II

LONDON, _September_--.

Yesterday’s papers had the usual account of an air raid on the

“Eastern Counties,” and during the day word was passed round that

this had consisted of an attempt to bomb the Woolwich Arsenal. This

morning they have finally had to add “and London” to the regular

formula, as last night, for the first time, bombs were dropped upon

the heart of the city and seven million people watched the whole

performance. It was the nearest thing to their promised “big raid”

that the Germans have yet brought off, and to-day London--in the

defence of the metropolitan area of which guns were fired for the

first time in many hundreds of years--appears to have declared a sort

of informal half-holiday to note the consequences.

To Londoners, a Zeppelin raid appears to be a good deal like the

paradoxical “man-sitting-on-the-pin” joke--it is funniest to those who

miss the point. To the ones in the swath of the raid, like the one who

sits on the pin, it is anything but a laughing matter. “But the swath

of the raid is so narrow, London so broad; the killed so few,

Londoners so many. If this is the worst the Huns can do, on with

‘Business as Usual!’” There is no denying that this epitomises the

spirit of London--even as it mourns its dead--on the morrow of the

first great air raid of history. For myself, I must admit that I was

rather too near the point of the pin, and have since seen rather too

many of the “pin-pricks,” to be able to look at the diversion from

quite the standpoint of the great majority.

Last night was clear, calm, and moonless--ideal Zeppelin

conditions--and walking down from my hotel to the Coliseum at eight

o’clock, I noticed that the searchlights were turning the dome of the

sky into one great kaleidoscope with their weaving bands of

brightness. The warming-up drill was over as I entered the music hall,

and, returning home at the end of the “top-liner’s” act, I picked my

precarious way by the light of the stars and the diffused halos of

what had once been street lamps. I was in bed by a quarter to eleven,

and it was but a few moments later that the distant but unmistakable

boom of a bomb smote upon my unpillowed ear. I was at my east-facing

window with a jump, and an instant later the opaque curtain of the

night was being slashed to ribbons by the awakening searchlights.

For a minute or two, all of them seemed to be reeling blind and large

across the empty heavens, and then, guided by the nearing explosions,

one after another they veered off to the east and focussed in a great

cone of light where two or three slender slivers of vivid brightness

were gliding nearer above the dim bulks of the domes and spires of

the “City.”

Swiftly, undeviatingly, relentlessly, these little pale yellow dabs

came on, carrying with them, as by a sort of magnetic attraction, the

tip of the cone formed by the converged beams of the searchlights.

Nearer and louder sounded the detonations of the bombs. Now they burst

in salvos of threes and fours; now singly at intervals, but with never

more than a few seconds between. Always a splash of lurid light

preceded the sound of the explosion, in most instances to be followed

by the quick leap of flames against the skyline. Many of these fires

died away quickly,--sometimes through lack of fuel, as in a

stone-paved court; more often through being subdued by the firemen,

scores of whose engines could be heard clanging through the

streets,--others waxed bright and spread until the yellow shafts of

the searchlights paled against the heightening glow of the eastern

heavens.

The wooden clackity-clack of the raiders’ propellers came to my ears

at about the same moment that the sparkling trail of the fuse of an

incendiary bomb against the loom of a familiar spire roughly located

the van of the attack as now about half a mile distant. After that,

things happened so fast that my recollections, though photographically

vivid, are somewhat disconnected. My last “calmly calculative” act was

to measure one of the on-coming airships--then at about twenty-five

degrees from directly overhead--between the thumb and forefinger of my

outstretched right hand, these, extended to their utmost, framing the

considerably foreshortened gas-bag with about a half-inch to spare.

Up to this moment, the almost undeviating line of flight pursued by

the approaching Zeppelins appeared as likely to carry them on one side

of my coign of vantage as the other; that is to say, they _seemed_ not

unlikely to be going to pass directly overhead. It was at this

juncture, not unnaturally, that it occurred to me that the

basement--for the next minute or two at least--would be vastly

preferable, for any but observation purposes, to my top-floor window.

Before I could translate this discretionary impulse into action,

however, a small but brilliant light winked twice or thrice from below

the leading airship, and a point or two of change was made in the

course, with the possible purpose (it has since occurred to me) of

swinging across the great group of conjoined railway termini a

half-mile or so to the north. This meant that the swath of the bombs

would be cut at least a hundred yards to the north-east, and, impelled

by the fascination of the unfolding spectacle, I remained at my

window.

During the next half-minute the bombs fell singly at three-or

four-second intervals. Then the blinking light flashed out under the

leader again,--probably the order for “rapid fire,”--and immediately

afterwards a number of sputtering fire-trails--not unlike the wakes of

meteors--lengthened downward from beneath each of the two airships. (I

might explain that I did not see more than two Zeppelins at any one

time, though some have claimed to have seen three.)

Immediately following the release of the bombs, the lines of fire

streamed in a forward curve, but from about halfway down their fall

was almost perpendicular. As they neared the earth, the hiss of cloven

air--similar to but not so high-keyed as the shriek of a shell--became

audible, and a second or two later the flash of the explosion and the

rolling boom were practically simultaneous.

Between eight and a dozen bombs fell in a length of five blocks, and

at a distance of from one to three hundred yards from my window, the

echoes of one explosion mingling with the burst of the next. Broken

glass tinkled down to the left and right, and a fragment of slate

from the roof shattered upon my balcony. But the most remarkable

phenomenon was the rush of air from, or rather to, the explosion. With

each detonation I leaned forward instinctively and braced myself for a

blow on the chest, and lo--it descended upon my back. The same

mysterious force burst inward my half-latched door, and all down one

side of the square curtains were streaming outward from open or broken

windows. (I did not sit down and ponder the question at the moment,

but the phenomenon is readily explained by the fact that, because the

force of the explosives used in Zeppelin bombs is invariably exerted

upwards, the air from the lower level is drawn in to fill the vacuum

thus created. This also accounts for the fact that all of the window

glass shattered by the raiders has fallen on the sidewalks instead of

inside the rooms.)

Tremendous as was the spectacle of the long line of fires extending

out of eyescope to the City and beyond, there is no denying that the

dominating feature of the climax of the raid was the Zeppelins

themselves. Emboldened perhaps, by the absence of gun-fire, these had

slowed down for their parting salvo so as to be almost “hovering” when

the bombs were dropped opposite my vantage point. Brilliantly

illuminated by the searchlights, whose beams wove about below them

like the ribbons in a Maypole dance, the clean lines of their gaunt

frameworks stood out like bas-reliefs in yellow wax. Every now and

then one of them would lurch violently upward,--probably at the

release of a heavy bomb,--but, controlled by rudders and planes, the

movement had much of the easy power of the dart of a great fish.

Indeed, there was strong suggestion of something strangely familiar in

the lithe grace of those sleek yellow bodies, in the swift swayings

and rightings, in the powerful guiding movements of those hinged

“tails,” and all at once the picture of a gaunt “man-eater” nosing his

terribly purposeful way below the keel of a South-Sea pearler flashed

to my mind, and the words “Sharks! Sharks of the air!” leaped to my

lips.

While the marauders still floated with bare steerage-way in flaunting

disdain, the inexplicably delayed firing order to the guns was flashed

around, and--like a pack of dogs baying the moon, and with scarcely

more effect--London’s “air defence” came into action. Everything from

machine-guns to three-and four-inchers,--not one in the lot built for

anti-aircraft work,--belched forth the best it had. Up went the

bullets and shrapnel, and down they came again, down on the roofs and

streets of London. Far, far below the contemptuous airships the little

stars of bursting shrapnel spat forth their steel bullets in spiteful

impotence, and back they rained on the tiles and cobbles.

Suddenly a gruffer growl burst forth from the yelping pack, as the

gunners of some hitherto unleashed piece of ordnance received orders

to join the attack. At the first shot a star-burst pricked the night

in the rear of the second airship, and well on a line with it; a

second exploded fairly above it; and then--all at once I was conscious

that the searchlights were playing on a swelling cloud of white mist

which was trailing away into the north-east. The Zeppelin had

evidently taken a leaf from the book of the squid.

The tinkle of shrapnel bullets on the roof sent me down at this

juncture to join the gathering of my fellow guests on the ground

floor, where, on the manager’s calling attention to the fact that my

knees were shaking from the cold, I was glad to avail myself of the

loan of his overcoat. I was not unappreciative of his delicacy in

attributing the undeniable shiver in my frame to the cold, and I have

not yet entirely made up my mind just to what extent the chill night

air, standing in a twisted and cramped position in order to look up,

and sheer funk shared the responsibility for it.

I have been under shell-fire on several occasions, and I confess quite

frankly that I never before felt anywhere near so “panicky” as during

that long half-minute in which the airships appeared certain to pass

directly overhead. The explanation of this, it seems to me, may be

found in the fact that, in the trenches or in a fort which is under

fire, one is among cool, determined, and often callous men who are

meeting the expected as a part of the day’s work, while in a Zeppelin

raid one is more or less unconsciously affected by the unexpectedness

of it, and by the very natural terror of the unhardened

non-combatants. At any rate, to say that there was not a very

contagious brand of terror “in the air” in the immediate vicinity of

the swath of last night’s raid would be to say something that was not

true of my own neighbourhood.

As soon as the firing ceased I slipped into my street clothes and

hurried out, reaching the “Square” perhaps ten minutes after the last

bomb had fallen. That terror still brooded was evident from the white,

anxious faces at street doors and basement gratings, but a mounting

spirit was recorded in the gratuitous advice shouted out by the

“Boots” at a hotel entrance to a portly and not un-Teutonic-looking

gentleman who went puffing under a street-light.

“No use hurryin’, mister,” chirped the young irrepressible. “Last Zepp

fer Berlin’s just pulled out.”

At the end of a block my feet were crunching glass at every step, and

a few moments later I was in the direct track of the raid. By a

strange chance--it is impossible that it could have happened by

intent--that last fierce rain of bombs had descended upon the one part

of London where the hospitals stand thicker than in any other; and

yet, while every one of these was windowless and scarred from

explosions in streets and adjacent squares, not one appeared to have

been hit. One large building devoted entirely to nervous disorders was

a bedlam of hysteria, and the nurses are said to have had a terrible

time in getting their patients in hand. From another, given over to

infantile paralysis, hip-disease, and other ailments of children, came

a pitiful chorus of wails in baby treble. The other hospitals,

including one or two foreign ones, appeared to be proceeding quietly

with their share of the work of succour, receiving and caring for the

victims as fast as they could be hurried in.

The fires, except for a couple of wide glows in the direction of the

City and a gay geyser of flame from a broken gas main in the next

block, had disappeared as by magic, and most of the places where bombs

had dropped in this vicinity could be located only by the little knots

of people before the barred doors, or by following a line of hose from

an engine.

Except for an occasional covered stretcher being borne out to a

waiting ambulance, the killed and maimed were little in evidence; and

but for a chance encounter with a friend who was doing some sort of

volunteer surgical work, I should have failed entirely to have an

intimate glimpse of the grimmer side of the raid. I jostled him at a

barrier where the crowd was being held back from a bombed tenement,

and he pressed me into service forthwith.

“They are trying to uncover some kiddies on the second floor. Four of

them--all in one room,” he explained. “Two floors above smashed in on

them. Everybody fagged out, and I’m after some brandy to buck ’em up.

You’re fresh. Take this armlet and tell the police at the door I sent

you.”

The little lettered khaki band passed me by the police cordon, and I

found myself in the lantern-lighted hallway of a rickety brick

building such as they erected as tenements in London thirty or forty

years ago. Two blanket-covered bodies lay on the floor waiting to be

removed to the morgue, and a third, hideously mangled, but still

breathing, was being hastily bandaged by a doctor before sending on to

the hospital. A dozen children were crying in a room which opened off

the hall, and there, too, a hysterical woman in a nightgown, her face

and hands streaming blood, was being restrained by a couple of

uniformed police-women from rushing up the sagging stairway.

A fireman who had collapsed on the floor gave me his axe, and a

special constable with a lantern guided me up the quaking stairs to a

little back flat, where several men, distinguished by armlets as some

kind of volunteers, were hacking away at the pile of _débris_ which

filled most of one of the rooms. Four children had been sleeping in

that room, explained the policeman, and one of them had been heard

whimpering a while back. There was no light but a lantern and a flash

torch, he added, and every one was dead played out; but just the same,

they were going to stick to it as long as there was a chance that the

“nipper” was alive.

This must have been somewhere around midnight, and it was by the first

light of dawn leaking in through the shattered beams and rafters that

we reached the last of the little bruised bodies buried under the

_débris_. The ghastly interval between was in many respects the most

trying I have ever experienced. Somebody’s strength, or nerves, or

courage was giving way every few minutes, and there was one dreadful

quarter hour during which we all had to knock off and help hold down

the now stark-mad mother who had somehow escaped from the room below.

For our reward we found that the youngest child was breathing, and

might continue to do so, according to the doctor, for several hours.

Its two brothers and its sister had mercifully been killed outright in

the first crash.

* * * * *

_Same day_, 7.30 P.M.

I wrote the foregoing after a couple of hours of sleep; then went out

and spent the rest of the day back-tracking the raiders. As the swath

was largely cut through the tenement and slum districts of the East

End, the property damage was not great, but, for the same reason, the

loss of life must have been considerable. Pathetic little

funerals--the kind one sees advertised on posters of enterprising

Shoreditch and Whitechapel undertakers as costing two pounds ten

shillings, with hearse and two carriages, with an extra carriage

added for an even three pounds--were to be seen here and there; but

withal there was a remarkable absence of “hate” observable in the

crowds that thronged from far and near to view the work of the

nocturnal visitors from beyond the North Sea.

It is, indeed, well said that the Briton is a poor hater, and almost

the only evidence that I could see of his being stirred by the events

of last night was in the heightened activity of recruiting. The astute

authorities, quick to see the advantage of taking the tide at flood,

kept speakers--both civilians and soldiers--all day at the barriers

where the crowds were held back in the vicinities of the points

bombed, and many hitherto wavering volunteers were gathered in as a

consequence. Here and there threatening crowds gathered in front of

bakeries and butcher shops which bore German names; but their leaders

were half-tipsy cockney dames whom the ever imperturbable “Bobbies”

had no trouble in hustling on out of the way. No, stubborn fighter

that he is, the Briton is only the most indifferent of haters.