the dance was in full swing, Gladys
Henley couldn't really think why she hadn't wanted to come;
it could only have been an odd premonition. And it was good
to see Albert relax for once, after the grinding months of blitz
better than the cinema where he fidgeted all the time and
picked holes in the plot. At 9 P.M., between dances, Henley
mounted to the rostrum to say a few words about the War
Weapons Week beginning on Monday, for which all Lon-
doners were urged to save. Watching him, Gladys Henley
was proud of the way he could make a speech without using a
single note proud that she was his wife.

They had come a long way together. Seventeen years back,
when they had met as voluntary Labor party workers toiling
for the General Election, Gladys Henley had not liked him at
all yet, strangely, the friendship of the broad-shouldered, fair-
haired young warehouseman and dark, lively Gladys Verrell
became known all over the borough. Even after marriage they
had worked on every election campaign together; when Leon-
ard, their baby came, they would put him to sleep in his pram
and take him to the Saturday-night dance held to raise funds at
Rotherhithe Town Hall. He was a good baby, as placid as his
father; he would sleep all evening in a quiet corner.

Not that Albert Henley wasn't sometimes very angry in-
deed. A stubborn man at times, his lower lip could jut obsti-
nately, the gray eyes go cold and distant. Bullying and aggres-
siveness made him angriest no man hated the war more than
Albert Henley, who fought it night and day. The plight of the
old and friendless made him angry, too; it had taken years of
campaigning before the first block of one-roomed flats for old
people was built in the borough. After that Henley would
walk past them every morning on his way to work. It made him
angrier than anything else in the blitz when these were hit.

Somehow everything about him added up to a husband one
could take pride in: a casual, friendly man, deceptively easy-

The City That Would Not Die

going, who liked sports clothes better than dressing up, who
never forgot to say how much he enjoyed his meal, especially
if Gladys could produce a bloater for tea. A father who liked
reading his son's comics and was still enough of a boy to hop
out of bed at nights and come back crunching a lump of coco-
nut ice. A mayor who would send the municipal car home to
fetch a basket of his favorite home-grown tomatoes but who
preferred to walk through the streets, chatting with the house-
wives on their doorsteps, seeing what he could do to help.

As her husband finished his speech, the thought came to
Gladys Henley: Albert is happiest helping people, and because
he is helping people he speaks from his heart.

It was an hour of dedication. In the shadowy crypt of St.
Paul's Cathedral clergy and volunteer fire watchers knelt side
by side as the dean, the Very Reverend William Matthews,
conducted the simple service: "Lighten our darkness, we be-
seech thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from

all perils and dangers of this night " Then the dean, in battle

dress and steel helmet, manned the control-room switchboard.
Other prayers were shorter, but as much lay behind them. In
Croydon Mrs. Margaret Daley donned her uniform, knelt care-
fully on her polished parquet, prayed as she had done through
every night of the blitz: "Sacred Heart of Jesus, let me let us
be safe tonight."

North of London Air Marshal Sholto Douglas had come to< a
decision: London's safety could best be assured by a "fighter
night." At 9.35 P.M. the usual dusk patrol, a few day and night
fighters, sweeping the raiders' normal routes: the Wash, be-
tween Boston and King's Lynn, the Sussex coast over Beachy
Head and Selsey Bill, along the Thames estuary between Rom-
ford and Southend.

Then, if the raid built up to follow the beam warning, both
day and night fighters zoo-plus planes would soar into the
battle. Day fighters would patrol in layersbetween 14,000
and 23,500 feet over London and the Thames estuary. Night
fighters, working under radar control, must hug the coast.

"There's That Nasty Man"

For pleasure seekers the evening had just begun. The last
houses had not yet spilled out from the cinemas; the people
who packed the warm, humming darkness of the West End
houses had plenty of choice. Clark Gable in Boom Tcrwn at
the Empire; Gable again in Gone with the Wind at the Ritz;
Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle at the Gaumont. At the Carlton,
which had the Jack Benny show Love Thy Neighbor, Link-
man William Sherrington, a wiry sixteen-year-old, stifled a
yawn; staff was so short he was just finishing a twelve-hour
day. He looked forward to a long night's sleep in his mother's
house by the Elephant and Castle.

In the twilit alleys behind the cinemas the ladies of the eve-
ning patrolled before the shopkeeper's "Business as Usual"
signs in the now-almost-regulation garb silver-fox capes,
slacks, pocket torches for when it grew darker.

At the Savoy Quentin Reynolds, the celebrated American
journalist, was seeing what M. Abel Alban's kitchen could do
in the way of potted shrimps and grilled sole. As he dined
with U.P. correspondent Ed Beatrie, they discussed Beattie's
quaint ambition to retire to Sarasota, Florida, because it was the
winter headquarters of the circus. Next door, at Simpson's,
Diana Riviere and Lieutenant Hodgkinson had reached the
coffee stage. George Ronus, manager of the Dorchester, ar-
rived at the Colony Club, Berkeley Square, to dine with Lord
Donegall, the society columnist.

As the dusk deepened, the city streets came alive with a
steady tramp of feet the bustling feet of a family party; the
probing of a blind man's cane; the sharp, slow step of a mother
carrying a childlike an undrilled army on the march. Armed
with bundles and bedrolls and flasks of tea the people thronged,
laughing and chattering, toward their chosen shelters. To Mrs.
Anne Russell, arranging her black-out at a Hampstead window,
the scene had a holiday flavor; she thought of the villagers
trooping to a flower show in die countryside of her child-
hood.

For John D. Allen, an alert twelve-year-old, tramping to

The City That Would Not Die

Elephant and Castle Underground with his parents, it held
less charm. Once below, the warm, swirling wind died to a
stifling animal heat. The twisting, tossing sleepers, packed
head to foot, the platforms, gritty and buff-colored with trod-
den sand, the reek of the latrines they all added up to a new
and unwelcome world.

Many hundreds were bedding down with friends or in build-
ings where they knew the watchman; Commissionaire Bill Lay-
cock had a dozen regulars and a black retriever using his rest
room at the Elephant and Castle Cinema. At least thirty
jammed in the basement of Fields' Soap and Candle Factory,
where Jimmie Sexton had his bed.

As they trooped through the shadowy streets they were a
polyglot company in Warden Stanley Barlow's area by
Euston Station the shelter rules were in eight languages. It all
showed an informality revolutionary for Britain, although
many shelters had by tonight become as exclusive as clubs.
Wealthy West Enders had wardrobes and even pianos in the
shelter near the Dorchester in Park Lane; the taxi drivers were
a clique sticking to Leicester Square; Jews to Mrs. Bertha
Roston's wine parlor in Stepney; down-and-outs to the Hun-
gerf ord Arches beneath Charing Cross Station, where Superin-
tendent Bernard Nicholls's Anglican Pacifist unit collected the
resultant vermin for typhus research.

Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, the brave and the fearful,
they added up to only 70,000 Londoners using the public shel-
ters this Saturday night.

To the men who knew this was a bad sign. In Poplar, Chief
Warden Ted Smith realized people had got more confident
the rescue services would have their work cut out in a raid.
CamberwelTs ambulance superintendent, William Harrison,
put it down to local prejudice; a street shelter had been hit and
many had died several weeks back. Now the locals distrusted
shelters. They were taking a chance at home.

Three miles up in the sky Hauptmann Friedrich Karol
Aschenbrenner was also taking a chance, and holding his

"There's That Nasty Man"

breath. At 10.45 P * M - the zo-strong spearhead of K.G.ioo was
just crossing the English coast line east of Lulworth, Dorset.
Aschenbrenner and his pilots were riding the tone zone of
beam Anton, the frequency a steady, regular pulsing in each
wireless operator's ears, and for nothing on earth could they
now alter height or course or take evasive action. For fifteen
full minutes they must fly unwaveringly in Indian file each
pilot walking a kind of aerial tightrope.

From Lille and Laon the first detachments of K.G.26 and
K.G.77 were winging to the rendezvous, and on twenty air-
fields from Holland to Cherbourg bomber engines were blazing
into life. As British radar stations showed the first blips dancing
forty miles into France, Squadron Leader Cyril Leman, in
Fighter Command's operations room, rang Air Marshal Sholto
Douglas: "There's something big on tonight, sir,"

In the underground filter room, next door, Squadron Leader
"Dickie" Richardson struggled to sort order from chaos. Be-
low Richardson, perched in the controller's gallery, a tense
team of plotters, tight-packed around a giant map of the coast
line from Penzance to Aberdeen, kept nightly touch by head-
and-breast sets with the radar stations girdling the coast.

But tonight the reports were mounting so fast it was hard
to tell what was going on. First the Highstreet, Norfolk, sta-
tion; then West Bromley, Suffolk; Canewdon, on the Thames
Estuary; Poling, Sussex; Canewdon again, the controller there
reading quick sense into the white scallops of light dancing on
the opaque glass radar screen: "M for Mother 2301, 2o-plus at

12,000."

To Section Officer Sadie Younger, the filter officer covering
the estuary corner, the rigmarole made disquieting sense. The
grid reference marked Canvey Island on the Thames Estuary
20 or more unidentified aircraft had roared over the point,
flying at 12,000 feet above the river. Five minutes later, more
detail: still hugging the river, the planes were moving west.

From the gallery Richardson called the snap decision he

The City That Would Not Die

would make more than threescore times that night: "Slap a
hostile on that one."

It was suddenly a frantic race against time. WAAFs were
shifting the small magnetic iron plaques marked "Hostile" on
the track; a WAAF beside Richardson with a f ourteen-circuit
head-and-breast set was intoning plot after plot: "Hostile 20-
plus at 12,000"; the news passing to the ops room next door, to
Fighter Command's Sector ops rooms all over the south. All
the time the filter officers kept up a barrage of instructions:
"Get another plot on that one." "Tell them to check that
height."

As K.G.i oo droned steadily over Woolwich, height was im-
portant to Aschenbrenner, too; at 15,000 feet the guns could
reach them so very easily and spoil everything. Time was
running out; to the radio operators the beam tone had changed
to a long-drawn-out throbbingthe first intersection past. As
the planes came onward, London by moonlight seemed strangely
lifeless: the Thames coiling like a ribbon of quicksilver, the
pale miles of massed roofs, the river bridges like a child's
matchwood models. To Aschenbrenner and all his pilots the
silence was uncanny. It was as if the city were dead. Soon the
guns must open up.

Below all was calm, like any serene moonlight night before
the war. Only a few felt a gnawing presentiment. As Sheila
Russell, a pretty secretary, modeled some tennis shorts in the
hall of her mother's Hampstead flat, a neighbor urged through
the half-open door: "Sheila, put on your siren suit, this is no
night for tennis. The moon's like day!" Miss Russell had a
surer yardstick: her sister Pat was about to take a bath so the
sirens were bound to blow.

At Corbett's Lane Wardens' Post, Bermondsey, Gladys and
Albert Henley had answered the final volley of good nights.
As they strolled peacefully back to the mayor's parlor, Albert
decided: "We must go to the shelters and tell people about
War Weapons Week."

"There's That Nasty Man"

Nearing the town hall, Gladys Henley remarked: "I wonder
if they'll come tonight."

"Of course they will," Henley replied. "There's a full

moon."

Some seized on smaller clues. At Westminster Control
Center, "Blitz," the black tomcat mascot suddenly took a fly-
ing leap, landed smack in Special Officer Angela EUiston's in
basket. There were knowing glances Blitz used his own and
normally infallible radar.

At five minutes before 1 1 P.M. London was a strange city
the few knowing or guessing what lay in store, the many utterly
oblivious.

At 1 1 P.M. no one could be in doubt. In Fighter Command's
ops room, as hushed and subdued as a city counting-house,
SholtO' Douglas and Squadron Leader Leman watched from the
circular gallery: across the map of England the WAAF plotters
with their long-handled paddles eased an urgent thicket of red
metal arrows toward the capital. On the gallery's wall map the
suffused lighting round the London region changed from
yellow to red danger imminent. Nearby, along the gallery,
Air Raid Liaison Officer Ronald Squire pressed one of a battery
of buttons connecting with the War Duty Officer at Scot-
land Yard. The news passed to 500 police stations.

For one long minute the cold, high voice of the siren wavered
and cried over the gray miles of rooftops.

As it reached its peak over North London, Mrs. Emmy Shaw,
an Islington housewife, racing panic-stricken for the shelter,
hit the brick wall of a factory head on. She could have known
nothing as the world fell in on her little life. No bombs had
fallen as the blitz of May 10 claimed its first victim.

Most people took it more stoically after the first primitive
coiling in the pit of the stomach came philosophy. So often the
raiders never came at all it might be localized or the guns
could turn them back. At the Savoy, Claire Luce, the American
actress, settled to a quiet game of chess in the Press Bar with
the Chicago Tribtme^s Larry Rue. Signor Giacomo Prada,

The City That Would Not Die

owner of the Soho gourmets' paradise Casa Prada, descended
on foot, as gravely as always, to his wine cellars, to the choice
Burgundies the staff called "Signor Prada's babies." He knew
no fear; merely if they died, he went with them.

In the Savoy's restaurant Quentin Reynolds and Ed Beattie
exchanged glances, and Beattie sighed: "There's that nasty
man." Across the crowded dining room Band Leader Carroll
Gibbons took thought of Hitler; his fingers rippled over the
keyboard as he swung the band into "When That Man Is Dead
and Gone."

At 11.02 Squadron Leader Cyril Leman, in the ops room
gallery at Fighter Command, saw that the dark sprawl of the
metropolis had vanished from the gridded map swamped by
red arrows. Aschenbrenner was over London.

Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle
who planned London's greatest
fire-raid. His motto was: "Is
there a foe that bombing cannot
break?" Liiftwaffenakademie,
Hamburg

Lieutenant Martin Reiser, Luft-
waffe, Villacoublay Airfield,
France

Above. Only a windbreak of Hawthorne prevented Hauptmann Albert
Hufenreuter's Heinkel 3 from exploding against a line of oak trees
near Ashford, Kent. The Kent Messenger. Below. Men of the R.A.F.
Squadron walking to their planes on the night of May 10, 1941.
Courtesy: Air Chief Marshal Sir Thomas Pike, K.C.B., C.B.E., D.F.C.

CHAPTER FIVE

'Why, It Must Be One of Ours"

HU.O P.M.

DOWN at The Lion, Angel Lane, West Ham, Publican Bill
Barker was a busy man at 1 1 P.M. on Saturday, May 10. Nor-
mally the big Victorian pub with its engraved glass and mahog-
any furniture should have closed half an hour ago, but these
were not normal times; the police and ambulance corps often
used the pub as an emergency center, and the padded leather
benches had seen service as a mortuary. Now Barker was wash-
ing and polishing glasses as fast as he could, the four bars were
jammed out, and Audrey, his wife, was at the piano leading an
ear-splitting singsong. Already the company had rollicked
through "Bless 'Em All" and "The Quartermaster's Stores."
Now, as the clock struck eleven, Audrey swung into a tune
with a note of optimism "There'll Always Be an. England."

Although the siren had sounded, Barker was not worrying
that Temple Mills Sidings, then Britain's largest marshaling
yard, lay only 400 yards from his front door. The East Enders'
belief in Kismet was contagious, and the noise of the piano was
drowning out any planes that might be overhead.

At 1 1.02 P.M., seconds after Aschenbrenner's observers were
signaling "Bombs gone" over their intercoms, the first incen-
diaries came whisdrng from the sky. Barker and everyone heard
that high-pitched whine; within a second someone shouted
"Drop!" Glasses went flying and everyone spreadeagled on
the floor, burying their faces. Suddenly they were scrambling
to their knees, laughing shakily, because Audrey Barker,
slightly deaf in one ear and with her back to the room, had

The City That Would Not Die

heard and seen nothing. The defiant notes of "There'll Always
Be an England" were still thumping out above the din.

At once the pub woke to action, but caught off guard it was
easier to act than to think. Across the way some incendiaries
had taken hold, and a butcher's shop was blazing too small a
job for the Fire Brigade, so Barker's customers waded in: labor-
ers, railwaymen, stall holders. A couple grabbed a stirrup pump
and bucket and had been pumping for a full minute before one
rounded furiously on the other. "You bloody fool, there's no
water in the bucket! "

Other bombers were moving in and more incendiaries were
falling not over West Ham alone. All along the eight and a
half miles of riverside between Barking and Tower Bridge
they came showering seconds of thin, high, whistling, then
the sharp clattering as they struck home. To those who watched,
the scene was indescribable. They fell in tenement gutters and
on warehouse roofs; among 250 acres of resinous timber stacked
20 feet high at Surrey Docks; on pavements and in roadways;
lodging in drainpipes, on window ledges. They burned with a
sizzling blue-white glare; above them the chandelier flares came
dripping beautifully down like Chinese lanterns, bathing the
river, the dockside, the miles of slate roofs, in a purer, whiter
glare than moonlight.

Near the City of London East End boundary Police Ser-
geant Fred Scaife was transfixed by the unearthly beauty: he
thought of diamonds glittering on dark velvet. To Station Of-
ficer Albert Garrod, in Clerkenwell, the incendiaries seemed
like a swarm of vicious gnats.

Even trained observers were aghast. In the East End Stepney
Warden John Connolly stood paralyzed. Never in all the blitz
had he seen incendiaries fall on this scale. Young William
Sherrington, the sixteen-year-old linkman from the Carlton
cinema, had just seen his mother to the shelter when the flares
came billowing over the Elephant and Castle. The lad felt his
heart in his mouth. "Now we're in for it."

Elsewhere all was still quiet. In the old walled City of Lon-

"Why, It Must Be One of Ours"

don, the rich, square mile of office blocks, the Police Commis-
sioner Sir Hugh Turnbull was on the roof of Police Headquar-
ters, scanning a peaceful night sky. For ten minutes after the
siren had gone there was no soundso quiet that the commis-
sioner's batman, P. C. Thomas Farquharson, could hear, from
miles away south of the river, a dog bark. Nearby, on the top
of Martin's Bank, Lombard Street, Fire Watcher Len Hill was
also on the lookout. At 11:10 P.M. Hill phoned Control: a
plane had droned overhead from the east heading for St. Paul's.
No sound of gunfire followed.

To Sir Hugh Turnbull the fact seemed reassuring. "Why, it
must be one of ours no one's firing at it." Nobody answered;
at Police Headquarters and all over the City of London it was
a rime for listening. Presently another plane passed overhead,
moving in the same direction as the first. Ten . . . fifteen . . .
twenty . . . the minutes ticked by; still no sound but the
planes' droning farther and farther away by now. Then one
of the planes did a left-hand turn and came back again. Still no
gunfire. P. C. Farquharson thought of the times he had read
how suspense could make the sweat slide down a man's back.
He had never believed a word of it until tonight.

As much as anything it was the long silence after the sirens
had gone that men remembered that night the sick minutes of
silence that frayed the nerves.

Since tonight was a "fighter night," Air Marshal Sholto
Douglas had decreed that the guns could engage targets: only
at 12,000 feet and below 2,000 feet below the bottom layer
of fighters. If the bombers stayed above that level they might
enjoy comparative immunity, unless the fighters were lucky.

A few had premonitions. Engine Driver LesEe Stainer, bring-
ing his engine out of Bricklayer's Arms Goods Depot in readi-
ness for the Cannon Street-Dartford run, had "a sense that
something awful was going to happen." At Borough Market,
near London Bridge, incendiaries rained across the track, and
Fireman Harry Osborne leaped from the footplate to douse
them with water from the engine. Soon Stainer had had enough.

The City That Would Not Die

"For the Lord's sake, let's get on into Cannon Street."

Private Arthur Simons, home on short pass, had the same
idea: "Come on, gel, it's one of them moonlight blitzes." Brush-
ing off Rose Simons' protests, he strapped three-year-old John
into his push chair and hustled his family off to the street shel-
ter, leaving the birthday cake behind.

Yard Inspector Robert Bromley, of Bishopsgate Goods
Depot, East London, found the same fact reassuring. As he
drank his beer in The Unicorn, Shoreditch High Street, a
second before the siren, he told himself the Germans would
never dare come by moonlight.

In the mayor's parlor at Bermondsey Town Hall Albert
Henley was changing into uniform. Turning over his small
coin, he found he had only 2S. 8d. but thought he might as well
take it along. As he set off for Control to find what incidents
were brewing up, Gladys Henley chaffed him: "Fancy a mayor
walking about with only 25. 8d. in his pockets."

Mrs. Henley did not realize that her husband had gone on
duty without what he called his "lucky sweater" a handsome
Fair Isle slipover whose glowing colors had even drawn a com-
ment from the Duke of Kent when he visited the borough.
She had no premonition.

Stanley Barlow, hastening to Post Dz, St. Marylebone, felt a
shade uneasy but couldn't tell why. As he passed the Bay
Moulton pub in Great Portland Street, two of his wardens
were just leaving Motor Mechanic Charlie Lee and Winnie
Dorow, the young trainee. The girl hailed him: "We left a
drink for you on the counter." Too late Barlow remembered
that he had promised to meet them for a quick one. Hastening
on, he called over his shoulder, "I'll pick it up tomorrow."

Over King's Cross Station the searchlights switched on,
wheeling and coning in the pale sky. Assistant Yard Inspector
Frank Marshall could guess what was coming. He told his chief,
Jabez Stevens: "I think they're going to make a main-line hit
for us tonight." At Waterloo Stationmaster Harry Greenfield
took one look east, then scribbled a note in the official diary:

"Why, It Must Be One of Ours"

"Guns and planes hundreds of them."

Three miles away, in jthe West End, the reaction was slower.
If the sirens had sounded, the night was youngand it could
so easily be a docks raid again. At the Ritz Bartender Michael
Gonley was laying out fresh saucers of olives and potato chips
and reflecting how these days you always knew a first-timer-
die swift glance at the ceiling on entry to gauge how solid was
the roof. Bartender Charlie Pearce, at the Queen's Brasserie,
bagged the autograph of Wing Commander Stanford-Tuck,
the fighter ace.

In the night spots the mood was one of sophisticated melan-
cholyand the setting was perfect. At the Cocoanut Grove a
pink spotlight picked out the seductive Hungarian Magda Kun
as she lilted into a favorite number:

"I've got a cozy fiat
There's a place -for your hat

Til wear a pink chiffon negligee gown;

And do I know my stuffy

But if that's not enough

I've got the deepest shelter in town . . ."

In the Garden Room at the Mayfair cigar smoke lay in blue
rope-like coils in the warm air; the chandeliers shone as dis-
creetly as altar lights; the champagne in the ice buckets was
deliciously cool and at 258. a bottle cheap. When a pretty girl
asked for "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" Bandleader
Jack Jackson grimaced at Pianist Freddie Aspinall. It wouldn't
be the last time that evening and just as surely they would
want "Room 504" and "The Last Time I Saw Paris."

On this Saturday night nostalgia was still the surest substi-
tute for peace. On the BBC's Forces' Program the Rendezvous
Players were signing off with a memory of 1917, "Let the
Great Big World Keep Turning."

A few took precautions more to be on the safe side than
because danger seemed imminent. At St. Luke's Hospital,

The City That Would Not Die

Chelsea, Clerical Officer Edward Glading kept rootling for his
identity cardif anything happened he wanted to be sure they'd
identify his body. Harry Weinstock, a City of London auxiliary
fireman, carefully emptied his pockets into the dormitory
locker: a bunch of keys and thirty shillings. They were all his
worldly goods, but he didn't want them going to waste. The
chief warden of Stoke Newington, Major Charlie Creswick-
Atkinson, left his false teeth in the Control Room you never
knew what blast might do. Then he set off on patrol like a
country squire inspecting his coverts tweeds, walking stick,
golden retriever Punch trotting at his side.

On Fields' factory roof by Waterloo Fixe Watchers Jimmie
Sexton and Albert Fey were garbed more prosaically overalls,
steel helmets, gum boots. In the light of the full moon everything
was as sharp as an autumn morning, the tall brick smokestack
of the factory with its warehouse buildings looming above the
main lines at Waterloo. The factory redly consisted of two
main buildings three stories high set 30 yards apart across a stone
courtyard. When the siren went Sexton and Fey had already
been standing guard for an hour on the south building nearest
the railway lines.

Now Jimmie Sexton glanced nervously at the big twenty-ton
vats of candle wax and palm oil stacked across the roof. If these
caught hold, he thought, the factory itself would burn like one
vast candle. To date no incendiary raid had ever come close
enough for that.

At first it was like any other night the slow, wordless patrol
on the flat roof, stamping your feet and windmilling your arms
to keep the blood coursing; the prickling moment when the
siren went and a deeper chill seemed to invade the body; that
same too-long silence. Then Fey rang his first routine report to
Fire Chief Bill Wilks in the basement of the north building that
served as Fire Guard Control: "They're dropping 'em up east
somewhere flares and incendiaries and there's a few gone
down over the Elephant."

There was more to come; Hauptmann Aschenbrenner was

"Why, It Must Be One of Ours"

taking good heed of the instructions of his commanding general.
General Pflugbeil: "Get the City well alight for the first wave."
Now the "Fire Raisers" wheeled south of Tower Bridge, strik-
ing down the river for Waterloo and Westminster. They came
in low, cruising at 10,000 feet, and for the first time the guns
south of the river opened up and the searchlights came on.

At the Savoy the band was still lively but the mood had gone
flat one by one the diners were drifting out in search of taxis.
Journalists Quentin Reynolds and Ed Beattie, in quest of news,
made for the back of the hotel, out by the sandbagged rear
entrance to the street. To the east, in the warehouses on the
southern shore, angry fires were licking to the sky. They saw
the red splinters of shells, the darting searchlights, and heard
the roar of many planes.

The same thought hit them as had hit Stationmaster Green-
field. "Christ," Reynolds said, "it sounds like there are hundreds
of them."

As yet there weren't, but they were coining: already Canew-
don and other radar stations en route could report only "mass
plots" to Fighter Command's Filter Room so many aircraft
winging west that the dancing white scallops on the radar
screens fused into one colossal "blip." Section Officer Sadie
Younger recalls with feeling: "We worked only four-hour
shifts but that was enough a night like that sent you cross-
eyed."

And still the bombers came. At i i.io Sadie Younger called
to Squadron Leader Richardson: "There are more here than
we know they all say they're saturated." Now Richardson
told the Sector Ops rooms, who controlled the battle for the
sky, "You'd better put on everything youVe got."

They were doing their best. At Mardesham airfield on the
Suffolk coast the first Hurricane of 242 Squadron had already
skimmed along the runway, vanishing westward into the empty
sky. First away was Squadron Leader Whitney Straight, pre-
war racing motorist, who had taken over the squadron from
Air Ace Douglas Bader. With a shining Battle-of -Britain tradi-

The City That Would Not Die

tion, the squadron rated as one of the most lethal in the RAF.
French, Poles, Norwegians, Canadians, Czechs every pilot an
officer and a dangerous adversary to meet in the London sky.

Nonetheless, Straight thought they would need more than
skill tonight-they'd need luck. At just after eleven he had
swung southwest toward the Thames, climbing ^steeply; at
14,000 feet he passed through cloud. Once above it, flying at
16,000 feet, the scene was unforgettable: the miles of pale sky;
the silver orb of the moon; the clouds reflecting the moonlight
like snow-capped mountains. At 11.15 P.M. he saw the dark
outlines of the Ford factory at Dagenham, then swung west
toward Tower Bridge.

Two miles away in West Ham the first bombers were pound-
ing London; the clouds gave back the coppery glare of rising
fires, and somewhere in the miles of night sky around more
bombers were moving in. Straight's problem was how to see
them; the spurting exhaust of the Hurricane dazzled his night
vision, to say nothing of the flak. The glowing orange balls
came whirling up from the ground, slowly at first, then faster
like bubbles rising to the surface of a glass 4,000 feet below
but near enough to be distracting.

Incredibly, Straight's first awareness of the enemy was
bombs: through a rent in the cloud a stick of three was suddenly
hurtling away beneath him. Now his eyes probed the false day-
light but he could see nothing no sign of an aircraft. The
bomber could be anywhere at 25,000 feet or even at his own
altitude. He flew on, one of a dozen day fighters already stalking
the night sky in search of prey and luck.

In the East End they needed more than luck. By 11.25
twenty minutes after Aschenbrenner arrived over the target
what looked at first like a dangerous fire situation was building
up in die drab gray streets of West Ham.

First the Royal Albert Docks; next the railway sheds and
sidings at the King George V Dock; then a major fire at Mitchell
and Snow's, the cork merchants. At West Ham Mobilizing
Control it didn't seem to Fire Chief Herbert Johnson that he

>J2

"Why, It Must Be One of Ours"

had enough fire engines to cope with the gouts of fire springing
up everywhere. Of the So engines on the spot, most were
already busy with fires that had started, and he had to think
of his own area first. It was in any case accepted practice to
order more engines than you needed, as something unexpected
might blow up. At 1 1.44 Johnson called Sir Aylmer Firebrace's
mobilizing staff, who were also housed at Lambeth, and asked
them to have an extra 20 engines standing by. Seven minutes
later Johnson signaled "Third Stage Help" he wanted those
engines drafted in.

At Fighter Command the Filter Room had struck the night's
knottiest problem. As early as 10.23 the WAAF plotting the
northern sector of coast line had a sudden call one of the radar
stations showed a single plane crossing the coast line northeast
of Alnwick, Northumberland. "Hey," Sadie Younger heard
an irate plotter call, "what's that type doing up there? They
should have told us there were some more coming in."

But as the minutes ticked by it seemed that there weren't-
just one aircraft, hugging the North Sea coast line at 300 m.p.h.
Two fighters, trying to intercept it, had as promptly lost it.

Squadron Leader Richardson rubbed his eyes. It made no
sense. A quick glance at the Movement Control Sheet confirmed
what he really knew no friendly aircraft was scheduled within
miles of the spot. Yet it couldn't be a German bomber; no
bomber in the Luftwaffe could touch above 180 m.p.h. His
chief, Air Commodore Torn Webb-Bowen, came to the only
decision he could: "Stick an f X' on it."

This stamped it doubtful, to be watched but left alone; there
was little else to do. To mark it hostile automatically called the
local guns and fighters into action and it just conceivably
could be a friendly fighter in trouble.

Next door in the ops room Air Marshal Sholto Douglas got
curious. He told Operations Officer Cyril Leman: "Find out
what it is what it's doing." On the Ops Room Control table
the plane was marked by a red metal arrow; as the men in the
gallery watched the WAAF plotters, earphones primed for

The City That Would Not Die

each fresh course the Filter Room gave, were getting busy.
Slowly the long-handled paddle was easing the plane north
toward Edinburgh.

But Leman had one ace up his sleeve that the Filter Room
couldn't play die dozen-odd Observer Corps posts scattered
across the moorland between the Northumbrian coast line and
Edinburgh. If someone could just glimpse the plane it might
solve the whole problem. At 10.30 came bewildering news
from Post A3 at Chatton: "We've got a visual at 100 feet it
came from behind cloud. It's a Messerschmitt no."

Sholto Douglas heard the news and shook his head. "Impos-
sible. No Messerschmitt would have the fuel to get to Edin-
burgh and back. Get another fix on it." Again Leman un-
cradled the phone, convinced in his own mind that Hitler had
developed a new bomber. Within minutes came confirmation
from Jedburgh. It was a Messerschmitt right enough, at times
flying as low as 50 feet.

Douglas, a fast enough thinker, made up his mind: "Get the
fighters up after it." Then a strange thing happened. For a
while the plane became confused with the track of an RAF
Defiant flying in the same area. At 11.09, before the fighters
had had time to make any contact, the observer post from
Eaglesharn came on the line. The plane had been shot down at
Bonnyton Moor, a few miles southwest of Glasgow. More
phone calls and the mystery deepened. No. 14 Group, RAF,
controlling all fighters in Scotland, knew nothing about it.

The minutes passed but no more news came of the Messer-
schmitt. Douglas felt a strange sense of disquiet. Why had it
made that lonely northern run and who had shot it down? At
n. 20 a WAAF removed the red metal arrow from the board-
die pawn was out of play. But at 11.30 everyone was more
preoccupied by that one mystery plane than by the hundreds
now milling over the target.

Whoever it had been, it wasn't Leutnant the Baron Von
Siber. At 11.28 his Heinkel III, "L for Lucy," was just crossing

"Why, It Must Be One of Ours"

the English coast line north of Southend, dead above Foulness
Point. The stocky fair-haired baron was feeling good; he was
anything but a superstitious man, but all the omens were right.
The Heinkel, with its load of eight incendiary canisters and
two 250-kilo high explosives, was behaving well. He had driven
to the airfield in a British Ford left behind at Dunkirk in the
Luftwaffe it held much cachet to own a British vehicle. And at
12,000 feet, flying at a steady 180 m.p.h., they would reach
London almost dead on time, just before midnight.

The baron's plan was clear cut: approach from the north,
then swing sharply southwest across London in the general di-
rection of Buckingham Palace. Deliver the first load, get back
to base fast, bomb up, refuel. Then try for the palace again.

If he felt the slightest tension, the baron wasn't admitting it,
even to himself. He knew his duty better. At twenty-five he
was still the senior man and the officer it was Ms duty to remain
calm. A few of his crew, like UnterofSzier Wylezoll, the seven-
teen-year-old gunner, had wheedled some winter flying kit; it
was cold, and if they were shot down over the sea they would
stand more chance in fleecy winter jackets. The baron, though,
wore his summer flying kit. He did not feel the cold; he did
not allow for the risk of being shot down.

Nor for the night fighter on his tail presumably nobody did,
for both Gunner Wylezoll and Oberf eldwebel Schneider, the
mechanic, had been briefed to keep a sharp lookout in the rear
turret. Without warning there was a rending clatter followed
a second later by a soft yellow whoosh of flame from the port
engine. In the second of turning the baron saw dimly the sec-
ond burst, coming from less than 50 yards away, and thought
he recognized the long mullet-head cowling that housed the
Spitfire's engine.

There was no time to see more. The Heinkel shuddered and
yawed violently with a third and final burst of tracer. Glass
sprayed everywhere, and a great rush of cold air came swoop-
ing into the cockpit. Most of the instrument panel had gone,
blown to smithereens. Probably the Spitfire was trying for the

The City That Would Not Die

starboard engine instead, it had blown away most of the cock-
pit and half the nose. In the rear turret somebody cried out,
and there was a strange moaning. Then silence.

Hastily the baron cut out the port engine, then called over
the intercom. No answer. He called again. Still no answer. In
fifteen seconds flat three of his crew had died. Only Feldwebel
Josef Fischer, the compact, swarthy little navigator who sat just
astern, was still alive. For the first time Von Siber felt a sudden
chill.

But only for a minute. It was by guess and by God now no
more instrument flying with the panel shattered, just the hope
of keeping "L for Lucy" airborne long enough to reach the
Channel and ditch her in the sea, near enough the coast to be
picked up by German air-sea rescue. With the Heinkel dipping
heavily to port, the baron told Fischer to fuse and release the
bombs. They would not harm Buckingham Palace now, but the
aircraft was lighter as they went. They had gained height.

With the increased wind resistance to the burning port en-
gine, the Heinkel was still yawing to the left. Suddenly the oil
temperature soared frighteningly. Luckily that gauge was still
working, but it meant a hit scored that die baron hadn't recog-
nized: the oil radiator of the starboard engine. There were
violent bumps and shudders. Waves of flames washed back at
Von Siber, and the sickly-sweet smell of burning alloy.

He tugged with all his might on the stick, trying to keep "L
for Lucy" up, then saw, from the corner of his eye, a stab of
flame somewhere in the fuselage astern. Somehow some petrol
must have got fired in the rear turret, and from the way the
Heinkel was jerking he gauged they were losing height rapidly
perhaps 1 2 feet a second.

The baron was not rated a good pilot for nothing; in a case
like this he knew where duty lay. Fischer was a good observer,
one of the best he had known, but he could not help now, and
no pilot who abided by the Luftwaffe's rigid code of honor
could needlessly risk the life of his crew. At midnight the baron

"Why, It Must Be One of Ours"

ordered Fischer: "Bale out." He and his crew of three dead men
would go it on their own.

At Fields' factory, by Waterloo, Jimmie Sexton felt almost
as lonely. True there was Albeit Fey to help him but suddenly,
at 1 1 .40, they could have used half-a-dozen men on the roof of
the south building. As the incendiaries came raining down the
little handyman was ducking and darting in all directions,
dousing them with sand. In his mind Sexton kept up a kind of
chant: "We've got to hold on. Soon they'll switch to another
area. We can save the factory if we only hold on." As a heavier
bomb dropped near at hand they ducked between the iron vats,
holding their breath.

As if to refute Sexton, the roof telephone buzzed, and Fey
answered. It was Fire Chief Bill Wilks, asking if they possibly
could hold on. Fey said he thought yes, then asked why. Quietly
Wilks explained that the bombs that had fallen had wrecked
the twelve-inch water main in York Road and the twenty-four-
inch in Waterloo Road. The whole area was virtually without
water to fight the fires.

Sexton looked east along the river, and his heart sank. He
could imagine nothing worse than what was now happening to
West Ham, but was their turn still to come?

Closer to, it looked more eerie still. To Thomas Sinden, the
bridegroom-to-be, the only passenger on a bus traveling east,
the whole scene was like fairyland: the white dripping flares,
the dim blue lighting of the bus, the buildings silhouetted as if
against a sunset. Farther, toward the docks, he counted the fires
in hundreds. His first thought it was the end of London. The
second and worst he would never marry Beatrice in the
morning.

On the face of it the firemen had a tough time ahead. On the
roof of The Lion, West Ham, Publican Bill Barker saw the
great orange wall of flame as a timber dump took fire across the
Temple Mills Sidings. As he watched, a watertower poked up
against the blaze like a steel finger, the firemen at the top cling-

The City That Would Not Die

ing grimly to the jet. Suddenly a German plane zoomed low
from the clouds; machine-gun fire cracked sharply. The fire-
men didn't even deign to look around, and presently, as if
abashed, the plane went away.

Some professionals took a cheerier view. To Sub Officer
Charles Tharby, dashing from dock fire to dock fire, it seemed
a light night for West Ham on one occasion they'd had 38
land mines. But the mains were standing up, the borough was
networked by natural rivers, there were many small fires, but
most of them well in hand.

Away from Control, Tharby didn't know that his Fire
Chief Herbert Johnson had called in 20 extra engines and was
on the point of calling for 20 more.

Back in Paris, at the Luxembourg Hotel, Field Marshal
Sperrle and General Roller heard the news which Aschenbren-
ner had radioed back: 100 bombers were over the target, more
were on the way, big fires were piling up. The field marshal
decided that supper and a cabaret would not come amiss. Gen-
eral Koller, more studiously inclined, went home to read the
German poet Heine. There was, in any case, nothing more
that either man could do.

CHAPTER SIX

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

11.012.2 P.M.

THE message from West Ham meant one thing to Major Frank
Jackson at Fire Service Headquarters he must go there and
see for himself. If the blitz moved westward, London would
need all the fire engines there were. There could be no question
of them lying idle tonight.

Before leaving Lambeth he rang Chief Superintendent May
at Home Office Control, and May repeated his earlier assurance;
at a pinch he thought he could manage 750 reinforcing engines.

May sounded more cheerful than he felt. Since Jackson's
first call six hours back now he had been mobilizing every
engine he could, but it was slow, backbreaking work. As on
every other night it was the same story: men were on leave; the
engines weren't all serviceable; the local fire chief would have
to ask the mayor's authority first; a succession of men standing
on petty dignities as the minutes raced by.

The trouble was that Britain's 1,600 local fire brigades were
a law unto themselves different uniforms, different standards
of training and equipment, different pay. The system was being
scrapped in favor of a National Fire Service, one unified fight-
ing force, as Minister of Home Security Herbert Morrison had
announced that very morning.

In fairness to Sir Arthur Dixon, chief of the Home Office
Fire Department, no authority had been obliged to maintain a
fire brigade until he changed the legislation in 1938. But al-
though the idea of nationalization was scarcely new the techni-
cal journal Fire had been urging it for sixteen years Sir Arthur

The City That Would Not Die

had had his own ideas. As late as March 1941 he had declared:
"Nationalization is impossible. The whole of history is against
it."

Morrison, too, had been wary of the project, foreseeing bitter
opposition from local councils. It had taken a powerful caucus
led by Lieutenant Commander John Fordham, one of Jackson's
deputies, two months to persuade Morrison that Sir Arthur was
wrong. And the struggle had involved such powerful allies as
The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Norman (now Sir Norman)
Brook, secretary to the Cabinet, Lord Beaverbrook, Minister
of Information Brendan Bracken, and William (now Lord)
Rootes, the car magnate.

None of this was much help to Chief Superintendent Augus-
tus May or London now. Until the National Fire Service was
a fact in law, local authorities could be as awkward as they
pleased, and never had they seemed so pigheaded as tonight.
One local fire chief said flatly that he had no engines, until
May countered by quoting from his all-England strength re-
turns: the chief had ten to spare and London needed them.

Now the argument changed: "I want them myself." No
wonder May shouted back: "Never mind what you want,
someone else is in worse trouble than you. I'll look after you
when you're in trouble."

Worse, it was still too early for May to decide what to do for
the best. A week of attacks on the northern ports meant that
he dare not call in engines from farther north than Birmingham.
Luckily Birmingham had been retaining some London engines
for emergency use. These could be brought back to base right
away.

Already word had gone out. A hundred miles away, in Bir-
mingham Fire Station, Sub Officer Charles H. Gibbs was wolf-
ing canteen sandwiches and coffee after a dance when an ex-
cited fireman burst in: "Hey, Sub, come on, form convoy."
Twenty minutes later Gibbs had clambered aboard one of
fifty gray-painted engines lined up on the Coventry Road. At
midnight, chugging at 25 m.p.h. along blacked-out roads, they

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

were heading for London the first relief convoy to set out for
the capital that night.

It was none too soon. There had been that deceptively slow,
almost insidious start; now, ten minutes before midnight, the
raid came ferociously to life. The bombers were moving west-
ward; over the City of London; over the warehouses of Clerk-
enwell and Saffron Hill, the Italian quarter; over the quiet
Bloomsbury squares. But pinpointing wasn't easy. Although
Euston Station was priority, the incendiaries, instead, caught
the British Museum a mile south, plowing through the old
copper roofing, burning fiercely in the high, timbered rafters
between roof and plaster ceiling.

As the first fire engines came racing across the courtyard the
Museum's director, Sir John Forsdyke, went pelting to meet
them, the doughty litde Greek scholar taking a header on to
the running board.

It took only twenty minutes to realize that the position was
hopeless. Not only the rafters were burning but the Roman
Britain Room; the Prehistoric Room; the Greek Bronze Room,
empty now of art treasures but an integral part of the threatened
building. On the roof choking black smoke drove Sir John
and the firemen back.

Suddenly, with a roar, the flames wrapped around the south-
west quadrant bookstack, climbing like a beacon to the sky. Sir
John and a fireman struggled across with a jet but after a minute
they gave up. "We might as well be spitting on it."

At least no lives were lost. Less than a mile away the first
bombers of Colonel Rath's K.G.4 orbited between King's Cross
Station and the New River Head reservoir of the Metropolitan
Water Board, and the first two of that night's parachute mines
drifted slowly as thistledown across the pale sky- nine-foot
cylinders packed with 1,500 pounds of high explosive. By
chance they struck neither target but landed in quiet Holf ord
Square, Finsbury, where Lenin had lodged thirty years before.
Three miles away, in Hackney, Reginald Bell, coordinating
officer of No. 3 Group, London Civil Defense Region, saw the

The City That Would Not Die

two immense magenta flashes hang glowing and throbbing in
the sky instinctively Bell, a gardener, thought of sweet sultan
blossoms.

Near at hand street Fire Guard Harry Wright, who had
thrown himself forward, felt the pavement recoil three times,
punch at his stomach. Stretcher-bearer George Eiffel, one of
the first there, found an unimaginable scene: 60 dead and 1 16
badly wounded; a crowd of 300 strong milling and screaming;
human hair matted gray with rubble; faces a mask of blood;
yellow dust hanging as thick as smoke over acres of shattered
buildings.

A barrage balloon site, a brewery, a convent, two pubs, and
sixty houses had been atomized within seconds and the night
was only beginning.

The full fury of it was starting to register now. At Martin's
Bank, Lombard Street, Fire Watcher Sidney Smith was one of
the first to detect the pattern of Sperrle's new technique the
high explosives and incendiaries raining together without a
pause; wave following wave in tight-knit formation; the planes
seeming to scream in at housetop level, lower than they had ever
done before.

On the roof of the Savoy Quentin Reynolds was convinced
that the whole city must burn, but on such a scale that he was
awed, not scaredit was all like some gigantic Hollywood
spectacle. From the terrace of a Hertfordshire country club
Captain Cliff ord Mollison, Fighter Command's Home Forces
liaison officer, watched vortices of blast eddying above the City
like ripples thrown upward from a pond. The savagery of it
appalled him. "It's that bastard Goering. He's really lost his
temper."

Some felt more detachment. Sixty miles away cars had parked
on Cuddesden Hill, Oxford, and a group of sixty-odd people
had settled down to watch the show. Theological Student Bill
Baddeley, who'd been roped in by friends, felt somehow con-
science-stricken. Many had even brought hot coffee and sand-
wiches to complete their Roman holiday.

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

The livid flames could be seen farther than Oxford Leutnant
Martin Reiser and the crew of his Heinkel III, "B for Bern,"
were 160 miles away over Rouen when they first sighted that
red shifting skyline. Over the intercom Reiser told Pilot Adolf
Schied, "Fires like that and moonlight, too they must have
been crazy to send us." And at 12.22, well north of Brighton, it
seemed as if Fate agreed-a violent explosion in the sky far to
the east, then a plane plummeting into space, trailing fire as it
went.

Reiser, of course, couldn't know it, but the Baron Von Siber
was in trouble.

For minutes after ordering Observer Josef Fischer to bale
out, the baron had fought to keep "L for Lucy" airborne. Now
he knew it was hopeless; the Heinkel was starting to spin dizzily;
he, too, must bale out. It was easier said than done. Although
he had made sure Fischer opened the pilot's escape hatch, he
had forgotten to ask help with his seat belt. To loosen it he had
to detach one hand from the stick, which was nearly fatal.
Flames, the moon, the shattered cockpit swam before his eyes as
he tugged.

Somehow he managed to crack his head badly; as he wrestled
through the escape hatch, pain was fast drowning conscious-
ness. He dropped like a stone, tugging the ripcord with one last
effort; only the jerk of the flowering parachute snapped him
back to sanity. As he fell, he saw clearly below a steely gleam
in the moonlight, and his body braced for the shock. He was
going to land in a river.

Actually it was the Medway at Upchurch in Kent, but either
way it spelled trouble to the baron. First the icy water knifed
the breath from his body at midnight the air temperature was
one degree below freezing. Then somehow a trailing lead from
the Heinkers intercom had got snagged in his parachute's re-
lease mechanism; several times the wind, ripping across the
river, pulled him choking beneath the muddy black water. By
the time he had yanked out his knife and cut it free he was well

The City That Would Not Die

out in midstream and it was a numbing 5oo-yard swim to the
shore.

As he scrambled through the mud a Home Guard detach-
ment loomed up; the baron was about to announce he was a
German officer, but apparently they knew. They seized him,
pounding him almost insensible with fists and rifle butts. The
blitz that was just starting for so many millions was over for
the Baron Von Siber.

For Hauptmann Albert Huf enreuter the trip was presenting
complications, not the least of them being his pilot, Richard
Furthmann.

The first trouble had come at 10.30 P.M. on Lille North air-
field when the crew settled at take-off stations for cockpit drill:
Furthmann revving the engines up to zero boost, testing the
magnetos, bomb doors, flaps. First the port engines whined and
snarled, blue smoke curling, then, after a few turns, the star-
board, too. Somehow Furthmann didn't seem satisfied; again
he punched the buttons of the booster coils. First the port inner,
then the starboard inner, port outer, then starboard outer.

Huf enreuter, seeing him grow pink and start to sweat, called,
"Is it all right?" The young pilot didn't answer, just kept test-
ing, until finally Huf enreuter yelled, * Well, is it all right, or
isn't it?"

At last Furthmann said reluctantly, "Well, yes," and then a
moment later, "Stand by for take-off." He checked through to
all the crew on the intercom Karol Gerhardt, the wireless op-
erator, even younger than Furthmann himself; Mechanic Josef
Berzbach, dead keen and reliable; Eggert Webber, the gunner.
Then the chocks were waved away and they taxied out to the
down-wind side of the airfield. Hufenreuter looked at his
watch 10.28. Two minutes to go.

Then the Heinkels scheduled before them had gone. Furth-
mann flicked off the brakes and they were rolling, picking up
speed, and the airspeed indicator was quivering at 125 m.p.h. as

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

the long, concrete runway raced away beneath. Then they
were climbing, four incendiary canisters and one i,ooo-kilo
bomb destined for Stepney secure in the bomb bays. At 300
feet they turned on course.

Now more trouble arose. Tonight, Hufenreuter, ignoring
the briefing, was making his own course and the pilot didn't
like it. Once Furthmann, a good, cautious pilot who went by
the book, voiced a protest the briefing was due north, over
the Dutch island of Tschelling, then a course of 203 North
magnetic. Hufenreuter snorted: "The same way as all the others
are going? You want to make it easy for the British?"

It almost seemed to Hufenreuter that the others did. With-
out observing them, he could feel their tension growing as the
Heinkel neared the French coast, could feel them wailing for
him to flash the signal pattern that established their bona fide
with the German anti-aircraft batteries.

Soon Furthmann asked what the matter was. Wasn't he go-
ing to give the signal? Hufenreuter admitted not if he could
help it. If the batteries let the formality slide, it would suit him
better. He argued, "If they can see it, the batteries over at
Dover can see it, too, can't they?"

A moment then Furthmann became agitated. "Give it, please
give it. Look, they're signaling to us, can't you see? " Reluctantly
Hufenreuter gave the signal. Mingled sighs of relief came over
the intercom and Gunner Weber urged: "For heaven's sake,
don't play monkey tricks like that. You'll have us all shot
down."

At 1 1.15 P.M., as Cape Gris-Nez came in sight, Hufenreuter
had privately confirmed what he had half -suspected all along:
he would have to see this flight through himself, to inspire this
keen but untried crew with the strength of a prewar Luf twaffe
pilot.

He settled down to map reading, charting pinpoints, work-
ing out a new wind. The moon swam up over the North Fore-
land, so bright tonight that he didn't even need a flashlight to
map read. Twelve thousand feet below the Channel was a shelf

The City That Would Not Die

of green luminous glass and there were small white waves
creaming against a foreign shore England. . . .

Hufenreuter spoke. "Your ground speed is exactly 164 miles
per hour. We shall be over London in exactly thirty-five min-
utes and ten seconds. ETA Hastings up in ten minutes. We
ought to cross the coast dead on track."

No one answered. Each man sat quiet, waiting, alert for
whatever was coming, his ears filled with the alternating irritat-
ing drone of the desynchronized engines. The uneven note
was supposed to make it harder for the sound locators but they
knew they would be registering some kind of blip on a radar
screen by now. And the orders would be going out to the flak
and the fighter fields.

Then they had crossed the coast; blacked-out Hastings lay
to starboard; beyond trees were thin striped shadows on the
moonlit downs. Furthmann asked: "What now? Lay track to
Maidstone and then straight to target?" But Hufenreuter
grunted a negative; on a night like this only a zigzag course
would help. He had worked it all out as he always worked out
his courses^ in solitude that afternoon, telling no one until the
time was ripe. Northeast now to Canterbury, as if they were
heading out over the North Sea. Then lay track for Croydon
on the west. Then due north to pick up the Thames at West
Ham.

He told Furthmann: "But I don't like this moonlight. Better
climbtake her up to 16,500. I'll tell you when to start losing
height."

The Heinkel flew on. Lying on his stomach in the nose,
Hufenreuter methodically tested switches, lights, bomb-sight
settings. From time to time he intoned: ETAs . . . Canterbury
. . . Croydon . . . West Ham. And they caught their breath with
awe. Along the Thames the red smoky fires had merged into
onethe riverside seemed alight for miles. Never had they im-
agined a city could burn like this. The Thames glowing like
blood with the reflection of the fires, buildings outlined like
mountains of red-hot cinders; the white probing fingers of the

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

searchlights; the droning of hundreds of engines, spaced neatly
150 feet below and above them, that seemed to shudder and
vibrate in their own fuselage. For a moment Hufenreuter
thought: This is it. We're seeing the end of a city, then turned
his mind to other things.

He told Furthmann: "Bring her down more a bit more.
Height 9,500 turn east. We're right dead on track and the
target should be coming up any minute."

Furthmann seemed anxious to be gone. "Are you going- to
bomb?"

"No, I'm not." Hufenreuter was adamant. "We're going to
identify the target area first and make damn sure we get some-
thing worth-while. We won't need a flare there are too many
of them as it is."

To Hufenreuter it seemed that K.G.ioo was gilding the lily.
All along the Thames for miles the flares were dazzling and
blinding, thousands of small magnesium expansions so many
that it was hard to see the target at all.

Prone on his stomach, Hufenreuter wrestled with the last-
minute niceties. From 10,000 feet the bomb would take about
twenty-five seconds to fall. Now they had dropped to 9,000
feet, sacrificing height for speed 120 m.p.L now against 100.
By the time the bomb had fallen they would have moved per-
haps a mile. He set the five complex readings of the bomb sight
they must be three miles from the aiming point now, which
was just right they needed all that for the run-up. The search-
lights weren't catching them, the lampblack eating up the beams
like velvet. Only a few flashes of ack-ack farther east. So far
so good.

A thousand feet below a parachute flare splashed into life; at
once Furthmann made a steep bend to port.

"Why that?" Hufenreuter grunted. The boy seemed nerv-
ous. "There were flashlights." Hufenreuter assured him: "It's
all right. They're lower than us." Over the intercom he called
back to Berzbach and Weber: "Still awake, you two?" He
thought they sounded very wide-awake.

The City That Would Not Die

Now Hufenreuter was almost ready. "Left, hard left," he
told Furthmann. Slowly the Heinkel eased round, Hufenreuter
craning for a visual; the red river curving; white, blinding
flares; the soft, steady drumming of the engine. It must be
Stepney all right, miles of huddled buildings, but it was hard to
find a good target in this dazzle. "Left farther still," he told
Furthmann, "about twenty degrees."

The pilot countered, "What's the time?"

"Twelve-five. Why?"

Furthmann seemed agitated. "Please hurry our time was up
minutes ago."

"If we stay here another ten minutes," Hufenreuter replied,
"we're going to find a target. That looks promisinga ware-
house or something. Right a little now. Steady."

Bombs fused, bomb doors open. Now Hufenreuter jabbed
the push button on the end of the trailing wire not unlike the
button suspended at a hotel bedside. Then "Bomb's gone,"
Hufenreuter yelled over the intercom, but there was no need.
The bomb went hurtling toward Stepney. The aircraft soared
like a balloon in a squall, 1,000 pounds lighter.

Yet Hufenreuter felt the old frustration. He had dropped
eighteen i,ooo-pounders in his time and it was always the same:
relentlessly honest, Hufenreuter was never satisfied unless he
could assure himself he had chosen and hit an orthodox target.
To the observer it seemed that wartime crews were the same,
too: ditch the bomb and get out of it, never mind whether it
was a military target or just a street of houses.

At 12.07 he told Furthmann: "Keep her on the river. We'll
see what the incendiaries will do."

They cruised gently, following the shimmer of the Thames
toward the City of London. The fires were getting away now,
red licking tongues along the northern shore above Southwark
Bridge Upper Thames Street, the wharves by Cannon Street
Station. Back at the bomb sight Hufenreuter felt better; with
incendiaries you knew where you were. It was a certainty that
they'd start up something worth-while and if the pilots f ollow-

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

ing up knew their job, they would land something heavy near
it to spread the fire or hinder the fire brigade, who cared?

And over the City you couldn't miss there wasn't that inner
niggle of dissatisfaction which you got with more isolated tar-
gets that you might be wasting incendiaries on a plowed field.

The Heinkel droned on, Hufenreuter intoning at intervals,
"Left, a bit ... steady . . ." Four times he pressed the button;
four times he signaled "Bombs gone." The incendiary canisters
went spiraling down over Roman London. Then they were
curving with the Thames, the great fires mirrored in the shining
water.

After a bit Furthmann asked, "Where are we?"

Hufenreuter grunted and consulted the map. "Over Wands-
worth. Why?"

For the first time that night Furthmann chuckled. "Funny I
was born there. My father was a bank clerk."

They joked for a bit as to whether that made Furthmann
British, owing allegiance to Kong George and Winston Church-
ill, although he spoke no word of English. Then Hufenreuter
said: "All right, we've had our fun. Course 1 89. Let's go home."

On the ground it was hard to tell what was going on. In
Turney Road, West Dulwich, Marguerita Stahli had damped
down the coal fire, donned an old weatherproof, snapped on
Rex's leash.

Now, with Windsor by her side, she was patrolling, steel
helmeted, up and down the street in case of trouble a voluntary
roster the residents themselves had arranged. They could see
the fires to the east and north, but at 12: 30 there seemed little
chance of the raid spreading this far south of the Thames. They
arranged that presently Windsor would borrow Marguerita's
bike and cycle home to spend what remained of the night with
his parents at Croydon, seven miles south.

Whatever the vantage point, the feeling outside the East
End was much the same. Warden Jack Smith was just setting

8 9

The City That Would Not Die

off on his beat near the Alexandra Hotel, Knightsbridge, when
he ran into fellow Warden Major Kennie. "Ah, well," the
major said, "another quiet night, I s'pose."

On Sydenham Hill old Mr. Reginald Harpur, snug in his
shelter, was making up his diary; the man next door was pushing
a wheelbarrow, gardening by moonlight, "as though the days
are not long enough, even now."

At St. Luke's Hospital, Chelsea, the medical superintendent,
Dr. R. Thane Taylor, debated whether to move all the patients
from the upper wards to the basement, then decided against it.
This wasn't really Chelsea's raid.

Mrs. Margaret Daley and the twenty-five workers at St.
Augustine's Depot, South Croydon, shared that viewpoint. As
she checked on that evening, in blue serge tunic and slacks, blue
peaked cap set on neat brown hair, the old query rose again to
Mrs. Daley's mind: Would this be the night? Then she saw dark
nineteen-year-old Olive Ward, her attendant, detach herself
from the throng in the gloomy raftered hall. Temporarily she
forgot it as they exchanged greetings.

Around the hall the others wondered about Mrs. Daley. Al-
though they liked her well enough she was always something of
an enigma a few were certain she had been "a lady's maid in a
big house." She would pitch in and help anybody, she liked a
joke, but she wasn't a woman with whom you would take
liberties. At the end of a long, grimy shift she was as neat, as
unruffled, as reserved as when she started.

Meantime Mrs. Daley had plenty to do. First the big con-
verted Chrysler had to be cleaned one of a dozen ambulances
and sitting-case cars parked in the moonlit yard behind the hall.
Then a careful check on the petrol, water, batteries, while Olive
Ward worked over the equipment four pillows, blankets,
splints, hot-water bottles which needed refilling every hour of
the night.

Again she wondered about tonight. Was it going to be Croy-
don's raid? Somehow it didn't seem likely; the planes muttered
overhead, and to the north the sky was trembling, but it was

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

twelve miles away at least. Later would come duties they all
shared, the hall and toilets to be swept out, stoves to be lit, taking
turns in the canteen, but maybe by 2 A.M. the all-clear would
go. If it didn't, it meant a long night up playing darts or table
tennis. Even curling up in blankets on the bare boards of the
hall, the only sleep possible, was forbidden if a "red" warning
was up. And if trouble did come, she must just have faith in God.

After all, God had protected her the day Bernard's motor-
cycle had gone out of control, crushing her against the iron
gates of her home. She had been pregnant at the rime, but God
had not let her die, even though the result had been a miscarriage
which had begun the slow breakup of her married life. And
God had protected Bernardine, her daughter, even when she
was too ill with rheumatic fever to be moved to hospital and the
blitz had shaken the house all night. Sitting by the bedside,
holding Bernardine's hand, Mrs. Daley had talked to God.
"Please, God," she kept saying, "don't let my Bernardine die."
She knew her prayers had been heard, because Bernardine lived.

By midnight she had decided, as she always did, that there
was no use worrying. The raid probably wouldn't come their
way at all.

Closer to the target area there was still the same illogical feel-
ingdanger was what happened to other people. In Bennond-
sey Auxiliary Fireman Percy Madden heard the first bomb
drop, sang out idly, "Oh, pack it up, old boy, we're just going
to bed." At St. Pancras Station Porter Walter Rainberg was
quite enjoying the spectacle with Porters "Yorkie" Merriman
and Andrew Fuller; the raised terrace outside the great Vic-
torian-Gothic station offered a grandstand view. As a chande-
lier flare came floating down, Rainberg called, "Not half a
treat like something in a pantomime." When the funereal
whisde of the bombs followed, the others heard the disbelief
in his voice: "Hold on they're coming in the station."

They were indeed, and 15,000 panes of glass were coming
with them. When Rainberg and the others picked themselves
up from the archway they'd dived into, there was a ringing in

The City That Would Not Die

their ears that lasted for weeks; the soot from the shattered
Victorian roof inside the main station was like black whirling
snow; a crater with the lights of the Metropolitan Railway
winking 100 feet below; ten-ton concrete slabs piled 300 yards
away.

As this debris spattered on the roof of Euston Station half a
mile away, Arrivals Foreman Ted Streeter couldn't believe his
ears either. He told his mates, "I think it's raining."

Shortly Assistant District Controller William Walton at
Kentish Town Control up the line signaled to every station on
the northern run: "All platforms St. Pancras to be considered
out of commission."

More and more people were finding that danger was thek
heritage. All through the blitz Driver Leslie Stainer had
breathed a pet invocation, "You can have it, we don't want it,"
when he heard a distant bomb. Now, at midnight on May 10, it
was Stainer's turn bombs raining on Cannon Street Station
where he stood frozen on the footplate of Engine 1541 ready
for the Dartf ord run. The aspect signal lights blasted out; bomb
after bomb falling; the station roof alight. When Stainer next
looked skyward the moon had gone blotted out by the smoke
from the fires. Soon Foreman Foote came running with fresh
orders. Vast brands from the blazing station roof were falling
everywhere; the safest place for the trains was out on the
railway bridge.

Tonight all safety was comparative. With Driver Percy
Collins, Stainer and Fireman Osborne coupled up another en-
gine, pulling out of the platform on to the bridge above the
river in time for a stick of three to come screaming almost on
top of them. One landed in the river, so hard that a column of
water geysered 80 feet high, clean over the top of the signal box.
The third was closer; for one moment Stainer and his fireman,
bunched on the footplate, felt the 54-ton engine lurch clean
from the rails.

"Look out," Osborne shouted, "we're going in the drink."
As the engine righted itself, Stainer was still dizzy with the

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

explosion. "Old mate, I thought my back week had come."

Next they realized they were trapped the other engine be-
hind them had caught a direct hit, "opened up like a sardine tin,"
cordite and scalding steam boiling everywhere. As they ran
back to check that Driver Perce Collins and his fireman were
safe, they saw their own train burning too fiercely for buckets
of water to help. There was only one thing to do: uncouple the
engine from the train, scour the engine, and leave the train to
burn out. Now Stainer told Osborne: "If we stop together, a
bomb '11 come down and wipe us both out. If we separate, we've
got a chance."

By 12.20 Stainer had doubled to the far side of the bridge.
Huddled in its lee, lonely and cold, he waited for the dawn,
and watched Cannon Street burn.

Two railway termini out of commission and Sperrle's bomb-
ers had been west of Aldgate Pump, the East End-City of
London boundary, just twenty minutes.

Both stations, of course, were priority targets, easily spotted
from the air. Other hits were more fortuitous, but they regis-
tered just the same. It was as if on this night, as never before,
the Luftwaffe had everything its own way.

At Group 3 Headquarters, Hackney, on the farthest fringe
of the East End, Reginald Bell tried to sort out the tangle. The
coordinating officer for Group 3, Bell was a government official
responsible for the City of London, Holborn, and the six high-
risk East End boroughs Stepney, Poplar, Hackney, Bethnal
Green, Finsbury, Shoreditch. From his own basement Control
Bell kept in minute-by-minute touch with the controls of each
borough just how badly each was faring. With a tally of avail-
able forces Bell could switch rescue workers, ambulances, even
relief wardens, from one district to another as needed.

At 12:20 Bell heard the voice of Stepney Controller Roger
Corderoy over the wire: "The buildings above our main access
are well alight and youVe got to run the gantlet to get in.
They've got some water on to the fires somehow but there is
only one pump."

The City That Would Not Die

Bell listened gravely. Stepney Control Center lay under-
ground between an electricity generating station and a sandbag
store. Now both were in flames. Without lights or ventilation
Corderoy's staff was working in suffocating darkness, unable
even to see one another for the smoke pumping into the
basement.

Bell tried Fire Brigade District Headquarters at Whitechapel.
Only ten minutes back on his way east Major Frank Jackson
had told WhitechapeFs Chief Superintendent Harold Norman,
and his Station Officer Cyril Tobias: "I'm very worried about
the West Ham situation. I think they asked for help earlier than
they need have done."

Now, although Jackson was on his way to sort things out,
Whitechapel still had no engines available. Bell rang back to
Stepney: "What about evacuating to your reserve control?"

Corderoy seemed almost resigned. "No good. It's damaged
by blast and out of action. We'll just have to carry on."

Bell worried about it, hardly knowing what to do for the
best. How much was Stepney going to need in the night ahead?
With their Control fighting to keep going, it was hard for them
to reckon up what was happening in their own area. Should he
divert services from Poplar to help them out or was Poplar due
for a heavy night? Finsbury was out of it just to cope with
those two land mines in Holf ord Square they'd had to call in
troops.

The City? Holborn? Shoreditch? Bethnal Green? At 12.25
Bell didn't know. His telephone links with all of them were
severed.

It was the same south of the river. At midnight Southwark's
Deputy Controller Cyril Flatten, a tall, handsome solicitor, was
calling Control from his Edgware home, ten miles away. But
now every line seemed dead, and there were twenty lines serv-
ing Control through four exchanges. Flatten jumped in his
Rover and set off for Southwark; this raid might prove too
much for them. The road was black but clear of traffic as far as
St. John's Wood, then the full hysteria of the raid struck home.

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

Now the glow of the sky lit up the road for him; he knew that
the bombs were falling but couldn't hear them inside the car;
frightened to death, he began to drive faster and faster. "By
Waterloo Station a flaming gas main barred the way, pulling
him up with a scream of tires. Mr. Flatten had a weird fancy:
"It was as if the Angel Gabriel stood there with a drawn sword/'

After a nerve-racking ninety-minute drive Flatten reached
Southwark, to find the lines weren't dead, just choked out with
calls for help. For the first time in the blitz Control Room Offi-
cer Richard Edwards had persuaded Group 5 Headquarters at
Brixton to slash red tape with every rescue man and ambulance
worker the borough possessed already in the field, Group were
laying on mobile reserves for Edwards himself to direct as the
need arose.

For the first time in centuries the faade was stripped aside
to show London for what it was a series of small stone villages
which chance had gummed together. Now, like villages in a
blizzard, they were cut off from one another by severed tele-
phone wires, by roads blocked head high with rubble, by the
sheer risk of running the gantlet of bombs.

Shut off in their private worlds, men did the best they could.
Down at the Elephant and Castle incendiaries fell so fast that
sixteen-year-old Bill Sherrington dashed to the nearest shelter
for help, but found only sour looks he must be mad to venture
abroad on a night like this. So Sherrington battled heroically on
his own, darting into houses the owners had left; stamping- out
some bombs, using a stirrup pump on others; tipping a flaming
flower box into the street seconds before the windowframe
caught. At Lambeth Hospital, where the top floor had caught,
Assistant Matron Margaret Fine saw a furious eighty-year-old
leap from bed in a nightshirt, and quench the blazing black-out
curtains with a deftiy aimed urinal.

In Westminster there was more punctilio. John Hodgkinson
was wooing sleep in the air-raid shelter beneath Diana Riviere's

<n T\<\ ri'fn **-n t* f"\l/"\f*lr Tjr7T**>n <s I-oHtr <JT*Twa>or"arl \\7 r\tt iH XT/MI r\** or> rm/\H

The City That Would Not Die

his first incendiaries licking at some trelliswork, Hodgkinson
couldn't locate sand or stirrup pumps; he "had to snuff them out
with his steel helmet. Next the porter for the block appeared;
some incendiaries had fallen on the roof and he wanted help. As
he guided Hodgkinson through a mass of stairways and attics
the man, a servant of the old school, kept up a running com-
mentary: "Up this way, sir ... mind your head . . ." Finally
they swamped the incendiaries with some boxes of mold stand-
ing handy. "Such a pity, sir, someone had planned to raise
tomatoes in these."

Even Field Marshal Sperrle and his group commanders could
hardly know how bad things were for London. At 1 2.30, when
some of the first planes were arriving back, the crews did re-
port that they had bombed visually with good results, but many
commanders didn't know this. At Dinard, Brittany, Colonel
Herhudt von Rhoden, chief of staff of No. 4 Flying Corps, had
gone to bed, ordering: "Don't wake me unless the weather
changes we might have to divert some planes to other airfields."
At Castle Maria Kerke, Ghent, General Paul Deichmann, No.
2 Flying Corps' chief of staff, at least waited up for the first
report, then turned in.

It all sounded good four large fires at the western end of
Victoria Docks, others in Millwall Outer Docks but fairly
routine. The general didn't even call his chief, General Loerzer,
to pass on details.

Not that it would have conveyed much if he had. General
Loerzer's knowledge of the situation in London was typical of
every Luftwaffe officer superficially good but sketchy. De-
tails of damage to communications, electricity cables, gas mains,
almost never filtered through to those who would have liked to
know. The only clue as to potential difficulties had come some
months back in a dispatch routed through Portugal from the
Germans' most reliable agent in Britain, a Danish-born mechanic
named Hans Schmidt. Then Schmidt had reported London's
water supply "not very adequate for fire fighting."

9 6

Goodge Street, near St. Pancras
Station, was one of the 2,200 fires
out of control before midnight.
Mirrorpic

Heart of a conflagration. This was
Fetter Lane, off Fleet Street, one
of nine conflagrations started by
Nazi incendiaries. Mirrorpic

Left. Fire streams from
the spire of St. Clement
Dane's, Wren's "Oranges
and Lemons" church, one
of the last targets to catch
fire. Mirrorpic. Below.
Firemen playing their
hoses on the ruins of the
Salvation Army headquar-
ters in Victoria Street.
Radio Times Hulton Pic-
ture Library

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

The Luftwaffe High Command had brushed this aside; too
vague to be of much use.

It was a masterly understatement. In a large-scale raid, if the
fires got away, even the square mile of the City of London
needed 600,000 gallons of water a minute to keep things in
check. The chances of tapping this quantity from the public
mains were slenderand not merely for reasons of pressure.
The mains lay rigid in the ground, barely three feet from road
level. Even a jo-kilo bomb landing close could snap them like
a carrot.

Two years' prewar haggling between the Home Office and
the London County Council as to who should foot the bill had
resulted in two twenty-four-inch emergency mains, with a
third under way, being piped through high-risk areas
; 500,000 worth of engineering. These, too, were cast-iron
mains three feet below road level.

Back at Fire Brigade Headquarters Major Jackson was sort-
ing out the picture. At West Ham Jackson had found all his
fears justified: in his anxiety to keep his area covered, Fire
Chief Herbert Johnson had overordered. At West Ham's three
principal stations, Stratford, Prince Regent's Road, and Silver-
town, fire engines had been lying idle. Now West Ham had
been ordered to dispatch surplus engines without delay to the
sorely pressed Whitechapel area.

But Jackson saw that it would need more than West Ham's
fire engines to put things right. The news was as grave as it
could be. At midnight a bomb had fractured the City Main,
connecting the Thames near Cannon Street Station with the
Grand Junction Canal, northward, by City Road just as it had
done on December 29. And the West End main, from the
Grand Union Canal in Regent's Park to Shaftesbury Avenue,
was out, too.

Between them these mains had reinforced the public mains
at a rate of 30,000 gallons a minute.

But die emergency mains had been constructed like any

The City That Would Not Die

other water main; like any other water main they* had suffered
the same fate.

What did this mean? Rocking backward and forward on a
chair, feet, as usual, jammed into a wastebasket, Jackson talked
it over with his water officer, District Officer S. J. Hender. It
amounted to this. Jackson could keep the fires in check if the
emergency mains stood up. He could check them with the
public mains in commission. He could even check them with
the Thames at normal level.

But look at it which way you would he could not hope to
keep the fires in check with the emergency mains gone, the
public mains fast going, and the Thames at its present level.

Actually the river was not at lowest ebb tonight 1 8 feet six
inches as against the "mean" spring minimum of 16 feet but
it was still out of reach to most fire engines installed on the high
embankments and bridges. And at low tide the river would be
separated from its bank-side wharves by 50 feet of treacly black
mud. Even trailer pumps lowered by ropes or man power to set
their suctions into the ebbing tide would be inextricably bogged
down.

Despite all the blitz the capital had been in most ways
superbly lucky. Most attacks had been localized. The fire raid
of December 29 had seen 1,400 fires but mostly within the
City's square mile. And March 19 had been like September 7
the docks had suffered most. Now Superintendent "Shiner"
Wright's mobilizing board with its rows of colored tallies
showed the situation plainly.

There were fires beyond West Ham, stretching almost to
Romf ord; fires six miles to the west in Hammersmith; fires eight
miles south at Norwood; fires far to the north beyond Hamp-
stead. And in the miles between these lateral points tongue after
tongue of orange fire was licking to the sky.

At Roseberry Avenue, Clerkenwell, the Italian quarter, the
building next to the Fire Service's "B" District Headquarters
covering the bulk of the City of London had taken a direct hit,
putting out the switchboard. For the moment seventy-five sub-

"Somebody Will Be Late for Their Breakfast"

stations In one of London's highest-risk fire areas were cut off
from their mobilizing headquarters with no knowledge of the
worst fires, with no instructions on how to deploy their
machines.

Even these were routine jobs compared with what was to
come. While Jackson was still chewing over the problem with
District Officer Hender, Superintendent George Adams, a
seasoned patriarch of the Fire Service, was checking in to the
District Headquarters he commanded at Southwark Bridge
Road. A glance at his Control Room tallies told Adams that the
biggest fire yet developed in "F" District which covered the
Thames and its immediate area from Teddington to the Note-
was a ten-pump affair beyond the Elephant and Casde. Adams
told his driver, S. S. Chapman, "We'll have a look-see."

It was only a five-minute run in the staff car, and Chapman
took the direct route south down Southwark Bridge Road,
away from the river, to make the oblique right-hand turn on
the far side of the Elephant and Castle traffic junction. Sud-
denly, as the car jolted through the deserted crossroads, Chap-
man jammed on the brake. To Adams it seemed the skies had
opened to rain white fire: scores of bursting incendiary canis-
ters, dazzling white parachute flares, flares that splashed into
blue and gold, red and green marker flares. Next instant the
six roads stemming like spokes from the central wheel of the
Elephant exploded into flame at the same moment.

"For the love of Pete," growled Superintendent Adams,
"what the hell can I do with this lot?" Driver Chapman, im-
perturbable, called on some useful philosophy: "One thing,
guv'nor, somebody'll be late for their breakfast in the morning,
and that includes us."

Adams stood thunderstruck. He was appalled by the near-
celestial grandeur of the scene. And still die incendiaries were
raining on the well-loved territory on the roof of the Elephant
and Castle pub with its elephant-and-casde trade sign molded
in red clay; on the roof of Spurgeon's Tabernacle, where
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the American Baptist, had preached;

The City That Would Not Die

on the railway arch, on Freeman, Hardy and Willis's boot shop,
on acres of soot-stained houses; on back-street grocery stores
and poky cobblers' shops, on gin palaces, and factories and eel-
pie shops. More than just the main artery, where all southern
roads to the Thames bridges intersected, the Elephant and
Castle was the symbol of warm, rumbustious South London
Cockney life.

It was now 12.19. Adams knew that he had to get a message
back, and fast. Like every senior officer, he had a despatch rider
following his car on a motor bike; now he grabbed his man.
"Get back to Control and tell them: Make pumps ten. Say if
I'm not careful I'll have a conflagration on my hands down at
the Elephant." Adams knew that he would need many more
than ten pumps to hold these fires in check but they would
do for a start. And the night's first potential conflagration, he
thought, should rate top priority.

Superintendent Adams was wrong on one detail. Back at
Lambeth Control, as his report was logged, neither Superin-
tendent "Shiner" Wright nor District Officer Ernest Thomas
even raised an eyebrow. It was the sixth embryo conflagration
they had logged in eighteen minutes flat.

100

CHAPTER SEVEN

'Another One In, Another One Out . . ."
12.2512.45 A.M.

HIGH above the East End of London another wave of bombers
orbited, and a trail of incendiaries fired the Anglican Church of
St. Mary of Eton by Wick Road, Hackney. Impotent with
rage, a street fire guard shook his fist at the sky, loosed off a
torrent of oaths, then realized one of the curates was right
beside him.

Shamefaced, the man mumbled: "I'm sorry, Father, I didn't
realize . . ."

The priest's eyes twinkled. "That's all right, son, you can say
it, I just have to think it."

As yet not many Londoners felt so involved emotionally. At
12.25 it was still, for more than a dozen boroughs, the other
man's raida source of pity, not fear and even the areas hard-
est hit told themselves things might soon slacken off. In East
Ham Truck Driver Edwin Wheeler saw a German bomber
bobbing in the hard white fountain of a searchlight and felt a
twinge of pity: whatever the pilot had done, he didn't deserve
to die. As the batteries hammered from Regent's Park, shelterers
by Bang's Cross Station chorused, "Good, we're giving it to
5 em." District Warden Rob Connell asked, "But s'ppse a Jerry
baled out in your back garden, what then?" Again reaction
was unanimous: "Oh, that's different offer the poor lad a
cuppa char."

Four hundred miles away, on Bonny ton Moor, near Glasgow,
Mrs. McLean, a sixty-four-year-old crofter's widow, was do-

101

The City That Would Not Die

ing just that. It had been a long, hard day on the little farm, and
by eleven Mrs. McLean and her daughter Sophia were in bed;
only David, her plowman son, lingered by the dying fire. Sud-
denly from the depths of sleep Mrs. McLean heard a strange
droning; it went on and on as if half-a-dozen planes 'were
circling the house. By this time David McLean had snuffed out
the oil lamp and dashed to the window in time to see a plane
rip violently into the ground 500 yards away. The shaking
yellow flames lit up the silhouette of a parachutist floating
gently down over the McLeans' cottage.

So McLean grabbed a hayfork, dashed to the scene in time
to find an aviator in full flying kit alternately nursing a hurt
ankle and fumbling with his parachute harness. When old Mrs.
McLean saw David struggling back to the cottage, supporting
a handsome black-browed stranger who admitted he was a Ger-
man, she felt "none too friendly," but somehow Scottish hos-
pitality won the day. The poor man looked pale and tired and
his ankle was so swollen that she just had to get the kettle boiling
and offer him a cup.

"Thank you, I never drink tea as late as this. I'll only have
a glass of water," was the courteous reply.

So they settled down to chat as strange a tea party as ex-
isted anywhere in Britain that night. The stranger gave his
name with disarming frankness Horn, Hauptmann Albert
Horn of Munich. How long had he been in the air? He thought
more than four hours. Almost diffidently David McLean ex-
plained that he'd have to get in touch with the police.

"Please," said the visitor, "I think that would be best." Later
he pulled out a pocketbook to produce a snapshot of a four-
year-old boy. "That's my son. I saw him this morning. God
knows when I shall see him again."

Now David slipped off to phone the police, but still the
visitor sat chatting, seeming grateful for the comfort of a peat
fire. He was so obviously a gentleman that old Mrs. McLean
was fascinatedby his perfect English, his gold watch and
bracelet, his easy manners. His one apparent concern was his

702

''Another One In, Another One Out . . ."

parachute. "I should like to keep a piece as a souvenir. I am
very lucky to be alive."

Presently, in answer to David's summons, two armed privates
arrived. Watching him, David McLean thought the visitor
seemed relieved to find them British. Asked if he was armed, he
spread his hands in a gesture. "You see all I have. My plane was
unarmed also."

As the soldiers searched him the McLeans stood silent, almost
embarrassed. It was as i, through no fault of their own, the
hospitality had gone sour. But there wasn't a lot to find a box
of German matches, personal papers, various capsules of medi-
cine. The one thing that struck them was the number of photo
graphs of himself and his family that the visitor seemed to carry.
To the end he remained calm and smiling; when the time came
to go he again bowed stiffly to old Mrs. McLean and Sophia and
thanked them profusely for all they had done. As if to atone for
the formalities of the search, one of the young Tommies pre-
sented him with a bottle of milk which he had brought for his
guard duty.

By 12.30 the McLeans had washed up the tea mugs and re-
tired to bed, a little dazed by the night's drama, unaware that
they had done anything more unusual than entertain one un-
lucky German airman.

About the same time, in Fighter Command Ops room, Air
Marshal Sholto Douglas was starting to get a different picture.
Not that he fully accepted it, for it was so incredible that it
didn't make sense. An hour and a quarter had passed and he
had almost forgotten the mysterious Messerschmitt when the
phone jangled. The commander of No. 34 Group, Royal Ob-
server Corps, calling from Glasgow: "We've got the pilot of
the M 1 10, sir. He admits he's Rudolf Hess and he wants to see
the Duke of Hamilton/'

Events might not have moved so fast if it hadn't been for the
speedy sleuthing of Graham Donald, Glasgow's assistant group
officer. Eager to vindicate his observer posts' identifications, he
had driven to the scene, to find the wreckage of a Messerschmitt

103

The City That Would Not Die

strewn over an acre and a half. Curiosity took him to meet the
pilot at the local Home Guard Headquarters even with extra
petrol tanks the man could never have made the return trip.
And as they chatted, something about the pilot's face struck
him as familiar.

Still, Douglas couldn't believe his ears. Walter Richard Ru-
dolf Hess was deputy fuehrer of the Third Reich ranking as
Nazi No. 3 after Hitler and Goering. He had fought with Hitler
in the Beer Cellar Putsch of 1923 and since then the two men
had been inseparable. Why, Hess was reckoned responsible to
Hitler alone, the man who truly wielded the power in the Nazi
party. Now he had come to Britain to see, of all people, the
Duke of Hamilton whose Scottish estates bordered die scene of
the crash.

One factor was easily settled: the Duke of Hamilton, the first
man to fly over Everest, was now a wing commander in the
Royal Air Force, in charge of Douglas's fighter sector at Turn-
house, East Scotland. In the commander in chief's Ops Room
annex, from which all top-secret calls were made, Douglas rang
the duke, asking without preamble: "Do you know Hess?"

The duke, sounding puzzled, asked if the fighter chief meant
Rudolf Hess, if so, he couldn't actually claim to know him. He
had shaken hands with him once at the Olympic Games ^1936.
How did the question arise?

Douglas, who had a boyish sense of humor, replied: "Well,
he's come to see you or says he has. They've got him at the
Central Police Station in Glasgow. You'd better pop over there
and have a look at him."

"To see me at this hour?" said the duke, still puzzled. But he
agreed that he'd get over there right away.

As Douglas recalled the phone chat, it was a strangely British
conversation, almost as if Hess, having made no appointment,
had chosen to send in his card at an inconvenient hour.

The duke, on the other hand, had no memory of this call. As
he remembers it, his first intimation that something had gone
awry was a midnight summons from his sector controller which

104

"Another One In, Another One Out . . "

brought him hastening from bed to the Control Room. The
news perturbed him. The German pilot of the plane that had
crashed near Eaglesham had asked for the duke by name.

At this time, the duke was positive, he had never met Rudolf
Hess, either at the Olympic Games or anywhere else. Instead,
while studying the German Air Force he had talked with Al-
brecht Haushofer, a leading Nazi theorist, who had been anx-
ious to engineer a meeting between Hess and the duke in Lisbon.
But the meeting had not taken place.

Next morning, together with Flight Lieutenant Benson, the
RAF interrogating officer for South Scotland, the duke looked
in on the prisoner, now transferred to MaryhiU Military Hos-
pital, Glasgow. When the German asked if the junior officer
could withdraw, the duke gave consent. It could be that the
prisoner had priority military information of value to Britain.

Once alone the German led off: "I was sorry to have missed
you in Lisbon." Then, quite simply, seeing the duke's puzzled
look, "I am Rudolf Hess." And he went confidently on. He
was as close to Hitler as any man alive. He had plans for a
negotiated peace with England which he knew Hitler would
regard as a basis for discussion.

The duke, playing for time, said: "If it's a question of peace
plans, I think I should return with an interpreter." His one idea
was to get out of the hospital as fast as might be, saying nothing
to anyone until he had made personal contact with Sir Alexan-
der Cadogan, permanent under secretary to the Foreign Office.

Still closeted in his private annex, Douglas had rung both
the Air Ministry and the Foreign Office the latter would have
to pass the news on to Winston. Churchill. Meanwhile, Douglas
recalls that he hugged the news tightly: instinct told him that
this was a high-level sensation which must not leak out. In fact,
the secret was well kept: as the night wore on everyone at
Fighter Command prickled with die news that something
strange was afoot, men exchanged meaning glances, but nobody
knew why. Minister of Home Security Herbert Morrison heard
nothing at the Home Office until well after dawn.

705

The City That Would Not Die

Even one of the first Germans in on the secret had refused to
believe it. A few minutes before 6 P.M. on the Saturday night
Oberstleutnant Adolph Galland, the air ace commanding
Fighter Group 26 at Wissant, near St. Omer, had Reichsmar-
schall Hermann Goering calling from Berlin in a state of frenzy.
Galland's entire fighter group were to take off at once.

Galland tried to reason with his chief. It was already getting
dark, many of his planes were still on night exercise, he had no
report of any aircraft flying in.

"Flying in? What do you mean, flying in? You are supposed
to stop an aircraft flying out. The deputy fuehrer has gone mad
and is flying to England in a Messerschmitt no. He must be
brought down."

The drawback was that Galland didn't believe a word of it.
Instead, after hanging up, he tried to reason out who had gone
mad Hess, Goering, or himself. For the first time the thought
crossed his mind: it was Goering. He toyed with the idea of
forgetting it, then duty won; you didn't buck an order from
the chief of the Luftwaffe. But Goering had given no details
except the likely course, probably didn't have any. So how
would Galland's fighters, when airborne, know which plane
Hess flew?

Like many a subordinate before and since, Galland merely
went through the motions. Ringing his five wing commanders,
he told them each to dispatch a couple of planes on immediate
patrol. He gave no reasons; it was plain that his subordinates,
too, thought the chief was suif ering from overstrain.

Things went the way he had hoped. By 7.30 P.M. just five
hours before Sholto Douglas received the staggering news the
planes had touched down with nothing to report. So Galland
had rung Goering to admit failure, at the same time beseeching
the Reichsmarschall not to worry. The distance between Augs-
burg and England was 830 miles; he doubted that any Messer-
schmitt could make it. And if Hess did achieve the impossible-
well, the Spitfires would finish what the Messerschmitts had
begun.

106

"Another One In, Another One Out . . ."

But Hess bad achieved the impossible, and no man was more
overjoyed than Winston Spencer Churchill. At Ditchley Park,
Oxfordshire, his weekend routine had been much as usual: din-
ner with the customary pint of champagne, hours of good talk
over brandy and cigars with a few close advisers General Sir
Hastings (now Lord) Ismay, Professor Frederick Lindemann
(now Lord Cherwell), Minister of Information Brendan
Bracken. Twice, after the raid started, The Old Man called
Home Security War Room to ask details of damage. Each time
he came back strangely wistful, knowing the worst.

Toward midnight, as always, the lights were dimmed in the
vast baronial hall; a mixed company of sixty or more settled
down with Churchill to enjoy the inevitable film show. To-
night it was "The Marx Brothers Go West" and almost the
only person who wasn't watching was Miss Mary Shearburn.
As duty secretary she was boxed up in the small office at the
rear of the hall, just left of the age-blackened oak front door.

Suddenly the private scrambler line from 10 Downing Street
rang. An urgent message for the Prime Minister: "Rudolf Hess
has arrived in Scotland/' Miss Shearburn's first reaction was:
"Who's Hess?" But, as always with Cabinet-level messages, she
typed it out on a slip of paper; even among the select few top-
secret messages were not delivered verbally. Threading her
way through the darkened hall, she asked the Prime Minister
to step outside.

In a minute he came black silk dressing gown embroidered
with gold pheasants over the baby-blue siren suit he called "my
rompers." As he read the message, chomping on an unlit cigar,
his face puckered with incredulous joy. He looked like a school-
boy about to dance a jig. When his advisers, with personal
Private Secretary Leslie Rowan, gathered near, an immortal
phrase ground out of him: "The worm is in the apple."

Still Miss Shearburn couldn't fathom the jubilation. In her
own words: "So many other more exciting things were happen-
ing then I couldn't make out what the fuss was about."

But now an argument arose. From the rear of the hall

707

The City That Would Not Die

Churchill's bodyguard, Detective Inspector Walter Thompson,
began wondering what all the noise was about. More and more
people seemed to be ducking surreptitiously from their seats,
slipping toward the annex. Stabbing with his cigar, Churchill
was strenuously resisting Bracken's point that the Prime Min-
ister should see Hess personally.

It made a memorable picture the owls dipping like moths in
the moonlit park, the great stone hall cloaked in darkness,
Churchill arguing with his advisers, his lurid dressing gown
spotlighted by the glare from the annex, while Groucho loped
and wisecracked across the screen.

Drawing near, Thompson heard his master explode: "No,
he'll be put inside he'll be interned. The audacity of the man!
He'll be interned like anyone else."

Here, again, there is confusion. Both Thompson and Miss
Shearburn were trained observers, close to Churchill, yet both
Churchill's and the Duke of Hamilton's versions differ on sa-
lient details. The duke is positive that he himself was the first
to break this news to Churchill, after a frustrating non-stop day
in which, having failed to contact Sir Alexander Cadogan, he
finally did establish liaison with one of Churchill's aides, who
was visiting the Foreign Office. After stressing that he had
"something interesting" to tell the premier, the duke got swift
leave of absence, flew by Hurricane to Northolt airfield, Lon-
don, eventually reaching Ditchley Park late on the Sunday
night.

He recalled, too, his meeting in camerawith both Churchill
and Sir Archibald Sinclair, then secretary of state for Air, in-
credulous at the news. "Do you mean we have got the deputy
fuehrer of the Third Reich in our hands? " Churchill asked with
sonorous relish.

Churchill, on the other hand, was later under the impression
that he had no contact with the duke at all until late on the
Sunday night. Then, since a phone call from the duke, in Scot-
land, was interrupting the screening of the Marx Brothers' film,
he left it to Brendan Bracken to make all arrangements. The

to8

"Another One In, Another One Out . . ."

duke's recollection is that this film actually followed his meeting
with Churchill, although, bone-tired after a grueling day, he
slept through the entire show.

The exact truth probably lies somewhere between all these
versions. One thing, in any case, is certain: Hess had eluded
pursuit all the way and arrived safely. But the crux of the matter
was: why had he come at all? To seek peace? To present an
ultimatum? To bring a personal message from Hitler? As the
minutes ticked by at Fighter Command, Sholto Douglas in his
private annex didn't know what to think.

But Douglas had other things than higher politics on his mind
in the cold, still hours of this spring Sunday. At 12.30 it was
hard to know how the battle of die full moon was going:
whether it was a success, a failure, or a stalemate.

There were now exactly 40 day and night fighters ranging
the target, trying their luck; so far they had claimed fourteen
"kills" between them. Good shooting, if the claims were ac-
curate; better still if the Germans had sent only 300 planes.

Not that Sholto Douglas had much doubt that his single-en-
gined fighters could inflict punishing losses. As a member of the
Air Staff, Douglas had clashed on this score with his predecessor,
Sir Hugh Dowding, who believed that without airborne radar
fighters would find only u an occasional fortunate encounter."
To Dowding the whole fighter night conception was "hap-
hazard," but Douglas had won the day.

Only a short while before Douglas had declared: "I would
rather shoot down 50 of the enemy when they have bombed
their target than ten forward of it." And again: "It does not
matter where the enemy is shot down so long as he is shot down
in large numbers."

The men in the sky felt much the same, but it wasn't that
easy. Confident and unafraid, they were still feeling their way-
some had never flown a "fighter night" until six weeks pre-
viously. Over the Thames, north of Dagenham, Squadron
Leader Whitney Straight spotted two licking blue exhaust
flames three quarters of a mile away it looked like a Junkers

20ft

The City That Would Not Die

88 and heading direct for the coast. At 300 m.p.h. Straight
began to lose height rapidly, but the Junkers was as fast: an
average 295 m.p.h. without bomb load. Once he lost it for
minutes on end, then that squirting blue exhaust again. Straight
was at 350 m.p.h. now, losing height fast, the frozen wind ham-
mering past his face. Over Eastbourne he was down to 1,000
feet, still losing height, and convinced that the Junkers had
seen him. Suddenly the thought jolted home: supposing it's a
Beaufighter?

One moment of doubt, and the plane, whatever it was, just
vanished. Straight turned for home still wondering; he would
have had to open fire at 200 feet. And positive identification
wasn't easy in a few fleeting seconds.

Thirty miles west of Eastbourne, over the spit of land called
Selsey Bill, Wing Commander Tom Pike, chief of 219 Night-
fighter Squadron, had his own problems. At the controls of a
British Beaufight, the young wing commander was in theory
one of the favored few. His plane was fitted out with a A.I., the
new air-to-ground radar; his navigator, Sergeant Sydney Aus-
tin, was in minute-by-minute touch with the new G.C.L
(Ground Controlled Interception) Station at Durrington, Sus-
sex. With luck Austin might get a hostile contact tonight, then
before any vector had even come from Control, Pike stiffened.
He had seen the impish twinkle of four faint stars a mile out
to sea. A Heinkel heading for London all right, and at 1 8,000
feet.

Carefully, at a steady 250 m.p.h., keeping well beneath, Pike
stalked him. Attacking from above you risked the chance of
overshooting. The moon was a white incandescent ball over
the water, right in the German tail gunner's eyes. Good that
he couldn't see to fire. But the Heinkel had suddenly spotted
Pike and now the chase was on, the bomber desperately weav-
ing and twisting inland to the northeast. All in vain. In eight
minutes Pike was close enough. The Heinkel narrowed to a
slim pencil quivering in his gunsight.

As the four lethal cannon shattered out, the Beaufighter shook

"Another One In, Another One Out . . ."

all over; long jets of flame curled from its ports. The plane
glowed as if on fire, and the air reeked of acrid smoke. White
stars pinpricked the length of the Heinkel's fuselage. Then
with a tremedous explosion it blew up.

For a moment Pike was almost blinded and deafened. Oil
slashed like rain at his windshield; chunks of flying metal struck
his fuselage. Then the aircraft was spinning out of sight over
Cranleigh, Surrey.

It was a cosdy victory. Within minutes Austin, from the
hull, had signaled complications; no matter how he wrestled
with the tuning control the cathode-ray tubes of the A.I. set
remained obstinately blank. In this time of teething troubles
even the juddering of the guns could often put a set out of
commission. Reluctantly Pike signaled to Durrington G.C.L
the code phrase used when a set went wrong: "Weapon bent."
Then he set course for Tangmere airfield one of the few
fighters equipped with radar, yet already out of the battle.

Back at Eastbourne, over Beachy Head, Flight Lieutenant
A. H. Dottridge could hardly believe his lucknot one Heinkel
but two, and actually flying in formation. One, obviously by
mistake, even had its navigation lights switched on. No wonder
Dottridge, a massive, barrel-chested man with bristling fighter-
pilot mustaches, exultantly broke radio silence: "Fve got two
dirty great Huns in my sights! " The temptation was too great;
from dead astern he opened fire on them both, hosing them with
angry shells. But at once the Heinkels banked sharply to star-
board and after a breathless ten-minute chase Dottridge realized
he had lost them both in the haze over Guildf ord.

At the Durrington G.C.L Station, on the chalk cliffs near
Worthing, Squadron Leader Howson Devitt, the controller,
had chuckled over Dottridge's exultant cry. It was almost his
only cheering news that night. For two hours he had sat with
his eyes glued to the small nine-inch radar screen, divided into
grids, which outlined his whole sector the 120 coastal miles
between Beachy Head and the Isle of Wight.

And for two hours the screen had swarmed with darting

The City That Would Not Die

white blips that Devitt couldn't identify; a day fighter not
equipped with radar was indistinguishable from a Heinkel or
a Junkers 88. Earlier he had spent half an hour maneuvering
one of his night fighters to the focal point just a mile from the
"enemy aircraft." Now word had come back it was a Spitfire.

No lover of fighter nights, Controller Devitt sat sullenly on,
destined to make only three contacts that night.

But the day fighters were making their mark. For two hours
they had kept the bomber crews wary, never knowing where
danger might strikea tense, dry-mouthed business that limited
talk over the target strictly to essentials. As Pilot Richard
Furthmann turned the Heinkel south from Wandsworth, Ob-
server Albert Hufenreuter had warned the crew yet again:
"Keep your eyes peeled for night fighters."

Muttered grunts of assent came from Gunner Eggert Weber
and Mechanic Josef Berzback. But they didn't really need
telling; to see a fighter before he saw you was largely a matter
of luck. At 1 2.25 on this calm, clear night Hufenreuter realized
that their luck was out.

They were at 9,000 feet, flying due south; Hufenreuter's
plan was to strike the Channel above Brighton, crossing the
coast at 6,000 feet, sacrificing height for speed. He had made
all these points to Furthmann, and the young pilot seemed to
understand; now Hufenreuter, at the port side of the cockpit,
was looking back over London. Briefly the sky was studded
with millions of gold sparks as the barrage pounded, then a
tremendous flash much closer at hand. Angry red tracer was
chopping past the port engine too low to score a hit, Hufenreu-
ter thought, near enough to be unhealthy.

"Dive," he shouted to Furthmann.

But it was too late. Furthmann bore down on the stick, but
not hard or fast enough a too-slow, too-cautious dive. Simul-
taneously all the dials on the instrument panel dropped at once.
The temperature of the water soared to 160. The port engine
was out of control.

112

"Another One In, Another One Out . . ."

"Dive steeply," Hufenrenter shouted. "And fly bends. We
can shake him if you only try." The tracer was flaring by but
still too shortjust ahead of the starboard engine or just below
it. At 12.30 Hufenreuter decided they must take a chance:
"Take her down as far as you dare. We'll shake him that way."

Hufenreuter knew from experience that if you sank almost
to 2,000 feet regardless of anti-aircraft fire or barrage balloons,
you were almost invisible against the ground. Furthmann
obeyed; the Heinkel zoomed steeply. Now they were perilously
close to the dark, rushing earth. But the fighter had gone.

Hufenreuter calculated fast. Everything depended now on
whether the starboard engine could hold out until they reached
the French coast. And the chance could vary from engine to
engine, from plane to plane. Some engines were now so heavily
armored that the plating alone put a colossal strain on them.
Much, too, depended on the pilot; the sheer, savage will to win
through that he could summon up.

At 12.35, as the Channel at Brighton came in sight, Furth-
mann said: "I can't make it."

"What, then?"

"I dare not risk putting her down in the sea with one engine.
I'll have to take her east as far as Dover. We might stand a
chance then."

Hufenreuter said nothing. For himself he would have
wrestled, win or lose, to force every ounce of power from the
failing engine. Now he felt powerless, impotent, realizing for
the first time that a man cannot stand alone. All along he had
tried to will Furthmann to do things he was incapable of doing.
Furthmann was a good enough pilot; it just wasn't in him to
make this supreme final effort.

With sinking heart he watched the Channel recede as Furth-
mann turned the plane to the east,

No word came from Weber or Berzbach in the rear turret.
They depended dumbly on pilot and observer to keep them
airborne.

113

The City That Would Not Die

Now they were down to less than a thousand feet. As the
nose of the Heinkel sank lower, the face of England became
plain under the moonlight white level fields, black clumps of
bushes, gray curving ribbons of roads. Hufenreuter could see
that the stick seemed to wobble loosely in Furthmann's grip-
there was almost no power left. Face foremost, he crawled on
his belly into the nose, suddenly howling a warning: "Get her
up! Get her up! It's a tree! "

As the Heinkel jolted painfully upward he felt hot sickness
burst in his throat.

He couldn't see Furthmann but he could sense the strain in
his voice beneath the outward calm. At 1 2.40 the pilot called to
him: "We go down." Again Hufenreuter, eyes glued to the
earth, shouted: "Up, get her up! It's a house."

The ground was whirling past at a furious rate: the landscape,
no longer a flat, unreal relief, was alive with cottages, tall clumps
of elms, theatrically black and silver under the moon. Quickly
Hufenreuter scrambled back into the nose, grasping the inter-
com. "Take up stations for landing." He saw that Furthmann's
seat belt was already fastened and fumbled to fasten his own.
Then, in a high, unreal voice, Furthmann cried: "Captain, I
can't hold her."

Hufenreuter, about to test the escape hatch, saw there was
no time no time even to sit. He had a sudden feeling dangerous
to a man fighting an air war: he accepted with "a kind of
serenity" that he was about to die.

The earth came slanting up toward them very fast, trees,
houses, barns, tearing by underneath, and in a few fleeting
seconds he saw, like a drowning man, all his life pass before
him: his first landing, eight years back at Fuhlsbuttel airfield,
Hamburg; his grandmother lying on her deathbed; the pale gray
line of the Harz Mountains beyond Quedlinburg. He balled up
in the cockpit like an animal, hugging his head. The Heinkel
tore into the soft Kentish pasture in a violent slewing pancake
landing, and a hundred yards away the trees came racing at

114

"Another One In, Another One Out . . ."

them. There was a monstrous roaring, shuddering, jolting like
"a giant hand pounding you against the walls of some tunnel."
The last thing Hufenreuter remembered was a feeling of un-
utterable helplessness.

At Fighter Command the ops room logged the crash an-
other bomber gone. But how many were left? The trouble was
that at 1 2.45 A.M. nobody knew. Every radar station reported a
mass plot, and the planes flew too high for visual checks, even
in bright moonlight.

The Royal Observer Corps report centers used "gallows"
steel uprights with crossbeams, signifying ten-plus planesbut
the system could fall down. Even before midnight Controller
Arthur Collins at the ROC Center, Bromley, Kent, had 40
gallows up and no more available.

Deptf ord Warden Albert Churchman found even his private
yardstick, based on the frequency of local bus services, didn't
help: a No. i raid meant a wave of bombers every fifteen min-
utes, a No. 47 was a wave every ten minutes. But tonight this
had fallen down; the high-pitched, whining cadence of the
engines never ceased.

And at Orpington, Kent, Observer Stanley Gardner kept up
a steady chant: "Another one in out, another one out, a lost
coming in now . . ." It was as good a method as any. Like 300
other observers, Gardner trusted his ears to distinguish the
number, to pick out friend from foe.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Wouldn't Have Joined if Yd Known"

12.451.30 A.M.

THE same sense of helplessness that overwhelmed Hauptmann
Hufenreuter had momentarily gripped Post Warden Stanley-
Barlow and his team in St. Marylebone. At 1 2.30 it had all been
so quieta game of darts going on in one corner of the post, a
hand of cards in another. Only the rumble of gunfire in the hills,
like surf beating against a reef, made them wonder what was
happening to the rest of London.

This was the true climate of disaster: any raid when the
bombs were not hailing on your own doorstep was a quiet night.

Tailoress Winnie Dorow asked trim, fair-haired Annie Hill,
"How do you do it? I swear I'll never be brave enough." Not
yet an officially qualified warden, it was Mrs. Dorow's first
night on duty. So now Annie Hill tried to comfort her; she, too,
had plotted the doorways that gave shrapnel shelter and the
sprinting time between each.

Just then Barlow cut in: lull or no, he wanted the post area,
less than half a mile square, patrolled once an hour. He told
Winnie Dorow to make the first patrol with Mechanic Charlie
Lee. A slack night would give her a chance to know the area
better.

Around 12.25 Winnie Dorow and Lee set off, only their
footfalls breaking the silence along the dimly-lit streets. Back
in the post time dragged. Nigerian "Sam" Ekpenyon was
chuckling about superstition some shelterers reckoned his
dark skin lucky, wouldn't bed down for the night until he had
looked in on them. Barlow was preparing to do a round of his

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Td Known"

shelter marshals. He deputed his close friend, handsome Eileen
Sloane, to take charge of the post.

At 12.36 the whole building shook as if an earthquake had
struck it.

"What in hell . . . ?" Barlow muttered. All evening he had
felt some kind of presentiment, and his first thought was; Can
this have been why? Suddenly Warden Johnnie Noble came
running. "That was Titchfield Street. They got Winnie and
Charlie Lee."

Barlow pelted to the scene but already it was too late. The
narrow canyon of Great Titchfield Street was like a battlefield.
Yellow plaster dust mushroomed above a crater 40 feet deep;
the "Bay Moulton" pub and the rest center next door were
burning furiously; the top floors of three houses had been
sheared clean away. Screams and cries from the trapped jarred
horribly with the chorus of "Oh, Johnny, How You Can Love"
rising from the pub cellar. Incongruously, Barlow thought of
the beer Lee and Winnie Dorow had left for him on the bar of
the pub only an hour and a half back. Now the street was
blocked by a vast slag heap of rubble. Lee and Winnie Dorow
must have been racing for shelter when they vanished some-
where beneath it.

Actually, Lee had been luckier; hearing something nearer to
"a soft breath" than a whistle, he had ducked his head aside.
The i,ooo-pounder burst only twelve yards away, but there was
no sound, no light only a feeling like "a monstrous hairbrush"
passing over his head For a second he was sailing through the
air, level with the first-floor windows, then the blast set him
down thirty yards away as gently as if he were getting into
bed. He was on die doorstep of a first-aid post, so he walked in.

Winnie Dorow was not buried, either, but as Barlow" espied
her through the cyclone of dust he knew tfiat she was lying
too still. Approaching almost CHI tiptoe, he very gently laid a
blanket over her.

Within twenty minutes rescue parties and firemen had taken
over at the "Bay Moulton" and Barlow was walking dazedly

7/7

The City That Would Not Die

back to the post. One thought obsessed him: Could he get
through this night and still stay sane? It made no sense. Winnie
Dorow had been scared, too, but she admitted her fear, she
tried to laugh herself out of it. When the raid began she was
scared, but she was alive, enjoying a drink and a joke. And he
kept thinking: Why Winnie Dorow and why Great Titch-
field Street? He didn't think of Euston Station, half a mile
northwest, twelve seconds' flying time for a fast-moving
Heinkel.

As the raid grew, the same thought obsessed others: the
bomber pilots had them marked out like a cat crouched over a
mousehole. At Peek Frean's Biscuit Factory, Bermondsey,
which was also turning out tank parts, Fire Watcher Alfred
Elms was with four others in the main yard when an incen-
diary bomb fell neatly behind each man. Sick and shaken, they
put them out; it was as if the bomber had meant to do that. In
Elvaston Place, Kensington, diplomat Edward Penrose-Fitz-
gerald heard a bomb drop and dashed out to help, throwing
coat over pajamas. Without warning he reeled back; a hot
yellow light flashed across his eyes. He didn't know that fire
had ignited the broken chunk of a i,ooo-pounder in the base-
ment next door, exploding and killing nineteen men, injuring
eleven others. He didn't even know London Region Head-
quarters, the nerve center of all Civil Defense, was only two
streets away. As he staggered back, Penrose-Fitzgerald thought
only: Why us? Why Elvaston Place?

It wasn't surprising that fear was abroad in the city. At 12.30
the raid was suddenly too immense, too overwhelming for any
previous standards to hold good.

Mrs. Isabel Penrose-Fitzgerald took one look at her husband's
face pouring with blood and began to repeat like a litany: "Dis-
infectant, where did I put it? I know it's somewhere, where
did I put it?" Some went completely to pieces. In blazing Baker
Street Ambulance Officer Eileen Young fought silently to over-
power a shrieking woman, a Pomeranian dog yapping in shrill
circles around their feet.

118

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Yd Known"

It hit the professionals, too. Near Liverpool Street Station a
quaking warden told Ticket Collector William Kidd, "I
wouldn't have joined if I'd known what it would be like." Dr.
Barbara Morton, of Bermondsey Medical Mission Hospital,
crouched in terror over her patients, trying to hide her fear,
praying all the time. At the National Temperance Hospital,
St. Pancras, Miss Frances Thirlby, the catering supervisor,
stood rigid and voiceless in the crowded corridor, her palms
slippery with sweat. She glanced so often at her watch that
finally a sister seized and shook her. "You're not fit to come
back. Matron shouldn't have let you."

Miss Thirlby couldn't answer. She had been bombed only
recently and she knew that now even the porter was in hiding
and it was the Irish sisters who carried die heavy stretchers
laden with the dead and the dying.

Some tried to brazen it out. In Stoke Newington a man he'd
ordered to take cover told Major Creswick-Atkinson cockily:
"I've paid for these fireworks. I'm going to see them." Perched
on a wall in the City of London, struggling to hold a bucking
hose steady, Auxiliary Fireman Harry Weinstock just had to
keep singing, everything from "Sons of the Sea" to "I'll Walk
Beside You." As the flames crept nearer, Weinstock joked:
"I'll die a hero. The hell with it."

At the War Office, Whitehall, as a bomb burst in the court-
yard, Percy Fearnley, the duty officer, was chatting to
a young A.D.C. Feamley felt "that tremendous grasping
at the air that seems to tug the guts out of you and go on and
on." Then he saw the A.D.C. rise stiffly from his armchair like
a man made of wood, walk robot wise across the room, and
disappear. Fearnley saw no more of him that night.

Few could hold on to a thought as coherently as diplomat
Edward Penrose-Fitzgerald. ' It's true, then, you don't hear the
bomb that hits you."

Whether you heard it or not, one woman saw it. At Poplar
Hospital, East India Docks, Sister Phyllis Ward was moving
quietly among her patients when the bomb that sliced the hos-

The City That Would Not Die

pital in two plowed clean through the ceiling from above, rip-
ping through the floor to explode in the ward below; killing
six; shaving the front six beds off every ward; burying patient
after patient under a choking torrent of masomy. In the false
darkness, among the cries of men in pain, people felt bewil-
dered, stripped of comfort, here, too. Father George Coupe had
held the non-denominational service earlier, had stayed only
because the raid grew heavy. Brisk, methodical Sister Ward got
him out, along with eighteen others, but later the surgeons
amputated his right leg. Dick Craze, a homeless fever patient,
had pleaded all day to be discharged; understandably the hos-
pital had restrained him. Before he died he had ten minutes to
ponder this.

At other hospitals the picture was a little brighter, but not
much. At St. Luke's, Chelsea, the bomb fell a little after mid-
night, smashing the receiving ward, the doctors' quarters, the
main theater, yet killing only two doctors and one patient. The
Medical Superintendent Dr. Taylor's belief that the raid wasn't
bad enough to move the patients below had saved 140 lives:
the basement was wiped out.

Even Clerical Officer Edward Glading, who pitched four
flights down the shattered staircase to the basement, was
shocked rather than hurt his clutching fingermarks were im-
printed on the walls for four stories. And others knew moments
of pure terror a porter trapped in a chair when the blast folded
its steel arms around him; Sister Horton pinned against scald-
ing hot-water pipes; Porter Jack Bickle blown clean into the
bomb crater.

Certainly the Germans hadn't aimed for the hospital, didn't
even know it existed; it was just sited too near the Albert
Bridge spanning the Thames. It was an ugly quirk of fate
shown time and again this night every London hospital stood
near a military target.

It was small comfort to the hospital staffs as they worked
to calm their patients. In the bitter-cold hours of this Sunday
morning it was grueling work. At St. Luke's Porter William

720

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Yd Known"

Lester and others had to shin four stories up the water pipes to
the hospital wards; both staircases had gone. Then the patients
had to be wrapped in warm blankets ready for evacuation;
some lifted gingerly on to stretchers; there were the old folk
to be reassured and wailing children quieted. At Poplar Assist-
ant Surgeon John McLauchlan was still helping to extricate
the wounded when casualties from the borough began to flood
in. As usual McLauchlan gave first priority to men with hand
burns: in this water-front area all a man's earning power lay in
his two hands.

As Lambeth Hospital blazed, nurses and porters moved all
the adult patients on stretchers to the maternity block; soon,
as the flames advanced, they had to move all the children in the
hospital there, too. Sometimes patients had never seemed so
contrary. One old man refused to budge until a fireman had
dashed through the flames to rescue his false teeth and his best
suit.

It was a night of merciless priorityhospitals and any build-
ing touching the war effort first, private dwellings a long way
behind. On the riverside at Lambeth Station Officer Charles
Davis had one engine at work on the blazing roof of St.
Thomas's Hospital when a verger came running from Lambeth
Palace: the roof was on fire. Almost before contacting Fire
Headquarters Davis knew the answer: no engines to spare.

The verger persisted, "You'll have to do something. The
Archbishop of Canterbury is in residence."

"I can't help the archbishop; the hospital is my first concern."

Angrily the verger threatened to report him and dashed off
to try his luck elsewhere seemingly with success. Soon after,
as Superintendent William Henry Thompson drove by, a man
ran from the palace and flagged his staff car to a halt. "We've
only two trailer pumps at work on the palace."

"Two at work?" Thompson turned to his driver, Fireman
Leslie HortoH. "Move one of than out, Horton there are
places of greater national importance tonight."

The tragedy was that without knowledge of how universally

121

The City That Would Not Die

bad things were, men expected irdracles of the firemen and then
grew angry when these weren't forthcoming. Near Victoria
Station a man grabbed Superintendent George Bennison by the
sleeve. "Can't you do anything to save our home? It's only
just caught."

"I'm sorry. There's nothing."

"But you're the Fire Service. You ought to do something."

"Look, the war effort doesn't recognize private property.
The only thing is to get your furniture out and pray."

Sometimes the interchanges were tougher. As Sub Officer
Norman Cottee's fire engine rocketed down burning Brixton
Hill householders ran screaming across the street to form a cor-
don. As the driver trod hard on the accelerator the people
scattered with only inches to spare.

It was hard for anyone to understand, and especially hard
for Jimmie Sexton. It had been bad enough just before midnight
when that first message passed from basement control to roof
the mains outside the factory broken, no water to fight any
fires that might break out. Still, with unquenchable Cockney
optimism Sexton had told himself the raid might pass over.

But when Sexton walked a few yards across the roof to the
parapet, he saw something that stopped him dead: the glass
roof of the Toilet Mill, where the soaps and shaving sticks
were made, was alive with a soft rosy glow. Close at hand Fire
Watcher Albert Fey was once again reporting to the basement.
Suddenly he saw Sexton come plunging toward him. "Fire-
fire in the Toilet Mill."

Fey was calling this news down the handset telephone when
there was a faint click. The Bne had gone dead.

As Fey asked Sexton how bad it was, he got a shock: he had
never seen the little man look so distressed. Shakily, Sexton
stammered that he thought things were very bad indeed. Fey
decided that Control could never have got that message. "We'll
have to get down and tell them."

It was all so urgent, yet so unreal, that Sexton could hardly
believe it was happening. First, slipping and sliding, they

122

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Td Known"

scrambled down the iron escape to the soap powder floor. Here
vast sacks of filmy flakes were piled to the ceiling. Suddenly
there was a tremendous concussion; they were hurled with
such force against the sacks that Sexton felt all the breath
slammed from his body. Finally they reached the yard, ducked
under an archway for shelter.

They could see the Toilet Mill burning now and stacked on
the paving stones only twenty yards from it were vats of paraf-
fin wax. Fey spoke for the first time in minutes: "Looks as if
this place has had it." Sexton, he still recalls, said nothing.

Jimmie Sexton couldn't. He felt sick and helpless and
frightened that same sense of impotence, driving out anger
that Hauptmann Hufenreuter and Stanley Barlow had felt.
First he thought of the little flat near Tower Bridge, of how
he had worked for the flowered print curtains, the leather arm-
chairs, and the tomato-colored rugs. Next he thought of how it
had looked the morning after the bomb had hit it young Jim's
cot smashed to matchwood, the china cabinet in cruel, glinting
fragments, just one armchair still shiny and undamaged. Of
how he had smashed at the leather with a lump of concrete,
sobbing, "We've had the other bastards, we'll have the lot,' 7
until a fireman had led him gently away.

Last he thought that Fields' factory which had meant secu-
rity and home for nine years was doomed as well.

From now on all was business. Both Sexton and Fey made
a dash for the north building, whose basement housed the Fire
Guard Control. One flight down they met three anxious men
on their way to see things at firsthand Fire Chief Bill Wilks,
Bill Westaway, the boiler man, Fire Watcher Bob Armstrong.
A hasty conference and Wilks decided they would try to sub-
due the fire in the Toilet Mill with chemical extinguishers. If
that didn't work, they would isolate it force the iron doors
of the mill shut. They were three inches thick, well oiled, on
sliding hinges; there seemed a chance they might do the trick.
Bob Armstrong was sent at a run for the Fire Service.

In a body they raced to the Toilet Mill, but it was hopeless

123

The City That Would Not Die

even to attempt an entry. The whole building, its shelves
stacked with cardboard cartons of soap and packing-case shav-
ings, was one mighty yellow flame; they couldn't even hear the
hiss of the extinguishers. Above the din Sexton heard Wilks
shout, "Doors the doors! "

Sweating and panting, the heat scorching their eyes, blister-
ing their palms, they began to slide the iron doors shutfirst
one, then doubling round the building to another, up the iron
stairway to the second floor, working until every door was
tight closed. Gradually, in ones and twos, they staggered back
exhausted to the paved yard. The north building, thirty yards
away, was still untouched.

Suddenly, with a roar, the pent-up heat blew the cast-iron
doors. A hot whirlwind of blast took Jimmie Sexton skimming
across the paved yard. When he picked himself up, the fire was
bellowing through the buckled doors, licking at the walls of
the Steerine Department close by. The building was packed
with animal fats, candle grease, inflammable palm oil. Sexton
thought that only the Fire Service could save the factory now.

As Wilks and the others ran for the north building, Sexton
doubled back around the mill to the works entrance nearest the
railway lines. His assignment was to see the Fire Service in. At
the works entrance he found only Gatekeeper Bill May he
looked nervous, distracted. Suddenly the phone rang in the
gatekeeper's lodge, and Sexton, answering, heard a truck
driver's voice: "Any orders for Monday?"

It was so off-beat that Sexton couldn't resist wisecracking:
"Yes, go to the works manager and get your cards if he can
find them! " As he hung up there was a strident jangling and a
fire engine came abreast. One look at the mounting wall of
flame across the yard seemed enough. "Too big we'll find an-
other one." Again the bell jangled as the engine raced off.

Angry and disgusted, Sexton doubled back, round the south
building, past the blazing Toilet Mill, then pulled up short.
Across die courtyard incendiaries had ignited the roof of die
north building, where Wilks and the others had taken shelter,

124

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Td Knovm"

The candle molders' department, two stories given up to
candles and night lights, was on fire. A sluggish, stinking river
of grease 30 yards wide flowed gently down the side of the
building.

Sexton's first thought was: They'll be trapped alive down
there. As he pelted for the basement, he thought: The Fire
Service left us to burn.

Again it was a grim question of priorities hard for any man
trapped by a raging wall of fire to view philosophically, yet it
made sense. Well before the factory sent out its fire call Super-
intendent William Henry Thompson had driven up in his staff
car. Even then, Fireman Leslie Horton recalls, the factory gates
glowed white hot, like newly-forged steel.

District Officer George Earl, along for the ride, was rocked.
"What on earth have they got in there to make it go like that?"

Thompson had to do the best he could. Fields' was an island
site; the fire was unlikely to spread to other property; it didn't
rate as a front-line factory. When he signaled back to Lambeth
Control: "Make pumps five at Fields'," he expected three
engines at the most. Minutes passed, but nothing came. Thomp-
son drove on to Waterloo Station: word had come that the un-
derground vaults were alight. There, with Staff Officer Edward
Bawdrey, Thompson signaled: "Make pumps ten at Water-
loo."

Still no engines. As they sat on the pavement, waiting help-
lessly, Thompson burst out: "We'll never get the bloody
pumps, and even if we do there's no water."

If seasoned professionals like Thompson felt despair, it was
only natural that civilians were completely at sea. Few had
even embraced the one tenet that could help tonight: nothing
was immune.

At the Alexandra Hotel, Knightsbridge, things had settled
down as uneventfully as always: Mark North's staff had seen
to that. Prompt on eleven, when the siren sounded, Head Night
Porter Charles Mattock had sent Porters Frederick Willis and
Frank Dearlove on a round of the six-story hotel, which was

12 J

The City That Would Not Die

built as a rectangle around an inner courtyard. Tonight there
were some 90 guests in residence and Mattock wanted them
knocked up discreetly and coaxed down to the lounge.

In Room 14, on the first floor, Rear Admiral Martin Bennett
climbed out of bed, slipped a lounge suit over his pajamas,
padded down to the main hall in carpet slippers. Farther along
the corridor, in Room 101, Allen Bathurst, a retired solicitor's
managing clerk, hurried to do the same.

Mr. Andrew Verdie was already below, killing time in the
main hall. A sound sleeper, the ebullient old Scot found these
discreet nightly rappings on the door of Room 302 far more
vexing than the Hyde Park gunshe could at least sleep through
those. So tonight Verdie planned to have his usual chat with
Porter Willis over a cup of tea, then slip upstairs like a guilty
schoolboy for a good night's rest.

A few preferred the basement to the lounge, although Mat-
tock, a grave, impassive man like a Hollywood butler, usually
advised against it. Tonight, though, there was no shaking Mr.
and Mrs. James Murdoch of the piano family. Along with Mrs.
Elizabeth Tuchmann, a well-to-do widow, and about a dozen
others, they trailed down.

Some weren't coming down at all. General Josepha Hallera
and his wife had their self-contained flat. Why trade in a com-
fortable bed for a restless night in an armchair? On the fourth
floor Mr. T. Blake Butler, one of the Ormondes of Kilkenny,
had kindred feelings. As he came out of the lift on his way to
bed, a woman he knew by sight hailed him: "I'm going to the
basement. I diink there'll be trouble tonight."

Butler laughed. "I'd rather stop up and come down with it
than have it fall on me," he replied. As always, however, he
climbed into bed fully clothedyou never knew.

Gradually in ones and twos people were drifting into the
lounge, some wearing bathrobes over day dresses, a few men
in sports clothes but more in lounge suits> standing and sitting,
clustering in little knots, wondering what sort of night this

126

"I Wouldn't Ham Joined if Yd Known"

would be. Mrs. Alice Woods chose a comfortable armchair.
The Percy Strauses settled in an alcove.

Checking over his charges, Head Night Porter Charles Mat-
tock reckoned about 30 in the lounge, with another dozen or
so in the basement; as usual about half the residents were tak-
ing a chance upstairs. A few weren't yet in the keys for
Rooms 212 and 314 were still on the hook in the main hall.
Mrs. Frances Morgan and her daughter Daphne, visiting the
Caledonian Club around the comer, had probably stayed late
with friends.

At 1 2.25 the lounge, which was to the left of the main fo^er,
overlooking the street, was in semi-darkness only a blue pilot
light burned dimly as the residents stirred uneasily in armchairs,
a few groups still on their feet talking in undertones. The hall,
too, was half-dark, lit only by another pilot light in Mattock's
box to the rear of the hall, on the right.

Andrew Verdie was now in the main hall, near^the tele-
phone kiosks, standing midway between the glass swing doors
fronting on the street and the swing doors of the dining room,
which directly faced them. He was chatting to Night Porter
Frederick Willis and awaiting that cup of tea. Almost every-
body liked "Bismarck" Willis, and he, in turn, was the kind of
man who nursed the residents along. That night he had^ de-
liberately stayed late on duty knowing that Mr. Verdie liked
a chat and the company.

Outside in Knightsbridge the sound of women's voices sing-
ing carried a long way in the still night: Mrs. Morgan and
Daphne were returning from the Caledonian dub in light-
hearted mood. On the corner by St. George's Hospital they
stopped to chat with the policeman on duty. He had a soft
spot for handsome gray-haired Mrs. Morgan, whom he called
"My lovely lady."

At this moment Warden Jack Smith was literally far above
them. With the Reverend Robert Moline, part-time warden
and vicar of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, he was on the tap floor
back of die Alexandra Hotel conducting his usual nightly sor-

The City That Would Not Die

vey from the point where the stone service stairway met the
roof. The barrage was beating against the sky, and the horizon
glowed with the driven fires. As the red markers broke above
them, they heard no plane,

'We're in for it," Smith cried. As the green marker broke
they were clattering away down the service stairs.

In the main foyer of the Alexandra Andrew Verdie chatted
on to Porter Willis, to be joined now by Head Night Porter
Charles Mattock. Mattock was a shade uneasy; the barrage was
getting heavier, and out of the corner of his eye he could see
people starting to wander. Mrs. Frances Morgan and Daphne
had collected their keys and started upstairs. Allen Bathurst,
too, was on his way up in his hurry to obey the summons he'd
forgotten his book. Mrs. Tuchmann had drifted up from the
basement; now, in company with a man named UUmann, she
had wandered back again.

And it looked as if even Andrew Verdie was in restless mood.
A man he knew passed through the hall. "Are you coming up,
Andrew?" Mr. Verdie had to admit it. "Fll be with you in a
second."

Just then Porter Frank Dearlove emerged from the dining
room with a tray of tea a cup for Andrew Verdie, one apiece
for Porters Willis and Mattock. He told Mattock, "Fve put
our dinners under the grill." Now he was on his way to- the top
floor to roust young George Alfry, one of the kitchen porters,
out of bed. There had been talk of an incendiary earlier on and
Dearlove wanted to make sure it had been dealt with.

"Use the stairs," Mattock advised. "You know they have
warned us not to use the lift when a raid is on." But Dearlove
only chuckled. Six flights was a long way to climb. The pas-
senger lift stood just left of the main staircase, facing manageress
Paula D'Hondt's office. He stepped in, thumbed the sixth-floor
button.

Jack Smith and the Reverend Robert Moline had just pelted
into Old Barrack Yard, the mews at the rear of the hotel, when
they heard the bombs above them a crowding, whining shud-

228

Above. The Temple. Mirrarpic. Below. Toppling buildings, like this
one in Queen Victoria Street, blocked almost 8,000 streets after the
May 10 blitz. Imperial War Museum

"7 Wouldn't Have Joined if Td Known"

dering like an express train flashing from a tunnel. As they
reached the shelter in the mews, the bombs seemed to burst
inside their eardrums. Qose at hand a girl screamed hysteri-
cally; Smith lashed out to quiet her. Then, groping through a
blinding fog of dust and ash, he stumbled toward the warden's
post in Belgrave Square.

Inside the hotel no one had heard a thing; the bombs had
struck almost as one. Glassware was breaking somewhere above.
The blue pilot light glowed brighter, then went out. Close to
Rear Admiral Bennett a woman cried, "Oh, where are you,
George?"

The air shook with a volcanic rumbling. The darkness thick-
ened with a cloud of dust. In the main lounge a marble pillar
snapped like a tree trunk and toppled with a crack that rocked
the room, missing old Mrs. Alice Woods by inches, wedging
her in her armchair. The Percy Strauses, groping cautiously
from their alcove, found it blocked by a smoking feet-high
mass of timber and bricks.

Rear Admiral Bennett was still upright on his feet. After
seeing the whole far end of the lounge coEapse, he was shocked
and bleached with dust, but miraculously alive. Somewhere
under the debris he heard a woman cry out; her legs were
broken. But in the pitch darkness it was impossible for him to
see or to help.

In the maelstrom of dust, tumbling masonry, and splintering
woodwork it was hard to know what was happening, Charles
Mattock was pitched across the foyer, clean through the swing
doors of the dining room, landing unconscious in a tangle of
linen and cutlery. The blast didn't catch "Bismarck" Willis or
Mr, Verdie, but within seconds they were lost to view beneath
a tumbling, blustering niagara of flotsam plaster dust, ward-
robes, planking, tables, chairs.

While the first bomb had exploded on the third floor, the
second and worst had hit the lift shaft, bringing the lift, the
the stair well, and the best part of five floors down with it.
Porter Deatlove never stood a chance.

12$

The City That Would Not Die

The walls seemed to burst apart, raining light brackets,
mirrors, clocks, chunks of ceiling. As the ground floor split
open and the debris thundered to the basement, one terrible
cry came up from the shelterers beneath.

Then silence, an aching, empty silence broken only by small
sounds: the rustle of broken water pipes, the slow trickle of
plaster dust, a faint whimpering as if a child had bad dreams.

Gradually people began to take stock. On the first floor
General Josepha Hallera and his wife found, bemusedly, that
they were unhurt; though the french windows of their suite
had come in on the teeth of a whirlwind, heavy velvet curtains
had staved off the ugly shards of glass. The general's instinct
as an old campaigner was to get out and reconnoiter. Half-
way to the corridor he had inexplicable second thoughts: he
went back to fetch his gas mask.

It might have made sense. Outside, a vortex of smoke and
oily fumes seemed to suck him into its midst. Glass gave with
an ugly snapping sound underfoot. Reaching the head of the
stairs, the old general trod cautiously forward, then recoiled.
The stairs had gone. He was stepping forward into space.

At the rear of the hotel he struck luckier most of die rooms,
including Andrew Verdie's, were untouched, even to the
pajamas folded neatly on the pillow. The steel emergency
stairs running down the outside wall were warped and twisted,
but from third floor to ground level they seemed to hold. Only
above the third floor were they unrecognizably bent a writh-
ing skein of steel winding absurdly out into space.

Thus General Hallera was able to make the ground floor
without too much trouble. The first thing that hit him forcibly
on entering the lounge by the front haU was the number of
people milling around. The second was the spectacle of a
woman he knew well by sight: every evening she sat on a sofa
in the lounge, smiling placidly, her husband beside her. To-
night die was again on the sofa, white with leprous patches of
dust, but still smiling fixedly. Her husband was beside her,
stone dead.

"J Would?? t Have Joined if Yd Known"

Neither then nor at any time was the general In any way
surprised by the proceedings. Instead, he went back the way
he had come to take a bulletin to his wife. He held the in-
triguing if improbable theory that the fate of the Alexandra in-
deed the raid was all linked with the "French" officers who so
mysteriously invaded the conference room with their air-flight
chart.

True or not, the hotel was a scene of horror. From the upper
floors now came the steady dramming of fists on door panels,
the trailing cries of the frightened and trapped. In stray shafts
of moonlight the dead lay carelessly, in grotesque doll-like at-
titudes, sprawled across corridors, looped over broken balus-
trades.

Some couldn't even move. On the fourth floor Mr. T. Blake
Butler awoke soon after the bombs had fallen, to hear a stealthy
crackling and feel a vast weight pressing down on his legs.
Finding he could move his hands, he switched on his bedside
torch and a chill like ice shot through him. He could see noth-
ing. He was blind. Trapped by the legs, he would be slowly
charred to death.

The truth was more consoling. The blindness was real enough
though it lasted only days but never at any time was the
hotel on fire. It was merely that the blast had blown away all
the outer walls of the fourth-floor front; the bedrooms stood
wide open to the 'moonlit park. Most probably the crackling
Mr. Butler heard, borne like a zephyr on the spring night, was
the sound of Mayf air burning.

At Westminster's Pest 12 Headquarters, Belgrave Square,
the old town house of Lady Bathurst, all this fell into the lap
of Herbert S. Mills, a dark, impassive man who had been deputy
post warden since his job as chauffeur to Sir Geoffrey Duveen
folded at the outbreak of war. As the bombs split the Alexandra
apart, Mills and his assistant, Nat Williams, who kept the local
cigar store, had been standing outside the post. "Bit noisy to-
night/' said Mills judicially, although the bombs seemed some
way away*

The City That Would Not Die

The chauffeur's first instinct was to move swiftly toward
the sound of the explosion, then he checked it firmly. If it was
in their post area, one of his wardens would be near enough to
make a quick reconnaissance. That done, the man would dash
to the post and reportwhat had been hit, the type of damage
done, whether or not people were trapped. The firsthand re-
port would save Westminster Control endless trouble when
ordering out emergency services; tonight, like every other
borough, Westminster needed to hold back all the reserves
they could. So it was common sense for Mills to stay where
the warden reporting would expect to find him.

Calm, methodical, diligent, Mills applied common sense in
life as coolly as he had once applied his capable fingers to spin-
ning a Rolls-Royce through traffic. He was the ideal Civil De-
fense warden.

Three minutes passedfive minutes ten. Deliberately un-
hurried, Mills chatted on to Nat Williams. Suddenly Warden
Jack Smith, his denims as white as a miller's smock, almost
collapsed on top of them. He gulped out, "Alexandra Hotel."

It was enough, but as Mills grabbed up two blue road lanterns,
the only tackle he needed, and started off , he felt a faint qualm.
After all, less than three years ago he had never bothered with
this kind of thing; he had been content in the pretty little mews
fiat, gay with water colors, where he still lived with his wife
Minnie, the cars all polished in the garage beneath and ready
to go whenever the boss called, winters spent in Biarritz or
Monte Carlo, according to the family's whim. It was a neigh-
bor calling at the time of the Munich scare, suggesting it was
up to everyone to do their bit in case of trouble, that -had
started all this off.

Mills had agreed, although without much enthusiasm; neither
of them fancied the Fire Service, so they opted for Civil De-
fense. To Mills the memory held its own irony: though he com-
pleted the course, his neighbor never turned up to one lecture.

And a stranger irony that, two and a half years later, the
greatest responsibility he had ever shouldered had hit this

132

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Td Known"

normally quiet post area. The blue lanterns, the blue steel hel-
met he wore, stamped Mills as one of the new incident officers
wardens especially trained to avert too-frequent chaos by
assuming supreme control over every service on the spot. To-
night every decision, right or wrong, would have to be his.

Already things were moving. At Belgrave Square Jack Smith
stammered out a hasty report to the post telephonist. By 12.47,
in the white toneless lighting of Westminster's Control Room,
Message Supervisor Elsie Ferguson was reading:

00.40. Post 12. H. E. Alexandra Hotel y
Knightsbridge. Casualties many. Roads
blocked. End of message.

Though bald enough, it was a start it gave Controller Sir
Parker Morris and his staff plenty to do. They must send am-
bulances, stretcher-beareis, rescue parties, to begin with. In
case of leakages or short circuits, the local gas and electricity
boards would have to know. Roads blocked meant diverting
busses, so they must ring London Passenger Transport Board.
Someone else must call Kensington telephone exchange.

The wires hummed busily, taking die news to all points
across the City of Westminster. Soon help would come. But
for twenty critical minutes the whole weight of the disaster
rested squarely on the shoulders of Herbert Mills, just then step-
ping across the Alexandra's splintered threshold into a gray
dust fog that seemed without end.

Hauptmann Albert Hufenreuter felt oddly lightheaded. He
was conscious of surprise, too; he wasn't dead, after alL Al-
though he had pitched clean forward into the nose of the plane
at the moment the Heinkel crashed, he didn't even seem to be
hurt.

Qambering back into the cockpit, he saw that Richard
Forthmann was still alive, though obviously badly shocked.
He was slumped against the maroon-colored leather of the
pilot's seat, mumbling disconnectedly, like a man talking in

The City That Would Not Die

his sleep. Hufenreuter unstrapped him, but he couldn't lift
the youngster bodily from the plane or stop the uncontrolled
twitching of his wrists. He realized that in his delirium Furth-
mann was still trying to keep the Heinkel aloft.

As Hufenreuter lowered himself gingerly on to the edge of
the cockpit, poised above the grass, he noticed that his left
leg swung as loosely as a shutter. Almost idljr he saw that a bone
had skewered clean through his flying suit and was^ poking
through his rubber boot. He must have walked back into the
cockpit on his stump, but the shock had been so great he felt
no pain at all.

A man came panting across the pasture and Hufenreuter
hailed him. "Where are we?" Puzzled, the man called back,
"In England." Hufenreuter's reply was almost English in its
understatement. "Oh, damn!" he groaned.

More specifically, the Heinkel had pancaked on a meadow
called "The Camp," above the tiny Kentish village of Kenning-
ton, near Ashford. Only a windbreak of stout hawthorn bushes
snagging the starboard wing had stopped it from exploding
nose first against a screen of oak trees. The first man to reach
the scene, Ambulance Worker Frederick Huckstepp, who lived
nearby, had thought a British plane was in trouble.

Soon more villagers had scampered to the scenebutcher
Edward Ward and his wife Ann who were sure the plane was
going to land in their back garden; Charles Peters, with his
daughters Joan and Joyce. Yet with droves of Heinkels still
winging their way north to pound London, it was hard for
the villagers to know which note to strike whether to accept
the Germans as human beings in distress or to repel them as a
ruthless enemy. Many, still clad in their night clothes, just
stood staring, as if space men had crashlanded their sleepy Kent-
ish village.

But some were more positive. The Peters sisters doubled
back to the cottage to fetch blankets and pillows. With diffi-
culty Huckstepp lifted Pilot Furthmann from the cockpit and
laid him tenderly on the grass, while Joan Peters wrapped an

'34

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Yd Known"

eiderdown around him; they found later that his spine was
fractured. Others helped lift Gunner Weber, who had both
legs broken, out of the turret; Gerhardt and Berzbach, though
only shocked, were both unconscious. Someone else phoned
for an ambulance and a doctor. As Joan Peters coaxed Furth-
mann to drink a little water, an artillery" captain arrived to take
charge, steel helmeted, with a pistol belt strapped over his
pajamas. Hufenreuter asked him if he wouldn't mind looking
in the cockpit and retrieving his forage cap. The captain
obliged without demur.

Now Hufenreuter was lying on the frosty grass with his
neck against a cushion. One of the women, kept saying, "Soon
going ambulance/' spacing out the words carefully so that he
should understand. He felt grateful, but he felt an overwhelm-
ing disgust, too they had been within an ace of home and
now this.

He understood the woman's English well enough; his father,
back in QuedHnburg, was the local schoolmaster. By degrees
it dawned on him that he might now have some years to per-
fect this language.

At Fire Brigade Headquarters, about this time, Major Frank
Jackson sent for his staff officer, District Officer Edward
Kirrage. "Well, it's time to move."

"Which way do you want to go, sir?"

"Let's go up Queen Victoria Street."

Now Jackson had seen the disposal of his forces on the big
mobilizing boards and map; the pattern of the raid had de-
veloped. And the largest fire areas were plain, too die north-
em bank of the Thames in the mile between Blackfriars and
Tower Bridge, spreading a mile inland. This area alone had five
conflagrations, and Queen Victoria Street was the main ap-
proach road from Blackf riars Bridge to the square mile of the
City of London.

It had been Jackson's area long ago, as a young divisional

The City That Would Not Die

officer the peaceful years when, as a lonely widower, he had
still found rime to indulge in his favorite sport of salmon fishing.

The black Armstrong-Siddeley made good rime toward the
City only once did Jackson halt it to put down the hood:
"We'll have this back, then we can see where we're going."
As they drove, thousands of red eddying sparks drifted at them
on the still-windless air. At Queen Victoria Street they pulled
up dead.

From end to end the street was alight; the gas mains were
white pillars, lancing 50 feet, with a terrible rasping sound, to
the red sky. The gutters were choked with idle pumps, coils
of empty hose. Firemen huddled in cold, dispirited groups, do-
ing nothing, or hung on to branches whose nozzles only
dribbled water like tea spouting from a pot.

At the northern end, toward Mansion House, even the roof
of the fire station was alight. Suddenly Jackson broke silence.
"My God, Barrage, what a sight!"

It was agonizing to watch and not in Queen Victoria Street
alone. Above the City for a hundred square miles the London
sky pulsed like a blast furnace red, angry, frighteningly alive.
Slow-rolling columns of yellow-gray smoke bannered across
the buildings and the river; and the piled clouds gave back the
molten glare to the earth. It glowed on the black wasteful
puddles of water, on the firemen's boots and oilskins. It glowed
on buildings already alight on every floor, their office windows
Ht up like showrooms.

A thousand tiny red embers drifted in the air, lodging pain-
fully in the eyelids. As the heat dried out a man's skm, the
smoke peppered his lungs and nostrils, parched his lips; time and
again the firemen sucked at the tiny draught of cold air that
hovers around the water jet* Down in Stepney professional
Fireman John H. Good felt for his cigarette lighter, then stood
staring his uniform was intact yet the heat had peeled away
the aluminum shell in dry, crumbling flakes.

Never had men been so hot and yet never so cold. As die
jets fountained through the stone canyons of the streets, the

136

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Td Known""

breath of the fire drove back the water; every man was
drenched to the skin with a fine spray like Irish rain. In a tem-
perature one degree below freezing the coldest May night in
British records firemen hugged their branches, wet and be-
wildered, w r ondering how long their water would last out, or
if it would ever come.

In some districts it seemed as if the noise would never stop.
In Theobalds Road, leading Fireman Morrie Zwaig, an auxil-
iary, was petrified by the throb of planes, the savage pummeling
of the guns; the steady droning of the pumps' engine; the nerve-
tearing scream of bombs. And only a mile away all might be
silent the quivering orange light; the dry crackle of the flames;
far away a fire engine tolling like a passing bell. By the burning
Temple Church Journalist Alexander Werth was one man with
time to listen and hear a vast ring of fire breathing rhyth-
mically, like a living thing. He thought: For once Wagner was
right.

There had never been a bonfire like it molten lead at the
Farmiloe's Paint Works, Battersea; 250,000 books at the British
Museum; bonded brandy and cigars at Waterloo Station; but-
ter and York hams by Tower Bridge; 6,000,000 Red Cross
flags and 10,000 collecting tins; the Royal College of Surgeons
with the army's collection of plaster wounds; the skeletons of
kangaroos brought back by Captain Cooke; and the skeletons
of Mosquito aircraft in Bethnal Green; chocolate and raspberry
jam in Poplar; cable and wireless headquarters in Moorgate;
10,000 pairs of shoes in Freeman, Hardy and Willis's store;
Fields' Candle Factory; all Mr. Alvah Clatworthy's lace doilies;
100,000 worth of Gordon's gin in the City Road.

And still the fires were leaping a barge called The Silver
Wedding; six acres of rubber and anchovy sauce at Hammer-
smith; Lambeth Palace; McDougall's flour mills; a two-acre
waste-paper dump; gyro compasses for night fighters in Hatton
Garden; Salvation Army Headquarters; j 60,000 worth of
railwaymen's uniforms; the Clubland Boys' Club; the roof of
the House of Commons.

The City That Would Not Die

By i A.M. Jackson had ordered "Emergency Working"
and this alone showed how desperate things had become. The
London Fire Service's 1,270 fire appliances were already in
action. Now the 1,242 appliances from the outer London bor-
ders miist move in without deky and many more were
needed.

All over the Qty people huddled on rooftops, silent, speech-
less. Behind Westminster Abbey John Hodgkinson and Diana
Riviere watched the glowing skeleton of St. John's Church
"Queen Anne's footstool" and remembered the opera Don
Giovanni, when Don Juan descends to the fires of hell. Artist
Kathleen Brooks watching black spires and turrets etched
against red from a Knightsbridge roof understood better the
words of G. K. Chesterton: "Some moment when the moon
was blood . . ."

On the fire ground it was different. What struck District
Officer Barrage in Victoria Street was the lack of organization
even if the sixteen-inch water main had gone the firemen
weren't making intelligent use of what little water remained.
At one point some firemen were laboring with two 500-gaHon
Coventry Climax pumps and two lines of hose. Kirrage urged:
"Look, knock out one line, boys that way you'll get a real
jet." It was the same all along the street.

It was a heartrending sight especially so to men like Jack-
son and Kirrage. Under normal conditions Jackson's Brigade
was a tough, highly disciplined force, capable of tackling and
mastering any fire. Its members prided themselves on being
"smoke-eating firemen"; they shared the same tradition of hard
work, off-duty pints of "old and mild," warehouse fires that
had flickered out twenty years back. Most of them had lived
all their lives in married quarters "bom under the hose cart,"
they liked to say. Their wives shared recipes and tea-party
gossip, knew the pros and the cons of every station this flat
didn't catch the morning sun, that flat needed its plumbing
fixed. They were true prof essionals, stuffed with tales of when

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Td Known"

things had been tougher, of supers whose oaths were fiercer
than any flame.

Since the blitz, though, this small, exclusive world was break-
ing up. The hard core of 2,800 professional firemen had been
swelled by a wartime influx of 28,000 auxiliaries, some volun-
teers, some conscripts courageous and keen enough but lack-
ing the years of training that went to make the professional.
They all added up to a force of 30,000 strong, but among them
only one man in forty was a peacetime officer who could sum
up a fire situation in an instant.

On this night old hands like Kirrage wasted precious rime
exhorting and chivvying. At the City end of Queen Victoria
Street the harassed district officer found another knot of fire-
men staring at a doorway blaze no bigger than a coal fire.
"What's the trouble here, boys?"

"No water, sir."

It was no time for words. As Kirrage waded in to stamp it
out the auxiliaries followed suit. They weren't scrimshanking;
the idea had only now occurred to them.

Other professionals found the same the auxiliaries didn't
seem to understand* In Holborn Superintendent Joe Ansell
found only one fireman with a line of hose, training a weak
jet on a burning department store already a solid sheet of
flame. Ansell stepped in. "Look, swing your branch to the
left, son give the Shoe Lane corner a drink. This one's a write-
offyou can only stop it spreading." When Ansell came back
five minutes later the auxiliary had the branch back in the old
position a spurting dribble against the impenetrable flame.

Finally Ansell swung the branch himself, to show how the
brickwork on Shoe Lane corner steamed as the jet hit it. "That
way you're cooling it down you're stopping the fire from
spreading." Even then the auxiliary didn't seem- to catch on.

It wasn't really surprising few auxiliaries had experienced
even a sizable peacetime fire. At the Qty end of Upper Thames
Street, above the river, Temporary Fireman John French had
a seven-story rubber warehouse on his hands and two years'

The City That Would Not Die

experience. Farther down the same street Station Officer Robert
Stepney, who had "never even had experience of a decent
peacetime fire," had a whole block alight. Leading Fireman
Morrie Zwaig, in charge of a pump crew at the Theobalds
Road conflagration, had two years' service. The same for Lead-
ing Fireman Joseph Cotterell, who took over the News Chron-
icle Building in Fleet Street, His crew was made up of a fur-
niture salesman, a fun fair attendant, a plumber, and an ice-
cream tricyclist.

In peacetime the chief officer of the brigade and all his senior
staff would have been present on these fire calls with pumps
surrounding the building.

As things stood, even experience couldn't help much. At
Upper Thames Street French had a four-man crew and one
pump. He knew that he wanted at least ten pumps, but he com-
promised, summoning five. He got nothing, and the building
burned down. In Theobalds Road there was no water; a bomb
had smashed the mains in Red Lion Street. Fireman Zwaig
did the best he could, smashing a manhole cover and pumping
water from the sewers, but the filters kept clogging up;
anguished minutes of waiting while they picked them clean.

In their eagerness some took risks that would have turned
an old-timer cold. In the News Chronicle Building, several
flights up, Leading Fireman Cotterell had one jet and a flam-
ing insulated cable. He remembered the training-school precept
never put a jet on an active cable, you'll get a high-voltage
shock back through the water. Then he turned to his mate.
"What about it?"

"Come on, let's have a go."

Luckily the cable wasn't live, and Cotterell survived to
shudder at the memory.

Even the seasoned hands were finding it hard going. At the
junction of Mark Lane and Great Tower Street Station Of-
ficer James Ellis had an almost impossible assignment: to stop
the fires spreading farther east and engulfing the Tower of
London. Some pumps promised from Kent hadn't yet arrived

140

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Td Known"

meanwhile, with the mains gone, they needed a hose-laying
lorry to relay water from the river 200 yards away.

Stumbling west along Great Tower Street, Ellis found one
finally, but the driver wasn't keen to budge; he swore the
street was impassable. So Ellis jumped on the running board
and guided himthrough potholes, over piles of broken brick,
with flames fanning across the street, the driver almost blinded
by drifting dust and the shimmering red reflection. Smeared
with soot 5 his eyes streaming, choking with the acrid smoke,
Ellis got the lorry back to the Control point.

"Where did you go for that?" Superintendent Joe Ayling,
Ellis' chief, asked curiously.

"To heH and back," Ellis replied.

And to the man on the spot, Lambeth Control the "under-
ground firemen" sometimes seemed quite a bottleneck. As-
sistant Divisional Officer Kenneth Hoare, a monocled former
naval officer, was perched on a green baize card table at the
corner of Old Street and City Road when he saw the flames
fanning north from Holbom Viaduct the railway station and
the bridge were alight from end to end. Hoare rang Lambeth
to let them know the fire was marching to an area where they
had ordered twenty pumps to rendezvous,

"They'll have to proceed as directed/' a curiously calm voice
told him.

"I don't think it's wise. The fire is spreading north. They
stand every chance of being marooned."

The voice begged to differ. They had no reports of fires
north of the viaduct. Hoare persisted: die mobilizing order was
an hour old, the situation changed. The voice acknowledged
Ms report. Nothing more was said.

A little kter Hoare had word that the pumps' crews had
escaped but the machines had gone. Boxed in by debris in the
narrow streets, their petrol had caught; the intense heat had
reduced them to a dripping, molten mass. Between twenty
and thirty pumps were lost.

In any case, there was nothing Hoare could have done.

141

The City That Would Not Die

Despatch riders were hard to come by, walkie-talkies non-
existent. And he was a mile from the scene of the flare-up,
with no men to spare.

Down at the Elephant and Castle Superintendent George
Adams was at his wit's end. Within five minutes of his urgent
call to Control the first of his pumps had arrived. The problem
now was to hern in the vast circle of fire, stop it from spreading
outward. He sent the first six pumps that reported to the far-
thest points on the outer perimeter a quarter of a mile away
to Walworth Road and New Kent Road in the south, to New-
ington Butts in the west, and Newington Causeway in the east,
to London Road and St. George's Road, which ran north and
northwest of the Elephant.

At 12.40 more pumps arrived. They began opening up the
first of the hydrants at the Elephant junction. Dry, every one.

A tough, hoary old fireman with a bulldog jaw and a parade-
ground invective, George Adams wasn't giving up. Ordering
on two water units, he set one of his trailer pumps into the
5,ooo-gallon dam by Spurgeon's Tabernacle, now burning as
brightly as a birthday candle. In five minutes the hose went
limp. The dam was bone-dry.

Bombs were still falling, rumbling and thundering between
the blazing cliffs of houses; somewhere above a day fighter
buzz-sawed, machine-gunning a parachute mine; it exploded,
veining the air with yellow light. In this din it was hard for a
man to make himself heard, let alone think. But Adams was
keeping his head. He sent two more pumps to Manor Place
Baths, an emergency supply of 125,000 gallons sited down
Walworth Road. Three more to the basement of the old Surrey
Music Hall, 600 yards northwest by St. George's Circus. There
were 200,000 gallons there, and Adams would need every
drop of it.

Meanwhile, grim news was trickling back from the outer per-
imeter. Vital water mains had already gone, fractured by the
incessant pounding of the bombs the twenty-inch main in the
Old Kent Road; the twelve-inch, high-pressure in the New

142

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Yd Known"

Kent Road; the twelve-inch in Newington Butts; and more
were going. Station Officer Sydney Boulter and his men tried
twenty hydrants before they found one half a mile away that
would help.

If part of the answer was emergency water supplies, this
plan, too, had gone awry. The steel dams and concrete basins
scattered over 100 square miles of London held a little more
than ten million gallons. Later the Home Office was to re-
estimate the need at four million gallons per square mile- for
most of the metropolis about forty times the quantity avail-
able on this Saturday night.

So Adams knew the main hope was water relays from the
Thames and from the Surrey Canal by Camberwell Road, a
mile away. Special hose lorries, like the one James Ellis had
rescued at Mark Lane, carried a mile of coupled hose, stowed
so that it would snake from the tailboard in a continuous line.
In theory a mile of hose could be laid within minutes with
special pumps set in to it at intervals to keep the water moving.
Along the route lynx-eyed operators had to watch the com-
pound and pressure gauges to avoid burst lengths ahead or
overtaking the amount of water delivered by the pump be-
hind them.

Adams didn't think the method entirely trustworthy, but
without emergency water it was the best available. Now he
signaled Lambeth Headquarters: "Make pumps fifty/'

A new arrival on the scene was Assistant Divisional Officer
Geoffrey Vaughan Blackstone. A six-f oot-plus Rugby foot-
ball enthusiast, Blackstone had no illusions about the dangers
piling up. One of Jackson's principal officers and deputy chief
of the Southern Division, he had for months urged the need for
on-the-spot emergency supplies. But somehow neither the
Treasury, who fixed the costing, nor the Architect's Depart-
ment of the London County Council, who carried out the
work, could muster much enthusiasm. They swore by a few
big resewoirs where the cost per gallon was less rather than
small ones scattered through unbUtzed property.

143

The City That Would Not Die

Ironically, the Surrey Music Hall reservoir, the one big
supply on which the Elephant now depended, was partly
Blackstone's doing. He and his chief, Lieutenant Commander
John Fordham, had seen the need for the site months before,
had cemented it up using Fire Service labor without waiting
for L.C.C. authority. At the time a report dubbed this "un-
constitutional."

Four lines of two-and-a-half -inch hose from this "unconstitu-
tional" supply had just been laid when Blackstone arrived at
the Elephant. Adams had set up a scaffold dam holding 5,000
gallons by Burton's, the Fifty Shilling Tailors, and water was
just coming through.

Still Blackstone didn't like the look of things. Manor Place
Baths were now reported dry within the hour they were on
fire. Although George Adams had laid on a relay from the
Thames at London Bridge, the hose lorry had a mile and a half
to go through the shivered streets. The total of broken mains
was creeping upmore than thirty within a mile radius. At i .00
A.M. one thing was plain to Blackstone the Surrey Music Hall
reservoir was momentarily all that stood between the Elephant
and annihilation.

Over the river, in Farrington Street, City of London, water
wasn't the only thing lacking. As Superintendent Ted Overton
watched his firemen use their razor-edged axes on locked of-
fice doors, he burst out, "Why in hell do they have to pad-
lock them? Don't they want us to save their property? "

Overton had cause to grumble. With District Officer Walter
Hall he had spent precious time driving up and down Holborn,
breaking into building after building to douse incendiaries. In
Cannon Street Police Sergeant Fred Scaif e and his team had no
axes but they used their truncheons joyously on every window
that was still intact.

Farther east, in Fenchurch Street, Fire Watcher Thomas J.
Burling, a shipping agent, shrugged as the flames fanned up
through a tailor's shop two blocks away. "What can you ex-
pect? There hasn't been a fire watcher there in months."

144

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Fd Known"

In any case, short of a battering ram Burling and Ms team
had no means of entry. The firms always took the keys with
them.

The government's policy on emergency water was not the
only factor hampering the Fire Service. Almost as frustrating
was Herbert Morrison's Fire Precaution and Business Premises
Order of January 15. Drafted to insure that men between six-
teen and sixty registered for forty-eight hours 1 fire-watching
duty a month, it offered so many loopholes that claims for
exemption totaled 75 per cent of registrations. Again Morrison
had been unwilling to resort to autocracy if there was any other
way out.

In Bishopsgate, by Liverpool Street Station, Fire Watcher
Claude Evans saw a bomb fall on an adjoining roof. Evans
blew a cutting blast on his whistle; although he had not seen
them on the roof all evening, he knew that the building housed
four full-time fire watchers. When a policeman in the street
heard the noise, Evans shouted down details. The policeman
ran into the building to rusde up the fire watchers. Within five
minutes he was up on the roof with them, neutralizing the
bomb.

From the parapet Evans cursed them like the Middle Ages,
but the men turned away sulkily, saying nothing.

Twenty minutes later two more bombs hit the roof. Again
no fire watchers. Evans blew his whistle for two minutes until
the policeman shouted uphe was busy but he would alert the
fire watchers. When they finally did come, they huddled in
the rooftop doorway, unwilling to advance farther. Evans had
to shout directions, pinpointing the bombs, before they dashed
out to tackle them.

Later the policeman told him that each time he had found
the team sheltering on the ground floor.

It was the same story time and again. Four times Evans saw
incendiaries plow through the roofs of warehouses in Houns-
ditch, a few hundred yards away. Dancing up and down on the
roof, shouting and tooting on his whistle, he thought he had

The City That Would Not Die

attracted attention, but no one appeared on the roofs to tackle
them. Three of the warehouses were locked and deserted; the
fire watchers had bolted from the fourth.

Soon all the fires had merged Into one battering sheet of
flame, and by then nothing could have stopped them.

To Temporary Fireman John French, on a warehouse in
Upper Thames Street, the fires seemed to start almost innocu-
ouslylike upended candles flickering gently downward.
Within thirty minutes the outlines of a building were gone;
there was nothing but a soaring shaft of yellow flame.

Some did their best. As Clubland burned, the Reverend
Jimmy Butterworth's teenagers defied death on the blazing
parapets until the police broke the nozzles on their hand pumps
to compel them to come down. In parts of St. Marylebone
people trooped from the shelters to stamp on the incendiaries,
leaping and singing. Looking back on it, Warden R. B. King-
ham was reminded of a square dance. And at Kennington Sta-
tion Officer Sunday stopped short for a strange sight: a de-
serted street; a shower of incendiaries; every front door open-
ing as one and householders, silent and purposeful, whisking
out to deal with them; men, women, small children, armed with
sand, buckets of water. Then every front door shutting again
like clockwork and not a word exchanged "like something
out of Disney."

But for every householder and business firm pulling their
weight there must have been three who weren't. Police Ser-
geant Fred Scaif e reckoned that in the whole City of London
fire watching was no more than 10 per cent effective. In Chel-
sea and the Belgravia district of Victoria whole streets of empty
pillared mansions glowed with neglected fires Bernard Shaw's
Heartbreak Houses whose owners had quit London when the
bombing began. At one Chelsea house Architect Arthur Butler
and his team just lost their tempers, stamping out incendiaries
and sloshing water about like naughty children. "You might as
well put up a notice Da come and burn me!' " Butler snarled.

Even by the Elephant young Bill Sherrington had to let

246

"I Wouldn't Have Joined if Td Known"

some houses in Pastor Street bum down; the owners had locked
up and quit, leaving no key. In Battersea south of the river
Warden Alec Woolfe was shocked: on St, John's Hill, by
Qapham Railway Junction, street fire guards had to hack their
way into building after building, shops, houses even factories.
And householders weren't the only offenders. At the Council's
depot, where the furniture of the homeless was temporarily
stored, not one fire watcher turned up for duty that night. At
one Battersea wharf the fire watchers got bored with the job,
went home to see how things were going. Most of the wharf
was gutted.

And when men dung doggedly to orthodox channels and
outmoded procedure it made things harder still. Temporary
Fireman John French needed access to a burning bonded ware-
house in Upper Thames Street, but first he had to parley with
police and customs officials; they wanted an assurance that
nothing would be moved outside the premises. In Fleet Street
Basil P. Bothamley, manager of Lloyd's Bank, saw incendiaries
strike the east end of the ancient Temple Church, where the
Crusaders were blessed before going on their pilgrimages. But
the local warden's post pooh-poohed his offer of help; the
Temple had its own fire brigade, which would arrive in due
time. Sergeant's Inn, too, had caught, but the caretaker had
locked up for the weekend and taken the keys. Soon both were
burning implacably with a luminous yellow fire.

The organization fell down almost everywhere. Just after
midnight Jackson's deputy, Principal Officer Clement M. Kerr,
had a fire call to Buckingham Palace. Outside the gilded iron
gates he found punips and water but no means of entry; King
George and his family were at Windsor, the palace dark and
silent. The police on duty had merely locked up and gone to
ground. For the first time in history the London Fire Service
had to enter Buckingham Palace by scaling the high railings.

Yet no one came to challenge them as they searched the
roof and rappo: rooms. They found a comer of the roof where

'47

The City That Would Not Die

something had smoldered, but no bomb. Kerr never knew who
made the call.

At 1 2.50 Kerr had word that disastrous roof fires had broken
out at the Palace of Westminster the site embracing the House
of Commons, the House of Lords, and the centuries-old West-
minster Hall, with just on five miles of narrow stone corridors.
As his staff car winged along the Mall, a shot crackled past
Kerr's head. The driver stopped to find the Home Guard was
warning them to keep out. Kerr's frustration began to mount.
No one had warned the Fire Service that St. James's Park was
temporarily closed to traffic.

At the House of Commons more confusion. Kerr found
pumps and crews, but the men on the spot were sullen; they
claimed that a busybody custodian had tried to keep them out
on the grounds that they didn't enjoy parliamentary privileges.
Kerr couldn't nail the rumor down, and it certainly wasn't
set policy; the main problem was that without hard-and-fast
compulsion even the Palace of Westminster had to rely on
twelve policemen, who were only on loan, to keep fire watch
on the palace's 1,000 rooms. At times certain doors, like St.
Stephen's Portal, were locked, and it took time to find the right
man with the right key.

As the Temple, Sergeant's Inn and Pump Court burned with
a quiet, unearthly hissing, Journalist Alexander Werth re-
called an old legend: the Temple had burned in 1666, too, be-
cause the authorities wouldn't countenance outsiders dealing
with Temple fires. By now more bombers had moved west-
ward, over Kensington, Paddington, St. Marylebone; to all
London's consternation it was every man's raid, but tradition
died hard.

148

CHAPTER NINE

"An Order's an Order Tonight"

1.302 AM.

IT seemed, suddenly, as if the raid would never end and it was
almost as great a shock to the German pilots. At 12.38 A.M., as
Leutnant Martin Reiser's Heinkel had swung away above the
smoke drifts of the Millwall Outer Docks, Reiser had instructed
Wireless Operator Leo Schuderer: "Contact home base say
mission completed."

Neither the Bavarian nor his crew were sorry. As the Heinkel
droned steadily south for the English coast, each mile seemed
an eternity. Never had Reiser so longed to see Vilkcoublay
airfield again. Never before had he consciously thought of a
mission; "Well, we lived through that." 1

Reiser must have been worrying all the evening without
realizing it. Normally the restaurant keeper had a robust diges-
tion, but tonight the stale aftertaste of fried potatoes kept re-
turning to plague him.

As die glowworms of the Vilkcoublay flare path loomed
ahead, Reiser relaxed consciously for the first time, feeling
relief seep through his whole body. He wouldn't want to live
through this night again. As he climbed from the plane, mechan-
ics were already swarming on to "B for Berta," and the armorers
were standing by with their bomb trolleys, but Reiser hardly
noticed them, Oberleutnant Speck had spoken of two sorties
at the afternoon's briefing, but that wasn't unusual: a reserve
crew would be taking Berta out again.

The City That Would Not Die

The crew set off to the mess hall for a snack. Reiser, instead,
walked across the frosted grass to Control office, the drumming
of bomber engines waking to life all around him. It was now
1.45 A.M. Two old friends, Leutnant Koch and Unteroffizier
Branner, were already at Control, reporting to the duty officer-
some stranger from Group whom they didn't know.

The three exchanged greetings. Had either of them seen
Speck, Reiser wanted to know. They shook their heads; he
hadn't yet touched down. Reiser began to worry. Earlier that
evening he had watched, alone in the darkness, as Speck's plane
took off over the treetops toward the coast. But the Longbridge
Steel Rolling Mills had been timed an hour earlier than London.
Speck should have been back by this time.

Now it was Reiser's turn: a short, concise report to the
duty officer. Yes, they had bombed seven 25o-ldlo bombs re-
leased at intervals across the horsehoe of Millwall Outer Docks.
Naturally they had planted them as near the fires as possible.
There was a little cloud at 14,000 feet but nothing below to
obscure the flashes.

As he finished, the duty officer said briskly, "Well done. Get
your plane refueled, see that it's bombed up, and take off again."

For a moment Reiser was speechless. To take off again on a
night like a summer's afternoon? Didn't the High Command
even think about the lives of the pilots they sent out? Worse,
this officer from Group Headquarters, so blithely giving the
orders, was an outsider who knew nothing of the wing's
problems.

"That is a crazy order, sir, if yon'll forgive my saying so/'
Reiser protested. "It is absolute suicide to take an aircraft and a
crew back over England in weather like this." His joke about
being "the oldest man in the Luftwaffe" came back to him, and
he thought fleetingly that now it might help. They would
know he wasn't a coward, they couldn't reproach him with
that, they might even reconsider . . .

But the officer was suddenly looking so sad that Reiser felt
a pang of shame at his thoughts, realizing that this came from

/JO

"An Ordefs an Order Tonight"

Field Marshal Sperrle himself, that he was only doing his job.
"I know the way it is," the man sighed, a but an order's an order
tonight."

Even tired and overwrought, with the dragging pain begin-
ning over his heart, Reiser felt a stab of remorse that he should
have queried an order. He said "Yes, sir, I see," and walked
very stiffly out of the Control office.

The order was, in fact, an unvarying facet of Sperrle's tech-
nique: a second and smaller sortie, timed to dovetail the start of
its attack with the tail end of the last main wave. They might
not achieve a vast amount of material damage but they could
at least further the prevailing chaos stoking up the fires, dis-
rupting factory production and goods traffic, keeping the citi-
zens awake.

All this Reiser accepted as common practice. It was just that
neither he nor any of the crews shared Sperrle's passion for
moonlight nights.

Now there would be no time even for a cup of tea, but in any
case he felt suddenly too sick to want one. As he walked back
toward "B for Bern" he wondered if anyone would ever re-
member his protest. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a truck
jolting across the airfield, packed with NCO's; one of them
seemed to lose his balance and somersaulted backward on to the

Still Reiser felt a strange detachment, as if all this was hap-
pening to someone else. He hoisted himself into the plane, and
shortly Pilot Adolf Schied and Mechanic Lorenz Huber joined
him. Watching Schied initial the bomb manifest and hstad it
down to the chief armorer, Reiser suddenly realized: Wire-
less Operator Leo Schuderer was missing.

Schied said he thought he'd be along. The sturdy little wire-
less operator had fallen off a truck and hurt his hand: he was
getting medical attention.

Despite the frightening knowledge they all shared, he still
addressed Reiser formally as "Herr Leutnant," referring to the
wireless operator as "Uberfddwebd Schuderer." The pro-

The City That Would Not Die

cedure never varied, even In times of stress: ranks were used
while on the ground, Christian names as soon as they were
airborne.

At a time like this a man clutches at small straws. Reiser
thought: We can't fly without a wireless operator there prob-
ably isn't a reserve man on the field at this hour maybe we still
won't go. But at two o'clock, there was no hope for it; Schuderer
clambered into the plane, grumbling that the doctor hadn't
bandaged his thumb properly, that now he'd have to get it fixed
when they got back. He seemed disproportionately ashamed of
the accident, begging them all to support him in his story that
he'd fallen down a flight of stairs. The youngster seemed to feel
that the humiliation of being jounced off a moving truck was
not for public consumption.

As Reiser gave his promise he thought how strangely unim-
portant all of it was. He felt quite powerless in the grip of
circumstances. He surrendered suddenly to the belief he had
fought to keep at bay: Speck was already dead. At 2.04, as the
green signal light showed for take-off, he knew they, too, were
going to die.

Few men were so sure. As always, in the midst of great disas-
ters, most continued to behave as if immortality was their
portion.

Since the raid began Albert Henley, mayor of Bermondsey,
was no exception. Henley had spoken confidently enough of
going to the shelters to talk to people about War Weapons
Week, but tonight there had been no time. By i A.M. Deputy
Controller Joe Blake and his staff knew that for London in
general and the dockside borough in particular there never
had been such a raid.

For two grueling hours Henley had been in the thick of it.
Just after i A.M. he and his chauffeur, Eddie Taylor, had re-
turned from a wrecked house where he had helped to hoist a
piano off a trapped man. First, a hasty journey to the Control

ZJ2

u An Order's an Order Tonight? 9

Room to make sure that Gladys was all right. As usual, she was
busy about the basement making tea for burly Joe Blake and
his staff.

As Mrs. Henley saw Taylor and her husband slip upstairs
again, she wasn't too worried. Although the underground room
shuddered time and again as the bombs came howling from the
sky, so that it seemed as if anyone would be lucky to come
through this night alive, she thought that Albert was usually
one of the lucky ones.

Groping through the darkness of the courtyard behind the
Town Hall, Henley and Taylor had parted Taylor to put out
incendiaries on the roof of the Municipal Buildings, Henley
climbing a ladder to the flat roof of the electricity substation.
Incendiaries had burned the tarpaulin covering so that the
rafters lay bare like wooden ribs under the moon. Presently
Henley was joined by his brother Percy, one of the borough's
incident officers.

The brothers chatted for a moment; Albert Henley suddenly
slipped; he fell heavily with one leg on either side of a rafter.
He was moaning a little as Percy lifted him, complaining that
he had hurt his ankle. He thought that if he lay propped against
the gutter for a short while he would feel better.

It was time for Percy Henley to return to Control for fresh
orders. Before he left he cautioned his brother against descend-
ing to the yard via the outside ladder propped against the wall.
He thought the chances of Albert heeding his advice were very
slim indeed.

There had been a rime, early in the blitz, when Percy, in
charge of an incident, had sent Albert scmrrying off on some
errand all the incident officers did the same. The chief warden,
shocked, had said, "Do you know who you are speaking to?"
And Percy Henley had answered, c< Yes my brother. He came
and asked to help and I gave him a job. Now he's happy."

Thus Percy Henley had litde hoj>e that his younger brother
would do what he was told. If an incident broke within the next
few minutes, Albeit would pick the shortest possible route to

The City That Would Not Die

get there. He never forgot that he had been an able seaman,
twice torpedoed, in World War I. He still took a stubborn
pride in doing things the hard way: scaling ladders, playing
football even though it gave him cramps.

In the Control Room Percy Henley had word that Peek
Frean's Biscuit Factory, by the railway line south of London
Bridge, was ablaze, and that all telephone links were cut off.
At just after 1.15 he set off.

Around 1.30 drivers George Blake and Jack Hart got an
emergency call in their rest room below the municipal build-
ingsthe Peek Frean's fire was so serious that the dead had to
be evacuated right away. As they tumbled up into the yard
they were surprised to see Albert Henley silhouetted against
the parapet of the electricity station. With surprising agility
for a heavily-built man, in spite of a hurt ankle, the mayor
shinned down a stackpipe to join them.

"This is a bad night," Henley said. "Where are you go-
ing?"

George Blake was making for one of the two green-painted
mortuary vans. "We're evacuating Peek Frean's."

"I've just put out one or two incendiaries on that roof,"
Henley said. "I'll come and help."

They were, characteristically, the last words he ever spoke.
Above them in the sky Blake heard a thin, high rending like
tearing silk; as he flung himself forward he shouted to Henley:
"Dive, Bert." All three men were scrabbling for some kind
of cover when the bomb burst, piercing Jack Hart's chest with
a fragment of shrapnel; puncturing George Blake's eardrum
with its percussion; killing Henley outright.

Half a mile away, in a phone kiosk near the Peek Frean
Factory, Percy Henley was reporting to the Town Hall. The
bomb that killed his brother was a faint echo, like the dying
note of a gong, up the wire.

Not that Percy Henley or those on the spot realized it
then. In the resultant chaos, with a thick yellow haze of dost
seething over the courtyard, those who ran from the basement

"An Order's an Order Tonight"

found only Hart, moaning in agony, and George Blake dizzy
with shock. Chauffeur Eddie Taylor, who dashed from the roof
within minutes, had no idea that Albert Henley was lying
within feet of him. He was convinced that the mayor had set
off hotfoot, as he often did, in search of some incident. Taking
the black-and-green Austin 24, he started out on a pathetic all-
night round of post after post in search of his beloved guv'nor.

Meanwhile, in the Control Room, incidents were piling up.
It was some time before one of Controller Joe Blake's officers
stumbled on Henley's body lying in the yard, within twenty
minutes according to Joe Blake, as long as an hour and a half
according to George Blake, his brother.

A forceful, muscular man, Controller Joe Blake was faced
with a fearful decision. As he received the whispered message,
Gladys Henley was only a few feet away, doling out die latest
brew of tea. Percy Henley had just arrived back for fresh
orders. As Henley's nearest relatives, they had a right to know,
and now.

On the other hand, Blake had to consider the fury of the
bombardment. Even die great docks raid of September 7 had
not surpassed it. One incautious word now, and die news would
go the rounds of every shelter; there would be incredulous
grief, perhaps even panic, Bkke had no need to conduct a poll
to know that 40,000 Bermondseyites were bearing up to this
night better because they believed that Albert Henley their
mayor was out in it as he always was, working like ten men.

So Blake said nothing not to his staff, to Gladys Henley, or
the borough at large. Only Percy Henley knew a vague dis-
quiet. Usually incident officers took it in turns; now he was
told that a parachute mine had landed on the Metallic Capsule
Company's factory by Surrey .Docks* and hustled off within
minutes.

Despite the cold night, Joe Blake found himself sweating as
he sat on with his secret, waiting for dawn. In Westminster,
where they grieved for their own mayor, Councillor Leonard
Eaton-Smith, they would have known how he felt.

ZJJ

The City That Would Not Die

There Is no doubting that Blake took the right decision. At
1.30 A.M. the truth about Albert Henley's death was almost
the only rumor that wasn't passing from mouth to mouth along
an invisible grapevine.

Bethnal Green's Chief Operations Officer Arthur Caldwell
heard that Goering was over the target In person, directing the
bombing. (He wasn't, or indeed on any other night.) Near
Paddington Station Warden Anne Kingham had an identical
buzz running through her shelters with Hitler as the master
bomber. In Hampstead Warden George Titcombe's aides knew
well enough why so many incendiaries were not igniting: they
had been sabotaged by the Polish Underground. Camberwell
shelterers had expected the raid all day they believed implic-
itly the scurrilous untruth that every broadcast by the Amer-
ican jazz pianist Charlie Kunz was a signal for attack.

At St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, the staff were on pins
all night; Paddington Station had been hit, just as "Lord Haw
Haw" had predicted. Yet the traitor's broadcast, which many
still swear they heard that night, was only a five-minute fill-in,
without any mention of the station.

With the pandemonium of crumbling buildings blotting out
all sound, a man could give credence to anything. In Ebury
Street, near Victoria Station, Superintendent George Benni-
son was spun backward on his heels by blast to find himself
slowly and horribly choking to death. Fighting and clawing
for life, Bennison had no doubt what it was: Hitler's secret
weapon that all had been warned to expect.

It must be a gas more deadly than phosgene. Then, near to
blacking out, Bennison relaxed and began to laugh weakly. The
chin strap of his steel helmet had hooked over some iron rail-
ings and he was in tie process of throttling himself.

On such a night it was easy to believe die worst. In Fighter
Command's operations room Captain Clifford Mollison, Home
Forces liaison officer, was doing his best to sort out a report for
his chief, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke. Suddenly a hysterical
Observer Corps man was on the line: "There are 10,000 planes

"An Order's an Order Tonight"

over the target." Mollison roared his disbelief and five min-
utes later the man was back: "Sony, a thousand."

Even then Mollison couldn't credit it. The board showed no
more than 300 German bombers at the most.

The confusion was understandable. Toward 2 A.M. many
men and women had seen sights which had never been seen be-
fore on land or sea.

Most Londoners could say with Shakespeare's Casca: "Never
till now did I go through a tempest dropping fire." But there
were worse things than fire. In Stepney Mrs. Esther Prisant,
a greengrocer's wife, found herself packed in a shelter with
several hundred terrified people and a black-draped coffin
brought on a handcart by a Jewish funeral party. All night,
as the barrage thundered, the candles flickered; the mourners
uttered their shrill, wailing cries and rent their clothes. Her-
self a Jewess, it was still to Mrs. Prisant "worse than anything
from Edgar Allan Poe. >y

North, at Stoke Newington, two land mines hit a cemetery,
scattered the newly dead and fragments of granite impartially
over acres of red-brick streets. Rescue Chief John Frisby and
his men were so shaken that as creaking boots echoed a long
way off in the stillness every man was silent, holding on to
sanity. Suddenly an outraged Londoner loomed from the dark-
nessbowler hat, topcoat over candy-striped pajamas, a coffin
lid balanced on his shoulder. He accosted them without cere-
mony: "I was in bed with my missus when this bloody thing
came through the window. What do I do with it?"

Frisby and all of them collapsed into wild laughter, offer-
ing suggestions.

Some sights made the spine crawl with a nameless terror.
By Surrey Docks Fire Watcher Alec Watt saw a blazing
barge upside down, literally flying for one split second across
the sky. Near Brkton Hill a house stood like a giant spider's
web fashioned from lead: it had shaken loose all its timber and
bricks and only the pipes remained. At the Elephant and
Castle a bomb struck an underground shelter to leave an un-

IJ7

The City That Would Not Die

forgettable sight the forms of humans imprinted on a neigh-
boring wall like a travesty of Pompeii.

For some the ugliness dawned by degrees. Superintendent
Bill Norwood followed the trail of an unexploded bomb down
flight after flight of the Victoria Tower at the House of Com-
mons, finally" ran it to earth in a basement. As he sized up the
danger he wondered why water was dripping on his hand from
above, then realized that it wasn't water. The bomb had
plunged through the ceiling after killing an official in the room
above.

For others it was a night of harrowing sound the fevered
jangling of burglar alarms set off by impact; the doomsday
knell across the City of London as St. Swithin's Bell ricocheted
down the tunnel of its steeple; the terrified screeching of the
gibbons in the Regent's Park zoo; the clip-clop of hoofbeats
down Piccadilly as a woman rode on a horse through the
drifting smoke.

Almost any sensation seemed bearable if it had roots in
normality. As a parachute mine struck near the Mayf air Hotel,
Pianist Freddie Aspinall felt the piano surge like a breaking
wave beneath his fingers. But he kept playing so the revelers
kept dancing. P. C. George Wharton, off duty and asleep in
City of London Police Headquarters, woke at 3 A.M. to see
the whole street alight from end to end and a fireman sitting on
his window sill with a jet in play. Wharton thought things
were in capable hands: he went to sleep again.

But any deviation from the normal triggered fear. Mrs. Kath-
leen Sales, returning from a dance during a brief lull in the raid,
heard a soft, sinister rustling and dived for the ditch then
realized it was the first time she'd been able to hear her white
taffeta dress. In Camberwell Warden Percy Lovett and two
policemen were in search of an unexploded parachute mine.
As they spotted it in a back garden^ the silk of the parachute
rustled. A cock struggled to the edge of the mine and crowed
to the paling sky.

When Lovett recovered from his shock, the policemen had

"An Order's an Order Tonight"

gone. They had taken to their heels like two-year-olds; he
never saw them again.

It was worse for some. For them the horrors were not fleet-
ing; they worked all night in their company. At 145 on the
Sunday morning Caretaker Frederick Haafe, stumbling from
the basement of No. 43 York Terrace, Regent's Park, was the
first intimation Wardens Eric Wills and James Ireland had that
the Group for Sacrifice and Service, 99 strong, were worship-
ing the moon beneath a naked glass roof.

Both Wills and Ireland were men who knew the world-
one a former public schoolboy and former dancing master, the
other a rich man's chef. But they had never seen a sight so
bizarre a bewildering mixture of rich and poor; women with
chased-silver, diamond-studded brooches; men in shabby, im-
pressed suits; the secretary, an elegant, imposing woman ex-
plaining that she could identify many of the dead by the rings
and brooches which established their place in the hierarchy.

While Rescue Chief Andy Sutherland and his team worked
by arc lights to free 60 people trapped on the ground floor,
Wills and Ireland were viewing unbelievable sights: an etch-
ing of Christ still intact on a shattered wall, a running buffet
in full progress in the main hall, a prayer chart detailing the
hours of meditation.

And more surprises were to come. According to Wills
some of the dead wore the white albs of priests, now patched
black with blood; as they were laid out beside the porch on
the graveled carriage sweep, the moonlight sparked fitfully
from the birthstones they wore. The dead archbishop, Dr.
Bertha Orton, a well-known London ocultist, wore no jewels
only a solid-gold cross studded with diamonds around her
neck.

Close at hand lay the body of Dr. T. Mawby Cole, the Har-
rogate businessman who had predicted "something stagger-
ing" would happen on May i r.

It was all part of a macabre picture from which neither war-
dens nor rescue men could extract much sense. What were the

159

The City That Would Not Die

moon worshipers, the British branch of a Calif ornian sect, do-
ing in the house at all? Once it had belonged to Lady Wynd-
ham, formerly Mary Moore, the actress; as a young man about
town Wills had danced in the painted ballroom. Now, accord-
ing to the records, it stood deserted. And neither Wills nor the
borough of St. Marylebone ever did succeed in penetrating the
mystery. When Wills went to make inquiries of the survivors
they were chatting animatedly in a drawing room set aside for
the purpose. From a chaise longue a portly woman called,
"Warden, I'd be grateful if you would get me a car."

James Ireland was having even more of a problem with
Frederick Haafe. The caretaker, rummaging in the rubble,
kept stressing that the altar must not be defiled "by pagan
hands." Ireland, steeling himself for something that would u do
credit to eternal Rome," gulped when Haafe salvaged the
top of a scrubbed deal kitchen table. But the caretaker would
allow no one to touch it, insisting it must be burned right away.

To top it all, a sudden argument arose about cremation, Haafe
insisting that none of the sect must be cremated until three
days after death, for fear the silver cord linking body and soul
might be sundered. Goaded, Ireland burst out, "Does it
matter?"

He meant that it was no time for niceties. On the other score,
Ireland and everyone else found unity. Hundreds of men,
women, and children were already dead. Hundreds more might
die before morning came. But meanwhile everything was ded-
icated to the proposition that life was sacred that no effort
was too great if one man, woman, or child could be saved.

And by 2 A.M. the situation could hardly have been worse.
Across London rescue men were already at work on more than
one hundred and fifty incidents where people lay trapped. In
some boroughs the situation had been critical an hour earlier:
with thirteen major incidents logged in two hours, Paddington
Rescue Chief Sidney Smith split his four-man teams into two
for the first time in the blitz.

Every qualm the wardens felt earlier that night had been

160

a An Order's an Order Tonight"

justified. The people had written the bEtz off too early; now
for many of them It would always be too late.

Among these who toiled, Deputy Post Warden Herbert
Alilk somehow emerges as symbolic. Within minutes of first
arriving at the Alexandra Hotel, the dark, impassive former
chauffeur had felt the same fleeting despair that engulfed
Superintendent George Adams at the Elephant and Castle: the
job was too big, the confusion too great. Then it was gone, and
Mills was again the perfect employee, realizing that only he
and practical men like him could restore order from chaos. He
felt no contempt, no patronage merely an awareness that
the kind of people the Alexandra housed were part of a world
too civilized, too remote, to cope with the horror that had be-
fallen them*

He was right. Inside the Alexandra a gray luminous pall of
dust still wavered like a curtain. Hundreds of people though
there scarcely can have been more than sixty seemed to be
milling excitedly about, grabbing the first person they could.
Mills saw one thing: unless the uninjured were got out of the
way and fast they were going to prove quite an obstacle.

Outside in Knightsbridge more welcome sounds became
audible above the cracking of the Hyde Park guns: the clangor
of bells and the crescendo of approaching engines as the am-
bulances and sitting-case cars came jolting and crunching over
the strewn rubble. Half the upper stories of the hotel had cas-
caded like a landslide across die road

The rules laid down that stretcher-party cars must be used
only by those who couldn't walk, but Mills saw no chance of
restoring order that way. Rear Admiral Bennett seemed fit
enough to go to the Underground nearby; he was soon out of
the hotel, escorting a Mr. and Mrs, Waterfield, with about
twenty others tagging along. Next Mils had the cars backed
up to the curb. He gave crisp instructions: the uninjured were
to be driven to the Ormonde Court Hotel nearby. The slightly
injured to Kingston House Qvil Defense Depot, which had
a first-aid post in its basement.

161

The City That Would Not Die

Then he started off on a quick reconnaissance with Assistant
Nat Williams. As they trod up the main stairway they stopped
short; a woman with a Red Cross cap on her head was spread-
eagled across the first flight. The face, wide open from scalp
to chin, had no connection with anything they had ever seen.

Beyond this point the stairs vanished into the sky, shorn
clear away.

Now, Mills in the lead, they doubled around to the rear of
the hotel, up the stone service staircase. The corridors were
flooded with rubble, blocking access to many of the bedrooms,
but it was no longer difficult to sum the position up. And Mills
felt a sudden prickle of horror.

With the central portion of the hotel gone from top to
bottom, every floor quaked like the sagging shelves of a cup-
board. A few seconds of silence followed each salvo from the
guns. Then the building gave out a stealthy crackling like the
first warnings of an avalanche.

Mills said; "My God, Nat, the place is alive."

The problem was hideously simple. There were people
trapped, many of them injured, on the upper floors. There
were people trapped in the basement. AH of them were blocked
off by rubble, and it would be necessary to cut through several
rooms to get at them. Meanwhile, one bomb falling too close,
one lively salvo even the right brick dislodged at the wrong
timeand the whole trembling shell would topple like a chim-
ney in a gale.

Worse, Mills didn't even know who was in the hotel how
many were staying there, how many were trapped aloft, how
many in the basement. The Alexandra should have phoned in
its total of residents to Mills's post in Belgrave Square, but
somehow they hadn't. The register had vanished beneath the
debris it never was found. And the manageress* Paula Dliondt,
who could have given firsthand detail, was locked up in Hyde
Park Underground; the police would let survivors in but while
the raid was on they wouldn't let anyone out.

Mills had never even heard of die one man who could have

162

"An Ordefs an Order Tonight

helped Mm. Head Night Porter Charles Mattock was stiE un-
conscious and unremarked in the ruins of the dining room.

Impassive, unhurried, Mils set up a table, his blue lamp glow-
ing beside it, on the pavement outside the hotel. From now on
this would be the control point for every aspect of the rescue.
As the stretcher-bearers struggled from the hotel with their
burdens, he and Nat Williams tried to get everyone's name,
a note of just where they were going. This could save endless
trouble with the relatives of survivors.

A squad of Guardsmen came doubKng up, an officer in
charge asking if they could help. Mills swept a hand over the
drifts of debris that virtually blocked Knightsbridge off: a You
could clear that away for a start." They looked a shade sur-
prised, but they waded in.

More consultation, this time with Rescue Chief Albert Ma-
rotta, a film stunt man, who had brought a tough, six-strong
team along with him Marotta settled every argument arising
on a job with judo. Tonight his peacetime background came
in useful: Mills wanted a reconnaissance of those parts of the
upper floors starting nearest to the demolished stair well. As
Marotta began his gingerly climb, he found the spiral stone
stairway had been snapped" back to the stubs, cantilevered out
from the wall.

Beyond the second floor they began to crumble. There was
a sudden gush of plaster. Marotta could save himself only by
clinging like a fly to the wall and the remnants of the balustrade.

But the lift cables still held intact, and Milk decided these
could be used to lower some of the worst stretcher cases from
up above to the front hall. The sooner these were cleared the
better. He set ambulance men and a few of Marotta's team to
work.

The worst problem was the basement. As faint cries filtered
up through massed debris, Milk realized that some of the shel-
terers were still alive. Using wicker skips to pile the rubble,
working "with hand stiovek and even bare hands, Marotta and
his crew began to terrier away.

The City That Would Not Die

Every so often they stopped, ears cocked, eyes straining up-
ward in the eerie half-light. The building had given another
ominous rumble, as if it were shifting slowly on its founda-
tions.

Standing there, only a few feet above them, Mills felt sud-
denly too tall, sensing that somewhere beneath the bodies of
people who wanted to live were being pressed and stifled be-
neath the crushing weight. At 1*40 he knew that whatever the
danger he was not going to give up, that no one else working
under him was going to give up either. There were lives to be
saved.

To do them justice, nobody gave it a thought. At the rear
of the hotel Police Constable Reginald Oakes, a fair-haired
young water-polo champion, was at that moment walking a
plank as confidently as he had ever sprinted along a diving
board.

The difference was that the plank, twelve feet by nine inches
wide, was perched precariously above a dark abyss 45 feet deep
which ended on the concrete floor of the inner courtyard. Its
outer end rested flimsily on a window ledge opposite and was
being held steady by P. C. John McKenning and another con-
stable. The inner end rested on a crumbling ledge a few inches
wide which jutted five feet below the windows of the fourth-
floor rooms.

Oakes, also under Mills's directions, was attempting a near-
impossible rescue feat. A boot manufacturer named Davies,
his wife, and two daughters were trapped in their fourth-floor
room overlooking the courtyard. There was no other way to
get them out.

Oakes's one consolation was that it was too dark to see
clearly. He had no conception of the drop involved; he was too
preoccupied with the fact that he had broken his police lantern
by diving too hard for cover when the bomb fell. They might
stop it out of his pay . * .

But Oakes decided that on his own he could do little about
shepherding the Davies to safety. He called, and P. C. McKen-

164

"An Order's an Order Tonight"

ning, a slow-spoken Scot, trod warily across the plank to join
him. Oakes then hoisted himself up, sat astride the window
sill, grasping each member of the family in turn by the waist.
Exerting all his strength, he managed to lower them bodily
down to AlcKenning. The Scot had one foot just resting on the
plank, one on the narrow ledge supporting it, with his left
shoulder pressed against the angle of the wall.

To Oakes it didn't always seem that the family appreciated
the gravity of the situation. As the elder Miss Davies was en-
trusted to McKenning's grip she screamed shrilly: her night-
dress had ridden up beneath the pressure of Oakes's hands.
Gently her sister reminded her: "We're getting out alive. We
needn't be too demure."

First the daughters, then Mrs. Davies, one by one, with Mc-
Kenning's arms encircling them from the rear, they teetered
giddily across the narrow plank. But at the last, when Mr.
Davies refused to be parted from his brief case, Oakes lost his
temper. "Look, don't be silly, will you? You're getting out of
this, aren't you? I'll bring it with me when I come."

As they staggered across Oakes thought for one moment
that the boot manufacturer's executive-sized bulk would topple
them smashing to the floor of the yard. But they made it finally,
and from then on it was a routine trip along rubble-choked
corridors to the service stairway.

As they stumbled into the street, Mr. Davies tapped Oakes
on the shoulder; he wanted a note of his name. But Oakes was
feeling sour; there would be trouble enough explaining the
filth on his uniform and the shattered lantern. Now, because he
had spoken sharply, this man would report him for insolence.
"Never mind my name," he answered roughly. "If you've any-
thing to say about me, I'm P.C 369 B* n

The rest of the night he spent drafting a report to try to
smooth things over. The fact that the family's account earned
him the George Medal strikes Police Sergeant Oakes as inex-
plicable even today.

But the same spirit of dedication had seized others. Down

The City That Would Not Die

by Battersea Power Station which the bombers never did hit
rescue workers Jack Searle and George Smith delved to reach
a trapped family in a tunnel no higher than a footstool, tons of
rubble creaking perilously above them. At one point Smith had
to lie as still as a rock for two hours holding a woman's head
while Searle chiseled away the concrete and woodwork en-
circling it. Even then Smith would accept no relief; Ambulance
Chief 3HL M. Westgate had to haul him out by the scruff of his
neck.

Some achieved miracles of improvisation. In Stepney the
Reverend J. Newton Sykes, chancing on a man with a broken
leg, quietly fashioned splints from wood wreckage with bombs
dropping 30 yards away. Among the blazing acres of the Ele-
phant and Castle an unknown man appeared from nowhere
with a bottle of whisky for four people trapped under a kitchen
table. When Warden Arthur Knight sent him for tea he
vanished into the flames, returned minutes later with a large
jug "hot with plenty of sugar."

In Islington Warden Rob Connell took all the weight of a
heavy wooden beam on one arm and shoulder, using the other
hand to scrabble away bricks that had trapped a couple in
bed. Streets away rescue men under Warden Nat Sharpe dis-
mantled a tottering wall brick by brick for fear it collapse
on a bedridden woman.

Sometimes the ends hardly justified the means. At the Royal
College of Surgeons' fire, Lincoln's Inn, the astonished post
warden, Victor Wootten, heard rescue men report a heavy
casualty list then realized they were saving specimens in pickle.
As a fireman smashed into Woolworth's store, blazing in Bethnal
Green, Sub Officer Sam Cheveau held his breath, then saw the
man stagger out disgusted. He was risking his life for a wax
dummy.

And a few, just to make things harder, didn't want rescu-
ing. Warden Jack Elaine, arriving to evacuate a Free French
billet in St. Pancras, found General de Gaulle's men propped
up phlegmatically in rubble-strewn beds refusing to move

166

"An Order's an Order Tonight"

a civilian had no right to give orders to soldiers of the Republic.
Even Blake's query as to how many should be on the spot was
poorly received: was it hw that a man should sleep in his own
bed on Saturday night? A friendship was cemented finally
over the least palatable early-morning snack Blaine had ever
eaten oily tinned sardines, French bread, raw red wine.

No such problems beset Warden Stanley Barlow. Not long
after i A.M. all his conflicts and doubts were resolved at one
stroke.

As usual, Barlow wasn't taking it easy at Post Headquarters.
Although the death of Winnie Dorow, the tailoress, had left
Mm cold and dazed, he was forcing himself to go on as if noth-
ing had happened. Barlow thought that few of his wardens
would understand why; they had even thought him callous
when he had driven a girl warden sick with shock out to patrol
again. It had been the same in the early days, when panic broke
out in an underground shelter and people clawed hysterically
for the entrance; in another minute they would have stampeded
blindly through the streets. Barlow had blocked the shelter en-
trance, swinging at every male chin within reach. Brutally effi-
cient, it had stilled the panic like a pail of cold water.

Barlow understood fear precisely because the seeds had
sprouted inside him. It was an enemy, he knew, that could be
allowed no quarter.

Tonight, though, he was patrolling with one of the few who
did understand trim, fair-haired Annie Hill. Once Barlow
showed razor-sharp presence of mind when they had gone to
watch a blitz from a roof and blast slammed the door on a
spring lock, blocking their exit. Without hesitation Barlow
scrambled down one and a half stories to a lower roof, then
caught her in his arms as she jumped. Miss Hill knew that
Barlow was often afraid, but she admired him as a man who
fought his fear as another man might fight a craving.

As they rounded the comer of Halkm Street^ which ran at
right angles to Portland Place where the post was sited, Barlow

saw a light shining at the vary top of the great Gothic syna-

* /"* yf

The City That Would Not Die

gogue which stood on the Hallam Street-Great Portland Street
comer. Inwardly he cursed; some careless worker had left an
electric Hght burning.

A closer look, and he began to run. The synagogue roof was
a furnace of blue-white incandescent light. Barlow was un-
aware that a bomb had fallen on the northwest tower, setting
the gas pipes in the gallery alight. The gas, as he had so often
stressed, should have been turned off at the main, but tonight
someone had neglected to do this.

Meticulous, painstaking, Barlow knew every inch of the
rabbit warren of basements and cubbyholes that ran beneath
the synagogue and the two connecting buildings. He knew who
sheltered there, too; in his notebook every name had been care-
fully entered up in the tiny accountant's handwriting. A quick
mental check there must be 14 in all.

Both he and Annie Hill ran for the synagogue: farther down
the street a woman with a dust-smeared face leaned against a
wall, giggling hysterically. Barlow turned to Miss Hill, order-
ing, "Get her up to the hospital." Again the knowledge of what
fear could do prompted his order. If people ventured from
below ground and espied a half -crazy woman, the panic would
spread faster than fire.

Alone Barlow ran on to the synagogue. Now he could only
hope that an incident report would get back to the Post and
quickly. Again he couldn't know it, but the teachings of
eighteen months were paying off. Warden "Sam" Ekpenyon
had been the first to see the synagogue take fire as he left the
basement of Yalding House, a tenement standing opposite. He
had an Express Report back to the Post in seconds. Now Bar-
low's words came back to him: "Wherever you are, stay there
and take charge."

The blast from the bomb had roused the shekerers in Yalding
House. Within seconds scores of people were surging for the
entrance. Suddenly at the head of the basement steps die
brawny Nigerian towered above them. "Man, see me excited?
See me worried?" As he launched into a heaitstirring Negro

168

u An Order's an Order Tonight"

spiritual, the fear began to evaporate. Ekpenyon sang on, do-
ing what Barlow would have expected him to do.

At the entrance to the synagogue basement Barlow had
paused. The stairway down was blocked by a gigantic tumble
of masonry, six solid feet of it. Impossible to claw at it with
Ms hands he needed leverage.

Without thinking the young accountant whipped off his tin
hat, bent almost double, scooping away at the debris for dear
life. It seemed hours before enough of it rolled aside to reveal
a faint light beyonda funnel large enough for him to ease
forward on his belly and tumble headfirst into the basement.
For a moment the blizzard of plaster dust stirred; he could see
four people reeling like sleepwalkers, picking feebly at the
debris that blocked off the basement from the hall. He knew
two of them Mr. and Mrs. Roth, the caretakers. He never did
know who the other men were.

Nor, for that matter, was he quite sure how he got them out.
But he had to make a quick decision. The three men seemed
dazed but capable of understanding; the woman was moaning,
almost paralyzed with fear. He would take the men first, then
return to tackle her on his own.

Already the heat was uncomfortable. It beat down on them
from the blazing roof, as if they were ants under a burning
glass. Yet strangely the fire was no help in guiding them. To
clamber their way over the debris they had only the milk-
water light of Barlow's pocket lantern. By the time they had
reached the street the fire had spread; every building stood out
clear and sharp in the light of the dancing flames. There was
no sign of the Fire Brigade.

Barlow told the three men to hang on outside, remarking
more confidently than he felt: *TU be back/'

Once more into the burning building. This time it was
much worse. The Eght of the torch seemed dimmer and for
minutes he couldn't locate the way back, groping in the black-
ness with only anonymous pies of bricks to offer clues. For
the first time fear swept over him like a wave. He thought

169

The City That Would Not Die

he would be trapped down there and slowly cremated in the
hot embers.

It was a good ten minutes before he found the basement.
The woman's nerve had practically gone; as Barlow slithered
over the rubble, she was backing away, never taking her eyes
off him. Barlow kept repeating: "It's all right, look, Fm trying
to help you." He just managed to catch her as she fainted in
his arms.

For the second time he began the return journey, almost by
guesswork. With the woman an untidy bundle in his arms he
could not focus the torch properly. Suddenly there was a
smothered roar and something struck him a spine- jarring crack
on the shoulder, nearly flinging him off his feet. He thought it
was a coping stone, but its only effect was to make him grasp
the woman tighter. He didn't know that the greater part of
the roof had fallen in on him,

Nor did he realize that for a moment one warden actually
saw him, silhouetted against the livid glare. Then he was lost to
view in a roar of timber and a red-gold rain of sparks.

This warden ran two streets to die Post, to find only Eileen
Sloane, Barlow's closest friend, and Miss Donaldson, the tele-
phonist. Shaken, he blurted out: "I've just seen Mr. Barlow
down by the synagogue carrying someone in his arms and the
roof fell in on him." Then what was the man doing here, Miss
Sloane wanted to know. Suddenly, losing control, she shouted,
"Get down there and get him out."

In the middle of it all the phone rang; District Warden
Harold Scoble had a routine query. Something in Miss Sloane's
voice struck him as odd.

"Hullo, what's the matter with you? "

"I don't know. I'm just praying God it isn't true, but they
say that Stanley's been trapped down by the synagogue."

Faintly she heard his shocked "My God" as he hung up. In
ten minutes Scoble himself had arrived at the Post Head-
quarters. He seemed to think she might need relieving. C TE
be all right," Miss Sloane replied. "Heaven knows I've enough

770

"An Ordefs an Order Tonight"

to keep me busy, but I can't even go down there to see. I've no

one to send and things must go on,"

Barlow's system had always been to have just one warden In
charge of the post between midnight and 4 A.M.; on a heavy
night the others stayed on patrol. Barlow's words came back
to her: "If you're In charge of the post, you're In charge of It.
You accept the responsibility. Whatever the circumstances,
you don't move from It." At 1.30 Scoble realized there was no
shifting her. Miss Sloane, too, was staying where Barlow would
expect her to be.

To Herbert Mills, Stanley Barlow, and several million other
Londoners, the blind fury of the raid made aE the difference.
On other nights there had always been the hope of the raid
petering out after the first waves fog might close down across
the Channel, as it had done on December 29. Or again it could
be the other man's raid. But by 1.30 on Sunday, May 1 1, It was
plain that all such hopes were gone.

And most people would have agreed with Captain Clifford
Mollison Goering had lost his temper. To Alderman Leonard
Styles, Southwards Civil Defense chief, the raid was "a delib-
erate attempt to create terror by fire." Stepney Controller
Roger Corderoy and his staff dubbed It "a pure spite raid from
start to finish."

At London Region Headquarters, Kensington, Deputy Ad-
ministrative Officer Julian Simpson had a truer picture. As the
night wore on the teleprinter clattered out facts so grim they
needed no embellishment.

One by one the railway terminals were going; St. Pancras
and Cannon Street by 12.15; at 1.00 Euston and King's Cross,
the alternative routes to the north; at 1.25 Victoria out, with
four unexploded bombs; Paddington at 1.15 with an appalling
casualty list; Liverpool Street, die main-line terminal for the
east soon after. AH three southern terminalsCharing Cross,

The City That Would Not Die

London Bridge, Waterloo were out, too. Only Marylebone
remained.

And this was only the beginning every river bridge be-
tween Lambeth and the Tower of London was blocked or
cratered. Twenty-nine miles of the underground railways were
out; six telephone exchanges already gone in the City of Lon-
don alone; all power including the high tension cut off in the
South West Indian Docks; Beckton Gas Works, the largest in
the world, blown sky-high, and 700 gas mains fractured across
the City; thousands of streets impassable with fallen buildings.

As key point after key point was knocked out, London Re-
gion's experts began to see it as a raid executed with the deadly
precision of a hammer driving home nails.

But the ferocity had one effect: it stirred Londoners to
action. At 2 A.M. the mood that swept the City was to save
something from the wreckagewhether it was a life or merely
property.

The things people gave priority showed the way they felt.
In Lewisham a baker came bounding out of his bombed shop,
carefully laid a mammoth slab of butter on the pavement. Mrs.
Monica Pitman, a Hampstead housewife, risked her Hfe to
rescue a gray tailor made. Near Norwood Junction Mrs.
Henrietta Cartwright saw a man walking vacantly along a
street stripped as naked as a battlefield clutching two coat hang-
ers. In Theobalds Road, Holborn, a man nipped in and out of
a blazing shop piling sewing machines on the pavement. Hours
later he appeared with a wheelbarrow, trudged off with all
the heads leaving the stands. At the Gordon's Gin distillery
in City Road Production Manager Walter Greaves and his
staff labored in choking smoke to salvage twenty precious tons
of juniper berries*

Some had less luck. Miss Esme Glynn raced in to a block of
luxury flats in St. James's to save her fur coat; in her confusion
she grabbed only a handful of bills. Near Leicester Square a
streetwalker raved and screamed outside a burning tenement;
her fur coat was burning on the top floor. Beside her, her fancy

"An Order's an Order Tonight

man kept assuring her that he'd buy her another on Monday,
but it didn't help a bit; she wanted that one. At Westminster
Abbey, where the deanery and all the cloisters were blazing, an
assistant verger realized that he had left his Home Guard uni-
form in the deaneryand tomorrow, for the first time, the
volunteer force were to mount guard at Buckingham Palace.
But after a heroic tussle the flames beat him back; he saved only
a rifle and a pet canary.

Inevitably, some found time to covet souvenirs. As Station
Officer Leslie Sinden made the rounds of his firemen at Drace's
blazing department store, he found one of them trying to
wrench up Baker Street with a hammer and chisel. An incen-
diary had printed its German serial number neatly into a pav-
ing stone; the man wanted to take it home. In Stoke Newing-
ton Major Charlie Creswick- Atkinson found a girl trying to
dismantle the green-silk folds of a parachute looped over a
garden wall. When the major explained that an unexploded
mine was lodged the other side, she fainted clean away.

A few, by sheer chance, saved their own lives. Old-age Pen-
sioner John Meggs, a Boer War veteran, had a heart attack
just before the raid started; for two hours he lay gasping and
alone in his Islington tenement room. When the attack passed,
the old soldier applied the remedy that he always did, raid or
no raid: he went for a walk* As he stepped briskly along the
burning streets, like a man savoring die sun in the park, a
bomb tore the house to pieces.

Chance favored Lord Donegall, too. He was just leaving
the Colony dub in Berkeley Square after that dinner with
George Ronus when the Dorchester Hotel's manager realized
he had lost his keys. The two men went back and found them
beside the table. But in the street the car was now a tangle of
smoking metal. Lord Donegal! would have been pressing the
self-starter at the moment the bomb went clean through the
hood.

Camberwell Ambulance Officer William Harrison had a
premonition: he was on his way to pay a doty call on a sick

The City That Would Not Die

driver when "someone" grabbed Mm by the shoulder. He spun
around but there was no one there. So Harrison decided against
itwent back, instead, to the depot. Two anti-aircraft shells
sliced into the pavement outside the driver's house five min-
utes later, the time he was due to arrive.

In the hospitals, the one thing that counted was the lives of
others: at St. George's Hospital, by the Alexandra, the blood
transfusions went on for thirty hours non-stop. On no other
night had the casualty lists in some boroughs mounted as they
did now the white-tiled foyer of St. Mary's Paddington ran
red with blood. Theater Sister Margery Vickers walked into
her ground-floor office at Mile End Hospital to find someone
had laid six dead bodies neatly on the floor, but she stayed on
duty without flinching all through the Sunday. Even for trau-
matic surgery, the conditions were primitive; when the emer-
gency lighting packed up at the National Temperance Hospital,
St. Pancras, the surgeons had to work on by torchnight. And
the pre-operative treatment alone took hours: morphia shots
to ease the pain, shots of anti-tetanus serum to nullify infection,
blood counts to gauge the extent of secondary shock, the thick
yellow patina of plaster dust to be scrubbed from naked flesh.

It hardly seemed a night to make medical history, yet Police
Constable John Dickie did just that. Five minutes after the Alex-
andra Hotel collapsed, the young constable was carried into St.
George's Hospital near to death. A third bomb had exploded
simultaneously in Rotten Row, fragments of it tearing into
Dickie's side, rupturing the lung and diaphragm, lodging in the
spleen.

By a stroke of luck one of the duty surgeons was a gynaecol-
ogist, with more experience than many of infinitely delicate
surgery. Although it was nowhere in the book, he took what
seemed the safest, most sensible course removed the spleen
through the punctured lung, then stitched the lung up again,
leaving the abdomen intact. The clock in the operating theater
at St. George's Hospital showed 2.45 when the first transpleural
splenectomy in medical history was successfully performed.

"An Orders an Tonight?'

And still the bombers were coming, the hell's chorus of their
engines drowning out aE other sound. Householder Ernest
Maidweil, nursing a spitting headache in Dagenham, Essex,
calculated that not once in three hours had the night been silent.
From the roof of St. Pancras Hospital District Officer Edward
Baker, London Fire Service, watched the planes calmly flying
in line abreast against the moon, seeming to bomb at a given
signal.

Steadily, -without hindrance, they moved back and forth
across the City like tractors plowing a field. And at 2 A.M. Leut-
nant Martin Reiser and almost two hundred more had not yet
reached the coast of France.

CHAPTER TEN

"Dorit Let Them Drop Any More"
2.003.20 AM.

AT Fighter Command, though, the mood was one of buoyant
optimism. By 2 A.M. more good news was through: Flying Of-
ficer Norvak of 306 (Polish) Squadron had sighted a bomber
near Camden Town, tailed it as far as Brighton, watched the
flames black out as the Channel waters closed over the flaming
HeinkeL

As Squadron Leader Reginald Tate, Air Ministry liaison of-
ficer, passed on the news, a subdued murmur of approval arose
from the officers around the control gallery and was echoed by
the WAAFs on the plotting board. Squadron Leader Cyril Le-
man and all of them felt better; they were really showing the
Germans this time.

If the casualties were mounting so, too, were the claims, and
Air Ministry was making sure the world knew. In the Savoy
Press Room Quentin Reynolds and the others were munching
"Tich Specials" three-decker sandwiches of bacon and scram-
bled eggs made up by the barman, "Tich" Massara when Jamie
MacDonald of the New York Times hastened in: there were
400 planes over, 14 already shot down. At the Royal Ob-
server Corps, Bromley, Kent, Controller Arthur Collins noted
a friendly tip from the Kcnley, Surrey, fighter sector that might
have given die newsmen food for thought: Kenley's stations
alone had bagged fourteen.

"Doift Let Them Drop Any More"

Air Marshal Shoko Douglas was more than satisfied. Steadily
the claims were coming in: at least ten bombers claimed as
destroyed, six more lethally damaged, four claimed as probable.

No wonder Douglas felt moved to remark: "We should soon
have been inflicting such casualties on the enemy's night bomb-
ers that the continuance of his night offensive on a similar
scale would have been impossible."

To date some 50 day fighters and 30 night fighters had
taken part in this spectacular sweep, and more than twenty
were due to be airborne within the next hour,

At Wittering airfield the scene was perhaps more typically
English than most. As the moon swam up above the Lincoln-
shire countryside, a dozen or so pilots sprawled on bunks or
mattresses in a converted gamekeeper's cottage on the airfield
perimeter, awaiting the take-off signal

Pilot Officer Andrew Humphrey, the youngest there, was
outwardly relaxed, inwardly alert. He knew exactly what to
do: the commanding officer of 266 Squadron, Squadron Leader
Pat Jameson, had briefed them as soon as the "fighter night 57
was laid on. At 2 A.M., five minutes after Jameson and Squadron
Leader "Barney" Beresford were airborne, Humphrey and
three others would take off.

First he had to climb to 18,000 feet; as the youngest he had
inevitably drawn the highest "layer" on the Southend-Ram-
ford patrol line. He was to keep this up for an hour or more,
eyes straining all the time in the hope of sighting an enemy,
then return to base.

Humphrey, who had shot down his first Heinkel two nights
earlier, at 21,000 feet, over Nottingham, felt his chances were
very small indeed.

This was typical of Humphrey, a dark, lean, good-looking
youngster of twenty; his pleasantly diffident manner might
have led harder, more assertive types, like Hauptmann Huf en-
miter, to underestimate him. But Humphrey was deceptive.
Away from die drome he enjoyed driving fast about the coun-
tryside in his high-powered (and almost brakeless) Talbot 105;

/77

The City That Would Not Die

recently he had arrived back with the remains of a level cross-
ing adornin^ his bonnet. But he also knew and cared about a
surprising number of other things: church architecture, good
food, above all flying. As a boy he had made model aircraft,
like other youngsters, but unlike the others, he worried about
the power-weight ratio when they came to grief. Cool, enthu-
siastic, analytical, he had been a star pupil at the RAF College,
Cranwell, when war broke out.

At this hour on a Sunday morning nobody felt much like
talking. The lighting in the cramped little cottage was kept
purposely dim to aid the pilots' night vision. If it hadn't been
for the knowledge that his parachute was already stowed in
the Spitfire, ready for action, Humphrey could have drifted off
to sleep. Already he had done three hours' practice flying since
breakfast on Saturday.

Tust before 2 A.M. the telephone cut the silence and Jameson
answered "Time to go, fellows." Half-a-dozen pilots climbed
leisurely from their beds, set off along the moonlit lane to the
grass airfield where the planes were drawn up yards away.

As he swung into the cockpit, patting the toy fur rabbit he
kept there for luck, Humphrey thought about the others. They
were a mixed bunch, but he felt they knew the answers to
problems he hadn't even begun to formulate. Pat Jameson, a
wiry New Zealander and an old 46 Squadron man, had operated
off pure ice in Norway, was torpedoed on H.M.S. Glonaus,
flew all through the battle of Britain. "Barney" Beresford, a
devil-may-care Irishman, seemed to bear a charmed life.

And Pilot Officer Richard Stevens, still awaiting the
"scramble" at dispersal, had a cold, deadly flair that was almost
frightening. After a German bomb had wiped out bis family in
Manchester, Stevens, a lean, aloof man in his thirties, seemed
to develop a sixth sense; he would even break radio silence to
call up the Gun Ops rooms and direct their field of fire. On
nights when no one else could spot a Heinkel Stevens could do
it and once he had spotted it there was no hope for it.

The chances were that Stevens, Jameson, and Beresford

u Doift Let Them Drop Any More JJ

would all find their targets tonight and Humphrey, who had
less than a year on Ops, wouldn't To Humphrey it seemed as
logical as that,

At 2 A.M. they took off, climbing into the pale sky, Jameson
hogging Ms Spitfire at a level 14,000, Humphrey/ 4,000 feet
above him, the others spread evenly in layers 500 feet apart. A
long way off the City glowed gently, evenly, like hundreds of
campfires fanned by a bellows: even the hard-bitten Jameson
felt himself growing angry at the sight. But the earth itself was
almost invisible only faint gradations of shadow, like a relief
map seen in twilight. In twenty minutes the flying contours
would grow lighter, then Humphrey and all of them would
know they were over the sea.

Despite his fur-lined Irvin jacket and fur-lined trousers,
Humphrey was bitterly cold; although the Spitfire had been
designed to fly with the hood shut he always kept it open. It
was something else he had worried out in six weeks of "fighter
night" experience an open hood aided the night vision.

The paler gray of the sea showed ahead, and Humphrey's
mind ticked over points. Speed was all right 115 m.p.h.
maxiinum. He was learning fast; already he knew that the
greater your speed the less chance you had of even spotting a
raider. Over Nottingham he had closed up so fast that he over-
shot his man. The bomber hadn't seen him so he had just waited
for it to catch up, but luck might not favor him again.

Already Andrew Humphrey had learned certain tricks. He
nursed his night vision in dimly-fit rooms, flew with his hood
open^ kept Ms windscreen highly polished, searched for the
enemy with the corner of his eye instead of staring dead ahead.
But it was the problem of temperament that worried him more.
By day a fighter pilot had to shoot weE and quickly, judging
from angles of deflection. At night you were a different man.
Even at 100 yards dead astern you could hardly miss, but you
had to be cautious, methodical, and take a lot of time judging
your position.

And tonight was no exception. The icy air that cut like

The City That Would Not Die

barbed wire; the moon a milky trail across the water; ten miles
out across the North Sea beyond Southend, then the slow turn
back to face London. Suddenly he stiffened: an aircraft's tail-
light had winked several thousand feet up but almost dead
ahead. Alert for battle, Humphrey hurled in, speed mounting
from 120 close to 200 mup.h. Suddenly he throttled back, eas-
ing off in a long, slow curve to port. He was chasing a star.

He flew on. In a moment the Thames estuary lay ahead under
the dead glare of the moon. To patrol the northern bank as far
as Ramf ord, Essex, twelve miles east of the City of London,
would take just ten minutes. Suddenly, about 2,000 feet above,
a vapor trail spread its thin ribbon across the sky. It was follow-
ing a steady course of 080 degrees, toward Ostend a raider and
probably a "returned empty," one who had delivered his
bombs and was going home.

The last thing Humphrey wanted to do was to get far out to
sea. But it seemed there wasn't much choice. By the rime he had
brought the Spitfire around in a starboard turn the aircraft was
out of sight. Now he would have to follow and make sure,
which meant closing to 400 yards. The young pilot cursed
aloud: "Damn it, another wild-goose chase."

Reluctantly, without hope, he started off in pursuit. The
minutes ricked by ... five . . . ten . . . fifteen ... by now he
must be near the opposite coast, and still no sign of the plane.
The moon was over his right shoulder, which made it hard to
see. Time to turn back. He had lost it now.

At this moment Humphrey saw the aircraft again. It was
heading down moon, just beginning to climb. Without hesi-
tation he dived, sensing, at the same time, that the tail gunner
had seen him, too. The aircraft was streaking for home base.

He slammed the throtde back, the air screaming past his
head as he dived steeply away; 15,000 . . . 12,000. At 10,000
feet it was dead level and ahead, near enough to see the char-
acteristic four sets of exhausts, the two-in-line engine. A Hein-
kel right enough, and diving fast.

Nine thousand . . . 5,000 . . . 3,000 ... at this moment Hum-

180

"Doift Let Them Drop Any

phrey didn't even realize that he was well over the coast, only
a few thousand feet above enemy-held Belgium. He didn't even
wish the German crew, as such, any harm. Instead, it had be-
come an absorbing technical problem could he catch it be-
fore it hugged the earth and vanished from sight?

Suddenly it was now or never. He had closed so rapidly that
the Heinkel was now only 100 yards ahead, bulking enormously
in his windscreen. He fired. With sudden and terrifying impact
the Heinkel exploded.

For a minute Humphrey could see nothing. Somehow he
kept hold of the stick, but the searing glare had washed clean
across his eyeballs. Instinctively he reefed away in the tightest
turn ever, missing the tidal wave of flame by a second, but un-
able even to focus his instruments. He had the ugly feeling of
being quite lost.

Around this time Leutnant Martin Reiser was actually land-
ing on enemy soil with that same feeling. His premonition had
been all too accurate. They had scarcely bombed Alillwall
Docks for the second time when from nowhere a fighter got
them fair and square in the port engine. After this Reiser was
never too clear what happened. Pilot Adolf Schied had been
badly wounded, he knew, the rest of the crew either dead or
knocked senseless. But as Reiser tried to struggle through to the
rear to see to them the plane dived like a comet. Smoke that
reeked like burning castor oil came pumping through. Reiser
realized that Schied had baled out; there was nothing he could
do now for either crew or aircraft* He, too, baled out.

Minutes later he hit the damp Sussex grass face first, tumbling
over and over with the drift of the parachute. Suddenly the
night seemed too silent for comfort. Far away he could see the
red London sky* and for the first time impersonality gave place
to faint regret. He thought: "I had a hand in that." The next
thought was. more prosaic; his feet were cold and wet. He must

181

The City That Would Not Die

have lost his boots as he baled out; he had landed in England
in his socks.

As the first contingent of soldiers, armed with rifles, came
doubling across the meadow, Reiser's eyes turned again to the
skyline. He felt tremendously alone, wondering what these
men would do to him. Their bitterness and vengeance, he
thought, could be a fearful thing. He had hurt his back, but al-
though they supported him from either side no one said a word
as they tramped across the frosty pasture over a ditch; toward
some kind of encampment where army trucks were drawn up
by a huddle of tents.

As they motioned him to take off his cap and flying jacket,
starting methodically to search his pockets, Reiser could still
see the burning City through the tent flap. Still no one spoke
a word. The Bavarian felt a mounting unease. They must see
that skyline, too. What kind of torture would they inflict on
him?

Suddenly, without affectation, one of the soldiers handed him
a cigarette.

As he lit it, drawing down a ravenous lungful of smoke,
Reiser was stammering out incredulous thanks. The man
achieved a cautious smile. One of the other soldiers went away,
returned with a blanket.

A long time seemed to pass. Reiser thought of Leo Schuderer
and how they had all promised to say nothing about the way
he had sprained his thumb. It would never matter now. He sat
on, smoking with the two soldiers, all three sometimes smiling
timidly, not speaking. Presently a truck drew up outside and
Reiser was led out. Now, for the first time, he sensed constraint,
a constraint mingled with sympathy. It was as if, like the doc-
tors, the soldiers had only bad news about his heart but could
not find the words to tell him. Almost diffidently they motioned
to him to climb over the truck's tailboard; one shone a small
pocket torch to aid him. For the first time he saw he was shar-
ing die truck with another aviator.

The man was lying on his back, staring at the moonlight, and

182

"Don't Let Them Drop Any More"

as Reiser scrambled alongside he almost cried out. Although
Pilot Adolf Schied had his eyes open, he somehow didn t seem
to focus his observer at all.

But some animal instinct held Reiser back from touching
him. He knelt, keeping his distance, asking, "Adolf, what s the
matter?" Again he said, "Adolf, why don't you answer me?
It was the first rime he had ever used the Christian name when
they were not actually airborne. Finally he summoned courage
to take the pilot's hand in his own, and then he knew why
Schied had not answered him.

The treatment accorded Leutnant Reiser and Hauptmann
Hufenreuter stood in marked contrast to the way the Home
Guard handled the Baron Von Siber. But there were other
reasons than the difference in location. Between die barons
capture and Reiser's exactly three hours had elapsed. On bun-
day, May 1 1, three hours was rime enough for a man to do a
lot of thinking.

If cold, remorseless anger was to follow, it played no part
while the raid was at its height. Instead, most men and women
found every facet of the raid too overwhelming for any emo-
tion as simple as hatred. It was as if a fury had been unleashed
that even die Germans had no power to control.

It was hard for the mind even to focus on disaster. As Dis-
trict Officer Thomas Goodman arrived at the Elephant and
Casde he wasn't conscious diat he and 500 other firemen were
ringed by five acres of fire. He only noted that die blockhous-
ing his denrist was burning with the rest and thought, Thank
heaven, I shan't have to go on Tuesday."

To tie firemen it seemed diat whatever diey did they
couldn't win. If they had die appliances, they hadn't die water.
In other districts where die water held out there wasn't an ap-
pliance to be seen. But no one bothered to reason out just which
audiority had let them down or how badly. There was rime
only to act.

183

The City That Would Not Die

"I think we're holding it at last," Assistant Divisional Officer
Geoffrey Blackstone shouted to Superintendent George Adams.
Blackstone had cause to be jubilant. At 2.20 the four lines of
hose leading down from his provident supply at the Surrey
Music Hall had jerked taut. Water was gushing through to the
canvas dam.

Two minutes later the great knot of firemen by the Elephant
crossroads looked apprehensive. Above the blowtorch roar of
the flames had come an explosion that seemed to tear the earth
apart. Near Blackstone someone said: "I think that's where our
pumps are." At the same time Blackstone had the eerie im-
pression that the water had crawled back into the hose.

Jumping into his car, he raced off to the Surrey Music Hall.
Although it was hard to peer closely through the teeming dust,
he could see enough to make his stomach knot up: the jaunty
red of fire engines strewn callously like discarded toys across
vast hillocks of masonry. The engine of one fire pump, blasted
from its chassis, had gone clean through the wall of the Salva-
tion Army Hostel, skimming over the heads of 300 down-and-
outs, fetching up against the opposite wall.

Twelve men lay cut to pieces in the rubble and all access to
the vital water supply was cut off.

And it seemed as bad everywhere. Minutes later, shaken by
the carnage, Station Officer Ronald Thorn phoned Southwark
Mortuary: "Send a van to the Surrey Music Hall, St. George's
Circus." An angry attendant screamed back, "You send a pump
to us! The whole bloody mortuary's on fire."

Back at the Elephant Blackstone went into a quick huddle
with his chief, Lieutenant Commander John Fordham, the live-
ly red-haired former naval officer who had fought so valiantly
for nationalization. There were other alternative supplies but
they would take time. A fire barge had been ordered to the
Surrey Canal to start a water relay, but that was a mile away.
Other lines were coming from Westminster Bridge and Water-
loo Bridge in the north, but both were a mile and a half from

184

"Don't Let Them Drop Any More"

the fire ground and the firemen would have that thick black
mud to contend with, too.

The one Immediate hope was the three-and-a-half Inch relay
lines, now arriving from London Bridge. As Fordham and
Blackstone chewed things over, water was pumping steadily
Into the dam.

George Adams now ordered some of the firemen to get their
jets to work. They had scarcely begun before the water again
died away.

Station Officer Sydney Boulter came running , to explain
why. A burning building had slumped clean across Newing-
ton Causeway, scoring through the lines from London Bridge
and burying them in a mound of red-hot bricks. Simultaneously,
on all sides, the fires seemed to get away. They gosted so hard
across the narrow streets that the flames seemed to join like
stretching hands far up In the sky; old Superintendent George
Haliey, off Newington Causeway, watched them romping
down Rockingham Street faster even than a man could walk.
Never would he forget the feeling of despair "sick with the
loss of pride that for the first time in thirty-two years a fire was
beating me and there was nothing I could do about It."

It was time for emergency measures. In surrounding streets
men slapped frantically at their clothes, where the flames had
caught them. The heat was suddenly so great that the paint on
the control cars was blistering. Showers of sparks drifted like
red-hot hail across the street; to Bkckstone It was "like hold-
ing your face to an infrared grill." He ordered the Control
airs moved due north of the Elephant, into London Road. That
done, he sent a priority message to Control: "Make pumps 100"
before hurrying back to Fire Brigade Headquarters for a con-
ference with Major Jackson.

It was no rime to stand on ceremony. As Bkckstone burst
into die Control room, District Officer Ernest Thomas never
forgot his first words: "Look here, sir, our bloody relay's gone
for a burton/'

But Jackson knew what he must do if any of London was to

The City That Would Not Die

be saved. He contacted Regional Fire Officer Sir Aylmer Fire-
brace's staff. The problem now was passed to Minister of Home
Security Herbert Morrison.

In the basement of the Home Office, Whitehall, Morrison
was shocked to hear the news. A South London policeman's
son, the Elephant and Castle was to him a cherished symbol. He,
too, racked his brains to think of some untapped emergency
supply, suggesting "Try Lavington Street Baths." He could
remember attending Labor party dances there as a young man.
But Lavington Street Baths were dry, used up in minutes in an
attempt to stem the fires around London Bridge.

So it seemed there was only one solution. Morrison ordered
Firebrace's staff: "Lay on the steel piping." A new kind of
emergency main, made up in twenty-foot lengths, the steel
piping was virtually impervious to both high explosives and
red-hot bricks. As with nationalization, the idea was scarcely
new; the Home Office fire adviser had first advocated it back in
1932. The Home Office had placed the first orders three months
back, in February 1941.

Given men who knew their job, a mile of this six-inch pip-
ing could be laid along the gutters in fifty minutes. By the be-
ginning of April more than two miles of it had been received
by the London Fire Service. Curiously, no instructions had
been given to ky it in preparation for an emergency.

Mulling over the reports of the shattered mains, Jackson
could see they would need piping from outside London, too
four and a half miles in all. They would need a mile of it from
Bankside, Southwark, to the Elephant. And there were other
sites; half a mile to cover the stretch between London Bridge
and Queen Victoria Street, by St. PanTs; another half mile
from Tower Bridge to Aldgate.

It wasn't at the Elephant alone that things were critical. In
Whitechapel, where die office blocks of the City of London
met the slums of the East End, District Officer Cyril Tobias
had his problems, too. At i .20 he had been confident the water
problem could be solved. By the time he had emptied Goul-

186

"Dorn't Let Them Drop Any More

ston Street Swimming Baths of its 60,000 gallons, bis relay
would be nicely through from Tower Pier, three quarters of a
mile away on London River.

At 2 A.M., with the water in the swimming bath sinking fast
toward the riled bottom, Tobias knew he had been too optim-
istic. A bomb had fallen on Tower Pier, spinning the fire pumps
into the river, blasting two firemen to pieces. The naval patrol
depot, H.A1.S. Tower \ a loo-ton hulk moored alongside, was
sinking fast, her decks awash with blood and oil, strewn with
wounded men.

All around Tobias the little tailors* shops and garment fac-
tories that make up Whitechapel burned like cardboard houses.
And there was nothing he could do; again it meant taking time
on a night when there was no time. Laboriously his men be-
gan to manhandle what trailer pumps they had back toward the
river, to try to connect up again with the old lines and feed
water back to Whitechapel.

It would be a two-hour job at least, and Tobias wondered
how much of Whitechapel would be left by then.

As building after building caught; the heat became unen-
durable. In Stepney, not far from where Tobias fought the
Whitechapel fires, Warden Louis Squersky saw a lamppost
wilting backward like a grass stem in a bonfire. In many
streets the paint streamed like water down the walls. All the
way from Cannon Street Station to Fleet Street the wooden
blocks of the roadway were alight with a merry glare. As
Superintendent Joe AnseU watched, a line of charged hose
hissed into a cloud of steam, shriveling to nothing.

Even behind closed doors and windows the fires glowed like
a blinding sun in the words of scores of witnesses "light
enough to read a newspaper by." Most were too busy to try,
although Baal P. Both2inley y seeking an errant office boy from
his Lloyd's Bank fire-watching team, eventually ran him to
earth on the bank's roof. Completely imperturbed, the twelve-
year-old was sprawled flat on his stomach, writing a letter by
the light of the Temple fires.

The City That Would Not Die

Fire Watcher Claude Evans, in Bishopsgate, was sickened by
the smell of scorching polish; the office furniture was as hot
as a stove lid. In St. Marylebone Mrs. Helga FeiUng, 500 yards
from Druce's Department Store, felt pain knife across her eyes;
her lashes had frizzled with the heat.

The smoke crept under doors, squeezed through cracks in
windowpanes. In his flat close to Druce's Journalist Charles
Graves kept rinsing his mouth with soda water, noting clinically
that his saliva had turned black.

And a strange illusion arose. Most men, recalling this night,
speak of the lively wind. Driver Leslie Stainer, crouching on
Cannon Street Bridge, recalled "the strong wind blowing up
the Thames." To Geoffrey Blackstone, down by the Elephant,
it was "a brisk, warm wind, like you get in a tunnel after a
train's passed through." A few streets away Chief Superin-
tendent Frank Dann noted "a hot whirling turbulence." It
struck an eerie note with Chief Superintendent Frank Bitten
in the City. In the warm wind shop signs stirred to and fro,
metal screeching gently on metal.

Until almost the moment the raid began the northeast wind
had been Force 3 enough to srir a flag on a pole, not enough to
fan an inferno. Yet by midnight although a Force 3 easterly
wind blew gently up the river, elsewhere it had dropped to
zero, so that in these critical hours men sensed a wind where
there was no wind at all.

What had happened? At Druce's Department Store in Baker
Street Superintendent George Bennison thought he knew. The
whole building was one ungovernable tempest of heat, and
as Bennison watched, the firemen clinging to the branches
seemed to be literally sucked toward the fire "like a handker-
chief up a chimney flue."

Beside him District Officer Thomas Hesketh felt the same
tremendous force, as if something, against his will, were tugging
him forward.

At once Bennison shouted to District Officer Victor Botten,

188

"Don't Let Them Drop Any More"

"Get those men back across the street. We'll have a fire stoxm
if we don't look out."

There is no doubt that Bennison was right. In some streets
the heat was so intense that it ballooned in vast, egg-shaped
bodies to the sky, setting op a monstrous vacuum that gulped
greedily for air around its perimeter. By a stroke of providence
it sprang up almost exclusively on island sites that formed
natural firebreaks, so that no fire hurricane actually arose to
bluster through the narrow streets, carrying trees, houses, even
men in its wake.

Even close to it was beyond most men's imaginations. In
Fenchurch Street, City of London, Fire Watcher Thomas J.
Burling and his team heard that two women were trapped in a
burning building. Frantic to help, they dashed to the scene,
armed with a tube of burn salve, to find they couldn't even ap-
proach the building. With proof positive that the women had
been there the Qty's medical officer, Dr. Charles White,
couldn't afterward discover one trace of their presence.

Although it was like fighting a tornado, the firemen wouldn't
give up more through a sheer determination to stick it than
from any belief they could hold the fires. Standing on the roof
of St. Thomas's Hospital, all water cut off, Station Officer
Charles Davis felt as if he were on a raft in a sea of swelling
fire.

"Good God," he burst out finally. "What the hell's the use?"

The little auxiliary fireman beside him was irrepressible.
**Yes, but we aren't going to give up, guv, are we?"

After that Davis somehow couldn't* By a miracle he saw a
fire float sailing up the Thames and managed to use his lamp
to flash them in Morse that he had no water. After a dry half-
hour it started to come through.

In truth, the hospital was lucky: fire after fire got no attend-
ance at all. At Shadwell Fire Station, by die Pool of London,
Fireman John H. Good saw the pink slips that detailed fire
calls pile steadily up in the watchroom unregarded. As he
waited* a message came through: "Make pumps two at die

189

The City That Would Not Die

Library." Fifteen minutes later: u Make pumps five at the
Library." Shortly: "Make pumps ten."

Although there wasn't a pump to be had, Good became in-
trigued; the Public Library, run by Stepney Council, was only
a quarter of a mile away in Cable Street, the heart of dockland.
Jumping into a staff car, he set off there. The main double
doors from the street were standing open. He mounted the
stone stairs and went in.

Suddenly the strangeness of it all swept over him. The fire,
which had started in the roof, was burning downward, so that
the leaf edges of the books, stacked on the shelves, were catch-
ing and crinkling first while even those books still untouched
by the fire were scorched red-hot, sending up tiny spirals of
smoke and sullen flame. To Good it was like an unexpected
peep into Aladdin's cave.

After a few moments he left. And still the street stood as
lonely as a desert: not a soul in sight, no pumps in view, no
clue as to who had made those weird, persistent calls.

To the firemen the true death traps of the night were the old
stone shrines beloved of millionsbuilt for gentle, dust-smelling
meditation, they only impeded desperate action. The men
who finally got to work at Lambeth Palace had to haul their
hoses around and around a spiral staircase; coming down was
like a helter-skelter, and molten lead from the old roof kept
dripping on their faces and hands. At Westminster Abbey,
with the fire dancing 130 feet out of reach in the turrets, Chief
Officer Arthur Johnstone needed all his ingenuity. First he
decided to sling a light pump on lines, haul it up to a convenient
balcony, and boost the water up. But first everything mov-
able inside the Abbey had to be shifted in case it took fire-
lecterns, chairs, pews. Meanwhile, Superintendent Henry
Davies was using similar ingenuity to stop the fire from spread-
ing shanghaing a dozen soldiers and sailors from an all-night
canteen and using them to form a bucket chain on the roof
above Poets' Corner; training all the jets he could on the south
entrance to stop the fire spreading north to the Tref orium, the

190

"Don't Let Thmi Drop Any More"

wide corridor 60 feet up that girdled the interior of the Abbey.

High up on the ancient lantern, silhouetted against the sky,

other firemen worked with their sharp-bladed axes to chop

away burning timbers. Just after 3 A.M., as Johnstone's pump at

last got to work, the whole roof of the Abbey fell in with a

roar.

But the worst was over. As firemen, vergers, clergymen
flooded in across the stone flags, trampling out embers* wield-
ing buckets, Johnstone heard a sigh of relief. From Ditchley
Park the Prime Minister had sent an impressive order: "The
Abbey must be saved at all costs." Johnstone Eked his job; he
had no wish to cross swords with Winston Churchill.

Across the street, at the Palace of Westminster, Chief Super-
intendent Charles McDuell had received an identical message:
at all costs, too, the House of Commons must be saved. But Mc-
Duell faced a fearful problem. The Debating Chamber of the
House of Commons was already an unquenchable ball of fire,
fanned fiercely by the old-fashioned heating system that fed
the Chamber through grilles set in the floor. But across the
narrow courtyard the oak beams and soaring arches of West-
minster Hall begun by William Rufus in 1097 and the largest
in the world were only just alight.

Yet the door at the north end of the hall, from which the
firemen could attack most effectively, was locked, and Mc-
Duell was reluctant to have them batter the ancient oak door
with their axes. Colonel Walter Elliott, M.P. for Glasgow,
Kelvinside, hastening to the scene from his house nearby,
found them dithering, irresolute. So Elliott seized an ax: "As
a privy councilor, I have the authority to do it myself."

As he chopped away, he said later, he "understood, in a kind
of ecstasy, the mentality of all iconoclasts."

The 'die was cast* For the next hour McDuell was concen-
trating the bulk of his fifty pumps on the rafters of West-
minster Hall, the water rising so fast on the stone flags that
Fireman Conrad Saadeis and his crew were soon almost waist
deep in

The City That Would Not Die

As they directed the jets vertically at the wooden roof,
Elliott kept exhorting them from the side lines: "Remember
the building is a thousand years old. It must be saved." In the
pitch darkness, with water, burning timbers, and debris rain-
ing down on them, the firemen were in no mood for a history
lesson. Sub Officer Joe Edmunds growled: "Never mind if
it is a thousand years old, don't risk your bloody necks if it
gets dangerous."

Even here it wasn't easy the static supplies were soon ex-
hausted; firemen had to manhandle a trailer pump down the
steps of Westminster Pier to the river; the turntable ladder
that Principal Officer Clement Kerr had set up to tackle the
roof kept sinking into the soft turf. For the firemen on the job
it was a wretched, sodden night they would long remember.
After half an hour, when the roof was almost under control,
Fireman Sanders and his mates were relieved by a fresh crew.
Going out, Sanders stumbled over a stack of leaded lights and
went clean under the water. Later a chunk of Big Ben landed
at his feet, but he cheered up when the old clock boomed the
half-hour.

At the House of Commons, across the courtyard, it was still
touch-and-go. To Sub Officer Herbert Rous and his crew,
tackling the fire from inside the old stone building, the water
seemed to damage them more than the fire; the jets were break-
ing up into a fine rain that drifted back long before the water
hit the 350-foot roof. As Rous sent back word to the pumps to
increase pressure to 120 pounds per square inch, he worried
afresh: would the hoses, with a working nozzle only one and
an eighth inch wide, be able to stand it? The hose began to
whip and thrash so savagely that four men at once had to grapple
it; as they wrestled, cannon balls of masonry were crashing into
powder at their feet. Beside Rous an auxiliary who had spent
his life big-game hunting grunted appreciatively: "Damned
nearly as good as a safari"

Outside London no one seemed to understand. At Home
Office Fire Control Chief Superintendent Augustus May still

192

"Dotft Let Them Drop Any More"

clung exhausted to the phone: at long last the relief crews were
coming but with agonizing slowness. At intervals May checked
through to London ? s five fire-brigade districts: "What's your
position now? Have any pumps arrived?"

At 3 A.M., in some cases, the first provincial crews had
checked in, but Southwark badly needed more pumps, noth-
ing had reported as yet in the Baker Street area. Whitechapd
still awaited pumps from Ipswich, 70 miles away.

May assured each station: "111 see if I can let you have more
later, but Fm down to bare poles." A fireman talking to fire-
men, May knew that the old-time slang for a fire station with-
out appliances would strike home.

The few already booked in could scarcely work to advan-
tage. In Montagu Square, at the Bayswater end of St. Maryle-
bone, Mrs. Helga Feiling, the post warden, found a crew
from Reading helplessly lost; her post area had logged 97
fires in just on two hours, but the firemen had no idea where
to report or where the hydrants were. A crew reporting from
Bristol to London Wall had the wrong couplings; while Lon-
don standpipe threads had a right-hand thread, most British
towns used a left-hand pattern. It was a problem normally
solved by adaptors, but in the burning, ravaged streets each
journey back to the station to rummage through scores of
different adaptors was a hazard in itself.

At the Mark Lane conflagration, City of London, Station
Officer James Ellis and his men had checked the fire from
spreading toward the Tower of London when the promised
crew from Kent finally arrived; soon after they got to work
on Mark Lane the water died away. Ellis went to investigate,
found that their lifting pump wasn't using its maximum length
of suction. Unused to working with tidal rivers, the crew had
hauled up their suction to add another length. The tide had
dropped in the meantime.

With the confusion of uniforms and rank badges it was
often hard to tell who was in charge of any fire. Near die
Elephant and Castle District Officer Thomas Goodman saw

'93

The City That Would Not Die

a station officer, a seasoned veteran, jump smartly to attention
In search of orders from a band of country firemen. It was un-
derstandableall of them were wearing the double epaulets
of a district officer and above.

Hastily Goodman found a small paint factory alight, got
them all to work out of harm's way.

Whatever the provincials lacked, it wasn't courage. One
engine from the Hertfordshire com belt brought the hay knife
used for rick fires in its locker, but soon it was chugging away
alongside the London pumps, delivering its steady 500 gallons
a minute, oblivious to the crash of bombs. In Bethnal Green
Chief Operations Officer Arthur Caldwell found a fire pump
from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, throbbing away
steadily in a deserted street close to an unexploded parachute
mine. Caldwell intervened: the vibration of the pump might set
the mine oif .

The firemen debated there was only one water point and it
was coming through nicely. As Caldwell waited they went
into a huddle, then reported back: "We've decided to carry
on."

"And if the mine goes up? "

"Well, then, it's the last fire we go on."

Over a hundred square miles fire after fire was completely
out of control. It was plain now that acres of London would
have to burn. The only thing the firemen, or anyone else,
could do was to try to stop them spreading.

In the midst of such a holocaust a man might have been
forgiven for wondering if any effort was worth the trouble,
yet despite that the human spirit seemed indomitable. In the
wet littered streets, which glowed with a red phosphorescent
light, people forgot their own problems to help others regard-
less of their own safety.

Off Mile End Road Warden Merion Davies slithered down
into a bomb crater, scooped up bucketfuls of loose earth, used
it to smother a nearby fire with his bare hands. In Leytonstone
Police Constable Horace Rutter, jumping from a tottering

Let Them Drop Any Mare"

building with a six-year-old boy in his arms, landed heavily on
a four-Inch nail which drove clean through his foot. Still
holding the youngster, Rutter straggled on until two of his
mates appeared to relieve him.

On the Thames Embankment a war-reserve constable erected
a rope barrier around an unexploded bomb, chalking a "Road
Closed" notice, puffing placidly all the while at his pipe.

Poplar Warden Dan Russell, a dock laborer, saw a parachute
mine drifting as slowly as a seed across the sky to tangle with
the parapet of a block of flats. He decided that It wouldn't
explode, was running to warn anyone out of shelter when the
mine went off. Russell found himself stiH running but back-
ward, as if he were jet propelled, finally skimming ful length
along the pavement like a man on an Ice floe.

His uniform and buttocks were ripped to shreds; he only
learned later that there was no one In the tenement.

At Poplar Hospital, a few streets away, there was the same
spirit. Along with the others, House Governor David Lindsay
worked on in the ruins, Ignoring the occasional twinge below
his breastbone; only after a game of golf did he realize he'd
broken two ribs. And the urge to carry on went deeper than
conscious thought. At the Alexandra Hotel, Knightsbrldge,
Head Night Porter Charles Mattock woke up shivering,
struggled blindly out of the dining room, across the ruined hafi,
past Herbert Mills and his rescue workers, out to the rear of
the hotel. When die police found him he had collapsed after
trying to turn off water and gas, vomiting tar and plaster from
deep Inside him without any knowledge of being there at all.

The bomb that shattered Tower Pier, cutting off White-
chapel's water relay, had also fractured the skull of Lieuten-
ant John Woodbume, R.N.V.R., and blown in his eardrums,
yet automatically Woodbume hobbled to the edge of the
wrecked pier and tipped one surviving drum of petrol into the
river for fear it caught light.

More knew what they were doing but still accepted the
risk. At the House of Commons the roof of the 350-foot Vic-

*95

The City That Would Not Die

toria Tower blazed as brightly as a box of matches. It seemed
a perfect beacon for the German bombers, yet when Police
Sergeant Andrew Forbes ran to the base of the tower he found
the door locked. Without hesitation he grasped at the tubular
scaffolding that workmen had left surrounding the Tower and
began to climb. As he reached the turret, the dark river spin-
ning dizzily beneath, two firemen helped him over the parapet.
They had been luckier in their search for a key.

Near Aldersgate, City of London, Police Sergeant Edmund
Bartlett saw a woman wandering down a deserted street, heard
a bomb corning. As he hurled her to the pavement, covering
her with his body, his steel helmet tilted forward, and a flying
fragment pierced the base of his skull. He lay where he had
fallen, not moving.

The night was full of such chivalry. If the raid could lay
bare the ugly side of human nature with a scalpel's precision,
it had a unique power to show the best in it, too. Sometimes, as
with Pilot Officer Andrew Humphrey, it was less conscious
courage than curiosity, ingrained deep in the character, cancel-
ing out fear, driving a man on to see how many liberties he
could take with fate.

About the same time as his first victim plunged like a torch
to the earth Humphrey recovered his night vision and his self-
confidence. Suddenly he saw below what he took to be the ap-
proach lights of an airfield. Again the analytical approach that
made the youngster fly with his hood back and puzzle out each
new problem took him down to investigate.

The airfield lay hard to port, spread like a dirnly-lit railway
junction across the moonlit earth. In leisurely fashion Hum-
phrey began to circle it on a left-hand pattern. Just then, about
a thousand feet above the ground, he saw another bomber clear-
ing die runway one more of the second sortie on which
Leutnant Martin Reiser had already left. Its red and green
navigation lights were clearly visible.

196

"Dotit Let Them Drop Any More"

Tonight Humphrey's curiosity was almost fatal. He came
down hard and fast, traveling at 200 m.p.h. just above the
German runway. At 250 yards he was dead astern of the
Heinkel, opening fire and closing aU the rime. For fifteen sec-
onds the red tracer split the night apart, then with a roar Hum-
phrey shot clean underneath the bomber, slogging tracer home
at its belly. At that moment the Heinkel went into a dive.

He sensed that it was coming clean on top of him, and in
the same analytical way his brain registered: "This is a day
fighter's mistake. A day fighter's instinct is to break away
downward."

For one second the bomber was a black rushing shape, bor-
ing down on him as the tracer went on striking home. Hum-
phrey judged there was less than 50 feet between the planes,
and a fearful vertigo overtook him. He slewed the Spitfire
violently to port. The Heinkel passed over him like a rushing
wind, flames blossoming out of it as it smashed violently into
the ground to starboard,

But Humphrey's troubles weren't over. He was now only
50 feet above the ground, likely to slice into a tree any second,
and from the far side of the airfield the light flak suddenly
opened up. White ribbons of tracer flung at him in slow mo-
tion, curving away very fast behind*

He put on full power, swerving in a quick spiral climb until
he had topped 2,000 feet. It was then, just below him, that he
saw the Messerschniitt z 10. It seemed quite oblivious of him, on
routine patrol, but Humphrey couldn't resist it. He peeled away
to port, attacking from above, guns chattering, then abruptly, as
the first twinkling flashes showed on the Me's fuselage, the
sinister hiss of compressed air through his breech blocks. His
ammunition "was finished.

Humphrey was suddenly shocked into realization of his posi-
tion. He counted himself lucky that the Messerschmitt had
reefed away out of sight; without ammunition he felt naked and
foolish, wondering what he was doing here at all It was def-
initely time to be getting home to bacon and eggs and the

The City That Would Not Die

crate of bottled beer that was always left ready in the mess
after a "fighter night." Not only was his ammunition finished;
he was perilously low on fuel, too.

Nor was he at all sure where he was, and he had brought no
map to guide him. Despite the icy wind he began to sweat a
little. He started to climb fast on a northwesterly heading, keep-
ing a sharp eye open for German fighters. But the earth and
the sky lay sleeping. The whole crazy split-second battle might
never have happened at all.

Toward 3 A.M. he was over the North Sea, close enough to
call up Wittering and ask for a homing. The sector controller
sounded puzzled; assuming Humphrey was between Southend
and Romford, he hardly bargained to find him over Belgium.
The young pilot, a little dazed, didn't know where he was rela-
tive to the aerodrome, explaining, "I only know I'm heading
southwest and I think Fve shot down two Heinkels." He was
slightly shocked to hear himself say it: a man could get himself
killed taking risks like that.

No one in London wanted to die, either yet no one could
feel quite comfortable unless this blitz had somehow touched
them. By Regent's Park Mrs. Monica Pitman thought of cricket-
ers relaxing in the pavilion after an innings; with shrapnel spat-
tering and the sky as light as noon, people from her bombed
block of flats were strolling unconcernedly up and down the
pavement. "Ah, well," said someone contentedly nearby.
"We've had our bomb."

Others felt the need to be in the thick of it. Mrs. Olive Smith,
a mobile canteen driver, felt even at 3 A.M., with her house
full of acrid smoke, that she should be on duty. From her Bays-
water home she phoned the Relionus Car Hire Company, who
promised to do their best. An urbane voice cautioned: "In the
circumstances, madam, I'm sure you'll understand there may
be a certain amount of unpredictable delay."

Farther north, by Hampstead Heath, the bombs had been
few enough, yet Miss Ann Flax, at an all-night card party*

198

"Don't Let Them Drop Any More"

suddenly threw down her hand. "I do feel a rat. n There was
nothing she could have done back home in Bethnal Green; she
just felt she ought to be there.

At 3 A.M. the feeling was universal. Those who'd experienced
something were satisfied. Those who hadn't, wanted to get into
it somehow.

At 48 Tumey Road, Dulwich, it seemed plain to Marguerite
Stahli that nothing would happen to her area tonight. To the
north and south, over Lambeth and Croydon, the raid was
like a nightmare. But tonight Tumey Road was much as it al-
ways was an isolated suburban pocket of red-brick villas and
privet hedges.

It was plain, though, that Windsor couldn't risk cycling
home to Croydon on a night like this. Now Marguerita sug-
gested: "Look, I know Aunt Maud wouldn't mind you'd bet-
ter have my room and stay on until the all-clear." The young
airman seemed almost too tired to argue; the six hours' journey
and the long, fruitless patrol up and down the avenue had
brought him to die point where he couldn't stay awake.

But it seemed politic not to undress. In Aunt Maud's old-
fashioned bedroom Marguerita threw off her raincoat, lay down
on the heavy feather mattress in her thin cotton frock, and
pulled the eiderdown over her for greater warmth.

Along the corridor, also fully dressed save for his greatcoat,
Windsor Neck was reclining under the eiderdown on Mar-
guerita's bed. Stretching out; he switched off the bedside lamp
with the golden silk shade that had been a present to Marguerita
from her brother Jack. Rex, the fox terrier, had retired to his
chair in the dining room.

Except for the steady cramp-cramp of the barrage overhead,
the nasal throbbing of the bombers, the house was quite silent,
wrapped in darkness.

Lying in the darkness Marguerita wondered about Windsor.
Six months since they had last seen one another. How long be-
fore the next hastily-snatched meeting? Almost nothing in war
was as cruel as this: the separations, the letters, the bitter-sweet

1 99

The City That Would Not Die

reunions. The one consolation was that tonight's meeting, com-
ing after they had been apart so long, had taught them one thing.
They were not going to wait. Ring or no ring, they would be
married before the year was out. It wasn't all that they wanted
by a long way, but it would be something. If the pain of part-
ing became immeasurably greater, at least they would belong
to one another in a deeper, richer way. And whatever happened,
nothing could destroy that.

Without warning the house shook twice from floor to ceil-
ing. As Marguerita Stahli started upright it was as if someone
had taken the room bodily and was rattling it like a box. The
floor heaved. There was a shattering blow against the bedstead.
Instinctively she yanked at the eiderdown, trying to pull it
over her head. Suddenly she had the sense of fallinga litde
like taking a lift. It was a moment before her mind registered
the truth. She was buried alive.

With remarkable self-control she did not panic. First, she
tried gently to move her head to left or right and was dismayed
to find that she couldn't. Next she tried to wriggle her litde
finger, but had no luck even with that. Although she could see
nothing there was always the sense of something pressing down.
The air seemed to grow quickly dry and stale, like an unlived-
in room; soon she could scarcely breathe. From somewhere she
remembered that the more you moved, the more oxygen you
used up. She decided she must keep completely still.

Anxiously she called into the darkness perhaps somehow
Windsor would be able to claw a way through. Only the dying
echo of her own voice drifted back to answer her. She thought
he must be stunned by the blast. No sound came from Rex,
either. Perhaps he, too, was buried, wondering what had sud-
denly struck him, too tightly wedged even to whimper.

An orphan who had lived most of her life with relatives,
Marguerita Stahli, characteristically, was not thinking much
of her own plight. Through most of her twenty-five years she
had thought habitually of what would trouble or what would
give pleasure to others her grandmother who had brought

2OO

Li Don J t Let Them Drop Any Afore

them up when her mother died, in the old house on Heme
Hill nearby, Aunt Aland, who had taken charge of her when
her father died. Her father himself a man to remember, who
had been all Ms life on the executive side at the Savoy Hotel.
She still remembered the awe with which she crept along the
blue-carpeted corridors to visit his office at holiday times.

Now the old habit prevailed. At 3.20 Marguerite StahH de-
cided quite calmly that it was only a matter of time before she
died. Her one regret was that she should have brought her
fiance into this. If only he had taken her bicycle and gone home
to Croydon, after all.

But the chances were that Windsor Neck would have walked
into trouble as bad. In South Croydon Airs, Margaret Daley,
along with others at St. Augustine's Ambulance Depot, had
decided it would be one more uneventful night. In two hours
now it would be dawn. All night the raid had trembled, like a
summer storm, to the north of the town, But there, too, the
quiet suburban avenues a mile west of the main rail artery to
the south had enjoyed an uneasy peace.

Mrs. Daley and Olive Ward were now engaged in a spirited
game of darts with two other drivers. Mrs. Daley was feeling
good, too, as the shafts plunked home: two more lucky shots
and they'd have won. She thought that she and Olive were a
formidable team, a match for any two men.

The dart was still poised in her hand, a fresh brew of tea was
coming up, when the outer door of the long, draughty hall
shattered open. They had heard no bombs, yet now a tram
driver was standing there, the tears streaming down his face,
repeating over and over, "My conductor's dead . . . he's dead,
my conductor."

At first someone tried to soothe him: "Oh, he can't be he's
just had a shock, poor chap/* But as the man went on weeping
bitterly they knew it was the real thing.

As they ran for the yard at the back, Mrs. Daley was terror-
stricken, her heart was knocking like a hammer in her throat.
It was always lie this: when, things were quiet she yearned

201

The City That Would Not Die

for action, but when action, however mild, came she could
only hope her fear didn't show, that the others weren't feeling
as bad. Both women piled into the big Chrysler and Mrs. Daley
let in the clutch. As they raced down the long, tree-lined ave-
nue, the first of a convoy of six, her old fear of being buried
aHve grew irrationally stronger. If they went full tilt into a
crater without warning, both of them might be trapped in the
suffocating darkness. To everyone that night fear wore a differ-
ent guise: Mrs. Daley could not have faced the ordeal that
Marguerita Stahli now endured and stayed sane.

As they drew near the main London-to-Brighton Road, an
incredible sight met their eyes. The London Transport bus
garage at the foot of the hill was a writhing ocean of flame.
Behind it, and closer to the railway, tins of blazing varnish from
a paint factory fountained like Roman candles to the sky. A
blazing gas main roared upward, as high as the jo-foot syca-
mores lining the road.

The tram from where the driver had fled was marooned in
front of the garage, slewed across the opposite side of the
road, its overhead wires looped everywhere. The conductor
was on the back seat, his money bag beside him, a young man
with fair, curly hair. Timidly, Mrs. Daley approached; sitting
as he was in profile, what she could see of his face seemed
young and smooth, quite undisturbed. Suddenly she realized
that the blast had struck the other way. Above the man's collar
there was just nothing at all. Never in her life had she seen any-
thing to equal this. Although she knew she should keep calm,
she burst into tears and ran blindly from the tram.

By now the others were on the scene. There was no time to
lose. Inside the garage the best part of 60 busses, their engines
already refueled for the morning's run, burned with a fearful,
thundering sound like somebody beating on sheet metal. Be-
neath them some of the inspection engineers were actually
trapped in the pits; within minutes they would be literally
barbecued by the heat. Ambulance Chief Harold Lock Ken-
dell, plunging in, managed to save four; although the fire bri-

202

"Dotft Let Drop Any

trained their jets on him the water striking his skin seemed
like the contents of a boiling kettle. And others worked as
valiantly. Warden Geoffrey Green, who had never driven a
bus in his life, went in after Kendell and drove out eight,

While some kept their heads, others surged here and there
in a panic of fear. By now the fire had caught the busmen's
Home Guard magazine, and bullets snapped and whined
above the roar of flames. Nearby two sticks of bombs had
blasted forty houses, killing 1 1 people outright, injuring 70.
Now the inhabitants swarmed through the streets barefooted,
running heedlessly over broken glass, through pools of blaz-
ing varnish.

Many of them, in any case, knew that the garage might blow
like a gusher at any moment. Qose to 80,000 gallons of petrol
were bunkered below in underground tunnels.

On the outskirts of the inferno Mrs. Daley fought to regain
her self-control A faint feeling of shame mingled with her
fear. After eighteen months of war this was the biggest inci-
dent her depot had known, and she had wanted to be of use-
why else had she joined? Yet this first sight of violent death
had almost shattered her nerve.

Suddenly a man wearing a lounge suit and brown trilby hat
staggered from the garage. Airs. Daley saw him come, thought
he must have been just finishing duty when the bomb fell.
After a few faltering steps the man suddenly collapsed in the
gutter.

At once Mrs. Daley recovered herself. She ran across, trying
gently to lift Mm. It was a shock case,, of course; he would need
a warm blanket and one of the hot-water bottles, strong sweet
tea. Then she realized that the man was trembling all over from
head to foot, as if an electric current ran through his body. He
was trying painfully to frame some words.

Now, as- it struck her that he probably had bad internal in-
juries, she looked around for help. But although the road was
milling with people wardens, firemen, terrified householders
it was hard to attract attention at a time like this. As a woman

203

The City That Would Not Die

came screaming from a house by the garage, Mrs. Daley shouted
to her to fetch a piEow.

It was doubtful whether the woman even heard her. Repeat-
ing over and over, "Must go to the shelter . . . the shelter . . .
must get there/ 7 she vanished from sight.

Mrs. Daley accepted that the man was going to die, but no
woman, herself least of all, could leave a man to face death, be-
wildered and alone, on a rubble-strewn pavement. Deftly she
stripped off her overcoat, bundling it into an improvised pil-
low. Kneeling beside the dying man, the pillow propped on
her lap, she cradled him in her arms like a little boy.

On this cold and terrible night it seemed that all her war-
all the purpose of her life even fused into this moment; that
nothing in the world mattered so much as that this unknown
man should not die unfriended. The man's eyes never left her
face, the painful stammering never stopped; although even if
he had spoken, it was unlikely that she could have heard him.
As the last sortie came in to attack, the noise of the planes over-
head was unbearably loud, swelling like an abscess in her brain,
drowning the roar of the fire.

Now she was rigid with fear; no matter how overwhelming
your own private disaster, an air raid goes cruelly, inexorably
on. She began to pray aloud, whispering over and over, "Oh,
Sacred Heart of Jesus, don't let them drop any more." And
often, to the man she nursed at her breast, "It's all right, it's
only our anti-aircraft fire." For a moment she saw wonder and
contentment on his face, like a child waking to a night light and
a well-loved voice. Gradually his trembling ceased, and after a
little while she knew her vigil was over.

204

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"You Will Never See Another Sunrise

.20.0 A.M.

As the last bombers closed In, high above the tall trees and the
old Georgian roofs, a strange calm fell over London. It was as
if,, with the realization that there was to be no respite, people
faced death almost passively.

"Have you made your will yet? " called Truck Driver Edwin
Wheeler to his next-door neighbor, Harvey WittredL "You
will never see another sunrise."

Sitting outside his galvanized-iron Andeison shelter in the
garden at East Ham, Wheeler fully believed that the end was at
hand. When an incendiary fell almost on top of him a second
later he w r as sure of it.

All over the City, in shelters and basements, the same sense
of resignation crept in. Not all of it was expressed in words.
In the Elephant and Castle underground twelve-year-old John
D. Allen could tell all he needed to know from the faces around
him. The wals seemed to transmit every bomb, every salvo,
like a depth charge through water. In the ghostly light the boy
could see hundreds of pairs of eyes turned upward in silent
apprehension.

It was the same in the wine cellar below Signer Giacomo
Prada's restaurant. When one of the staff peeped down to see
how he* Prada, was faring, he was on his feet, eyes closed, arms
outstretched in prayer over his precious burgundies.

20S

The City That Would Not Die

The shelter philosophers had a well-worn platitude "It'll
hit you if your number's on it." But could a man ever know
what that number was? Driver George Irish and Fireman Joe
Cheetham, shunting the few coaches that had survived at St.
Pancras Station, thought they could; their engine was just mov-
ing away toward the sidings when a shunter dashed past shout-
ing, "I'm off." Investigating, Irish and Cheetham saw a para-
chute hanging from the signal 1 2 yards away. Nearby the mine
was lying on the track between Platforms One and Two.
Picked out in white lettering on the black eight-foot cylinder
was the number 1991.

To Irish's alarm Fireman Cheetham first sat on it, then put
his ear to it. "This is a dud one, George," he reassured the
driver. "It's not ticking."

Two hours later, in the engine shed, Irish was making out
his time sheet when he heard a dull report. The mine had gone
off. Irish felt cheated unaware that a parachute mine only
ticked just prior to the explosion, then his sense of destiny took
over. Whatever his number was, it wasn't 1991.

Few knew now when the next bomb would strike or where:
the pattern of the raid was too confusing. At 3.30 A.M. Padding-
ton was still under intermittent attack; bombing was just closing
down in the City: South London was due for more than most
boroughs north of the river. If Poplar's blitz was finished, in
Shoreditch it was at its height. The bombers cruised fitfully,
stoking up fires here, hoping to start a fresh blaze there. A
cabinetmaker's flaring upward in Tabernacle Street, Shore-
ditch, may have prompted the bomb that burst with a hammer-
blow concussion outside Shoreditch Fire Station.

For Fireman Albert Edward Clarke, arriving to tackle this
fire, it had been a relatively quiet night. He had come up from
Hammersmith on relief; at 9 A.M. his wife was expecting him
home to breakfast. It was harsh fate that the bomb killed him
dropping when it did.

But everyone was now prepared for the worst that could
happen. In the Savoy Hotel's shelter a handsome dowager in

206

"You Will Never See Another Sunrise"

full evening dress sipped a tali drink, said matter-of-factly to
Quentin Reynolds, U I wonder how many of os will be alive by
morning." Police Sergeant Alf Lucas, hogging a wall in the
City of London, said aloud, "This is the last night of my life."
Below Fenchurch Street in the City the petrified caretaker told
Thomas J. Burling and Ms fire- watching team, "Only God can
save us now." Somehow no one could bring himself to answer
him, let alone disagree.

Near the Elephant and Castle old Air. Matthew Hanley,
fitfully roaming the streets, was surprised to find a pub open
and doing a roaring trade at 4 A.M. "Drink the beer while it's
here," said the licensee, drawing pints as fast as he could for
his firemen customers. Outside, the light of the fires glowed
niddily on the swinging pub sign, "The World's End."

Only a few remained indifferent to the danger. Near Mill-
wall Outer Dock Station Officer Bernard Belderson and a police
sergeant met a small girl skipping unconcernedly along the
road, eyes glistening with excitement, only a coat thrown over
a thin nightdress. When she answered that she was just having
a look around, Belderson expostulated: "But look, there's a
German aeroplane up there."

"Huh," she grunted. "That* s all right. That square-headed
bastard couldn't hit a haystack."

In the ruins of 48 Tumey Road Alarguerita Stahli felt the
same resignation: it was only a matter of time before she died.
As she lay pinioned and helpless, hours seemed to pass in which
she could hear no sound. It was oddly relaxing, as if the world
of guns and bombs in which this had happened was now no
more and she already inhabited a more peaceful world where
such things had no place. She felt no fear, only a strange
tranquillity.

But by degrees the silence assumed an ugly* brooding quality
that feral instinct told her was the silence of death. There
should have been some sound, some movement, to tell her that
Windsor and Rex were still alive. Bet she was listening only to
silence. A cold hand clutched her heart and she knew, as only

207

The City That Would Not Die

a woman can know, that Windsor and Rex were not stunned.
They were somewhere very close at hand and they were dead.
All these hours, while she thought them alive, they had been
dead.

In such a situation she was bound to lose all count of timethe
records show that not more than fifteen minutes elapsed be-
tween the bomb's falling and rescue parties arriving. Marguerita
Stahli's first knowledge of this was hearing voices some way off.
They were pitched on a conversational level, like two men
chatting in the next room. Mustering all her strength, she gave
one tremendous yell. After a moment someone shouted back,
"Where are you?"

"Here," Marguerita shouted back. She realized that this prob-
ably wasn't very helpful. But lacking precise knowledge of
where she was herself it was the best she could do.

In a little while the voices came nearer. They seemed a very
long way above her. Then a probing began, gentle, persistent,
followed by a dry rumbling: a sudden rattle of plaster, the slam
of a wooden board. Curiously, Marguerita Stahli was now terri-
fied. The very sound of the debris shifting made it seem alive
and menacing for the first time, something that really had power
to harm her.

As a groping arm encountered the fingers of her right hand
she clutched it tightly. "Please," she begged, "let me hold on
to you. Please don't go away." Now she needed reassurance
that she really was going to be saved. At this moment she could
not bring herself to ask about Windsor or Rex.

Time seemed to pass with agonizing slowness. She had to
fight an almost hysterical impatience with everything she knew.
Above the yellow-white dunes of debris she glimpsed a white
helmet; she supposed it must be a doctor. "Are you all right?"
he asked gently, and she answered quite seriously, "Yes, I think
so, only my neck's broken." For a moment it really felt like
that; the headboard of the bed collapsing under the weight of
the wall had pressed the pillow viciously into her shoulder
blades, jamming her head forward.

208

"You Will Never See Another Simrise

When the rescue men began to uncover more of Miss Stahli,

one cried appreciatively: u Oh, what a lovely leg." She was
woman enough to take pride in this tribute and remember it: it
helped sustain her through almost two hours of probing and
fumbling until the rescue workers lifted her out. Naked and
wrapped in a blanket, she was carried away from the vast crater
that was all that was left of 48 Tumey Road. Near at hand she
saw the Reverend James Capron, the vicar, and it was then she
fonnd strength to say: "My fiance's in there, too."

She had nothing left in the world now as they carried her
down the quiet street to where a private car was parked in the
moonlight. She said, "This seems very special/' and one of the
men explained that it was the worst night ever and they had
run short of ambulances. They climbed in, but the car had
traveled only a few yards when they had a puncture. It seemed
such a strange anticlimax to a terrible adventure that Marguerita
Stahli didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

One man who was determined not to die if he could help it
was Jimmie Sexton.

As the night wore on, he had a yardstick of how great the
danger had become. The basement of the north building of
Fields" factory in which he and the other fire watchers had
taken shelter grew steadily and unendurably stuffier.

When Sexton made his frantic dash for the basement steps
after seeing that terrible river of molten wax flowing down
the north building, the course had seemed plain. They could
not save the factory now. And besides the fire watchers there
were 30 civilians, mostly women and children, bedded down
in the basement. They would have to make a dash for it,

But once Sexton had led Fire Guard Chief Bill Wiles and a
few otheis to the archway abutting on the ground-floor en-
trance they could see that there was no chance. The raid was so
heavy that the wail and crash of high explosives drowned out

The City That Would Not Die

all sound. At 3.20, with a roar like an avalanche, the whole of
the south building across the yard fell in.

It made an unforgettable picture the silent, crouching men,
unable to speak, their faces lit by the kindling glare of the flames,
watching the factory that had spelled security topple in ruins.

Back in the basement a kind of stunned despair overtook the
people. All of them felt frightened, alone. If they stayed down
here, they stood a chance of being roasted alive. If they tried
to escape, they would have to run for it through a steady rain
of bombs. And the construction of the building made the bombs
seem closer than they were. The lift shaft that ran from top
to bottom of the four-story building brought every reverbera-
tion on top of them like a clap of doom.

Some, huddled in their blankets on the floor, still tried to
sleep, but gradually the heat became too overpowering, even
for that; the shaft was bringing oven wafts of heat from the
blazing upper story. The children were whimpering and rest-
less, making endless trips to the toilet. Presently a steady mur-
muring arose, like the noise of a crowd heard a long way off.
The women were hunched in prayer.

Sitting on his camp bed, plunged in gloom, Jimmie Sexton
could think of nothing useful to do. At a time like this a man
abandons logic. It seemed to the born family man that if only
Bill, his brother, had been fire watching with him this weekend,
all this would never have happened.

Toward 5 A.M. he could stand it no longer. He wandered
from the basement up a flight of stone stairs to the ground floor.
And now he realized with a surge of alarm that something
would have to be done. Sour-smelling brown smoke was billow-
ing from almost every room along the ground floor. As he
watched, the glass-shuttered entrance doors split vertically, like
cracking ice, with the heat.

Pelting back, Sexton grabbed Fire Chief Bill Wilks. "You
can't stop here another five minutes the fire'll be down on top
of you."

filks wrestled with the decision. "But all these people . . ,"

2IO

"You Will Never See Sunrise

The little man was adamant. "We can either stop here and
get burned alive or make a for It try to get out."

A second's silent cogitation, and Wilks agreed. He thought
the best plan was to form a human chain, everyone linking
hands. In that way no one could get left behind. As Wilks
mounted on a chair, made the announcement, people began to
stir uneasily, getting their bundles together. Jimmie Sexton was
packing his small attache case apart from pajamas, a sweater,
and toilet things, he had no chance to take more. His bicycle
would have to stay and bum along with Hs camp bed.

Gradually the people drifted into line. As Wuks started off
in the lead, he cautioned them again: above all, don't panic.
Sexton was toward the front of the line. Hands clasped tighdy
it wasn't easy with everyone carrying a bundle they shuffled
timidly up the stairs like children going on a picnic. But as they
ducked through the gutted doors at the top of the stairs, Wilks
stopped them short. The only exit to the street now was through
a 25-yard-long tunnel used by the transport lorries. From where
they huddled in the doorway they could see that the farther
end was blocked. The candle wax dripping from above seemed
to form an almost solid curtain, like giant stalactites suspended
from a cave. Yellow flame came flickering and bannering out
of it,

"Oh, my God," Sexton heard Wilks groan. "We're sunk."

Then an inexplicable thing happened inexplicable because
meteorological records show that at this hour, 5.30 A.M., there
was still almost no wind. But all at once Sexton, Albert Fey, and
several of the others gave a cry. The flames had parted and
despite the hanging festoons of grease their way was now clear.

Tripping, stumbling, gasping for breath, they ran for it-
women, children, old men, fire watchers. As the last survivor
tumbled through into the inky gutted ruins of the street, Wilks
was aH business. He began to call the roll of names, was halfway
through, when he realized that to one name "McBride" there
was no answer*

Fire Watcher Albert Fey was so tired he wasn't even listen-

211

The City That Would Not Die

ing. The first thing he knew was that little Jimmie Sexton had
turned back from the safety of the street and was running
wildly into the factory through the great veil of grease, which
again blazed fiercely, vanishing out of sight up the long tunnel.
Scandalized, he called: "What's up with Jim?" Someone
answered: "He must have gone to fetch McBride."

Jimmie Sexton had. Without stopping to think he had dived
back into the north building. By now the flames were fluttering
across the ground-floor corridor, through the grille of the lift
shaft. They came in short, hot bursts, like a welder's lamp, pass-
ing narrowly above his head as he clattered the twenty-two
steps from ground floor to basement.

Sexton knew exactly where to find Albert McBride. The old
man was sitting on a camp bed in a dark corner of the basement
fumbling painstakingly to strap up an attache case, quite ob-
livious of his peril. Sexton thought that the old veteran had been
so long with the firm almost forty years that he probably
believed, as the others had done, that nothing could happen to
Fields'.

What was more he seemed cross, almost resented being
rescued. As Sexton tugged him forward toward the stairs he
voiced an old man's grievance: it wasn't natural the way young
people hustled about in these days. Sexton didn't answer; with
his other hand he was scooping up a black cat that had some-
how got left behind. When they reached the yard and saw
the flames, the cat scratched wildly, tearing itself free and
bolting from sight. But Sexton got Albert McBride through
the tunnel, even though they had to bend double under the
dripping flames.

There was no cheering hardly any emotion at all as they
rejoined the group. For his part Sexton had not expected that
there would be. Albert Fey thought that in any case people
were too stunned to take it in. They had resigned themselves
to death. Now they were alive, in a dawn shot with angry fires,
and for them it was all over. It was going to take time to re-
adjust.

212

"You Will Never See Another Sunrise"

One woman was not resigned to die, and for Herbert Mills
at the Alexandra Hotel she was the greatest single problem that
night.

No sooner had Albert Marotta's rescue workers tunneled far
enough into the basement to uncover her head than she began
to scream voicelessly. She would not say a word, would not
tell them her name merely that appalling, nerve-edged scream-
ing that went on and on. Big gentle Bill Garnan, a peacetime
all-in wrestler, who could lift a paving stone with one hand,
was more distressed than anyone. "For heaven's sake, miss," he
pleaded with her, "we'll get you out." And ignoring the risk
to himself, he took off his steel helmet and placed it on her
head.

Mills had other reasons to worry. With rescue men and am-
bulance workers inching delicately from room to room to save
those trapped on the upper floors, he wanted no mass alarms.
He sent a messenger doubling to St. George's Hospital next
door and shortly Dr. Edward Ensor, a young house physician,
arrived. The only way to reach the woman was down the 15-
foot shaft that Marotta's men had excavated, but the doctor
didn't hesitate: he shinnied down a rope holding his morphia
syringe in his teeth. He injected the standard quarter grain of
morphia, then clambered painfully back to the ground floor.
Suddenly there was an electric blue-white flash from the street
outside.

As the whole hotel shook and rambled with the bomb, Mills
and Nat Williams glanced tensely upward: was this it? But no
the building had subsided again, although they realized with bit-
ter frustration that all the earlier work had been in vain. With a
dull roar the shaft caved in.

At 3 A.M. Marotta and his men began the backbreaking work
of tunneling the shaft all over again.

They had known triumphs as the night wore on: Percy
Straus and his wife rescued alive, Miss Alice Woods freed
from the terrible menace of that marble pillar. But they had
known tragedy, too. Allen Bathurst had died en route to find

213

The City That Would Not Die

that book. Mrs, Morgan and Daphne must have died at the same
momentthey had just reached the first floor. It seemed un-
likely now that they would ever reach Mr. and Mrs. James
Murdoch in time.

Yet somehow Mills's calm, authoritative presence staved off
all panic or frantic haste. Patiently, his white coat plastered
with filth, Dr. Ensor agreed to stay on he, too, was acutely
conscious that one wrong move could bring the building crash-
ing to trap them all. A long hour went by; the shaft began to
take shape again. As if on cue, the woman began to scream.

Swinging back down the rope, Ensor once more plunged
the hypodermic home. Afterward he thought that due to a de-
ranged circulation the woman must have been absorbing the
morphia very slowly, if at all.

About 4 A.M. Mills and Nat Williams took a breather out-
side in Knightsbridge. They were resigned now that it would
be many days, maybe weeks, before this incident was finally
closed. All the while they would have to call on reserves of
the same infinite patiencedealing gently with the next of kin;
checking the credentials of everyone who wanted entry; draw-
ing up pathetic lists of personal property. They would have to
live with the incident, sleep with it even, until it was part of
their lives forever.

Now a strange hush had fallen on the scene. Across the park
the guns were silent; the only sound was the muted blare of a
gas main burning in Park Lane. The brilliant moonlight washed
die shattered outline of Princess Alexandra's town mansion,
silvery and unreal, like stage lighting.

Suddenly a tremendous explosion from a bomb nearby blew
Mills heavily against the iron railings, bruising him across the
small of the back. His first reaction, after picking himself up,
was again for the hotel: would it collapse? His second reaction,
when it didn't, was the goaded fury of a Londoner driven almost
beyond endurance.

**Now look here," he said, as if Nat Williams were personally

214

"You Will Never See Another Sunrise"

responsible, "I'm really fed up tonight, I don't mind telling
you. Fm just about ready for it to end, aren't you?"

This understatement was the nearest Williams had ever seen
Mills come to being angry.

It was the same everywhere. If many were prepared to die,
they now somehow sought for the right note to strike. It was
as if death would be met with the traditionally courteous re-
serve with which the British receive visitors in general.

Near the Alexandra, at 10 Grosvenor Crescent, Lady Palmer,
wife of the biscuit magnate, was sitting on a flight of stairs,
unwilling to descend farther. She explained to Warden Jack
Smith that she didn't feel she ought to go downstairs for a man
like Hider. In Brixton Warden George Brown was urging a
woman to vacate a burning house. She replied that the place
wasn't nearly tidy enough; she'd come when she'd finished her
dusting. And when Rescue Chief Sidney H. Smith crawled
into a blocked basement in the Bayswater Road, the lady of
the house greeted him: "I'm so glad you've come now. The
kettle's just boiling."

The men were almost as bad: as if, whatever the stress, they
had to react conventionally. On the third floor of the Daily
Mail Building Journalist Alexander Werth passed the wash-
room, thought of a pressing physical need, then decided against
it too undignified to be lolled in that position. Bishopsgate
Goods Depot was ringed with fire as Yard Inspector Robert
Bromley hunted through desk after desk to find the goods
agents' private address. When he found it he would call and
report the damage. In thirty-seven years this had been standard
procedure; it never occurred to him to vary it now.

In the midst of death men still preserved the outward forms
of dignity. Aboard a hospital ship in London River Lieutenant
Commander Herriott, captain of the sunken H.M.S. Tower,
seemed at the last gasp weak from loss of blood, his arm hang-
ing by a thread. Diffidently he entrusted his wallet to Lieuten-
ant Frank G. Creswell: "If I peg out, you might see my wife

2/5

The City That Would Not Die

gets this there are enough stamps inside to cover postage."
The greater the danger the greater the decorum.

Mr. Shirley Brooks was one of ten people trapped in a Pad-
dington basementbeneath such a weight of debris that the
doctor couldn't squeeze in to give morphia. One victim, a med-
ical student, called up, "If you passed me the syringe, sir, I
think I could administer it I (mi in my second year."

Often a total disbelief in disaster lay behind it. As Deptford
Warden Joseph Bellaby cut through a back garden, approach-
ing a row of blasted houses, a furious head popped out of an
Anderson shelter. "Don't you touch that ruddy trelliswork
I only put it up last Saturday." Bellaby marveled at his country-
man's sang--froid~ y the front of the house had gone altogether,
yet a pot of stew still simmered gently on the cooker at the
back.

In St. Marylebone the bombs had thundered all night around
the street shelter in Lisson Grove it ran parallel to the marshal-
ing yardsbut by the small hours Mrs. Rose Simons was too
sleepy to care. She had even forgotten that it was now officially
her son John's third birthday; the little boy, in his push chair,
was sleeping soundly as always. Her husband, Private Arthur
Simons, was out getting a breath of air.
Suddenly he burst into the shelter. "Our house has gone."
Mrs. Simons, gazing at him sleepily, decided he was jok-
ing. "Don't be daft."

"I'm telling you, gel, the house has had it."
"Pm too sleepy for leg pulls, mate, and that's a fact."
No man can ever have found his wife so aggravating. For a
time Private Simons tried to convince her, then finally gave
up. He decided that soon it would be dawn, then she'd see for
herself.

For Major Frank Jackson, in the City of London, it was
all too easy to believe in disaster. To north, south, east, and west
of St. Paul's Cathedral the fires were now burning roughly
in the form of an outspread fan. To the south the quarter-
mile stretch between the cathedral and the river was one steady

2l6

"You Will Never See Another Sunrise"

sheet of flame. In the west the flower girls' church of St. Clem-
ent Danes, with its "Oranges and Lemons'' theme song, was
the beacon that marked the first break in the fires for half a
mile. To the north it was worsea square mile of fire, with
the stalking columns of flame only 300 yards from the cathe-
dral's northwest corner. It was almost as bad to the east.
Scarcely a building that hadn't caught in the mile between the
cathedral and Aldgate Pump.

Certainly the water was coming but how soon and how
much? The first steel-piping relay from New Fresh Wharf,
London Bridge, was already on its way that would mean up
to 1,000 gallons a minute emptying into the 5,ooo-gallon dam
by St. Paul's. From Lambeth Headquarters Station, Officer S.
J. Hender had phoned the Control point to say the Metro-
politan Water Board were doing their best. All the water they
had was being fed to that spreading fan of fire.

There hadn't even been any need for Chief Engineer H. F.
Cronin to issue special instructions. At pumping station after
pumping station startled engineers had seen their sinking
pressure gauges and taken action.

The trouble was that water for the East End and most of the
City of London was fed from the River Lea, at West Ham, via
the Crouch Hill and Maiden Lane storage reservoirsa tortuous
ten-mile journey from east to north and then south again along
the worst-hit distribution system of the night. Even at the
best of times a powerful twenty-four-inch main could feed only
15,000 gallons a minute, and tonight there was no means of
knowing how much water was bleeding uselessly into the
gutters.

Even to shut down a main at all to prevent further leakage
was a primitive affair involving four men and a six-foot radius
treadmill, which might take all of two hours.

Watching Jackson, District Officer Edward Barrage could
only marvel at the man. If London burned, it was Jackson who
would take responsibility, despite the inadequacy of the tools
he had been given for the job.

2/7

The City That Would Not Die

But nothing of this showed in Jackson's plump, impassive
face as he moved from fire chief to fire chief in the red dawn,
bustling over the littered pavements, dwarfed by the gray mush-
room dome of St. Paul's.

Always courteous, he understood men very well. He told
serious, capable Chief Officer Arthur Johnstone, who had come
on from Westminster Abbey, to organize a shuttle service of
lorries to the Regent's Canal, a mile north. The lorries could
bring down only 1,000 gallons at a time to tip into the central
5,ooo-gallon dam, but it was a start. He grinned at District Of-
ficer Kirrage, who liked a joke. "We're in a hell of a mess,
aren't we?"

On the phone to Home Office Fire Control he told Chief
Superintendent Augustus May the grim truth, because he had
to: "Mr. May, the fires around St. Paul's are out of control."

May never forgot the agitation in Jackson's voice. He urged
him to hang on: relief engines were coming.

But Jackson's worst dilemma that night was known only to
a few, and none of them were then on the spot. Just south of
St. Paul's, fronting on Queen Victoria Street, stood Faraday
Building, a nine-story concrete fortress dividing into four main
blocks. Its northeastern block, known as The Citadel, was a
top-secret emergency retreat for the British Cabinet. Winston
Churchill had a suite there. Among those housed there on this
night were Sir John Anderson, the lord president of the Coun-
cil, and Minister of Labor Ernest Bevin secure under a roof of
reinforced concrete seven feet thick between walls of half that
depth. This apart, the ten-acre site housed not only the City
and Central telephone exchanges but the toll and trunk ex-
changes, the Continental exchange, and the Overseas Radio
link with America and the Commonwealth.

If Faraday Building caught fire, Field Marshal Sperrle would
have achieved the greatest triumph of that night's trium-
phantly successful raid. He would have disrupted London's Unk
with the rest of Britain and curtailed vital telephone services

218

"You Will Never See Another Sunrise"

on which so much of war production hinged to an extent never
before achieved.

Already that night high-explosive bombs had grazed it. There
had been fires which Superintendent George Robinson kept
under control with a sweeping curtain of water down the front
of the building.

But if the east wind grew stronger the building would stand
no chance. The red-hot cinders driving from the east would
pile six inches deep on gutters and window ledges. On the roof
of Unilever House they had even fired the sandbags. And if
that happened, there would be no holding Faraday Building.

At 5 A.M. on Sunday, May i r, this was one of London's most
closely-guarded secrets. But rumor was in the air, made more
disturbing by the fact that few knew the true facts. District
Officer Edward Kirrage heard of a plan to send for the Royal
Engineers, though it was abandoned for lack of time. Superin-
tendent Joe Ansell had phoned Lambeth earlier for permission
to cut off all electricity and gas to the Qty of London; he
thought short circuits and gas mains were starting as much
fire as anything. But the answer had been no.

In the lower echelons there was a strange unease. Along with
dozens of others Fireman Harry Weinstock had spent the bet-
ter part of two hours evacuating all the shelters around St.
Paul's, bundling blankets over the women's heads so that they
couldn't see the fires. Police Sergeant Reginald Goldsmith
heard a senior fire officer probably Jackson say, "Pm think-
ing of evacuating the whole Gty." Goldsmith blenched; his
wife Lily was in a shelter nearby. He thought, now which
bloody bridge do *we get out over.

Only Jackson and his immediate deputies knew that in the
last resort the fires would be held off by a charge of dynamite
large enough to blast both flames and buildings into a pile of
ashes. The yardstick was whether the fires crossed Godliman
Street, a narrow alley bordering Faraday Building on the east,
running from St. Paul's Churchyard to Queen Victoria Street.

The City That Would Not Die

The street ran only 150 paces from the southwest corner of
the cathedral.

At the Fire Service conference that had decided this the
cathedral authorities had protested bitterly. A shock like this,
following on the millions of gallons of water which the Fire
Service had drained from under London through the blitz,
would gravely jeopardize the cathedral's foundations.

Hence Jackson's despair. At 5.30 A.M. his anguish was as
great as that of any man in London: to hang on in the hope of
water and risk bringing London's communications to a virtual
standstill or to risk endangering the cherished symbol of St.
Paul's.

But the water just wasn't coming. At 5.30 A.M. there had
been no pressure obtainable in the City of London at all for
three and half hours and the situation was as bad elsewhere.
The river was now almost dead low, and, incredibly, the whole
City locked in by a triangle of water was as dry as the Sahara.

Across the asphalt desert men took what action they could.
Near the Elephant and Castle people ran after water lorries
with buckets; each time the water slopped over the canvas
dams they scooped it from the gutters. District Officer George
Spurrett, finding a line of hose smoldering, stopped his car and
kicked water from the puddles over it, looking guiltily around
to see if anyone were laughing. Fireman Robert Coram and his
mates had no water to make a fire break just piled the entire
contents of two shops on the pavements, leaving only the
empty buildings. Off Fleet Street a dairyman saved his own
premises, sluicing all the liquid he could find milk, orange
juice, soda water-over walls and ceilings.

But it was hard for anyone to comprehend. In Queen Vic-
toria Street, by St. Paul's, Major Arthur Carr, Salvation Army,
told a police sergeant: "If only we had some water we could
save all this." The policeman gave him a long, pitying look.
Under the railway arches at Bermondsey a young girl pro-
tested when First Aid Worker Alfred Bardett used an astrin-
gent on a cut "Wasn't he going to wash it first?" Bardett ex-

22 O

"You Will Never See Another Sunrise''"

plained patiently: "We have not got a cup of water to drink,
let alone wash that." By Southwark Bridge a young sub of-
ficer sped up to a fire chief. "Sir, I want some more water."
The fire chief was withering. "Son, I haven't got enough water
to produce a good piss."

Farther east, into the City, the situation was as bad. In
Hounsditch, behind Liverpool Street Station, District Officer
Frederick Abbott couldn't stop the fires spreading north, try
as he might; he had only one 5,ooo-gallon dam and four water
lorries. The fire spread so fast there wasn't even time to re-
position the branches; burning buildings kept burying the hose
all the way from the river at London Bridge; sometimes the
men had to lug the trailer pumps by hand out of the path of
the fire. Superintendent George Robinson had taken up a last-
ditch stand to prevent the fires leaping Aldgate High Street
from the south and joining up with Abbott's fires around
Hounsditch. Four hundred yards east Station Officer Cyril
Tobias at last had that relay coming through from Tower
Pier. He could stop his fires from spreading northeast to Houns-
ditch but even if the raid ended, the hose was still vulnerable.
He, too, urgently awaited steel piping.

There was no longer much pretense at control. Where a fire
chief was on the spot, the men worked doggedly on, filthy, ex-
hausted, their eyes blood-red from the painful sparks. Else-
where confusion reigned. Toward 5.30 A.M. Major Jackson
sent District Officer Barrage to sort out the chaos around
Whitechapel; the station had been hit, the pink slips detailing
the fire calls were piling up in the watch room* Most of the
firemen had disappeared; without orders they had slumped
exhausted into any shelter they could find. Often there was no
need to shelter. The knowledge that scores of pumps and men
stood idle at spent fires, unwilling to move on to a fresh fire
ground, kept District Officer Thomas Goodman on the go
for hours.

For all practical purposes the City was now a battlefield.
With telephone lines out, streets blocked, it became every

22 1

The City That Would Not Die

man for himself. At the Elephant water was just coining
through from the Waterloo Bridge relay when the line again
went limp. Simmering, Assistant Divisional Officer Geoffrey
Blackstone drove to the scene to find another officer had
plugged into the charged hose to tackle a fire of his own. The
forceful Blackstone turned the air blue with curses, but the
damage was done.

And the provincial pumps now trickling on to the scene
were fair game for anyone. As a convoy jolted past the Cut
street market by Waterloo Bridge, Fireman Leslie Horton
calmly impressed the last three. He had no idea whether they
were booked for more important work; his own fires took
priority. The out-of-towners themselves were none the wiser.

A few had no intention of being taken prisoner. By Houns-
ditch District Officer Frederick Abbott saw a burning build-
ing about to totter; he ran into the road to warn a small convoy
of two towing vehicles and a trailer pump. Evidently they sus-
pected his motives, repaid his solicitude by trying to run him
down.

There were flashes of the same ugly mood all over. When a
top-ranking Fire Service officer gave what seemed a nonsen-
sical order, Superintendent Harold Norman of Whitechapel
couldn't hold himself in check. "For Christ's sake," he snarled,
"take yourself off, will you? We can do without you when
we're busy." The officer was completely abashed. He turned
and walked away.

It was small wonder that tempers were frayed. The worst
air attack in London's history, coming on top of nine inter-
mittent months of blitz, had been too much. Many Fire Service
officersGeorge Adams, Joe Ansell, Cyril Tobias still swear
that in all that time they never removed their clothes except
to take a bath. They slept in their uniforms when and where
they could, then carried on with the daytime job of running
the station.

In the cold, acrid-smelling dawn men swayed on their feet,
still going through the motions, in an agony of fatigue. From his

222

"You Will Never See Another Sunrise"

Control point by Smithfield Meat Market Superintendent Ted
Overton sent for sardine-and-tomato sandwiches and a flask of
coffee, then went to sleep as he ate, still standing. In Southwark
Street District Officer George Spurrett found two firemen as
drugged as men in shock still clinging to a branch. He had to
punch them into wakefulness. Farther on, by London Bridge,
two firemen lay asleep in the gutter, only a third sitting up-
right chanting "Rule Britannia."

At the last fatigue had anaesthetized the body against every-
thingfear, pain, even the sense of duty. Deptford Warden
Harry Cable went to sleep on a stool, toppled face first into a
brazier. As the others dragged him clear he didn't really seem
to care. Station Officer Robert Stepney, summoned to a top-
story fire in an Upper Thames Street warehouse, couldn't
summon the energy to climb the stairs. He stood and watched
the building burn down, ripe cheeses thundering like skittles
from the upper floors. Along the street people stood staring,
lost in thought.

There was much to think about. For some there was the
irony of being in a strange place at a strange time. Basil P.
Bothamley, bank manager, would normally have been asleep
in respectable suburban Purley. Now, at dawn, he found him-
self in the Cock Tavern at Fleet Street. He had just quenched
a small fire; now he was quenching his thirst with a tumbler of
neat brandy.

Leutnant Martin Reiser should have been back in the mess,
or, better, still asleep above the bar restaurant in Mitwitz,
Bavaria. Today he had planned to visit the beehives, and post
some color snaps back to Maria. Instead, for the first time in
Ms life he was in a prison cell with only a hard plank bed, an
enamel toilet, and a Bible he couldn't read. The policeman
wouldn't tell him where he was; he guessed it was Tunbridge
Wells because it was on the man's helmet, but that conveyed
nothing either.

For Mr. Alvah Clatworthy, the silver-haired draper, there
was a change in plans to consider. He had meant to spend the

223

The City That Would Not Die

morning attending Baptist chapel, the afternoon teaching in
Sunday school. Now he decided he must go to Friday Street,
City of London, and see if his stock of Duchess sets and tapes-
try cushions had suffered.

Dairyman Edward Morris, on the spot in Upper Thames
Street, thought it rime to act. Some firemen had arrived from
Witney, Oxfordshire, but had lost their rations on the way.
Before they could tackle any fire they insisted they must eat.
Morris saw there was nothing they could do to save the ware-
houses, but his own dairy restaurant was only just alight. "You
save it, boys," he cried. "I'll feed you." The bargain was
clinched.

A few recalled that this day had never spelled good luck.
Diplomat Edward Penrose-Fitzgerald, awaiting hospital treat-
ment, remembered May 10, 1940. Then he had been in a French
train which the Germans machine-gunned. For the first time
Hauptmann Albert Huf enreuter, lying painfully in a military
hospital, remembered it, too. It was the anniversary of his be-
ing shot down for the first time and taken prisoner by the
French.

Some perhaps wondered why they were in London at all.
Lieutenant John Hodgkinson had come on a whim for a change
of scene. Fireman John H. Good should have been on leave,
had stayed to help. Now he was fighting a blazing inferno in a
i4~acre Stepney timber dump. Dr. Barbara Morton was sick
with neuritis, checked on duty when things got bad. Now she
examined patient after patient with the black "M" morphia
neededscrawled in skin pencil on their foreheads.

Some were thinking more of others. Gladys Henley had
wandered up from Bermondsey Control room, awaiting the
all-clear. It was four hours since she had last seen her husband;
now she almost wished he had stayed below. Then she re-
membered how shocked Albert Henley had been at a recent
Mansion House reception. He had heard one mayor say to
another, "Where was I in the last raid? In the shelter, of

course."

"You Will Never See Another Sunrise"

Henley had come home and told his wife: "If I ever sink
to that and get trapped, I hope the rescue men won't dig me
out."

She thought that Chauffeur Eddie Taylor, who was stand-
ing near, told her: "The guvnor's gone on a job round town."
(On the other hand, Taylor remembered saying, "No, I've
been looking for him.") He had just heard the news after his
fruitless all-night hunt but he didn't want to be the first to tell
her.

To some it had seemed time to abandon hope. At Post Dz
Headquarters, St. Marylebone, Eileen Sloane was sunk in silent
despair. For a long time now the area had been quiet. Since
Stanley Barlow had been reported trapped in the blazing syna-
gogue there had been no news at all. Presently Miss Donaldson,
the telephonist, approached her. "I think we'd feel better if we
had a cup of tea."

At that moment Stanley Barlow was scarcely thinking of
Eileen Sloane or of anything- at all except the need for sleep.
It was a long time before he even realized that he had faced
his own personal crisis squarely and passed the test. There was
no longer any need to be fearful of fear.

Incredibly, he had not faltered as the sparks and timber
swallowed him from view. He had even kept his grip on Mrs.
Roth. He carried her to the street where her husband and the
others awaited him, to be joined now by Warden Arthur
Payers. He sent Payers in charge of the party to a nearby
shelter.

Always thorough, Barlow now abided by his own training
as scrupulously as any of those he had inspired that night. He
remembered another maxim: a warden doesn't write off an
incident until he has personally made certain there is no one
else on die premises. He stumbled bade into the synagogue to
make sure. About 1.45 the whole roof fell in on him.

This time, strangely, it was easier. He was responsible for
nobody's life but his own. Clawing and gasping for breath,
retching the plaster almost from his bowels after every breath,

22$

The City That Would Not Die

he finally managed to grope his way out by a side entrance,
emerging farther up the street. He saw wardens and ambulance
workers milling around the synagogue entrance but it didn't
occur to him they were looking for him. He had noticed
something they hadn't. The roof and ground floor of No.
143/9, Great Portland Street, just opposite, were alight. His
card-index brain told him that there were fire watchers here,
too.

Next instant he had charged down the stairs. These men, too,
were trapped in the basement; Barlow was becoming practiced
at moving debris but here, unfortunately, debris was not the
biggest problem. The three men were badly shocked, cut by
flying glass, quivering with fear. Worse, both basement and
ground floor were part of a motor company's showrooms. All

iut~

Barlow had just cleared some kind of passage through the
rubble and got two of the men as far as the stairs when a whip-
lash report seemed to split his head open. Another, then an-
other. The air seemed to rain long, wicked daggers of glass,
and walls were crumbling.

As Barlow got the first two men into the street and doubled
back for the third, he was certain some anti-aircraft gunner
had got the wrong range and was lobbing shells into the build-
ing next door. In fact, they were liquid-oxygen cylinders ex-
ploding in a dental company's premises, but it made them no
less dangerous.

On his second trip to the basement more debris had blocked
the way. Again Barlow used his tin hat to good advantage. The
one thing really on his mind was the neat, methodical evacua-
tion of all the buildings affected by fire. He could see that his
rubber boots were badly cockled by the heat and he was
vaguely aware as he scrabbled that his ankles felt sore. Only
later he found that the heat had fused the woollen socks he
wore into a sticky, frizzled mass.

By the time he had almost carried the third man from the

226

"You Will Never See Another Sunrise"

basement, weaving in and out of the burning cars, the concrete
floor was thick with embers, the soles of his feet felt red-hot.
The blood of the wounded man mingled with the sticky white
paste of plaster dust coating his denims.

Barlow then buttonholed a passing warden and saw the three
men hastened off to the nearest first-aid post It had just oc-
curred to him that Hallam House, an office block at right
angles to the synagogue in Hallam Street, had looked pretty
badly blasted by the same bomb. There were 15 people shel-
tering there, too he knew the total without even checking.

This time luck was on his side: at least 13 of them had
managed to claw their way over the rubble and escape by a
back entrance. Only two remained numbed by shock,
sprawled out behind a fallen wall. Once more Barlow doffed
his steel helmet. Twenty minutes later they were free.

By now the fire in the synagogue showed every sign of
spreading, the Fire Service hadn't arrived, but there was a 5,000-
gallon dam brim full around the corner. For the next two hours
Barlow was organizing a bucket chain of fire watchers to keep
the walls of the buildings on either side cooled down.

At Post Di Eileen Sloane was sitting on a window sill sip-
ping tea. Sunk in grief, she heard the door open but didn't
look up. The first thing she saw was Barlow, covered from
head to foot in thick white dust; only his eyes, bloodshot with
pain and fatigue, seemed alive. Near hysteria, she thought,
"My God, it's his ghost."

Barlow was thinking, "I just could use a cup of tea." Then
he became aware of the silence both women staring at him,
neither speaking. "What's the matter?" he asked. He sensed
the tension now.

"I thought you were trapped in the synagogue," Eileen
Sloane replied. "I thought you were dead." Suddenly she felt
the tears coming, and even though she tried she couldn't stop
them.

Barlow tried to comfort her. "It's aE right now," he kept

The City That Would Not Die

saying. "Look, it's all over. It's all right now." He couldn't
trust himself to say anything more, and Eileen could say noth-
ing, nothing at all.

Stanley Barlow, of course, was only striving to bring com-
fort, but it <uxw all over. The last bomb dropped at 5.37 A.M.
precisely, plumb on the northwest turret of Scotland Yard,
bringing the index cards of a million criminals plus the filing
cabinets smack on to the desk of the commissioner, Sir Philip
Game. Only half an hour later he would have been sitting
there.

The raid ended as it had begun with one of the longest
silences ever endured by man. The sun came up over the Kent-
ish fields, and overnight the weather had changed again; a warm
west wind was blowing. Only the inky pall of smoke wreathing
the horizon to the north witnessed that for seven hours all hefl
had been let loose over the City.

At the Royal Observer Corps Bromley, Kent, Controller
Arthur Collins heard the last bombers departing the slow,
steady drone of the engines beating toward the Channel. It was
5.50 A.M. Then he wrote a very human comment in the official
log: "Phew!"

Underground, in Fighter Command Ops room, they could
see nothing. But as Squadron Leader Cyril Leman watched,
the last red arrows were receding over Kent; over Sussex;
across the Channel waters. Captain Clifford Mollison had just
one suggestion: "Coffee!" Flight Lieutenant Ronald Squire
pressed a button among the battery before him.

London, 5.52 P.M., Sunday, May n. The clarion call of the
all-clear, like a liner nearing safe haven, ringing over the whole
Gty.

228

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Ho*w Many Are You for, Mate?"
After j.jo AM.

"On, Mummie, my birthday cakemy birthday cake's all
gone/' little John Simons sobbed bitterly as he clutched the
hand of his mother, Mrs. Rose Simons, outside the ruins of No.
155, Lisson Grove, St. Marylebone.

At 6 A.M. on Sunday, May n, Mrs. Simons did not, could
not, answer. Together with the birthday cake had gone every-
thing she and her husband possessed their home, their fur-
niture, their wedding presents, all ground to a clinging yellow
powder. Beside her Private Arthur Simons stood like a man in
a trance. Presently he muttered something like, "Everything

J O * J O

a man owned . . . not even a toothbrush." Still, unable to
imagine greater deprivation than that birthday cake, his little
boy wept uncontrollably. Private Simons had no heart to
scold him. He was crying for the world he knew.

There was excuse for tears on this May morning. Across the
wounded acres of brick and stone a drifting shroud of choking
brown smoke rolled like a sea mist. Burning embers from the
fires eddied and spiraled above the wreckage. The sun was a
dark-red disc in a near-invisible sky. In the warm, almost
windless air the stench of the broken City seemed to catch the
pit of the stomach rubber, sulphur, leaking gas, the acrid tang
of burning wood. By Marble Arch the smoke parted to reveal
a tattered cinema poster "So Ends Our Night."

The City That Would Not Die

In many streets a sharp, nerve- jarring clatter broke the
silence; armed with brooms or dustpans and brushes, the house-
wives were defying Field Marshal Sperrle, sweeping the jagged
icicles of broken glass from their front doorsteps. But it was
not a sight that went much remarked. The people who struggled
past them, faces blackened like coal miners coming off shift,
moved as unheedingly as the inhabitants of a dream world.
Time and again, in the few roads still navigable, motorists
jammed on their brakes to avoid mowing down men as blind
as sleepwalkers. There was a strange sense of mass self-control
being very near to snapping. In a crowded Battersea teashop a
waitress let fall a tray of plates; for a moment terror showed,
naked and animal, on every face.

Elsewhere an appalling stillness hung like a curtain above
the gray rooftops, their slates prickled and ridged like a hedge-
hog's spines; above the countryside, where charred paper
swirled and danced over quiet woods 30 miles away. On para-
pets and bridges long lines of pigeons and sea gulls roosted,
blinking at the unfathomable pea-souper of smoke, and they,
too, were unnaturally still.

At first, understandably, it was personal suffering that made
the deepest impact. It wasn't that people had no time for the
heartbreak of others that would come. It was merely that at
first the devastation was too vast to comprehend save in per-
sonal terms. Rich and poor, famous and unknown, in Mayf air
and Stepney and Croydon, were crying for the world they
knew.

Marguerita Stahli was in Dulwich Hospital. She was not
crying yet; the fear and horror had lodged like a block of ice
where her stomach should have been, and every muscle in her
body had clenched tight in protest. In the hospital ward men
and women were packed impartially together, bed nudging
bed; the doctors moved mechanically, hollow-eyed with
fatigue, and the sound of sobbing trembled in the graying light.
Presently a woman cleaner in a ragged overall brought them
all cups of tea, and later Marguerita's girl friend, Marjorie

230

"How Many Are You for, Mate?"

Jacob, visited and brought some clean handkerchiefs. They
talked of everything but the one thing that mattered until
Marguerita cut quietly across Marjorie's sentence: "Is he dead? "
When Marjorie nodded, Marguerita said, "I thought so." But
that was all.

Later still they moved her, slung on a stretcher in a Green
Line coach, to Epsom Hospital, Surrey. It was there that Eileen,
her married sister, found her and brought Jim Norman with
her. Somehow he was the last person Marguerita had expected
to see today. He was really her brother Jack's friend, a young
airman who lived nearby; he had been in and out of Aunt Maud's
house as long as she could remember. They had all played tennis
together and seen each other at All Saints' Church every Sun-
day for years. She had always rather taken Jim Norman for
granted before, yet today she was especially glad to see him.

He had even managed to retrieve her bicycle from the ruins
of Turney Road and she has it still. Marguerita was worried
as to what Aunt Maud would say when she returned from her
weekend in the country to find her home in ruins, but Jim
Norman reassured her. He would go right back on Monday and
see if he couldn't at least salvage the aspidistras that were the
old lady's special pride. He was so reassuring and so nice that
day that now, illogically, Marguerita did want to cry.

Elsewhere the people conducted their own post-mortems
and came to terms with grief. Winston Churchill was in the
ruins of the House of Commons. He stood with Lord Beaver-
brook and Lord Reith, the minister of works, and the tears
rolled unchecked down his old cheeks. From early on, guess-
ing something of what he would see, he had been unusually
quiet, nursing grief. But perhaps he had no true picture of
what lay ahead. The Bar no longer stood to check intruders.
The green leather-padded benches were charred beyond rec-
ognition. The Debating Chamber, the Press Gallery, the
Strangers* and Ladies' Galleries all had gone. So Churchill
wept and then, because he was a fighter, he straightened up
and his bodyguard, Detective Inspector Walter Thompson,

231

The City That Would Not Die

saw him light a fresh cigar. "People will expect it of me,
Thompson."

A minute later, when he emerged from the House, Quentin
Reynolds noted that cigar-it had the angry jut of a man who
meant business. As they passed, Beaverbrook said gravely: "It
was a long night, Quentin." And Reynolds agreed that indeed
it had been. But Churchill said nothing; his heart was too full
for words.

Almost everywhere it was the same scene the silent, staring
crowds grouped before ruined landmarks, the sudden depar-
ture of someone who found all of it too poignant. In Oxford
Street Ambulance Officer Eileen Young saw an old gentleman
in a frock coat weeping alone outside a burning store. Pretty
Marjorie Felton, driving past the gutted Queen's Hall in her
father's car, felt the same. She didn't cry, but she could hardly
bear to look. It was too much like intruding on private grief.
And something of her youth had gone forever.

For some the association lay deeper a life's work vanished
with a puff of smoke. In the City of London Mr. Alvah Clat-
worthy arrived by St. Paul's Cathedral to find Friday Street
gone only twisted acres of masonry as if wreckers had been
at work. The police wouldn't have let him through at all if he
hadn't come straight from his South London post wearing
warden's uniform. As it was they thought he belonged; they
let him tread reluctantly up the street to find firemen cooling
down the steaming ruins of his wholesale drapery.

Mr. Clatworthy was direct. "You're not going to save any-
thing here, are you?"

"Not a thing."

But it was hard, at the age of sixty, to see twenty years* work
gone in a night, to know that there would be compensation
only for the ^100 worth of stock stored on the premises
which were his on lease. Standing there, the Utde draper
struggled not to cry, to seek strength from his Baptist teach-
ings. At last, with a great sigh, the words were wrung out of
him: "The Lord will provide."

232

"How Many Are You for, Mate?"

In the ruins of Clubland the Reverend Jimmy Butterworth
mourned, toonineteen years' work for the boys and girls of
the South London streets, and now the church, the gymnasium,
the theater, the workshops, gutted to black wet slime. One of
his boys, scorched by the long night's fire fighting, saw him.

"Wotcha crying for, Jimmy?"

"Because this is the end."

"The end, me eye. You've still got us, aintcha?"

No doubting it was true. That night, in the ruins, several
hundred teenagers came to worship, and one among them read
the lesson, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills . . ." With
their help Jimmy Butterworth worked on to build Clubland
anew.

Some wounds were healed less easily. Outside Bermondsey
Town Hall Gladys Henley still stood waiting, not anxious
yet, just hoping her husband would soon appear. In a moment
Controller W. E. Baker approached her. "Gladys, I'm afraid
Albert has been injured. He's been taken to St. Olave's Hos-
pital." As the car ground through the mean streets, Gladys
Henley said impulsively, "I don't care if he's got two arms off
as long as he's alive." Nobody answered. Still, until she reached
the hospital, she knew nothing until a doctor, in gentle, halt-
ing phrases, broke the news.

A long time afterward, when she again met the Duke of
Kent, he asked about the "lucky sweater." Then she remem-
bered.

There wasn't always time for gentleness. Back home in
Hammersmith Mrs. Edna Clarke was getting worried sick; her
fireman husband's breakfast was ready but he was long over-
due from Shoreditch. Another fireman was there, actually,
steeling himself to tell her when a policeman arrived, an-
nouncing bluntly: "You're wanted to identify a body at Hack-
ney Mortuary." Once she had willed herself to get there she
realized the raid had been even worse than she had thought.
Later she had to join a queue for a death certificate. Behind

233

The City That Would Not Die

her a Cockney with heavily bandaged hands asked flatly: "How
many are you for, mate?"

It was so bizarre that Mrs. Clarke thought she must be in
the wrong place. Then the man explained: his wife, sister, and
two daughters had all been buried and killed.

Not everyone can have known with such certainty. In Angel
Lane, West Ham, Publican Bill Barker had just opened up The
Lion for the early shift workers when Inspector Reg Jones of
the local C.I.D. came in. Barker knew Jones as a "half-of-
bitters" man, but as he went to pull the measure the policeman
stopped him short. "Bill, for God's sake give me a double
scotch. I've just inspected half a ton of unidentified flesh."

And the sorrow was universal. At Hyde Park Comer, by the
Alexandra Hotel, the policeman on point duty was weeping
openly; he had heard that his "lovely lady," Mrs. Frances Mor-
gan, was among the dead. In Shoreditch Chief Warden William
Coyne saw rescue men carrying the bodies of children from the
ruins. Some were former jailbirds, convicted for razor slashing,
yet the tears rolled down their -cheeks. In Soho Rescue Chief
Leslie Lane saw his men cheer wildly, cry from sheer reaction,
when a mother cat and her kittens were dug out alive.

Some thoughts lay too deep for tears. At Post Dz, St. Mary-
lebone, Stanley Barlow took time out to deal with neglected
paper work, unearthed a brand-new warden's certificate. Now
he remembered what he had forgotten to tell Tailoress Winnie
Dorow as she set out on her first, and last, patrol. She had that
day qualified as a fully-fledged warden: the news had been
phoned through for him to tell her. The others gave him a
wide berth; he was sitting too still, too quiet.

Many had nothing to grieve or celebrate, but the sheer joy
of being alive was enough. Crossing the courtyard of the Na-
tional Temperance Hospital, St. Pancras, Miss Frances Thirlby
thought that the sunshine had never been so beautiful. At
Westminster Control Center Message Supervisor Elsie Fer-
guson wanted to cheer, then found that after dealing with 3,000
messages she'd lost her voice. The New York Times' Bob Post

"How Many Are You for, Mate?"

thought that the phrase "Glad to see you" had a new meaning.

A few were lightheaded with bravery. A youngster arrived
at R. B. Kingham's post near Paddington to explain exactly
how he had extinguished his first incendiary bomb. He wanted
to know: did this qualify him for a medal?

It was almost pathetic, yet many right on the spot never
realized their penl. At Waterloo Stationmaster Harry Green-
field sat in gloomy solitude in his office. No trains could run;
his station had no water, gas, electric light, or power. His one
comfort: the ten-pump team who had eventually turned up to
deal with the fire in the vaults had reported it out.

Suddenly, to his chagrin, District Officer Thomas Goodman
burst into his office. Greenfield, whose father had been royal
train guard to Queen Victoria, ruled his domain with a firm
hand; he pointed out that a stationmaster's door was there to
knock on. Goodman's reply, ungrammatical but to the point,
became a classic in Fire Service circles: "If I don't get some as-
sistance soon, you won't have any station to be Stationmaster
of." The hard-pressed crews hadn't stayed long enough; in the
vaults beneath Waterloo was alight from end to end, a fire so
consuming that the whole upper structure might collapse into
the pit. Greenfield's face seemed suddenly to crumple. He could
only whisper: "As bad as that, mate?"

Thereafter he worked alongside the firemen like a Trojan,
even though the neglected fires, rampaging through 23 acres of
catacombs, were by then white hot; 30 feet above, the asphalt
on the platforms steamed like cooling toffee. It was Lieutenant
Commander John Fordham and Geoffrey Blackstone who
found the solution; plowing through the station taxi rank with
a pneumatic drill, they vented the fire, allowing the almost-
bofling air to rush like a geyser to the sky. But it was four
anxious days before the fires were subdued.

Preoccupied with their own problems, nobody realized there
were crises on every hand. Thomas Sinden, the bride groom-
to-be, had been afraid all night that he would never marry
Beatrice; this morning he was sure of it. He had trouble getting

235

The City That Would Not Die

from the East End to Aldgate Pump; when he insisted he was
hurrying to his wedding in Acton, all the taxi drivers shrugged
him off as drunk. Finally he got a lift in a doctor's car, a night-
mare detour to the north, with only the gray dome of St.
Paul's as a familiar landmark on the skyline.

Sinden had no idea that the cathedral stood at that moment
in grave peril. By midmorning the fires were creeping on to-
ward Faraday Building. Superintendent Henry Davies, who
had charge of operations, held his breath. If the flames crossed
the narrow alley of Godliman Street he would have to send that
call for dynamite.

To check the fire, Davies had only skeleton equipmenta
fireboat on the Thames by Blackfriars Bridge, a water unit, a
hose-laying unit, and six pumps. He, too, had nursed the same
secret as Jackson for many months, although the relief officers
drafted in to help him this Sunday morning knew nothing of
the issues at stake. To Captain Herbert Eaton, chief officer of
Chigwell, Essex, Fire Brigade, it was only another routine job-
sorting out the vast snake pit of redundant hose by Blackfriars
Bridge to get more water and quicker results.

But Davies' heart was sinking. The steel piping was coming,
but with appalling slowness few men had been trained in its
elementary use and the river was pitifully low. All the while
the flames crept nearer. By noon the top stories of the houses
on the east side of Godliman Street, nearest to St. Paul's, were
burning. Worse, the pressure obtainable was nowhere near the
2,300 pounds per square inch that was needed.

A jet like that, Davies knew, could punch through the en-
velope of solid heat and knock out the fire at source.

The buildings were liable to go, the hose might disintegrate,
but he took a risk. He ordered his men to snake their branches
right into the upper stories and drench the fires from close at
hand. That done, he drew them back.

Hour after hour Davies kept a drifting curtain of water
saturating the crumbling buildings on the east side of the narrow
alley until every brick was cold and wet to the touch. To the

236

"How Many Are You for, Mate?"

northeast, close to St. Paul's, Captain Eaton watched other fire-
men doing the same for Waiting Street corner.

By 6 P.M. Faraday Building and St. Paul's Cathedral were out
of danger, but the fire had left its mark in more ways than one.
Soon af ter Davies had a breakdown in health and retired from
the Fire Service. The strain had been too great.

Yet the ordinary civilian could hardly have believed it pos-
sible. When part-time Fireman Percy Madden staggered into
his suburban home groaning, "Oh, what a night," his wife had
a word of comfort: "Nothing to worry about, they went up
over the Midlands." Out on Sydenham Hill, an untouched oasis
between Lambeth and Croydon, old Mr. Reginald Harpur
noted in his diary: "I hear casualties were very fight 30 at the
most." Even Journalist Charles Graves, on the doorstep of the
great Druce's fire, grumbled: "These astrologers are very dis-
appointing. They promised something sensational to happen
last night."

In the remote suburbs the ignorance was total. In Wembley
C. L. Miles couldn't understand why the Sunday papers were
late. Euston's Arrivals Inspector John Atkinson, 17 miles away
at Watford, thought the dark atom mushroom of smoke above
London was a thunderstorm, cursed that he hadn't brought a
raincoat.

Even the visiting firemen couldn't believe their eyes. As the
convoy that had left Birmingham six hours back came into the
City from the north, they were shocked into silence. From
Hendon, eight miles north of the City's center, onward, house
after house burst with a dry, intense roaring. Yet there wasn't
a fire engine in sight, not a soul on the streets.

That same feeling that had struck Hauptmann Aschenbren-
ner six hours earlier now struck them: this was a city of die
dead. Sub Officer Charles H. Gibbs summed it up for all of
them: "What the hell are we coming into?"

Above all, they were entering a city that had done some hard
reappraisal. In six hours millions of people had learned, as never
before, the meaning of total war. Overnight, through the

The City That Would Not Die

medium of Field Marshal Sperrle, they had become, in the
fullest sense, adult.

For twenty-one yearsan ironic totalmany people had con-
vinced themselves that it could not happen here. To Guernica,
to Shanghai, even to Rotterdam, but not to London. And in a
sense, once and for all, their complacency died that night and
they came of age. The symbols of a proud past lay in ashes.

District Officer Edward Baker, watching the fires leaping
south of the Strand, thought there was every chance of a con-
flagration in that packed terraced property. Moving men and
pumps rapidly from street to street, he forced himself to ignore
historic St. Clement Danes. From a side street he heard but did
not see the roof of Wren's church come smashing down.

It was in most ways a significant gesture. A new age was
dawning. The grim system of priorities which the Fire Service
had to enforce this night was in keeping with the new unremit-
ting conception of war. If, in a nuclear battle, victory consists
of atomizing only 22 per cent of an enemy's industrial potential,
what chance would a church even a Wren church stand in
the future?

By dawn on Sunday, May n, the old Charterhouse was a
brown stinking ruin. On the Old Bailey's dome the gilded
blindfolded figure of Justice stared bleakly above the ruined
northwest wing. The sixteenth-century hall of Gray's Inn was
a mound of shimmering ash.

The destruction was really a tragic catalogue of what the
well-traveled tourist should see the Elizabeth Greycoat Hos-
pital; the house where Catherine Parr lived before her marriage
to Henry VIII; London's oldest house, at 10 Nevill's Court,
Fetter Lane, which even the fire of 1666 had not razed; the
halls of five great livery companies; Devonshire House; the
Grand Priory Church of St. John of Jerusalem; St. Columba's
(Church of Scotland) Pont Street; and the masterpieces of
Wren; St. Mary4e-Bow; St. Mildred's, Bread Street, his "little
St. Paul's"; St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, Queen Victoria Street;
his finest of all St. Stephen's, Walbrook.

238

"How Many Are You for, Mate?"

And insensibly out of this night a new spirit was to arise
tougher, more skeptical, more scientific materialistic. If seven
hours' bombing could topple the symbols of centuries, was
tradition really the inspiration it was accepted to be? And peo-
ple have had less patience with tradition since that time.

In many ways, of course, the seeds of the Quiet Revolution
were irrevocably sown. The beginnings of the blitz had seen to
that. But May 10 marked the grand finale, and nothing could
ever be the same again.

As with traditions, so with people. Rightly or wrongly, most
people tended to blame the politicians for their suffering, al-
though in the final analysis Neville Chamberlain's pathetic
sortie to Berchtesgaden was only the inevitable outcome of a
long tradition. Other governments than his had bent over back-
ward to appease the dictators. Other governments than his had
refused to sanction more than 100,000 a year on civil-defense
expenditure.

But a people tends to get the government it deserves. The
blitzes of the past nine months had been a warning for the
government but for the people, too. Yet on May 10 Flanagan
and Allen's refrain about how completely the blitz had failed
spotlighted the prevailing mood. The Cup Final and kindred
distractions claimed priority. Fire watching, even the instinct
to save one's life, came a long way down the list.

In both cases the lesson held good. People have looked to the
politicians increasingly for quick results, not promises. And
both government and people have lived under the shadow of
war ever since.

Within weeks London's emergency water needs had under-
gone a drastic revision, and every major provincial city had
received the same treatment. (In the Southern Division Lieu-
tenant Commander John Fordham and his aide Geoffrey Black-
stone didn't even wait for sanction: they cemented up forty-
four sites, a totaLof more than one and a half million gallons, in
two months) . Steel piping, borehole pumps on bridges, became
the order of the day. By August the National Fke Service, as

239

The City That Would Not Die

a unified fighting force, was an established fact. And despite
later denationalization the skeleton remained standard ranks,
above all standard training and equipment.

It marked the end, too, of Herbert Morrison's uneasy flirta-
tion with laisser-faire. By Tuesday the minister had called on
every London borough for detailed reports on how the fire-
watching system had fallen down. Within days the regulations
were being enforced more stringently by prosecution, even jail.
A hard lesson had been learned: if a country is to survive total
war no man can please himself and in a nuclear war a strong
central authority would have to grasp die reins even tighter.
The people have been learning to live with controls from that
time on.

It began a new era for the Press, too. The Times and The
DcAly Telegraph had fought vigorously for a National Fire Serv-
ice. Now, despite wartime security, other newspapers became
openly resentful that the government had revealed so much less
than the truth, Alexander Werth, remembering a Ministry of
Home Security press conference, commented, "Clearly some-
thing had gone seriously wrong . . . with this much-vaunted
emergency water supply." The Evening Standard was brusque:
"Let's face the facts-London has not learned the lesson of the
fire raids . . . but Goering's fire raisers may be here tonight."
The Daily Mail was cynical: "It must not happen again, but we
said that last time!"

It was a pointer. The Press has been more thrusting, less ready
to take things on trust some would say less respectful as the
years have gone by.

The world of which the Alexandra Hotel was somehow a
symbol didn't vanish that night, but it took a beating from
which it can never now recover. Death duties and taxes were
part of the answer, but the question goes deeper than that. If
former chauffeur, Herbert Mills, the film stunt man, Albert
Marotta, tobacconist Nat Williams were the kind of men needed
to restore order from chaos, were the wealthy and educated
really as omnipotent as they had always seemed? In any case,

240

"Ho*w Many Are You for, Mate?"

such men became increasingly conscious of their right to a
place in the sun. May 10 marked a subtle turning point in
Britain's drift toward a classless society.

The advantages of a good address were diminishing, too.
Never again could Bartender Michael Gonley at the Ritz con-
fidently serve dry martinis as the bombs were striking West
Ham. The complaint received by one town clerk that the
scion of a noble house had been improperly sent to the mortuary
in the Council's dust cart would strike a sour note, too. The
intercontinental ballistic missile, any more than the flying bomb
or the V-i rocket, is no respecter of persons or borough
boundaries. Macaulay said "Moderation in war is imbecility,"
but the scientists had yet to make that supremely true.

The same would apply to those empty Belgravian mansions
that Architect Arthur Butler and his fire party found so frus-
trating. A first-class ticket to a country retreat would seem a
futile enough gesture in the nuclear age.

On the other hand, much that was good, if hopelessly chival-
rous, vanished forever on May 10. Rescue Worker George
Smith, lying for two hours in the ruins of a Battersea home to
hold a woman's head; Police Constable Reginald Oakes walk-
ing the plank at the Alexandra; Mrs. Daley's pathetic vigil with
the dying man; these were the gestures of the men and women
who held the lives of others sacred, even when they themselves
were under heavy bombardment. Today the same spirit of devo-
tion could not, for obvious reasons, hold good, within the lethal
ij-mile zone of nuclear attack.

What strikes one most forcibly in conjuring up that lost
world is the loyalty that prevailed. The way Jimmie Sexton and
his mates stuck doggedly to their factory; Alexandra Porter
Frederick Willis coming back on duty to keep Andrew Verdie
company; Yard Inspector Robert Bromley risking death by fire
to find the correct channels for filing a damage report. The
loyalties are there still, but somehow subtly confined; in a
grimmer, more elemental world people would probably give
pride of place to their families rather than their firais.

241

The City That Would Not Die

To one observer trudging the streets later that day it seemed
that people had become newly possessed of an old emotion:
cold, deadly anger. In Whitehall, walking north to Blooms-
bury through Trafalgar Square, Quentin Reynolds saw it time
and again the tight-set Lips, the glances of implacable hatred,
men muttering over and over, "The dirty bastards." He recalled
a line of Kipling's, "The English began to hate. . . ." and
wondered what shape that hate would take if the bombers came
back.

But they were not returning. Although no one then realized
it, the all-clear crying through a sea of smoke this Sunday morn-
ing signaled more than the end of London's greatest air raid.
On May 22 the whole of Feldmarschall Albert Kesselring's
Air Fleet Two moved to Poznan. On June 22 the attack on
Russia began from the Arctic to the Black Sea. There would
be other raids on London but never one like this. The blitz was
over.

But nobody knew this then or even later. A third of the
Luftwaffe was left behind in France. Winston Churchill
warned that the attacks might continue in force. The tele-
communications branch of the General Post Office did some
frantic costing: if they excavated tunnels 105 feet deep>, below
underground railway level, burying the telephone cables
deeper, was it likely to break the banks?

And there was the problem set by Rudolf Hess. Many men,
Winston Churchill among them, later showed a human tend-
ency to be wise after the event: Hess was an obvious psycho-
path, no real store could be set by his visit. But there is no
denying the electric excitement that was running through 10
Downing Street and Fighter Command in the days that
followed.

Not that Hess's peace plans a free hand for Britain in her
own empire provided Germany had a free hand in Europe--
were ever likely to have been accepted. The enigma boiled
down to two questions: was Hess's self-portrait of a quixotic
intermediary, a man sickened by the senseless slaughter of raids

242

"How Many Are You for, Mate?"

like May 10, a living likeness? Or was he the trusted emissary
of a Hitler who felt secretly that Britain's war- waging poten-
tial stood higher than it really did? The answer to the riddle may
never be known for certain, but the weight of opinion-
Churchill's included came down on the first score.

If so, the irony seems almost too bitter. The raid of May 10
had started as a whim. The methodical Sperrle planned it as
well as a good tactician can when time is against him. Yet some-
how on that night everything went against the City. If the moon
hadn't been so bright; if the tide hadn't been so low; if the tele-
phone cables and the water mains hadn't gone so fast; if the
raid hadn't been so widespread as to defeat the Fire Service; if
reinforcements had come quicker; if only more night fighters
had been equipped with radar.

As it was, Sperrle had everything with him. In a reprisal raid
to end all reprisal raids his bombers had wrought havoc. More
than 50 per cent of all telephone trunk circuits, 60 per cent of
all outgoing toll circuits were inoperative. Fourteen hospitals
had been struck, a score of Fire Service and ambulance depots.
The Port of London was already cut down to a quarter capac-
ity; now four large docks and 24 river wharves were damaged,
too.

Intelligence was slow to trickle in. For instance, the digest
report presented to the Cabinet on May 2 1 cited only 147 water
mains broken. The Metropolitan Water Board finally put the
grand total at 605 the biggest of the entire blitz.

The picture of the air war also underwent some revisions.
On Monday May 12 every newspaper, The Times included,
announced 33 German bombers shot down: on the basis of this
figure Quentin Reynolds gave it as his opinion that on this night
Britain had won the war. As this news was going to press
Fighter Command had already whittled the total to 2819 to
the day fighters, four to the night fighters, four to the anti-
aircraft gunners, one to an intruder plane. Even so, there seemed
grounds for optimism almost one in ten shot down if 300 air-
craft had been over.

243

The City That Would Not Die

It was a long time before anyone realized that Sperrle had
launched more than five hundred bombers against the capital
that night. Or the more disturbing fact that of this number he
had lost few more than eight, with a further three damaged.
For seven hours the Luftwaffe had hit London with everything
they had, escaping virtually unmolested.

Certainly the RAF had made their claims in all good faith.
But in the flaring excitement of combat it was often hard for
the pilots to tell whether or not their hits were lethal. Or a pilot
might report a bomber down at the precise moment that two
independent Observer Corps posts were also reporting bombers
down in slightly varying locations. It was thus all too easy for
three bombers to be claimed where only one existed.

Nor could the damage be reckoned only in terms of lives lost
and ancient monuments destroyed, the only yardstick that
security would then permit. More relevantly, the raiders had
knocked out 7 1 key points at least half of them front-line fac-
tories like Peek Frean's (tank parts and ration packs), Siebe
Gorman's (deep-sea breathing apparatus), Dean's Rag Books
(Mae Wests for airmen), J. W. Shale of Stepney (Bailey
Bridges) . The railways had taken such a battering, as Winston
Churchill announced later, that the through routes were not
open again until June.

It was worse on the roads. Almost eight thousand streets a
third of greater London were virtually impassable with rubble
and coiled hose. At London Region Headquarters Deputy Ad-
ministrator Officer Julian Simpson told a colleague who had
just checked on: "If we get another like this tonight we shall
have to call the troops in." His colleague was impressed and
with reason: if troops were needed, the 44,ooo-strong civilian
force who handled road repairs and debris clearance must be
already swamped.

It was little wonder. In central London no east-west route lay
open nearer than the Euston Road. South of the river every ap-
proach route was closed: a labor gang of 400 was working at
the Elephant alone. Warden Arthur Moore, who despatched

244

"How Many Are You for, Mate?"

zoo homeless shelterers from the Guildhall to a nearby field
kitchen, didn't see them again until dusk; the ten-minute walk
and the lunch took them five hours to negotiate. It took Fire
Watcher Claude Evans the same time to travel from Bishops-
gate to Hove, Sussexnormally a ninety-minute journey. En
route to Paddington Station the Reverend Cecil Curwen
watched a taxi meter ticking up in silent dismay. A routine
ten-minute journey had clocked up an hour's fare.

If the men at the top were slow to realize the implications,
the men nearer to the people weren't. Late on the Sunday
Southwark's Civil Defense chief, Alderman Leonard Styles,
was one of many attending a top-level conference with Admiral
Sir Edward Evans, joint regional commissioner, at the Imperial
War Museum, South London. To the admiral's reassuring
"Chin up, chaps," Styles had a short answer: "In my opinion,
sir, two more nights of this and London will be at a standstill."

Styles was not talking emptily- The people of his own
borough were among 155,000 families who on this Sunday
were without water, gas, or electricityand without water even
the bakers were unable to work. As sixteen-year-old William
Sherrington, grimy with his night's fire fighting, led his mother
Sophie from the Elephant and Castle shelter she was one of
many women who began suddenly to cry. There was a lovely
joint of lamb at home and how she was going to cook it she
didn't know

Almost everywhere there was the same problem. People
breakfasted how and where they could, thankful to be eating
at all. In Diana Riviere's flat behind Westminster Abbey Diana
and John Hodgkinson ate a pensive breakfast of bread and
butter, honey, and cold milk- At Cloak Lane Police Station,
City of London, Police Constable Thomas Farquharson and his
mates settled for bread, cheese, and beer. If utensils were lack-
ing, Londoners improvised. At St. Leonard's General Hospital,
Shoreditch, Mrs. Rose Flaxman, die night cook, found aM the
teacups broken; she served up tea in kidney bowls from the
operating theater. Temporary Fireman John French, in Upper

The City That Would Not Die

Thames Street, suddenly thought of that bonded warehouse
where he had parleyed with the customs men. He went back,
found some brandy intact, drank it from his tin hat.

But the greatest problem was not people but industry: even
many factories that were totally unscathed lacked water, gas,
and power to keep going. The Londoners weren't beaten in
the same sense that they thought themselves defeated but no
city can survive long without the means of production. In
December the Metropolitan Water Board had calculated that
if the raids kept on at that peak the City would be waterless by
February. On May 1 1 they revised their estimate: four more
raids on this scale and the same crisis would be reached.

Taken with the slow attrition of the Battle of the Atlantic
it makes a frightening picture. In that week only 92 colliers
were signaled past Tilbury Dock; during the fortnight the
totals dropped steadily. For all the public undertakings on
which London dependedgas, transport, electricity, water-
there was only six weeks' reserve of coal.

And out of this chaos a strange wickedness was arising.
Heavy rescue men strolled into Edward Penrose-Fitzgerald's
Kensington flat as he slept exhausted, stole a gold pencil and a
torch. In Gracechurch Street, City of London, men calmly
stepped through jagged plate glass and redressed themselves at
a big outfitter's expense. Others looted a London County Coun-
cil depot there was a sudden strange rash of bogus park keepers
and nurses. In Southwark looters stripped a public house of
its entire stock, even stole the fittings from the firemen's hoses
at the Elephant and sold those. In Wandsworth a blitzed school
was shorn of planks and broken tables while the dust was still
rising.

With many there seemed a strange, almost callous indiffer-
ence to the sufferings of others. At the Elephant and Castle
District Officer Thomas Goodman found a police inspector in
despair; he could no longer control the vast crowds of ghouls
swamping in from the suburbs. Near the Guildhall Miss Julie
Boxhall was shocked to hear one woman hail another: "Oh,

246

"How Many Are You for, Mate?"

come down here, there's nothing to see down there." By Houns-
ditch jokers ransacked an outfitters, carried off some wax
dummies of girls in one-piece bathing suits, arranged them in
the firemen's canvas dam. Many came dressed in their Sun-
day best, girls in gay cotton frocks and head scarves, youths in
natty blazers. In the City of London this holiday garb so in-
censed Warden Arthur Moore that he burst out, "The bastards
are wearing straw hats!"

In a locust swarm they descended on the cafes, demolishing
every bun and biscuit, draining the tea urns dry, chattering
nineteen to the dozen like picnickers. They choked the queues
for scarce busses and trams so effectively that many priority
workers found it impossible to get home. Others were luckier
with rationed petrol, and their car wheels cut the firemen's re-
lay hoses to ribbons. Near the Elephant four young bucks hailed
a policeman from a car: "You're just the chap to tell us where
to see the sights. 57 For three scorching minutes the policeman
let fly, then turned to Station Officer Ronald Thorn: "If that
takes the cape off my back, it was worth it."

The firemen had troubles enough of their own. At Lambeth
Headquarters Major Jackson was once more on the phone to
Chief Superintendent May. By 6.40 A.M. he had canceled all
officers' leave; now he wanted 1,000 relief firemen drafted in
by bus, five hundred pumps to stand by on the London borders.
Despite this he knew that if the Luftwaffe came again tonight,
the situation would be indescribable. The bulk of the fire fight-
ing, with a ruptured water system, would fall on the reEef
firemen's shoulders yet few knew one street from another, let
alone the positioning of the hydrants.

Already they were taking oven At a blazing timber dump in
Stepney Fireman John H. Good had mixed feelings as the re-
lief crew rolled up scrupulously unrolling coils of scrubbed
white hose across the charred slime. Near St. Pancras Station a
fire engine turned up from Nottinghamshire with its brass
gleaming like a sunrise. Their chief explained the delay to

247

The City That Would Not Die

Warden Wilfred Avery: they had been up all night polishing
the engine in honor of a London call.

There was much for them to do. Of the two thousand fires
still charted, hundreds were out of control a magnificent flare
path for any bomber force that might come on the Sunday
night. At 4.30 on the Sunday afternoon the Metropolitan Water
Board reported the worst: in the Shoreditch and London Bridge
areas more than a thousand acres of the City, they could provide
no water at all. Later Jackson's deputy, Principal Officer dem-
ent Kerr, admitted: "I shudder to think what would have
happened if the Germans had returned."

For the men who had fought against such overwhelming
odds were for the time being out of the fight. Station Officer
James Ellis lay down on the floor fully clothed and slept. In
Whitechapel Cyril Tobias chose a trestle table. Fireman Harry
Weinstock reached his bunk but couldn't be bothered to shrug
out of his sodden uniform.

As the German pilots' reports flooded in that Sunday morn-
ing Field Marshal Sperrle professed himself more than satisfied,
-and General Hans Jeschonnek concurred "a brilliantly suc-
cessful raid." The bulk of the national Press felt the same. The
22-Uhr Blatt asked: "Do you want any more refreshments,
Mr. Churchill? " Volkiscber Eeobachter was more to the point:
"London is one single sea of flames."

But the final decision rested with Hitler and Hitler's mind
was on other things. The Russians had been a thorn in his flesh
for too long, and to his aides it seemed that the defection of
Hess rankled too deeply. In the Reich Chancellery at Berlin,
whence he had returned in haste, Pilot Hans Bauer saw the
Fuehrer accost Goering passionately: "He must have gone mad
or he couldn't have done a thing like that to me ... he's stabbed
me in the back!" When Goering urged the continuance of the
blitz rather than a Russian campaign for which neither troops
nor planes might be adequate, Hitler broke in furiously. When
Russia was beaten to her knees, then was the time to talk about
England. ...

248

"How Many Are You for, Mate?"

Thus when the much-maligned Hans Schmidt's more de-
tailed report arrived via Portugal six weeks later the die was al-
ready cast. The Luftwaffe were now irrevocably committed on
the eastern front.

Again the irony is breathtaking. In one raid Sperrle had
achieved almost everything that Hitler had always urged. He
had wrought a havoc that followed by another week of such
raids might have put London, the symbol of the civilized
world's hopes, out for good and all. The fires his bombers lit
were never conquered rather did they smolder themselves out,
so that not for eleven days were the last pumps withdrawn.
Three weeks later many big mains were still unrepaired; the
level of the vital Crouch Hfll and Maiden Lane reservoirs had
not reached normal.

And then the bitterest irony of all the Luftwaffe had to let
the greatest opportunity of the blitz slide by. From start to
finish the whole effort, the lives wasted on both sides, were in
vain. Again Hitler's whim had prevailed. The raid had proved
nothing at all.

All this still lay in the future. Meanwhile, there were no
heroics, only an impassioned determination that Hitler should
not interfere with the planned routine. The London Philhar-
monic's musicians turned up at the Queen's Hall, took a long
look at the empty shell, and decided that the afternoon's concert
must go on. They salvaged enough instruments from the still-
dripping ruins to hold die concert at the Royal Academy of
Music, with the doors left open for all those who could get
pavement room only.

Thomas Sinden, the bridegroom-to-be, arrived at St. Helen's
Church, Acton, to find things looking almost as unpromising.
Beatrice, his bride, had had to send to Willesden, three miles
away, for fresh carnations to make her pancake hat; next she had
settled for toilet roll centers covered with silver paper to make
tiers for the wedding cake; finally she had spent half an hour
driving in a hired car round a church that was no longer there.
But somehow, though the porch was all that remained, die

The City That Would Not Die

vicar had managed to rig it up to look like a church in miniature.
Despite Sinden's doubts and premonitions the wedding did
take place.

Everywhere people were putting as brave a face on it as
they could. Father George Coupe had been injured so badly
at Poplar Hospital that his right leg would have to be ampu-
tated, but he consoled himself that now he would have more
time for reading; from his bed in the London Hospital he
ordered the complete works of Shakespeare. At the Royal Hos-
pital, Chelsea, Captain Cecil Townsend, who looked after a
section of the red-coated pensioners, found that flying metal
from an incendiary had scored deep into his instep, took com-
fort that it had at least burned out a particularly vexing corn.

It seemed to be tacidy understood that no one must make a
fuss. "What a game, eh?" the bus drivers shouted as they
passed each other north of the city. "We're in a pretty pickle,
aren't we? " Dr. Anthony Feiling, driving in from West Middle-
sex Hospital and anxious for his wife's safety, found Jane, the
family maid of all work, faintly disapproving of his hasty ar-
rival. She asked, "What have you come home for, sir? There
haven't been any telephone messages."

Yet many had nothing left at all but the clothes they stood
up in. In Lewisham the council could only fix up the bombed-
out Patrick St. Aubyn with a woman's peach-colored pajama
top with a green collar. Near Westminster Bridge the Chicago
Tribune's Larry Rue saw a girl wearing only pajamas and a
mink coat. Canon Roger Berry of Westminster Abbey went
off to preach in a sports coat and dirty flannels everything
else had gone. To some appearances mattered more than to
others. Assistant Matron Olive Sales left Poplar Hospital thick
with mortar dust but a sister was adamant about making her up
a fresh starched cap.

In fact, nobody was putting on an act; to them these were the
natural things to do. City of London chemist, W. G. Harries,
served lipsticks and aspirins ankle deep in a thick sludge of
tooth powder, water, and zinc oxide. General Josepha Hallera

250

"How Many Are You for, Mate?"

left the ruins of the Alexandra for Mass at the Polish Church,
marveled to see a totally-blitzed newspaper kiosk draped with
a blanket labeled "Business as Usual." Nor were the usual
courtesies neglected in this time of stress. Rear Admiral Bennett
at the Stanhope Court Hotel had three baths to sluice away the
plaster dust, then went straight to apologize for the state of
the bathroom.

It was the same with Jimmie Sexton, trudging wearily
through blasted streets with his small attache case. He wasn't
surprised to meet his father taking his morning walk near the
Oval Underground Station. The old man had taken that morn-
ing walk every Sunday for fifty years; the strange thing would
have been to find him missing. As his father asked casually,
"Hullo, boy, what's happened?" the conversation seemed
everyday, too.

"Fields' has gone, Dad."

"I thought it had. I said to the gels, 'That could be Fields/
that fire by Waterloo/ "

"It was and all"

"Then how have you lived, boy?" old Mr. Sexton asked,
and Jimmie Sexton could only think to reply, "I don't know,
Dad but here I am."

For millions it was the sense of duty that prevailed above
all else. Charles Mattock was back at the Alexandra Hotel, by
Herbert Mills' side. He was still sick and shaken, plaster dust
coated his royal-blue livery. But he even contrived a little joke
when Chef Theo Kummer reported for duty. The bewildered
man asked what had happened, and Mattock recalled a con-
versation a lifetime ago when he and Dearlove and Willis and
Mr. Verdie had been drinking tea in the hall. He answered,
"I don't know, but our dinners are still under the grill."

And where else could Mattock be at a time Eke this? He was
the only man alive now who had known the habits of the
guests their little idiosyncrasies, in just which corner of the
hotel the rescuers should search for them. A good servant to

The City That Would Not Die

them while they lived, Mattock could still be of use to them in
death, too.

Mills stayed on until it was plain that what remained of the
Alexandra would rest precariously intact so long as the rescue
work continued. And by midmorning it was plain that every
living soul had been rescued from the hotel, even the woman
who had cried so piteously though she died soon after. Only
the twenty-four who had been killed outright still lay crushed
among the rubble. But Mills worked patiently on even per-
suaded the rescue men, at a woman's urgent request, to salvage
a pair of corsets from an upper room. To his surprise she called
back to present him with a bottle of whisky.

Others, the leaders or led, stayed patiently on, doing their
best. A. J. Burgoyne's fire-watching squad sat patiently on the
rubble in Fenchurch Street, City of London, waiting for the
next squad to relieve them. The building had burned right
down to the ground, but it seemed only proper to stay. Chief
Warden William Coyne sat sleepily in the Jacob's Well pub-
lic house, Shoreditch, a pint of beer in his right hand, his left
hand jetting a stirrup pump on to- a small fire outside the win-
dow. District Officer William Cesana was fighting the Water-
loo vaults fire the same way munching ham sandwiches with
the hose propped on a branch holder. The heat was so intense
that the melting fat trickled slowly down his wrists.

To most the pressing need was for sleep. Mrs. Margaret Daley
had taken a bath, carefully cleansed the filth from her uniform
and from her body. As she sank exhausted into bed she could
not banish the memory of the dying man from her brain. It was
momentarily hard to reconcile with her faith. Then, quite
simply, it came to her. She had prayed to God to protect her
and those at her depot. And God had not only protected them
again but had guided her to where she had been most needed,
as a man had been guided long ago on the road to Jericho. It
was as simple as that.

Herbert Mills went back to the post in Belgrave Square.
Reverently he uncorked the precious botde of whisky and

252

"Hoiv Many Are You for, Mate?"

poured a tot for himself and Nat Williams. Only a small tot,
but within twenty minutes he was as dead to the world as a
youngster taking his first unwary nip. The whisky and the
fatigue had done their work.

Pilot Officer Andrew Humphrey also slept the blissful sleep
of a young man after a healthy night's exercise. The interroga-
tion had been a bore, but the beer and the bacon and eggs had
gone down well. Miles away Hauptmann Albert Huf enreuter
also slept, the uneasy sleep of the drugged. He dreamed that he
was spreadeagled on a relief map of England and was trying to
dive off it, to swim across the Channel to France. But some-
thing held his leg in chancery; a swarm of German fighters
hovered, trying to rescue him, then British fighters swooped
in and drove them away. He woke up, drenched with sweat,
the pain in his broken leg stabbingly alive.

Marguerita Stahli lay drowsily in a clean white ward at Ep-
som Hospital. They had given her a sedative, and the first
tearing pain of grief was dying away, leaving her numb and
spent. She tried hard not to thank of Windsor or Rex but of
more pleasant things, and found herself remembering Jim Nor-
man's smile as he sat beside the bed earlier on. There was a
quiet strength in it that somehow reminded her of Windsor-
kind, yet firm, a man who would not let you down. She
wondered why she had never noticed it quite like this before.

Outside, the death pall of smoke still lay over London,
motionless and threatening, but here there was only the warm
air, the green lawns bright with daffodils, the liquid sound of
bird song. The afternoon sunlight flooded the wide windows
of the ward and Marguerita Stahli slept.

FACTS ABOUT MAY /o-/z

THIS book is the story of a few people on the night when the
fate of their city hung in the balance. Not the whole story, for
that is beyond one man's power to tell; it does not present all of
the facts or anywhere near all of the facts. Few of the 6,000,000
Londoners who lived through this fateful night noticed the
peak points of the raid's intensity between 12.30 and 1.15 A.M.
and between 3.00 and 4.30 as phased by the Ministry of Home
Security. They were too frightened, too angry, or too stunned
by the cataclysm or too busy to notice the passage of time. So
such a night is not the best climate for pinning down what
happened when and since no other raid ever provoked such
controversy, even the basic statistics must be accepted with
caution.

Bearing those points in mind, here is an attempt to answer
some fundamental questions:

How many bombers did the Germans send? The original
Home Security Appreciation of May 18 estimated 320 over
the target about 30 believed to have made a double sortie.
T. H. O'Brien's Civil Defence (History of the Second
World War, UK, Civil Series) shows 550 aircraft involved.
But there seems no reason to doubt the official German
records, which show that of 541 bombers slated to fly, 505
reached the target 358 on the first sortie, 147 on the
second. Other planes developed technical faults, returned
after fighter interceptions, or were shot down.

255

Facts About May 10 //

What 'was the tonnage of bombs dropped? O'Brien estimates
440 tons of high explosive plus many parachute mines and
large numbers of incendiaries. German totals are far higher,
showing 708 tons in all 498 tons of high explosive (in-
cluding naval mines) dropped on the first sortie alone, 210
(again with mines) on the second. On both sorties they
loosed, in all, 86 tons of incendiaries. Of the mines and
high explosives, 167 failed to explode.

Ho f w many bombers were lost? Paradoxically, German
figures show 14 losthigher than the revised British esti-
mate of 8 destroyed, 3 damaged. The German figure seems
reasonable: 14 did not return to base and were presumably
written off by British action. The RAF lost only one
Beaufighter, which crashed on landing.

What 'were the casualties? Approximately 1,436 people
were killed and 1,800 seriously injured close to the total
of fatalities in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and a
greater total of fatal casualties than on any other London
raid. And the first total, compiled from the Register of
Civilian War Dead, does not include those seriously in-
jured who later died as a result. Of those killed only 20
were under cover in an approved public shelter.

HOIV many fires 'were started? A tally of London Fire
Brigade records agrees with O'Brien's estimate- nearly
2,200. Of these 9 were eventually reclassified as conflagra-
tions, 20 as major fires (rating over 30 pumps), 37 as
serious (up to 30 pumps), 2 10 as medium (up to 10 pumps).
Records show they consumed some 700 acres one and a
half times the area damaged by the Great Fire of 1666,
though spread over a wider area.

What time did various incidents happen? Everybody agrees
that the first bombs dropped, simultaneously to the sound-
ing of the siren, on the barge Fraser at the Royal Albert
Dock; the last bomb on Scotland Yard at 5.37 A.M. But in

Facts About May wii

between there is much discrepancy. Every time given
in the text follows an entry in an existing log, but in the
midst of such strife an hour could elapse before an incident
was definitely logged. For instance, many firemen who
gallantly fought the Elephant blaze put the peak of the
conflagration at about 9:30 P.M. on the Saturday night-
ninety minutes before the siren had even sounded, two
hours before the fire in question, a good five hours before
some of them had arrived on the scene.

The time phases indicated at the head of each chapter
should be taken as a rough guide only. Inevitably some
incidents began earlier and finished later than the compass
of that chapter.

What did people say? There are no imaginary conversa-
tions in this book. Such dialogue as is quoted is the genuine
endeavor of one or more individuals to reconstruct the
conversation as he or she remembers it. Here, too, there
is margin for error: witness the unimpeachable but widely
diverse accounts of what was said by whom at the time of
Rudolf Hess's arrival.

What f was the damage done? Aside from the mammoth-
scale strategic damage referred to in the text, and the
damage done by fires, high explosives and naval mines
demolished some 5,500 houses, damaged another 5,500 be-
yond ordinary repair, rendered 12,000 people homeless.
These figures are based on feeding and shelter station re-
turns and necessarily cannot include those who found
sanctuary with friends or relatives.

The sterling value of the total damage is almost incalcula-
ble, but a few random figures give pointers: the City of
London, approximately ^800,000; Westminster Abbey,
j 1 3 5,000; Waterloo Station, .30,000 worth of goods;
Scotland Yard, ^22,000. On the final figure, probably
even ^20,000,000, by 1941 values, is a modest estimate-
double the damage caused by the Great Fire of 1666.

Facts About May 2011

Like so much else concerning May 10 that final figure
may never be known for certain. Some historians have
agreed, some have disagreed violently, on almost every one
of the points discussed above. While some are irrecon-
cilable, a writer can only, to the best of his ability, try to
weigh the evidence and give his own opinion on the others.
In the end only one thing remains certain: no mortal man
will ever know the full truth of all that happened on the
incredible night when London burned.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

"THERE never was a raid like it," Reg Matthews reminisces. "An-
other one like that and they'd have had us on our backs." Mr.
Matthews should know. As a General Post Office telecommunica-
tions engineer he fought back at the Luftwaffe through all of them:
the docks raid of September 7; the City fire raid of December 29;
the two great April raids.

But no it is May 10, even at this distance of time, that remains
branded forever on his mind. The Bride Street subway, with its
eighty-three main cables gone and all the westward trunk routes;
the Queen Victoria Street subway; all the cables in Westminster
Bridge Road; the Great Dover Street cable, the one link with the
Dover defenses. Long in retirement, Mr. Matthews had journeyed
to London on a graying afternoon to share with me his memories
of that night.

Everyone who had a part in it showed a similar spirit. Cabinet
ministers, air chiefs, fire officers, wardens, dock laborers 596 people
in all gave their unstinted help toward the compiling of this
narrative.

Many of them, in an effort to help me recapture how it felt,
yielded much more than one still-lucid memory. For instance,
young Mr. James Verdie relates how, weeks after the Alexandra
Hotel tragedy, he salvaged his father's copy of the trade diary their
firm produced. A sentimental souvenir, yet what sent a shiver of
horror through him was that the page for May 10 stood blank,
innocent not only of entries but of any print whatsoever, even the
date. In time he called in every other copy of the diary he could
lay hands on. And all were as the printer would have wished them.
Only his father's copy contained that blank.

259

A cknowledgments

The raid seems to have gathered to it that same supernatural aura
that surrounds all the great events of history. The strange incidence
of the moon worshipers at York Terrace and Dr. Mawby Cole's
prophecy; and the unidentified officers at the Alexandra; the be-
lief among many people that the dead did walk that night; the
almost unique configuration of all the planets and the uncanny part
that coincidence played all through; the warnings which so many
chose to ignore. Even the uncanny arrival of Rudolf Hess had
figured in the dreams of a Yorkshire dairy farmer, Ernest Almond,
on April 28, was broadcast to impartial witnesses. So this, too, was
foreseen.

You feel the haunting quality of the time when Jimmie Sexton,
now reunited with his family in London's dockland, tells how, on
the Monday morning, crowds of men stood silent and weeping
outside Fields' factory; when Stanley Barlow, today a fully-fledged
accountant and married to Eileen Sloane, shows the livid scars that
the fires of the synagogue imprinted on his flesh; when Mrs. James
Norman (then Marguerita Stahli) speaks of the hour she became
resigned to dying. Heard in the peace of a Kentish cottage, the
story has a strange power to take you back to the horror of that
night, to its glory and its agony.

Superficially, the raid seems to have touched these people hardly
at all neither their homes nor their way of life. Once more a
chauffeur, Herbert Mills thumbs over his stained incident officer's
notebook in a mews flat not a stone's throw from where the Alexan-
dra Hotel frowned above the spring flowers in Hyde Park. Mrs.
Margaret Daley, still working as a waitress in Croydon, has walked
times without number on the street where she once gave succor to
a man whose name she has never known. Yet the changes are there.
In the first place, even the youngest of these people seem more
vigorous, more alert than their contemporaries. In the second place,
they have taken pains far beyond anything that I had a right to
expect. After passing through the valley of the shadow, they seem
to have emerged with a truly Christian desire to help others.

For without their aid the book could not have been written at all.
Its planning, really a minor military operation, involved more than

2 60

Acknowledgments

fifteen thousand miles of travel, not only in London, the heart of
the story, but to seventy towns in Great Britain and Germany.
The testimony of 470 eyewitnesses more than seven million notes
of words and reports was the raw material from which it was
fashioned.

Many contributed more than a personal narrative; they freely
loaned personal papers that proved invaluable. In this respect I
particularly thank Chief Officer Geoffrey Blackstone, Hertford-
shire Fire Brigade, for his contemporary reports on the Elephant
and Waterloo fires; Sir Arthur Dixon for a summary of the night's
fire situation; Claude Evans; John H. Good; Harry Greenfield, for
the stationmaster's diary, Waterloo; John Hodgkinson, for a letter
written to his father following the raid; Mass Observation, Ltd.,
especially Leonard England, for a host of contemporary diaries;
Chief Officer Charles Tharby for the log of West Ham Fire
Brigade.

The families of many no longer living have been equally helpful.
To Peter Bathurst, Mrs. Gladys Henley, Stanley Murdoch, Wing
Commander J. Darlay Pyne, Miss E. M. Tweed, James C Verdie,
and Mrs. Nora Willoughby go my heartfelt thanks for their co-
operation in what must sometimes have been a painful task.

Nor can I easily express my gratitude to the officials of the
twenty-nine Metropolitan boroughs of London and the outer Lon-
don corporations. Many not only arranged for me to inspect original
logs and incident messages, they themselves spent precious time
tracking down survivors. The time and patience devoted to this
end by Sam Shutt (Bermondsey), Colonel F. C. Lorden (Croydon),
Arthur Moore (City of London), S. A. Hamilton (Poplar), E. J.
Pitt (Southward), and Sidney Bennett (Westminster) saved me
more hours than I like to compute.

The other authorities have been equally cooperative. Among
those who made available records of paramount importance I have
to thank: Mr. E, C Baker, chief archivist to the GPO; Chief Officer
Frederick W. Delve and Miss Margaret Winsor for the records of
the London Fire Brigade; Mr. E. R. Hambrook and Miss Irene
Darlington, London County Council* for the London Civil Defense

26l

A cknowledgments

Region Branch Intelligence Reports that form the hard core of this
book; Mr. C. D. Shaw of the BBC Secretariat, for detailed sum-
maries of every program then broadcast; Colonel Arthur Young
and Superintendent Shannon for the records of the City of London
police.

The RAF were invariably helpful not only in making records
accessible, but in answering endless supplementary queries. My
particular thanks go to Mr. L. A. Jackets, chief of the Air Histori-
cal Branch, Air Ministry; to Group Captain Tom Gleave; and, for
helpful narrative accounts of the night in question, to His Grace
the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Douglas of Kirtleside, Air Chief
Marshal Sir Thomas Pike, Air Commodore Pat Jameson, Air
Commodore Whitney Straight, and Group Captain Andrew
Humphrey.

Many people went to untold trouble to suggest sources or to
provide background material that would put the raid in better
perspective. Some by degrees evolved into my experts on a given
subject and found their kindness shamelessly abused. In particular
I recall fruitful afternoons spent discussing London's gas supply
with Sterling Everard; the kindness of Lieutenant Commander
John Fordham, chief officer, Kent Fire Brigade, in relating the
facts which sparked off the National Fire Service; an intriguing
tour of the Palace of Westminster with Victor Goodman. Others
to whom I shall always remain indebted are Mr. George Bennison;
M. R. James of the Metropolitan Water Board; Observer Com-
mander F. W. Mitchell and Observer Lieutenant A. J. Lardner
for their help on th@ Royal Observer Corps; C. F. Tomlinson of
the Port of London Authority; H. M. Turner, regional controller,
London Telecommunications Region. Above all to Wing Com-
mander Bob Wright and Squadron Leader "Jimmy" Rawnsley for
more help on all aspects of the RAF than can ever be detailed here.

Some of my new-found friends arranged for me to have discus-
sions with those who had studied the subject at firsthand; of inesti-
mable value from this aspect were my meetings with the Right
Honorable Herbert Morrison, the Honorable Sir Arthur Howard,
Commander Sir Aylmer Firebrace, and Major T. H. OTBrien.

262

A cknowledgmenis

I must stress that none of the people acknowledged thus far
necessarily agree with allor in some cases with any of my con-
clusions. For the views expressed or implicit in the course of the
narrative, for any errors that may have crept in, I alone am re-
sponsible.

The various information and public-relations officers have worked
like beavers to insure that the errors should be few. C. Conway-
Gordon of London Telecommunications Region; Peter Coomb
of the Savoy Hotel; Percy H. Fearnley of the Metropolitan Police
Division, New Scotland Yard; F. D. Faulkner and M. B. James,
respectively, of British Railways' Southern and Eastern divisions;
A. Fowler Kearton and Christopher Moyle at the Home Office;
Harold Wilson of Cable and Wireless; all helped the wheels of
research to turn more smoothly. W. J. Coles proved that even in
his eighties he can still locate every man who ever served with the
London Fire Brigade.

In Germany I had not only matchless cooperation on all sides
but full access to the little-explored records of the LuftwafFen-
akademie, Hamburg. General Paul Deichmann, Colonel Greffrath,
General the Baron von Falkenstein, General Alexander Holle,
Major Fischer, Colonel von Grauert, Leutnant Colonel Hans von
Ploetz, and Rolf Kiinkel none of their kindness and hospitality
has been forgotten. The former air crews, though facing no easy
task in being interrogated by an inquisitive foreigner, weighed in
handsomely with narrative accounts. Readers who followed their
stories may be interested to know that Albert Huf enreuter is now a
schoolmaster teaching English in Hamburg, while Martin Reiser is
once more back in the bar restaurant business in Westphalia. And
the Baron Von Siber now runs an electrical business in Salzburg,
Austria.

Thanks to wartime security, printed contemporary accounts of
the raid are harder to find though this blitz, in large, has been
written about more often than any other. On detailed anecdotal
coverage the London Times far outstripped the others, although
the American press had some telling points notably Robert P.
Post's account in the New York Times ^ Larry Rue's despatch in the

26$

A cknowledgments

Chicago Tribune, Eddie Gilmore's report in the New York Herald
Tribune.

Inevitably most published accounts saw the raid from local view-
points. The best is unquestionably Quentin Reynolds' fine account
in Only the Stars Are Neutral (Cassell/Random House, 1942), and
I am grateful to him for answering more questions than any re-
porter should expect to answer after a job so thorough. Other
accounts saw the raid from Hackney (Reginald Bell's The Bulls-eye,
Cassell, 1943), the Temple (Alexander Werth's account in The
Saturday Book, Hutchinson, 1943), the Strand (Ben Robertson's
I Saw England, Jarrolds /Knopf, 1 94 1 ) . And many privately printed
histories offered valuable clues. A. H. Pullin's The History of
Reporting Post 12, Southwark, for the Elephant; E. H. Warming-
ton's History of Birkbeck College in the Second World War; J. F.
McCartney's typescript account in Unilever House at War; Dr.
P. J. Watkin's Lambeth Hospital: Fifty Years in Retrospect; Vol-
ume XV of The British Museum Quarterly. Aside from William
Sansom's Westminster in War (Faber and Faber, 1947), incom-
parably the best study, local histories are all too few. But there are
useful hints for Stepney in F. R. Lewey's Cockney Campaign
(Stanley Paul, 1947) and in W. H. Berwick-Sayers' Cray don and
the Second World War (Croydon Corporation, 1947).

Many important clues came from specialist publications and
periodicals. Charles Graves' London Transport Carried On (London
Passenger Transport Board, 1947), the same author's The Thin
Red Lines (Standard Art Book Co., 1946), and Bernard Darwin's
War on the Line (Southern Railway, 1946) were all of much use.
Geoffrey Blackstone's History of the British Fire Service (Rout-
ledge, 1957) reoriented most of my previous ideas on the subject.
And there were rewarding gems to be found in John D. McLauch-
lan's article "Poplar Hospital in War-Time" (in the Medical Press
and Circular for October 6, 1943) ; in E. C. Baker's contribution to
the Post Office Electrical Engineers' Journal for October 1942; in
John McGeorge's study of the last night of Electra House, Moor-
gate, in The Zodiac of June 1944; above all in the files of Fire: The
Official Journal of the British Fire Service. My special thanks go

264

A cknowledgments

to Editor Harry Klopper for what resolved itself into a long-term
loan of the back numbers for the period.

Readers seeking a final answer to the riddle of Rudolf Hess will
find facts to tickle their fancy in Sir Winston Churchill's The
Second World War, Vol. Ill, The Grand Alliance (Cassell, 1950),
as well as in T. E. Winslow's Forewarned Is Forearmed (William
Hodge, 1947), Hans Baur's Hitler } s Pilot (Muller, 1958) and Gen-
eral Adolph Galland's The First and the Last (Methuen, 19557
Holt, 1954).

Finally the loyalty and pertinacity of the research team who
worked alongside throughout deserve special mention. Cynthia
Walker did an unparalleled job of research across the length and
breadth of the British Isles. Invaluable, too, was the persistent
delving of Bryan and Joan Morgan, Diana Riviere, Caitriona Mac-
Donald, Michael Brampton, and, above all, of my wife, who not
only researched it and typed it but endured a two years' marital
monologue on the subject with the serenity of temperament which
enabled her, off-duty in the heart of London, to sleep undisturbed
through the pandemonium of May 10.

265

THE EYEWITNESSES

The 470 men and women listed below contributed untold help
in the preparation of this work through furnishing specially writ-
ten accounts, through the loan of contemporary letters and diaries,
or by patiently submitting themselves to a detailed question-and-
answer interview. To avoid confusion the ranks and in some cases
the names given are those which then pertained, followed by the
vantage point from which he or she saw the raid.

District Officer Frederick Abbott, LFS, Hounsditch.

Bernard Abrahams, St. Marylebone.

District Officer Bill Absalom, LFS, Baker Street.

Superintendent George Adams, LFS, Elephant and Castle.

Squadron Leader Russell Aitken, RAF. No. 3 Squadron, Martlesham,

Suffolk.

M. Abel Alban, Westminster: Savoy Hotel.
John D. Allen, CamberwelL
Chief Superintendent Joe Ansell, LFS, Holborn-City of London,

Queen Victoria Street.

Signalman Ernest Archer, Liverpool Street Station.
Miss Patricia Arden, St. Marylebone.
Denis Argent, Tonbridge, Kent.
Miss Doris Arnold, Kensington.
Miss Mabel Ash, Baling.

Freddie Aspinall, Westminster: May-fair Hotel.
Arrivals Inspector John Atkinson, Euston Station.
Miss E. ]. Ausden, Watford, Herts.
Wilfred Avery, St. Pancras.
Nat Ayer, Westminster, Pimlico*
District Officer William Ayres, LFS, Whitechapel

267

The Eyewitnesses

William Baddeley, Cuddesdon, Oxford.

Leonard Baer, Paddington.

Thomas W. Baillie, Kensington.

District Officer Edward Baker, LFS, St. PancrasSoho.

Frederick R. Baker, Deptford.

Edward Ball, Westminster, Palladium Theatre.

Josh Barham, Elephant and Castle.

R. W. "Bill" Barker, West Ham.

Stanley M. Barlow, St. Marylebone.

Superintendent Sidney Barnes, LFS, Whitechapel.

Alfred Bartlett, Bermondsey; Peek Frean's Factory.

Booking Clerk Sidney Baulk, King's Cross Station.

Ralph Bayne, Croydon.

Ernest Bedford, Stoke Newington.

Station Officer Bernard Belderson, LFS, Millwall Docks.

Reginald Bell, Hackney, HQ Group 3, London Region.

Paymaster Dennis E. Belton, East Ham.

Rear Admiral Martin Bennett, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.

Sidney Bennett, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.

Superintendent George Bennison, LFS, Baker St. House of Commons

Ebury St.

Dr. Richard Bentley, Kennington, Kent.
Thomas R. Berg, Westminster.
Jack Bickle, Chelsea: St. Luke's Hospital.
Reverend John G. Birch, Stepney.

Chief Superintendent Frank Bitten, LFS, City of London: Mark Lane.
Assistant Divisional Officer Geoffrey V. Blackstone. LFS, Elephant

and Castle Waterloo.
Jack Blaine, St. Pancras.
George Blake, Bermondsey: Town Hall.
Joe Blake, Bermondsey: T&wn Hall.
Charles T. Boothby, Camberwell.
Basil Parkinsoa Bothamley, City of London: the Temple.
District Officer Victor Botten, LFS, Baker Street.
Station Officer Sydney Boulter, Elephant and Castle.
Miss Julie Boxall, City of London: Gresham Street.
Chief Inspector Tom Breaks, Home Office Fire Inspectorate, Tottenham

Court Road.

Stationmaster James Bridger, Victoria Station.
Frederick R. Bristow, Bethnal Green.
Harold Brockman, St. Paul's Cathedral.
Oberleutnant Max Brodemeier, Luftwaffe, K.G. 41 st Flying Corps.

268

The Eyewitnesses

Yard Inspector Robert Bromley, City of London: Bishopsgate Goods

Depot.

Peter F. Bromwich, Maida Vale.

Sidney P. Brook, City of London: Electro. House, Moorgate.
Miss Kathleen Brooks, Knightsbridge.
Mr. Shirley Brooks, Paddington.
Miss Diana Brown, Shoreditch.

Oberleutnant Hugo Buchs, Luftwaffe, HQ K.G. 77, Laon, France.
Station Officer Walter Bunday, LFS, CamberiuelL
A. J. Burgoyne, City of London: Fenchurch Street.
Thomas J. Burling, City of London: Fenchurch Street.
J. W. A. Burness, Paddington.
Arthur Stuart Butler, Westminster: Belgravia.
Mrs. Sakunthala Butler, Kensington.
T. Blake Butler, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.
Reverend Jimmy Butterworth, Camberwell: Clubland.

Arthur Caldwell, Bethnal Green.

Mrs. Maisie Capel, Lambeth: Brixton Hill.

Major Arthur Carr, Salvation Army, City of London: Queen

Victoria Street.

Mrs. Henrietta Cartwright, Dulivich.
Herbert Cartwright, Dulwich.
Mrs. Phyllis Catt, Croydon.
Arthur Chandler, Stepney.
Chief Superintendent Sidney Charters, LFS, London Bridge Queen

Victoria Street.

David Cherry, Hammersmith.
Mrs. Doris Chase, Bethnal Green.
Sub Officer Sam Cheveau, LFS, Bethnal Green City of London:

London Wall.

Ernest Christensen, S. Marylebone: Queen's Hall.
Auxiliary Fireman Charlie Chrysler, City of London: the Temple.
W. S. Churchill, Baker Street.
Albert Churchman, Beptford.
H. Dixon Clark, Islington.
Mrs. Edna Clarke, Hammersmith.
Godfrey Clarke, Paddington.
William Clarke, West Ham.
Alvah Clatworthy, City of London: Friday Street.
Walter Clayton, Elephant and Castle.
Mrs. Mary Cohen, City of London: Old Bailey.

The Eyenwtnesses

H. A. Cole, S*. Pancras.

Rob Connell, Islington.

John Connolly, Stepney.

Edward W. Cook, Battersea.

Yard Inspector Alf Cooke, St. Pancras Station.

Herbert Cookson, Wandsworth.

Douglas Copp, Elephant and Castle.

Auxiliary Fireman Robert Coram, Elephant and Castle.

Miss June Cory, Hendon.

Station Officer Norman Cottee, LFS, Elephant and Castle.

Joe Cotter, Poplar.

Leading Fireman Joe Cotterell, LFS, City of London: Fleet Street.

Third Officer George Cotton, Letchivorth, Hert$ y Fire Brigade.

Father George Coupe, Poplar Hospital.

Chief Warden William Coyne, Shoreditch.

Station Officer George Cramp, LFS, City of London: Faraday Building.

Lieut. Frank G. Creswell, London River, H.M.S. Tower.

Major Charlie Cres wick- Atkinson, Stoke Newington.

Miss Dorothie Crombie, CamberwelL

Rev. Cecil Curwen, Southwark: Old Kent Road.

Mrs. Margaret Daley, South Croydon.

Chief Superintendent Frank Dann, LFS, Elephant and Castle.

Superintendent Henry G. Davies, LFS, Westminster Abbey /St. Paul's.

Station Officer Charles Davis, LFS, St. Thomas's Hospital

Jack Davis, Westminster: Leicester Square.

John Davis, Deptford.

General Paul Deichmann, Luftwaffe, HQ II Flying Corps, Ghent.

Auxiliary Fireman Paul Dessau, LFS, Elephant and Castle.

Squadron Leader Howson Devitt, RAF, GCZ Station, Durrington,

Sussex.

Miss Maisie Dickens, Stoke Newington.
Police Constable John Dickie, Westminster: Hyde Park.
Herbert Dines, Deptford.

Booking Clerk Aubrey Dodge, Chadivett Heath Railway Station.
Walter Donaldson, Holborn.
Miss Helen J. Donovan, Islington: City Road.

Air Marshal Sholto Douglas, RAF, AOC-in-C., HQ Fighter Command.
John Dovaston, St. Marylebone.

District Officer George Earl, LFS, Lambeth; Fields' Factory.

270

The Eyewitnesses

Chief Officer Herbert Eaton, Chigwell Fire Brigade, City of London:

St. Paul's.

Miss Florence Edwards, Royal Victoria Docks.
Richard Edwards, Southwark Control.
Porter William Eggins, Chelsea: St. Luke's Hospital.
George Eiffel, Finsbury: Holford Square.
Station Officer James Ellis, LFS, City of London: Mark Lane.
Miss Angela Elliston, Westminster Control.
Alfred Elms, Bermondsey: Peek Frean's Factory.
Acting Arrivals Foreman Jack Emberton, Euston Station.
Dr. Edward M. Ensor, Westminster: St. George's Hospital /Alexandra

Hotel.

Claude Evans, City of London: Bishopsgate.
George Evans, Chelsea.

Goods Guard William Everett, West Ham, Temple Mills Sidings.
Flight Lieutenant Jack Evers, HQ Fighter Command: Filter Room.

Police Constable Thomas Farquharson, City of London: Old Jewry.

Arthur Fayers, St. Marylebone.

Percy H. Fearnley, Westminster: War Office.

E. P. Featherstone, Elephant and Castle.

Mrs. Helga Feiling, St. Marylebone.

Miss Marjorie Felton, St. Marylebone: Queen's Hall.

Miss Elsie Ferguson, Westminster Control.

Albert Fey, Lambeth: Fields* Factory.

Feldwebel Josef Fischer, Luftwaffe: No. 3 Wing, $3 Group.

Eric John Fisher, Bermondsey Town Hall.

Sub Inspector R. A. Fisher, City of London: Queen Victoria Street.

Miss Ann Flax, Golders Green.

Mrs. Rose Flaxman, Shoreditch: St. Leonard's Hospital.

Miss Carissima Fontaine, Hampstead.

Police Sergeant Andrew Forbes, Westminster: House of Commons.

The Rev. Hubert Ford, Stepney.

Lieutenant Commander John H. Fordham, LFS, Elephant and Castle/

Waterloo Station.

Sir John Forsdyke, British Museum.
Harry Frazer, Hackney.
Sydney J. Freeman, Lewisham*
Temporary Fireman John French, LFS f City of London: Upper Thames

Street.
Unteroffizier Karl Frey, Luftwaffe, No. i Wing, 28 Group.

2-Jl

The Eyewitnesses

Terence Fuller, Westminster, Pimlico.

Bill Fulton, Fimbury.

Oberleutnant Adolph Galland, Luftwaffe: No. 26 Fighter Group) St.

Omer.

Observer Stanley Gardner, Royal Observer Corps, Orrington, Kent.
Ben Garman, Stepney.

Station Officer Albert Garrod, LFS, Clerkenivell.
Sydney Garvey, Chelsea.
E. Willoughby Gee, South Croydon.
Sub Officer Charles Gibbs, LFS, Birmingham/ Holborn: Theobalds

Road.

Percy F. Gillam, Camberwell.
Joe Gilmore, Westminster: Berkeley Hotel.
Edward Glading, Chelsea: St. Luke's Hospital.
Edward J. Goddard, Lewisham.

Police Sergeant Reginald Goldsmith, City of London: St. Paul's.
Michael Gonley, Westminster, Ritz Bar.
Fireman John H. Good, LFS, Stepney.

Station Officer George Goodman, LFS, Westminster, Knightsbridge.
District Officer Thomas Goodman, Elephant and Castle /Waterloo

Station.
Victor Goodman, Chief Civil Defense Officer, Westminster: House

of Commons.
David Grant, Shoreditch.

Walter Greaves, Gosiuell Road: Gordon's Gin Distillery.
Stationmaster Harry Greenfield, Waterloo Station.
Jim Gray, St. Marylebone.

Auxiliary Fireman Bill Grisley, LFS, City of London: the Temple.
George Groom, City of London, Cheapside.
Dr. Calvert M. Gwillim, Westminster: St. George's Hospital.

District Officer Walter Hall, LFS, Holborn/City of London: Queen

Victoria Street.

General Josepha Hallera, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.
Superintendent George Halley, LFS, Elephant and Castle.
Miss K. Halpin, Westminster: Tothill Street.
Group Captain, the Duke of Hamilton, RAF, No. 75 Group, Turnhouse

Sector, Scotland.

A. Bertie Hancock, City of London: Unilever House.
Ranald Handfield- Jones, Paddington, St. Mary's Hospital.
Fred Harding, City of London: Paternoster Row.
John Harper, Battened.

The Eyewitnesses

Reginald Harpur, Sydenham Hill.

W. G. Harries, City of London: Gracechurch Street.

Ambulance Supt. William Harrison, Camberwell

William Hawkey, CamberwelL

Police Constable Cecil Heaysman, City of London: Southwark Bridge.

Station Officer S. J. Hender, LFS, Lambeth Control.

Mrs. Gladys Henley, Bermondsey Town Hall

Percy Henley, Bermondsey: Town Hall/Peek Frean's Factory.

Station Officer Walter Henson, LFS, Shoreditch.

District Officer Thomas Hesketh, LFS, Baker Street.

Charles Hicks, Westminster: Dean Street, Soho.

Len Higgs, Camden Town.

Miss Annie Hill, St. Marylebone.

Bob Hill, Battersea.

Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Hoare, LFS, Holbom Viaduct/Upper
Thames Street.

Edward Hobbs, Westminster: May-fair Court.

Mrs. Edward Hobbs, Westminster: Mayfair Court.

Miss Sheila Hobbs, Westminster: Mayfair Court.

Lieutenant John Hodgkinson, Westminster: Millbank.

Leonard Holmes, East Ham.

Fireman Leslie Horton, LFS, Lambeth: Fields' Factory /The Cut.

The Hon. Sir Arthur Howard, Principal Warden of London, Westmin-
ster Control.

Mrs. Edward Huckstepp, Kennington, Kent.

C. G. Huddy, Lambeth Hospital.

Hauptmann Albert Hufenreuter, Luftwaffe: No. y Wing, $3 Group.

Harry Hughes, Southwark Town Hall.

Pilot Officer Andrew Humphrey, RAF, 266 Squadron, Wittering, Lines.

Mrs. Eleanor Humphries, Blackheath.

Miss Florence Hunt, St. Marylebone.

Miss Beatrice Hynes, Acton.

James Ireland, St. Marylebone.

Driver George Irish, St. Pancras Station.

Horace "J a dko" Jackson, Battersea.

Mrs. Minnie Jackson, Camden Town.

William Jacobs, Lewisham.

Squadron Leader Pat Jameson, RAF, 266 Squadron, Wittering, Lines.

Station Officer Richard Jewson, LFS, City of London: Old Street.

The Eyewitnesses

Chief Officer Arthur Johnstone, Enfield Fire Brigade, Westminster

Abbey/Queen Victoria Street.

Storekeeper Arthur Jones, Chelsea: St. Luke's Hospital.
Nurse Monica Jones, Knights bridge.

M. Eugene Kaufeler, Westminster: Dorchester Hotel.

Robert Kennedy, South Croydon.

Mrs. Rose Kenny, Wood Green.

Principal Officer Clement M. Kerr, LFS, Westminster: Buckingham

Palace/House of Commons.

Ticket Collector William Kidd, Liverpool Street Station.
Anne Kingham, St. Marylebone.
R. B. Kingham, St. Marylebone.
Mrs. Nora Kirby, Lewisham.
District Officer Edward Kirrage, LFS, City of London: Queen Victoria

Street/Whitechapel.
Arthur Knight, Elephant and Castle.
Wally Knight, St. Marylebone: Queen's Hall.

George Lambert, Deptford.

Leslie W. Lane, Westminster: Old Compton Street, Soho.

Dan Lawrence, Bermondsey: Peek Frean's Factory.

William Laycock, Elephant and Castle.

Charlie Lee, St. Marylebone.

Squadron Leader Cyril Leman, RAF, HQ Fighter Command: Ops

Room.

Porter William Lester, Chelsea: St. Luke's Hospital.
Victor Lewis, Wandsworth.

House Governor David Lindsay, Poplar Hospital.
S. D. Lindsay, Wimbledon.

C. A. Linge, Clerk of Works, City of London: St. Paul's.
Jack Lippold, Barnes.
C. E. "Bert" Livings, Battersea.
Harold Lock Kendell, South Croydon.
Bert Lockett, Finsbury.
Geoffrey Lonsdale, Camberwell.
Percy Lovett, Camberwell.
Police Sergeant Alfred Lucas, City of London: London Wall.

Auxiliary Fireman Percy Madden, Bermondsey: Peek Fr can's Factory.
Ernest Maidwell, Dagenham.
Charles H. Major, Kensington.

274

The Eyewitnesses

A. R. Malcolm, Camberwell.

Cecil A. Manning, Camberivell.

Albert Marotta, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.

Assistant Stationmaster Frank Marshall, King's Cross Station.

Ronnie Marshall, St. Marylebone.

Arthur "Tich" Massara, Westminster: Savoy Hotel.

Reg Matthews, GPO, City of London: Queen Victoria Street.

Charles Mattock, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.

Geoffrey Maxwell, Paddington.

Chief Superintendent Augustus May, Whitehall: Home Office Fire

Control.

Leonard McColvin, Westminster Control.
E. D. McDowall, Brixton: HQ Group $ y "London Region.
Margaret McGrath, Westminster: Windmill Theatre.
Assistant Surgeon John McLauchlan, Poplar Hospital
C. L. Miles, Wembley.

Herbert S. Mills, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.
Eric Mirams, Kensington, Elvaston Place.
Cyril Mitchell, Westminster: Scott's Bar.
Herbert F. Mitchell, Aldgate.

Captain Clifford Mollison, HQ Fighter Command: Ops Room.
Sub Officer Frederick Moon, LFS, St. Marylebone.
Arthur Moore, City of London: Guildhall.
John Morgan, Deptford.
Sydney Morgan, Deptford.

Edward Morris, City of London: Upper Thames Street.
Mrs. Edward Morris, City of London: Upper Thames Street.
Sir Parker Morris, Westminster Control.
Right Hon. Herbert Morrison, minister of home security, Home Office.

Whitehall

Dr. Barbara Morton, Bermondsey Medical Mission Hospital.
Dr. Herbert Moss, Wandsworth.

John Murphy, City of London Control: Lloyd's Building.
Francis R. Mulliss, Greenwich.

Supt. Bernard NichoIIs, Anglican Pacifist Unit, Westminster:

Hungerford Arches.
Jim Nonrian, West Dulwich,
Supt. Bill Norwood, LFS, Westminster: House of Commons.

Police Constable Reginald Oakes, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.

215

The Eyewitnesses

John O'Conneil, Bermondsey.

The Rev. Hubert D. Oliver, Southwark: Old Kent Road.
Superintendent Edward W. Overton, LFS, Holborn/City of London:
Farringdon Street.

Frederick Pace, Elephant and Castle.

Kenneth Parker, Kensington: HQ London Region.

Ticket Collector Alfred Payne, Liverpool Street Station.

Tom Peace, City of London: Unilever House.

Ernie Pearson, Hackney.

Edward Penrose-Fitzgerald, Kensington: Elvaston Place.

Mrs. Isabel Penrose-Fitzgerald, Kensington: Elvaston Place.

Miss Joan Peters, Kennington, Kent.

Thomas Pharoah, South Croydon.

Auxiliary Fireman T. E. Phillips, LFS, Millwall Docks.

Wing Commander Thomas Pike, RAF, 219 Squadron, Tangfnere.

Assistant Matron Margaret Pirie, Lambeth Hospital,

Mrs. Monica Pitman, Hampstead.

Cyril R. Platten, Edgware/Southivark Control.

M. Campbell Pook, Paddington.

Mrs. Esther Prisant, Stepney,

Major William Pritchard, Salvation Army, Southwark: St. George's

Circus.

Mrs. Florence Pritchard, Southwark: St. George's Circus.
Thomas H. Probert, Westminster: Pimlico.

Miss Rowena Quelch, Kensington.

Porter Walter Rainberg, St. Pancras Station.

Mrs. Ellen Raines, Lewisham.

Kennedy Reid, Kensington.

Leutnant Martin Reiser, Luftwaffe: No. 9 Wing, 55 Group.

Quentin Reynolds, Westminster; Savoy Hotel.

Squadron Leader "Dickie" Richardson, RAF, HQ Fighter Command:

Filter Room.

Mrs. Alice Rickett, Plaistow.
Miss Diana Riviere, Westminster: Millbank.
Miss Denise Robins, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.
Superintendent George Robinson, LFS, Hammer smith /City of Londom

Queen Victoria Street Aid gate.
George Ronus, Westminster: Dorchester Hotel.
Yardmaster Dudley Rose, West Ham: Temple Mills Sidings.

216

The Eyewitnesses

Station Officer Frederick Rose, LFS, Hammersmith.

Mrs. Bertha Roston, Stepney.

Sub Officer Herbert Rous, LFS, Westminster: House of Commons.

Eric Rumsey, Streatham.

Mrs. Anne Russell, Hampstead.

Miss Patricia Russell, Hampstead.

Thomas Russell, St. Marylebone: Queen's Hall

Police Constable Horace Rutter, Leytonstone.

Mrs. Disa Safey-Eldin, Westminster: Soho.

Mrs. Ettie St. Aubyn, Le<wisham.

Miss Sheila St. Aubyn, Leivisham.

Mrs. Kathleen Sales, Streatham.

Assistant Matron Olive Sales, Poplar Hospital.

Temporary Fireman Conrad Sanders, LFS, Westminster: Westminster

Hall

Police Sergeant Fred Scaif e, City of London: Cannon Street.
John K. Scott, CamberixelL

Mrs. Phyllis Scott, St. Columbas (Church of Scotland) Pont Street.
Ernest Seabrook, Paddington Control.
Jack Searle, Battersea.
Jimmie Sexton, Lambeth: Fields' Factory.
Nat Sharpe, Islington.

Miss Mary Shearburn, Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire.
Walter Sherrington, St. Marylebone.
William Sherrington, Elephant and Castle.
Police Sergeant Aubrey Shiers, City of London: Fleet Street.
Ticket Collector William Sibthorpe, Liverpool Street Station.
Miss Olga Silva, Casa Prada Restaurant, St. Pancras.
Private Arthur Simons, St. Marylebone.
Mrs. Rose Simons, St. Marylebone.
Station Officer Leslie Sinden, LFS, Baker Street.
Thomas Sinden, Plaistvwf Acton.
Eileen Sloane, St. Marylebone.

Station Officer Arthur Smith, LFS, Lambeth: Canterbury Music Hall.
Chief Warden Edward Smith, Poplar.
Jack Smith, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel
Mrs. Olive Smith, Bayswater.

Sidney H. Smith, City of London: Martin's Bank, Lombard Street.
Sidney Smith, Paddington.

Booking Clerk Jack Southgate, Kings Cross Station.
John Spencer, Paddington.

211

The Eyewitnesses

District Officer George Spurrett, LFS, Elephant and Castle.

Louis Squersky, Stepney.

John Squires, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.

Miss Marguerita Stahli, West Dulwich.

Driver Leslie Stainer, Cannon Street Station.

Station Officer Robert Stepney, LFS, City of London: Upper Thames

Street.

Passenger Yard Inspector Jabez Stevens, King's Cross Station.
Mrs. Winifred Stockman, St. Marylebone: Queen's Hall.
Squadron Leader Whitney Straight, RAF, 242 Squadron, Martlesham,

Suffolk.

Percy Straus, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.
Arrivals Foreman Ted Streeter, Euston Station.
Alderman Leonard J. Styles, Elephant and Castle.
John Sutton, Westminster: Public Health Control.
Station Officer William Sutton, LFS, Goswell Road: Gordon's Gin

Distillery.

District Officer Bill Swanton, LFS, Millivall Docks.
Station Officer Terence Syrett, LFS, Lambeth Palace.

Albert Tagg, Bermondsey: Peek Frean's Factory.

Station Officer Harry Tanner, LFS, Lambeth: Albert Embankment.

Bob Taylor, Westminster: Dolphin Square.

Driver Charles Taylor, LPTB, Baker Street /Elephant and Castle.

Eddie Taylor, Bermondsey Toivn Hall.

Sub Officer Charles Tharby, West Ham Fire Brigade, West Ham.

Miss Frances Thirlby, St. Pancras: National Temperance Hospital.

District Officer Ernest Thomas, LFS, Lambeth Control.

Jack Thomas, Stoke Newington.

"Tommie Thompson," City of London: St. Martin' s-le-Gr and.

Detective Inspector Walter Thompson, Ditchley Parky Oxon.

Superintendent William Henry Thompson, LFS, Lambeth: Fields'

Factory /Waterloo.

Station Officer Ronald Thorn, LFS, Elephant and Castle.
Police Constable Frederick Tibbs, City of London: Queen Victoria

Street Station.

George Titcombe, Hampstead.
District Officer Cyril Tobias, LFS, Whitechapel.
C. F. Tomlinson, HQ Port of London Authority.
William Tompkins, Croydon.
Captain Cecil Townsend, Chelsea: Royal Hospital
Charles C. Toye, Westminster: Savoy Hotel.

2 7 8

The Eye-witnesses

Mrs. Mabel Truncheon, South Cray don.

Major E. M. Turnbull, Siherthorne Goods Yard, Wandsworth.
Police Constable Abe Turner, City of London: Cloak Lane.
H. M. Turner, G.P.O., City of London: Provincial House.
Ernest Uphill, Paddington.

John N. Vautier, City of London: Electro. House, Moorgate.
James C. Verdie, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel
Theater Sister Margery Vickers, Mile End Hospital, Stepney.
Leutnant the Baron Walther Von Siber, Luftwaffe: No. 5 Wing, $$

Group.

Sub Officer John Waddingham, LFS, Westminster: Pimlico.
Gilbert Wadham, Paddington.
William Whaley, Hampstead.
Assistant District Railway Controller William Walton, Kentish Town

Control.

Ann Ward, Kennington, Kent.
Edward Ward, Kennington, Kent.
Charles Warner, Bermondsey.
Dr. Philip Watkin, Lambeth Hospital.
Joan Watson, St. Marylebone.

Ruby Watson, Bermondsey Medical Mission Hospital.
Alec Watt, Surrey Commercial Docks.
Tommy Watts, Leivisham.
Miss Phyllis Wayne, Harrow.
Miss Violet Webb, Hammersmith.
Fred Webster, Holborn.

Signalman Stanley Weekes, Kings Cross Station.
Auxiliary Fireman Harry Weinstock, LFS, City of London: Queen

Victoria Street/St. Paul's.

Norman Wells, City of London: Unilever House.
Colonel W. Thomas Wells, Salvation Army, City of London: Queen

Victoria Street.
H. M. Westgate, Battersea.
The Reverend John Westlake, Stepney.

Police Constable George Wharton, City of London: King Street.
Edwin Wheeler, East Ham.
Harold Whetstone, Blackheath.

Dr. Charles White, City of London Control: Lloyd's Building.
Nat Williams, Westminster: Alexandra Hotel.
Eric Wills, St. Marylebone.

The Eyewitnesses

Lieutenant John Woodburne, RNVR, London River: HMS Tower.

Superintendent Alfred Wooder, LFS, Southivark Bridge Road.

Alec Woolf e, Battersea,

Victor Wootten, Westminster: Lincoln's Inn.

Mrs. Betty Wright, Deptford.

Harry Wright, Finsbury.

Flying Officer Robert Wright, RAF, HQ Fighter Command.

Mrs. Eileen Young, St. Marylebone.
Miss Nancy Young, Leivisham.

Section Officer Sadie Younger, WAAF, HQ Fighter Command:
Filter Room.

Leading Fireman Morrie Zwaig, LFS, Holborn: Theobalds Road.

280

120848

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "The City That Would Not Die The Bombing Of London May 10 11 1941"

See other formats