As Time Goes By: The Blitz
...The blitz on London began at 4 pm on Saturday Sept. 7th 1940. It was recorded that there were 348 bombers and 617 fighter planes, creating a 20 mile block of aircraft filling 800 square miles of sky. This horrific ‘blanket’ bombing of London lasted until 6 pm. Then two hours later, guided by the fires set up by the incendiary bombs, a second group of raiders commenced an attack which lasted until 4.30 am the next day. The whole of the city was ablaze, lighting up the sky, turning the barrage balloons pink above the flames and smoke...
Eileen Perrin recalls the horror of the worst days and months in the long history of the great city of London.
Raids became more frequent in the summer of 1940 when Hitler began bombing our sea ports and airfields. We were bombed day and night right through from August to the end of January 1941. I remember hearing Churchill’s famous speech to the House of Commons – “ Never was so much owed by so many to so few,” -in praise of the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots who attacked the German planes coming in over the Channel.
Five hundred German bombers devastated Coventry and the cathedral was gutted on November 15th 1940. On November 26th the city of Liverpoool was pounded, and in December the Liverpool Docks were attacked with bombs and incendiaries.
During the five day week I spent at Hazelwood we girls slept on our mattresses in the corridors downstairs and when I was home at weekends, Mum and I slept downstairs, trying to fit into the under-stair cupboard.
Dad was away at night. He packed papers for the Daily Herald in their Long Acre warehouse, working through the air raids, as the printing machines were housed below street level. Done for the night at 4 am he would lay back to sleep on the paper bales, waiting for the Underground trains to start running at about 5 am. At Leicester Square tube station, one of the deepest underground stations, he would pick his way along the platform among the sleeping forms of those Londoners who had sheltered there from the night raids.
At a later date, bunk beds were put along the back walls of the platforms and tea ladies took round cups of ‘cheer’ to those sheltering there.
Dad would get home to Queensbury about 6.30 am and get to bed around 7 am, to sleep until 2 pm. Always his breakfast would be two Shredded Wheat in hot milk. Our evening dinner was about 7 pm, and Dad left for work again about 9 pm, taking the sandwiches of cheese or Spam Mum had made for him from the frugal rations.
The blitz on London began at 4 pm on Saturday Sept. 7th 1940. It was recorded that there were 348 bombers and 617 fighter planes, creating a 20 mile block of aircraft filling 800 square miles of sky. This horrific ‘blanket’ bombing of London lasted until 6 pm. Then two hours later, guided by the fires set up by the incendiary bombs, a second group of raiders commenced an attack which lasted until 4.30 am the next day. The whole of the city was ablaze, lighting up the sky, turning the barrage balloons pink above the flames and smoke.
I was home for the weekend, and we were downstairs trying to sleep but could hear hundreds of planes going over, and bombs falling in the distance and from the back garden door could see the red sky over London.
Night after night the bombers pounded London setting it ablaze. We heard how the Heavy Rescue Service pulled away the rubble with their bare hands listening for any signs of life, never knowing when they would find arms, legs, and scattered bits and pieces. It was horrible, but sometimes miracles happened and a whole family would be pulled out alive.
Gas was one of the biggest problems; ruptured gas mains were deadly. The men said they couldn’t even have a fag to calm their nerves and the gas masks just about choked them. They said when they came across unexploded bombs, they were like cats on hot bricks till the Army bomb squad arrived.
Each evening when these Londoners said good bye to their families they wondered if their luck might run out, with no idea if they would come back or if they or the house would still exist the next morning. One said he had been bombed out three times, and the third time was just so awful, as his mother-in-law had been eight months pregnant with her fifth child, a much wanted second daughter which was still born. He said he had made the tiny coffin from an orange box, painted it white, and recalled his mother-in-law padding it with cotton wool and a baby blanket.
Firemen from all over the country came to fight the fires. Those in the London docks were particularly hazardous. In warehouses on the Rum Quay barrels of spirit exploded and torrents of blazing brandy and rum poured down on the men.
Beckton Gas works was hit, and Woolwich Arsenal, and choking black smoke came from the Silvertown Rubber warehouses. Firemen reported that smoke from the burning pepper and spice stores made taking a breath almost impossible. The fire-bombed stacks of wood in Surrey Docks created an inferno. It was estimated that 25,000 bombs fell on Dockland during the war.
We were lucky to be out in the suburbs. The more I listened to the stories the clearer it became to me that the city-dwellers - those men and women of the 1940 raids, were the unsung heroes of England.
How would we have got through those terrible times without the staunch willpower, determination and British sense of humour of the person in the street who ‘thumbed his nose’ at Herr Hitler.
