ERNIE PYLE

_Los Angeles_

_July, 1941_

_Ernie Pyle_

in England

_I. ON MY WAY_

_1. QUALMS_

_New York,

November, 1940_

A small voice came in the night and said, “Go.”

And when I put it up to the boss he leaned back in his chair and said,

“Go.”

And when I sat alone with my so-called conscience and asked it what to

do, it pointed and said, “Go.”

So I’m on my way to London.

Never before have I set out on a long trip with anything but elation in

my heart. It is not so with this trip. This one is no lark. It will be

tough and I know it.

I will be scared. I know I will feel small and in the way among a

people who are doing a job of life and death.

_2. CROSSING_

_Aboard_ S.S. Exeter,

_December, 1940_

The sailing of a ship, the world over, is a gay event. A ship carries

people out of reality, into illusion. People who go away on ships are

going away to better things. But that was not true as we sailed for

Europe. There was no gayety on the _Exeter_. Never, on any ocean or

in any climate, have I seen a ship sail so drearily. I doubt there is

a single person on board who goes joyously. Certainly no one is going

for the fun of it. The _Exeter_ takes its human cargo into the land of

heavy reality, rather than from it.

There were no farewell parties aboard ship. What few people had

visitors to see them off sat in the lounges in small, quiet groups,

talking seriously.

That Girl came to the ship with me. And so did an old friend we hadn’t

seen for years--Jim Moran, the fellow who hunted the needle in the

public haystack, and who sold an icebox to an Eskimo. Maybe you’ve read

about him. We knew Moran back when he was just an amateur crazy-man.

He was a gay fellow to have around this day, and we were grateful for

him. He tried his best to add a touch of joviality to the long-faced

atmosphere of departure.

“Look at these passengers,” Moran said. “Spies all over the place.

Secret Agent Y-32. There goes Mata Hari of 1940. Everybody trying to

eavesdrop on everybody else.

“Ernie, you need a dispatch case. Get an important-looking dispatch

case and stuff it full of newspapers. Put a big padlock on it. Carry it

everywhere with you. Carry it to meals. Walk the deck with it. Never

put it down. Then, about four days out, walk away from your deck chair

and leave it lying there. I’ll bet half the people on board would get

maimed in the rush to grab it.”

And I said, “Oh Moran, shut up.”

* * * * *

We were to sail at 11 A.M. But the word passed around that we wouldn’t

get away till several hours later. The uncomfortable quiet of

anticlimax went over the ship.

Moran sat down and wrote four postcards for me to mail in Lisbon, so

his friends would think he was over there.

They left the ship at noon--Moran and That Girl. We couldn’t sit there

any longer, just waiting for the last moment to come. I walked out into

the pier shed with them. She slipped me a note she had written, and I

put it in my pocket. We have known each other a long time.

We didn’t try to say anything but just good-bye. And we made it quick.

For a minute I watched them walking away, down the long pier shed. Then

I went to my cabin and shut the door.

Finally, at two o’clock, we sailed. Everybody had gone. The dock

was empty and dead. There was no shouting, no confetti, not even a

handkerchief waved. The lonely dock simply drew away. Nothing more, as

we sailed on a cold gray afternoon in November toward the darkness of

Europe.

* * * * *

We have just thirty-one passengers aboard. That is only a quarter of

the ship’s normal capacity, and only a sixth of what it carries on

the return trips. Coming back, they put cots in the lounge and pack

in 180 or 190 people. But there are so few of us that everybody has

a cabin to himself. Mine is a big one with two beds, a sofa-couch, a

private bathroom and two portholes. Furthermore, it has a sunny veranda

just outside the door. It is, I believe, the most comfortable cabin

I’ve ever had aboard ship. All I need to set up housekeeping is a

base-burner and a side of bacon.

We weren’t two hours out of New York when we had boat drill.

There wasn’t any monkey business about it, either. They swung out the

boats, and tested the radio in No. 1 boat.

I figured that, due to the instability of world conditions (as some

people call it), we would have boat drill every day. But there wasn’t

another until the seventh day out, when the whistle blew and the bells

rang at eleven o’clock in the morning.

It turned into quite an experience for a British girl on board. She

had just got up, and was taking a shower. When she heard the bells it

never occurred to her that it might be a drill. She said to herself,

“My God, this is it!” So she jumped out of the shower and into slacks

and sweater without even drying. The lifebelts are on racks under the

beds, and she got her lifebelt stuck and practically had to tear the

bed down to get it out. She couldn’t find her money, so she ran off

without it. She tarried not for lipstick nor rouge. She arrived on deck

pale and breathless--to find that we were only playing.

* * * * *

We are now getting into waters where ships do get sunk occasionally.

But there is no anxiety on board about our safety. We are fully lighted

at night, and on each side of the ship is painted a big American flag,

with a spotlight rigged to shine on it. Every night I’ve been meaning

to lay out my heavy clothes on the other bed and have everything all

ready to jump into--just in case. But we’re almost there now, and I

haven’t got around to it.

Some of the passengers have been hoping something exciting would

happen. One favors picking up a couple of lifeboats from a sunken ship.

Another wants a raider to stop us and search. One extremist even favors

being fired at mistakenly by a submarine--on condition that the torpedo

misses. As for me, I don’t want to see anything in this ocean but

waves. And on second thought I don’t even want to see waves. For I’m

seeing them right now; and to put it bluntly, they make me sick.

The run to Lisbon is tough these days for the dining room and cabin

stewards. Going over, there are so few people their tips don’t amount

to much. And coming back, although the ship is loaded to the hilt,

everybody is broke, so the tips are still small. But the crew does get

a war bonus of $1 a day for working this run.

We have one Englishman aboard who is the most satisfactory listener

I’ve ever talked with. He considers everything you say the most

fascinating thing he’s ever heard, and says so with a repertoire of

ejaculations completely new to me.

For instance, you say you’ve been at sea a month this year, and he

almost jumps out of his chair and says, “No! How extraordinarily

remarkable!” You say something else, and he says, “God save us! Would

you believe it?” You remark that planes are landing completely blind by

radio beam these days, and he leans forward as if about to leap, and

comes out with: “God’s teeth! You don’t say it!”

That last one is worth the whole voyage to me.

_3. WAY STATION_

_Lisbon,

December, 1940_

You must call it “Leeze-bone,” this only free seaport city left in

Europe. If you say “Leeze-bone,” then you’re a bona-fide European

traveler. If you say “Leeze-bo-ah” you’re a Portuguese and live here.

If you say “Liz-bun” you’re a plain American.

Today Lisbon is the temporary pasture for all those of Europe fortunate

enough to escape. It is the needle’s eye through which must pass all

non-fighting travel between Europe and anywhere else. A month ago

it was estimated there were 20,000 refugees in Portugal. There are

probably fewer now, for they are being worked out gradually, and

Portugal has tightened her borders against newcomers. You can’t get a

visa for Portugal today unless you can show a ticket to take you on

beyond.

Most of the refugees are in or around Lisbon. A good portion of them

hope some day to get to North America. Others go to South America and

the Belgian Congo; and since our arrival a whole shipload of Greeks has

left for the Dutch East Indies. The majority of the refugees had money

originally, or they couldn’t have greased their flight from their home

countries. But most of them couldn’t bring much with them. And living

costs in Lisbon, although low by our standards, are high by European

standards. So the refugees live close to their belts. Lisbon is not a

gay place of high night life.

The staff of the American consulate has been greatly enlarged, yet they

are working as intensely as newspapermen just before edition time. All

day long thick groups of people shove and push and wave papers before

the consulate counters, trying to be next in line to argue for a visa

for that haven of havens--America. Desperation drives people to many

ruses. The consulate clerks have heard so many phony stories that they

practically suspect everybody. Yet they seem to have an attitude of

tenderness toward them all, too, as if to say “You poor devils!”

Most of the refugees are German Jews and people from the Balkan

countries. But now there are a large number of Belgians and French too.

Many of them are trying to get to England. And England will take them

in, if they can get there.

Restaurants in Lisbon are excellent. There are half a dozen that would

satisfy any international epicure. Last night I had the best steak

since Buenos Aires, and with all the trimmings it came to only eighty

cents. Food abounds here; they pile it on, they even waste it--while

the rest of Europe draws closer to starvation.

This is a hilly city--a beautifully hilly city. There are streets

here nearly as steep as those in San Francisco. It is very white,

and from a distance it glistens. And it is vastly larger than I had

expected--nearly a million people--and there are traffic jams just as

at home.

The sidewalks are made of flat-topped stones, walnut size, laid in

weird designs of black and white as are the sidewalks in Rio. The

streets are practically all of cobblestone. The city is dotted with

parks and circles and statues.

There are some palm trees, and the other trees still have their leaves

on them. But don’t let such greenery, and such bright sun, and such

blue skies, pull any wool over your eyes. A friend’s description of

southern California fits Lisbon perfectly right now. He said, “You can

lie down under a rosebush in full bloom and freeze to death.” That’s

Lisbon too, in December.

* * * * *

Three great warring nations all run regular passenger air lines into

Lisbon. You can see planes take off every day for Berlin and Rome;

and several times a week for England and the U.S. The downtown ticket

offices of the English and German lines are next door to each other. In

fact, I got into the German office by mistake, and naively asked about

planes to London. The young man behind the counter directed me, in

excellent English, to the British Overseas offices next door.

Theoretically, the air line to England is a commercial line. But the

British Air Attaché here tells them whom to take, and when. When you

arrive from the United States, England-bound, you register in a book at

the ticket office of British Overseas Airways. That’s all there is for

you to do. That’s all you can do. Some afternoon maybe a week later,

maybe two months later, the ticket office will call up and tell you to

get ready.

Passengers are chosen in the order of their “priority.” Nobody goes

without priority. This is arranged in London only, and the average

traveler can’t get priority at all. Being a newspaperman, I have

priority. If I didn’t have, I might as well go home. But when it will

get me to London is anybody’s guess. All you can do is wait.

What applies to us, applies to thousands here awaiting transportation.

Trains are crowded. The Rome plane is booked three weeks ahead. Time

is heavy on people’s hands, and as the weeks drag on they draw their

financial belts closer and closer. But at cocktail hour the bars are

crowded, and you hear a dozen different tongues. Americans mostly

gather at the Avenida, and give each other the day’s developments--if

any--in their struggle to get wherever they’re going.

Even transportation to America is difficult. They say three hundred

people are sitting here waiting for the Clipper. Seats on the Clipper

have been “scalped” for $1000--and then the buyer finds he has bought

nothing, for Panair doesn’t permit transfer of reservations. The

American Export Line runs a weekly steamer to the United States, and it

is booked two months ahead. But many of these bookings are for people

who haven’t even arrived from their home countries yet. Hundreds who

have made reservations will never get their papers to go. They say that

when the weekly boat sails, carrying out about two hundred people, it

pretty well clears out those who are free to leave.

* * * * *

As far as I can tell, sentiment in Portugal is overwhelmingly

pro-British. Some friends say they sense a lot of feeling for Germany

here, but it doesn’t seem that way to me. True, you see an occasional

German army uniform on the streets. And you hear a good many people

speaking German. But there is no way to tell whether these latter are

fifth columnists or refugees.

* * * * *

Along with George Lait of the International News Service, who was

a fellow passenger on the _Exeter_, I put up for several days at a

pension, which is something halfway between a boarding house and a

hotel. And from my slight experience with pensions in this and other

countries, you can have them, and welcome. But by pulling wires, the

two of us finally got a room in a hotel.

The new room is about twenty feet square, and it has two big windows

that look onto a narrow street. Early each morning they bring all the

newsboys and street vendors of Lisbon up to this street and test their

lungs. If they can’t wake us up, then they are weak and sick and are

sent home for the day with a black mark.

Our room is old-fashioned, yet quite comfortable (except for

temperature). The ceiling is far, far above us, and is covered with

colossal scrollwork in purple plaster. The bathroom is simply one

corner of the room walled off by movable panels, which stop five

feet short of the ceiling. Our bathtub has three faucets, one marked

cold, and two marked hot. The point is that one is a little hotter

than the other. I don’t know why it’s done this way. All I care about

is that one or the other should give off hot water; and they really

do--plenty hot. But our radiator does not have the same virtue. It

is a centuries-old custom not to have heat over here. All radiators

are vaguely warm; none is ever hot. They have no effect at all on the

room’s temperature.

I’ve been cold all over the world. I’ve suffered agonies of cold in

Alaska and Peru and Georgia and Maine. But I’ve never been colder

than right here in this room. Actually, the temperature isn’t down to

freezing. And it’s beautiful outside. Yet the chill eats into you and

through you. You put on sweaters until you haven’t any more--and you

get no warmer.

The result is that Lait and I take turns in the bathtub. I’ll bet we’re

the two most thoroughly washed caballeros in Portugal. We take at

least four hot baths a day. And during the afternoon, when I’m trying

to write, I have to let the hot water run over my hands about every

fifteen minutes to limber them up. I’m telling the truth.

* * * * *

We went down to see the _Exeter_ sail. You’d never have recognized

it as the placid and sparsely populated ship we came over on. In the

lounge stood row after row of cots. Two-by-fours, with holes bored

in them, had been laid over the rugs. The cot legs were set in these

holes, to keep them from sliding in rough weather. Down below, every

cabin was jammed. Cabins with three beds had four people in them. The

ship was alive with children. Luggage was stacked everywhere.

The stewards were about to go completely crazy. Everybody was wanting

something. And nobody could understand anybody. Bernie Garland, my

steward coming over, said he could recognize about every language in

Europe but he had a cabinful speaking something he’d never heard before.

On these homebound trips you’re lucky to be aboard at all. Which made

the request of one haughty woman sound ridiculous. I overheard it

myself. She was in one of the best cabins, but she didn’t like it. She

came to the steward and asked if she was in first class. He told her

there was only one class. So she said, “Well, you must have better

cabins. Change my cabin right away, even if I pay more for it.” She

wanted to change--and with eighty people sleeping in public on cots!

_II. ALL QUIET_

_1. PEACE TO WAR--SEVEN HOURS_

_England

December, 1940_

The phone rang in our hotel room in Lisbon, and we were told to be at

the marine airport before daylight this morning. Don’t think I didn’t

get all a-twitter. Our almost two solid weeks of waiting were drawing

to an end, and Lait and I decided not even to go to bed.

Each of us left a small suitcase in Lisbon, to cut down the weight. I

put my excess necessities in a white sugar sack which a boat steward

had given me. And so today I arrived in England carrying a small yellow

bag, a typewriter, and a knotted-up sugar sack over my shoulder.

It was cold and eerie in the dimly lighted airport building at

Lisbon. We walked up and down to keep warm, until finally the captain

said, “Let’s go.” We followed the crew along a pier, and got into a

motorboat. We could make out dimly the shapes of two big flying boats

at anchor. As our boat eased up to one of them, we jumped through the

door.

The plane had four motors, and was bigger than the Baby Clippers of

Pan American Airways, but not as big as the regular Clippers. She was

camouflaged.

The cabin was partitioned into three compartments, with smoking

permitted in the rear one. I had supposed that these planes were

stripped of all peacetime travel comforts to save weight, but not so.

The seats were deep and comfortable, the floor was carpeted.

The steward gave us blankets. The engines were started, the door

closed, and we taxied far out into the river. We could see the lights

of the city on each shore. Suddenly the motors roared, and spray

blinded the windows. We ran for what seemed a long time, surging

through the water, until finally we felt her break free. The windows

cleared and the shore lights dropped farther and farther below. The hot

exhaust rings of the motors shone dramatically red in the darkness. We

were on the way to England.

* * * * *

It might have been a flight in peacetime. Every one on the plane

immediately went to sleep. I slept for a while, but curiosity got the

better of me, and from daylight on I stayed awake.

Dawn found us over the ocean, with no land in sight. I had been told

the flight would take ten hours, but we picked up a howling tailwind

and came through in less than seven hours. Time didn’t drag at all.

Five hours out, I went through the plane and every passenger was

asleep. As far as I could observe, not one person ever spoke to another

during the trip. There were seven Americans aboard, one Swiss, and

three Englishmen.

The steward served coffee and sandwiches, and later fruit. Then he came

around and blacked out the windows so the passengers couldn’t see out.

This was done by putting a section of frosted glass over the regular

windows, with rubber suction cups. This lets in light but prevents you

from seeing out. I presume it is done to keep passengers from seeing

convoys in the water below. But the joke was that the steward blacked

out every window except mine. Either he ran out of frosted panes or

else he thought I was blind. At any rate I stared out the window the

whole trip.

Land came into view on the left. It was dark brown and bare, a high,

rugged coast. I thought it was Ireland. We flew along this coast for an

hour. The air got rough, and five passengers were very sick. Somehow I

escaped that. We passed only two ships, both small. One of them flashed

a signal to us with a blinker. We did not see a single plane on the

trip.

Suddenly the pilot throttled down his motors and we started losing

altitude. Then I realized we had not been flying along Ireland, but

along the coast of England itself. We landed far out from shore among a

lot of boats at anchor and camouflaged planes resting on the water. As

we struck the surface there was that familiar long ripping sound.

I felt like a character in a dream. The journey from America was over.

We had arrived. But it didn’t seem really true. Any moment I expected

to wake up and find myself still between those perpetual walls of the

Hotel Europa in Lisbon.

* * * * *

A score of British officials, in raincoats and boots, came out in a

motorboat and looked everything over, and a doctor took up the forms we

had filled out. Then we all got into the boat. The men chatted with us

all the way to shore. They said they would try to get us through the

inspection in time to catch the mid-afternoon train to London, but they

couldn’t promise.

It was raining. We walked a hundred yards along the docks, then into

the main street of the little town. There were soldiers on the street,

carrying tin hats and gas masks. There were women in khaki uniforms,

and many people on bicycles. All the store windows were crisscrossed

with strips of paper. This tends to prevent shattering from the

concussion when bombs explode in the neighborhood. Strips of many

colors, pasted in many designs, made the town look as though it had

been decorated for Christmas instead of patched up for the war.

I wish you could see that village street. It was like a picture from

a Dickens novel. The gabled buildings, the language of the signs, the

many smoking chimney pots were all the England of fiction, so peaceful,

neat and secure. I had not been ashore three minutes before I was in

love with England.

We were escorted to a big ground-floor room, the temporary office of

the British Overseas Airways. There were easy chairs and couches and a

coal fire in the grate, and a boy was serving hot tea. It took us two

hours to get through all the inspections. We were taken one at a time

into a room where two men questioned us. They asked about our purpose

in coming, about our money, about whom we knew, and so on. It was by

no means a grilling. They did it in a way that made you feel you were

just sitting there chatting. The procedure was more than courteous; it

seemed genuinely friendly.

After that they went through our baggage minutely. They even read our

letters. But so great is English courtesy that the customs man asked me

to take each letter from its envelope for him. He evidently thought it

would be prying for him to do so! And then as train time drew near he

said we would have to hurry to catch it, so he closed the bags without

finishing the inspection, gave us advice about trains and the blackout

in London, and hustled us into a waiting car provided by the air line.

We drove for fifteen minutes through a thickly settled suburb. They

told us bombs had fallen in the street a few afternoons ago, but we

saw no evidence of it. The suburb was like a continuation of the

main street of that first town--neat as a pin, snug, comfortable and

beautiful.

The train came right on schedule. The porter, an old man, stowed our

bags away carefully and told us just when we would get to London.

It would be after dark, he said, and the Germans would probably be

overhead, but he said for us not to worry.

* * * * *

My very first impression of England was of lovely, courteous people.

And I don’t mean to us visitors so much as to each other. It is true

that they are especially nice to Americans right now, but I noticed

that they were just as thoughtful among themselves.

My only contact with English people before had been in the colonies.

I had assumed that the ordinary Englishman had the same personality

as those in far-off lands who gather in the clubs and hotels of an

afternoon for their gin and tonic and who consider themselves superior

to anything else on land or sea. But the Englishman in mass, at home,

bears no resemblance at all to that. He always seems to have a pleasant

little remark to make. He is interested instead of blasé. He is

considerate, and he seems to enjoy being alive.

An English friend of mine says all this is true. But he says further

that it is truer now than ever before. He says the war has done a lot

for English character. He says it has drawn the people together, made

them prouder of each other, made them humbler, and hence both mellower

and stronger.

Anyway, I know that in all my traveling I have never visited a new

country that in a few short hours filled me with the warmth that I feel

for England.

_2. “HE HASN’T COME YET, SIR.”_

_London,

December, 1940_

We rode in luxury on our way to London town. We rode in a private

compartment. We smoked, and read London newspapers, and drank tea,

and ate ham sandwiches. We traveled through a magnificently green

countryside. The fields looked more like parks than farms. It seemed

odd that everything should be so green in December. It was a beautiful

afternoon, not too cold. It would rain a little while, then the sun

would come out bright.

Our first three hours in England had been so pleasant, the country so

serene, the tea so true to tradition, it didn’t seem possible that

death and destruction could lie only three hours ahead. But it lay

nearer than that.

We were drinking tea when Lait said “Look!” and there in the sky ahead

silver barrage balloons were floating. There weren’t just a few, but

scores, even hundreds. They stretched on for miles and miles. We knew

their presence indicated we were coming to a good-sized city.

And then came the first sight of destruction. I don’t remember

specifically what was the first bombed thing we saw, for we had barely

seen the first when we saw a second and a third. Then wreckage became

constant. I remember a crater in a suburban street, then wrecked houses

near by, and a small factory burned. After that, for block after block,

half the buildings we saw were wrecked. Some of the suburban stations

where the train stopped were shattered, but people by the hundreds got

off and on.

If I were to say there were strain and worry and fear on people’s

faces I certainly would be overworking my imagination. Except for the

ghastly scenery, life seemed thoroughly normal.

An old man got into our compartment and sat down. He was ragged

and feeble, and until he spoke I couldn’t have told him from an

eighty-year-old Missouri farmer. When the conductor looked in for the

tickets he said to the old man, “Sorry, but you have to move back.

You’ve got a third-class ticket, and here you are in first.” The old

man, in an accent that would be British wherever the sun sets, said,

“Oh dear, oh dear” feebly, and took himself up and out. We wished he

could have stayed.

Back home I had seen newsreel pictures of bombed buildings, but somehow

I thought the real thing would look different. It doesn’t. The only

thing different is that now it’s real and you feel a revulsion and a

small sinking feeling with the knowledge of the awful power of a single

bomb. You feel what it could do to you personally.

Finally we left the city and its wreckage behind and were out in green

country again. Every open field had something in it to keep enemy

planes from landing. Some fields were crisscrossed with row after

row of tall white poles. Others had rolls of wire. Some had shallow

ditches. Some had mounds of earth piled up in rows so geometrically

regular that you would have thought they were planting crops instead of

building obstructions.

Occasionally you would get a glimpse of a silver balloon pulled down

into a woods to nestle until nightfall. Twice we passed antiaircraft

guns out in the fields under canvas canopies, painted so like shrubbery

that we could hardly identify them.

Every tree, every field, every cricket ground, every house and street

seemed to be doing its bit. In the backyards of suburban homes along

the railroad tracks there were somber marks of what war has done to the

English way of life. I mean private bomb shelters; almost every back

yard had one.

From the train window a shelter looked like just a large mound of

dirt. From closer up, it could be seen to be a half-underground

cellar, walled with concrete and sheet metal and covered heavily with

dirt, much like the outdoor cellars of our Western prairies. We were

interested to see vegetables growing on the earthen tops of many

shelters.

All this, you must remember, was still a long way from London.

Now dusk came on, and we could no longer see fields nor bomb shelters.

The conductor came through and asked us to black out the compartment.

The windows have black shades on rollers, which you pull down and hook

at the bottom. The windows themselves are painted black except for

a square in the middle, and this is fully covered when you pull the

curtain. A faint blue light shines at the top of the compartment.

Thus we rode on toward London, sealed in a blacked-out compartment,

growing increasingly jumpy as we came nearer that city where the wail

of sirens and the thud of bombs are as routine every night as supper.

* * * * *

We were running late by now, and consequently couldn’t tell exactly how

close we were getting to London. The train would stop frequently for

several minutes at a time. At these stops we would turn out the light,

then pull the blind and look out, trying to see something familiar.

George had lived in London for years and he knows the landmarks for

miles around.

We could not see anything at all. We seemed to be out in the country.

“We’re apparently still a long way off,” George said. Then, on the next

peek, not two minutes later, he said, “We’re here! We’re coming into

the station!”

We had arrived in the very heart of London before we knew we had even

approached the suburbs.

* * * * *

The very first words I heard spoken in London were, “Well, he hasn’t

come yet, sir, he’s more than a bit late tonight.”

They were spoken by an aged station porter who opened our compartment

door and reached for our bags. The station was lighted so dimly that I

could barely see him, but his voice was old--though it had gayness in

it too.

What the porter meant was that the Germans had not yet appeared over

London this night. They usually arrive as punctually as the hands of a

clock. Apparently they take off from fields across the Channel a few

minutes before dark and arrive over London a few minutes after dark.

Our porter talked constantly as he carried our bags through the station

and to the street. We dogged his heels, for we could barely see and we

didn’t want to get completely lost in our first few minutes in London.

The porter said, “I had a gentleman a bit ago and he said ‘Could I

speak with you for a second?’ I said ‘Yes indeed you may. Time’s up.’

The gentleman didn’t get it at first, and then he thought it was pretty

good. You might as well have a bit of a laugh, I guess.”

Our station was right in the center of London. It had been hit at least

three times, and once a German plane had fallen through the roof. Yet

they clean up damage so quickly that we saw no sign of wreckage in the

half-light.

In my first night here not a bomb was dropped on London. In fact, not

a single German plane appeared over any part of the British Isles that

night. Perhaps it was just as well, for if I had arrived in the middle

of an inferno of explosion and fire they might have had a berserk

American on their hands. Even as it was, those first few minutes

in London will be a panorama running before my memory’s eye for a

lifetime--a panorama more of impressions than of things actually seen.

The night was not entirely black. The moon was up, and you could dimly

distinguish shapes if not details. You could see the black outline of a

car a few yards away, and buildings stood out against the faint hint of

light in the sky.

At the porter’s shout a taxi pulled up at the curb and we rumbled off

into the darkness. There was very little traffic. Perhaps two cars to a

block. Now and then there was a bus. You could see pin points of light

moving down the street, but you could get no perspective on them. They

were like slowly moving stars in the sky. Then as they came near they

would be surrounded by a great black shape, and you could tell it was a

bus--but not until you were abreast of it.

As the moon came out fuller it shone on the sides of the buildings and

made them appear snow-covered. The city was ghostly silent. Only the

low sound of our motor and the small purr of a passing car--that was

all. There was no other sound in the streets of London. Yet it wasn’t

the silence of a graveyard. That wasn’t the feeling at all. It was like

something mysterious, darkly seen in a dream--shapes here, shadows

there, tiny lights swimming toward you, dark bulks moving noiselessly

away. And where I had expected to see block after block of vacant

spaces and jumbled wreckage, there stood block after block of whole

buildings.

I thought to myself: Is this nonsense? Or is London really still

here? And I realized there in the dark, with a kind of incredulous

excitement, that London was still here, and very much so.

As we drove along in our darkened taxi, Lait pointed things out to

me--buildings that we could see only vaguely in the hazy light of the

moon. We passed the Houses of Parliament, and saw Big Ben high up there

in his tower. But he was not telling the time, either for us or for

German fliers; he was all dark. We drove onto Victoria Embankment and

along the Thames. We saw Westminster Bridge and a little later Waterloo

Bridge. I was astonished to see them still standing. Since then I have

found that all the Thames bridges are standing, every one of them open

to traffic. We passed the great obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle,

which was nicked by bombs from a Zeppelin in the last war but hasn’t

been touched this time. Then we turned off into a maze of side streets

that finally brought us to Fleet Street, the greatest newspaper street

in the world. There Lait got out to go to his office, and the cab went

on around the corner to my immediate destination.

The driver couldn’t locate the number. He yelled at the shadows of

some men unloading something from a truck. He yelled at vaguely seen

passers-by. Nobody knew where the number was. Finally the driver--and

this was the only unpleasant thing I had encountered so far in

England--told me to get out and hunt. It seemed that it was not his

responsibility to get me there.

I said, “Good Lord, man, I’ve only been in London ten minutes and I was

never here before in my life. How in heaven’s name am I going to find

anything in this blackout?”

So he groused a little and yelled at some more passers-by and finally

did locate the address. I paid him off and carried my bags and sugar

sack up to the door. A tiny blue light shone over it. The entire front

was packed high with sandbags.

I didn’t know whether I dared to enter or not, for fear of letting out

light. The tenderfoot treads cautiously in London these nights. He

doesn’t want to make a fool of himself. But finally I gingerly pulled

open the glass door, reached in and touched a heavy curtain, and pulled

that aside. There, behind it was a typical office-building lobby,

lighted up. I was in the right place.

On an upper floor I found the men of the United Press at work. Their

windows were blacked out. Tin hats and gas masks lay thrown on

tables. The men were surprised to see a stranger walk in from America

unannounced at that time of night.

They gave me suggestions about hotels and made several phone calls for

me. All the calls went through immediately, just as though London had

never been bombed. And they sent an office boy to dig up another taxi,

for not many cabs cruise the streets at night.

We drove a few blocks in the dark and then pulled into what seemed to

be an alley. It was as dead and silent and black as a pit.

“I hope I’m not being held up,” I thought.

At the end of the alley the taxi made a half turn and stopped. Someone

outside opened the door and shone a flashlight on the floor of the

taxi. Then I saw that he was a doorman and that we were at the entrance

of one of London’s finest hotels, the Savoy.

I went through a revolving door, the panes of which were blacked out

with cardboard, and stepped into the same luxury and brightness and

crowds of people that you can find in any good New York hotel. The

reception clerks were all in tuxedos. The bellboys were in gray

uniforms. The elevator operators wore wing collars.

I laughed and apologized for my sugar sack, but I needn’t have done

so. Anything is all right during the “emergency.” On my way through

the reception room I noticed a man sitting at a table drinking coffee.

He was on his way to sleep in the hotel’s basement shelter. He was in

pajamas and bathrobe.

Imagine sitting in the lobby of the Mayflower in Washington or the Mark

Hopkins in San Francisco in pajamas!

* * * * *

Before coming here I knew only one person in this city of eight

million. This was Ben Robertson, now London correspondent of _PM_, the

New York newspaper. I hadn’t seen him in years, but within forty-five

minutes after stepping off the train in London I was shaking hands

with Ben Robertson. Talk about being glad to see anybody! It was like

striking gold.

I found him in the Savoy dining room eating with two young members of

Parliament. One was Dick Law, son of England’s famous statesman, Andrew

Bonar Law. Dick is financial secretary to the War Office. The other was

Jim Thomas, parliamentary secretary to Anthony Eden.

I hadn’t eaten a real meal in twenty-four hours. So I ate one

now--soup, chicken, mashed potatoes, a green salad, pastry, coffee. You

could get practically anything you wanted. The dining room was packed

and an orchestra was playing.

Bob Casey of the Chicago _Daily News_ came by, and Larry Rue of the

Chicago _Tribune_. Frank Owen, editor of Lord Beaverbrook’s London

_Standard_, came and talked about how things were going for Britain.

My new English friends wanted to know what America thought; and they

told queer bomb stories by the dozen. “You’re a welcome sight,” they

said. “We’ve all told our bomb stories to each other so many times that

nobody listens any more. Now we’ve got a new audience.”

What an introduction to London! I not only felt vastly relieved to

be among friends, but also as snug as a bug and as big as a barrage

balloon. To say nothing of feeling extremely brave, since there were no

planes over England that night.

It was midnight when I got to bed. It was the first bed I had lain in

for forty hours.

Everything was wonderful. “This can’t last,” I said to myself. “This

isn’t the way the people live.” But it’s mighty good for your soul on

your first night in London.

_3. FIRST IMPRESSIONS_

_London,

December, 1940_

My first two days were consumed in getting signed up and identified.

Now I have so many papers that I’ve had to buy an extra wallet, a

leather case so big I have to carry it in a side pocket, and it is

already stuffed full.

First you register with the police and get a booklet with your picture

in it. You have to give them your whole life history. If you move, they

must be notified.

Then there is the national registration. Here you get another

booklet--and don’t you lose it! Then you get your food-ration book.

Then you report to the Ministry of Information and get a pass with your

picture on it. Then the ministry gives additional cards permitting you

to stay out after midnight and enter prohibited areas, such as zones of

military action.

Everywhere you go people are nice to you. At the police station it took

half an hour to get my business done because a policeman had to tell

me about the bombs in his neighborhood. I have never seen policemen

at home so friendly and helpful. And it wasn’t just because I was an

American. For I watched them at other desks, where other foreigners

were registering, and these got the same courteous treatment.

My particular policeman lives in a quiet suburb on a rise of ground,

with a good view. And he said that the night before I arrived London

was a sight to see, with searchlights and noise and fires all over

town. He said a bomb hit his block not long ago and wiped out thirteen

houses. But only five people were hurt and nobody was killed.

“Imagine bombing a quiet, homey suburb like ours!” he said. “What

military advantage could that possibly have?”

“Well,” I said, “I suppose the point is to try to break the spirit of

the people.”

And he said, not boastfully but in an ordinary tone, “I guess so; but

actually it’s having just the opposite effect.”

I asked him if he had a backyard shelter. He said he did, but never

went into it. He preferred to sleep in his own bed, get a good rest and

take his chances.

On my second afternoon here I got a haircut. The barber talked all

the time, and for once I enjoyed it. He knew instantly that I was an

American. We don’t look very different to me, but these Londoners can

tell an American a mile off. It didn’t take the barber long to find

out that I had just arrived and that my first two nights in London had

passed without a single bomb being dropped. He said we’d have some

before many nights.

“And I’ll tell you,” he said, “if you don’t get a little windy your

first night, then you’re not much of a man. A fellow who doesn’t get

his wind up at the first experience isn’t a man at all. He’s just an

animal with no nerves in his body.”

I told the barber I was all prepared to be London’s biggest coward. He

said not to be ashamed if I was scared and did something silly. He was

an air-raid warden at night in his home suburb, he said, and what did

I suppose he did in their very first raid? He dived for the nearest

underground shelter. When he got down there, he said, he realized that

was no place for a warden to be, and he was so ashamed he took off his

badge so people wouldn’t know he was a warden.

But that was soon changed. Now his whole district is organized. They

know exactly what to expect and what to do, and they go about it like

a business. He goes to his post every night after supper. Every third

night he is on duty all night, regardless of whether anything happens.

On other nights he stays on if things are happening. He’s not afraid

any more at all.

I’m mighty glad I got a haircut. The barber was a great solace. Before

that talk I had been afraid of bombs, and also afraid to have anyone

know I was afraid. Now I’m only afraid of bombs.

I had heard stories of new arrivals over here sleeping right through

their first air-raid warning, but I never thought anything so drab

would happen to me. It did.

This morning at nine-thirty a friend came to my room. “Did you hear the

warning?” he asked. “Don’t make fun of me,” I said. “There wasn’t any

warning.” But he was right. The sirens went off at 6 A.M. There was

just one plane over town, and it didn’t drop anything. The all clear

sounded at 6:30, and I slept through that too.

I think the English bed manufacturers should have me write a

testimonial.

* * * * *

In my first few days here I have met an enormous number of people.

The first thing everyone says--and I’ll bet I’ve heard it two hundred

times--is this:

“Is it better or worse than you thought it would be?”

Then I have to explain to them that in the United States we had felt

that perhaps, because of the censorship, we might not be getting a

complete picture of the devastation. We had been afraid that London was

more grievously wounded than we were being allowed to know. And now,

having been prepared for any shock and having looked at London, I can

truthfully answer that it is better off than I had expected.

I think the newspapers have given a proper estimate of the damage.

True, the destruction has been immense. But these ghastly blows

actually have hurt London less than it is possible to imagine or

believe without seeing for yourself.

London as a living, enduring institution is not gravely injured. Not

in its architecture, or in its mode of existence, or its utilities, or

its transportation, or its health. And above all, not in its spirit. So

far, the blitz on London is a failure. London is no more knocked out

than the man who smashes a finger is dead. Daytime life in London today

comes very close to being normal.

My reply of “better” seemed to please the questioners, with one

exception. A girl said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear you say that.” I think

she probably felt that I didn’t appreciate what they had been through.

Also, she may have thought that if I wrote such stuff back to the

States it might lead people to believe that Britain didn’t need help

as badly as she really does.

* * * * *

There are no restrictions on newspapermen here. They can travel

wherever they like.

The two sections of London hardest hit are the poor East End and the

rich West End. The latter would correspond to the Times Square and

Fifth Avenue districts in New York; or to all of downtown Washington

between the Capitol and the “Million Dollar” Bridge; or to San

Francisco from Market Street to Russian Hill.

I haven’t been to the East End yet, but I have walked at least ten

miles through the West End. I covered and re-covered the Parliament

Buildings, Regent and Oxford Streets (the great shopping centers), Pall

Mall and Piccadilly, Park Lane and Leicester Square, the Strand and

Holborn Circus. And the best way I can describe it is to say this:

You may walk a block or two without seeing a single wrecked building.

Then occasionally you will see a block that is half wiped out. But

the typical block in the West End would have perhaps two buildings

completely wrecked by bomb or fire, and half a dozen damaged but not

destroyed. That still leaves a lot of whole, sound buildings.

There is in the West End no single great sweep of destruction, with

everything flat--just a building damaged here and another there.

You are impressed when you see how little effect a bomb has on a

building unless it is a bomb of the very heaviest type. A big modern

building next door to us took a heavy bomb right on top, yet it stands

there today whole and beautiful, only slightly damaged. Steel and

concrete and stone usually stand up. It is the age-weary buildings of

brick and dry mortar that have gone down in heart-sickening heaps.

Much of the damage is not visible to a person walking on the street. I

was in a plant, the rear part of which had been blown to the ground,

yet from the front it looked untouched. A house next door to doom

may get nothing more than broken windows. The Savoy Hotel stands up

as big as life, but it has been hit more than once. The famous Savoy

Grill is closed while bomb damage is repaired. And when I was taking

a gander out my window I discovered that the room next to mine was

unoccupied--because a bomb had blown off a corner of it.

Yet the service--food, light, drink, attention--goes on as usual, even

to the floor porter complaining that I hadn’t put my shoes out for him

to shine. The British won’t let anything interfere with their being

British.

The damage is terrific, but what impresses me most about it--and the

point I want to get over--is this: it doesn’t make any difference!

That sounds heartless. But honestly, it’s the way the British look at

it. They don’t feel that they have been hurt at all.

An American who has been here through it all says the most impressive

thing to him is the way people who have been secure have abandoned

their property sense. They can see their buildings go up in smoke,

their savings blasted to bits, and apparently they don’t care--so long

as “we get that guy in the end.”

_III. MOST HATEFUL, MOST BEAUTIFUL_

_1. RINGED AND STABBED WITH FIRE_

_London,

December, 1940_

Some day when peace has returned to this odd world I want to come to

London again and stand on a certain balcony on a moonlit night and

look down upon the peaceful silver curve of the Thames with its dark

bridges. And standing there, I want to tell somebody who has never seen

it how London looked on a certain night in the holiday season of the

year 1940.

For on that night this old, old city was--even though I must bite my

tongue in shame for saying it--the most beautiful sight I have ever

seen.

It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire.

* * * * *

They came just after dark, and somehow you could sense from the quick,

bitter firing of the guns that there was to be no monkey business this

night.

Shortly after the sirens wailed you could hear the Germans grinding

overhead. In my room, with its black curtains drawn across the windows,

you could feel the shake from the guns. You could hear the boom, crump,

crump, crump, of heavy bombs at their work of tearing buildings apart.

They were not too far away.

Half an hour after the firing started I gathered a couple of friends

and went to a high, darkened balcony that gave us a view of a third of

the entire circle of London. As we stepped out onto the balcony a vast

inner excitement came over all of us--an excitement that had neither

fear nor horror in it, because it was too full of awe.

You have all seen big fires, but I doubt if you have ever seen the

whole horizon of a city lined with great fires--scores of them, perhaps

hundreds.

There was something inspiring just in the awful savagery of it.

The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames

and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we

watched. Big ones died down under the firemen’s valor, only to break

out again later.

About every two minutes a new wave of planes would be over. The motors

seemed to grind rather than roar, and to have an angry pulsation, like

a bee buzzing in blind fury.

The guns did not make a constant overwhelming din as in those terrible

days of September. They were intermittent--sometimes a few seconds

apart, sometimes a minute or more. Their sound was sharp, near by; and

soft and muffled, far away. They were everywhere over London.

Into the dark-shadowed spaces below us, while we watched, whole batches

of incendiary bombs fell. We saw two dozen go off in two seconds. They

flashed terrifically, then quickly simmered down to pin points of

dazzling white, burning ferociously. These white pin points would go

out one by one, as the unseen heroes of the moment smothered them with

sand. But also, while we watched, other pin points would burn on, and

soon a yellow flame would leap up from the white center. They had done

their work--another building was on fire.

The greatest of all the fires was directly in front of us. Flames

seemed to whip hundreds of feet into the air. Pinkish-white smoke

ballooned upward in a great cloud, and out of this cloud there

gradually took shape--so faintly at first that we weren’t sure we saw

correctly--the gigantic dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

St. Paul’s was surrounded by fire, but it came through. It stood there

in its enormous proportions--growing slowly clearer and clearer,

the way objects take shape at dawn. It was like a picture of some

miraculous figure that appears before peace-hungry soldiers on a

battlefield.

The streets below us were semi-illuminated from the glow. Immediately

above the fires the sky was red and angry, and overhead, making a

ceiling in the vast heavens, there was a cloud of smoke all in pink. Up

in that pink shrouding there were tiny, brilliant specks of flashing

light--antiaircraft shells bursting. After the flash you could hear the

sound.

Up there, too, the barrage balloons were standing out as clearly as if

it were daytime, but now they were pink instead of silver. And now and

then through a hole in that pink shroud there twinkled incongruously a

permanent, genuine star--the old-fashioned kind that has always been

there.

Below us the Thames grew lighter, and all around below were the

shadows--the dark shadows of buildings and bridges that formed the base

of this dreadful masterpiece.

Later on I borrowed a tin hat and went out among the fires. That was

exciting too; but the thing I shall always remember above all the other

things in my life is the monstrous loveliness of that one single view

of London on a holiday night--London stabbed with great fires, shaken

by explosions, its dark regions along the Thames sparkling with the pin

points of white-hot bombs, all of it roofed over with a ceiling of pink

that held bursting shells, balloons, flares and the grind of vicious

engines. And in yourself the excitement and anticipation and wonder in

your soul that this could be happening at all.

These things all went together to make the most hateful, most beautiful

single scene I have ever known.

_2. NIGHT STROLL, ILLUMINATED_

_London,

December, 1940_

London learns a lesson from each new horror that the Germans bring over.

Through the school of experience it is gradually acquiring a

superb efficiency at its new career of bomb-receiving. It learned

a keen lesson from that Sunday night fire-bombing which was my own

introduction to modern war. That lesson was that the rooftops of London

must be manned through every hour of darkness.

They say there are a million buildings in London. Of course there is

not a watcher on every single little roof; but hereafter whenever

Hitler sends his fire-sprayers there will be at least a quarter of a

million pairs of hands and eyes waiting on the darkened rooftops to

smother his fire bombs or direct the firemen to them.

* * * * *

Let me tell you how an incendiary bomb works.

A fire bomb is about a foot long, and shaped like a miniature torpedo.

On the upper end are three metal fins circled by a strip of metal on

top. The bomb is made of a magnesium alloy, with a thermite core. Each

one weighs a little better than two pounds. One plane can scatter a

thousand of them. Ten planes could easily start 750 fires at once, over

a large area.

Of course you don’t see the bombs falling. They go off when they

strike. If they hit the street they bounce crazily like a football,

sputter violently for the first minute, throwing white fire about

thirty feet, and then simmer down in an intense molten mass and burn

about ten minutes more. It is said they burn at a temperature of

2000 degrees. If one is left on a floor it will burn a hole and drop

through. When they land in the open they are easily smothered with

sand. Common ordinary citizens have smothered thousands of them.

Sunday night I saw one that fell within two feet of an emergency

sandbox in the street. That was an easy one. But few of them land so

conveniently.

That night I went to an office building which I visit frequently, and

there two fire bombs had plunged through the roof and on down through

three floors. One of them had gone through a heavy sheet of steel laid

over an air-shaft. It left an opening in that steel plate exactly the

shape of the bomb, and as neat as though it had been cut in cardboard

with a knife.

Now there was a lesson about placing roof spotters. The men on the

roof of that building knew that those bombs had gone through, and they

were quickly smothered. But there were hundreds of unwatched buildings

in London that night into which fire bombs plunged unnoticed, and ten

minutes later the buildings were aflame.

That night as I wandered along Fleet Street I saw a five-story building

suddenly leap into great flames. The firemen hadn’t even known there

was a fire in it.

At home, when a big fire starts, the police rope off the whole section,

but it wasn’t so in London Sunday night. What few pedestrians there

were could go anywhere they liked, and they didn’t have to feel their

way that night, for there was no darkness.

Probably foolishly, I walked down a street that was afire on both

sides, past walls that would soon be ready to fall. Hundreds of small

motor pumps, carried in two-wheeled trailers behind cars, stood in

the streets. The engines made such a whir you couldn’t have heard a

plane overhead. Firemen by the hundreds were working calmly, shouting

orders to each other, smoking cigarettes, and paying no attention to

pedestrians.

I walked ten blocks. Every step had to be picked carefully amid an

intertwined mass of fire hose.

Somehow I didn’t have a feeling that this was war. I just felt as if I

were seeing a terrific number of big “natural” fires. Even when I came

upon two buildings that had been blown to dust by heavy bombs less than

an hour before, there was still a feeling that it was all perfectly

“natural.”

Although bombs are liable to fall anywhere, it happened that none came

within six blocks of where we stood watching the early part of the

fantastic show Sunday night. There were fires all around us, but we

seemed to be on an island of immunity.

When we started out among the fires, the friends with whom I had been

watching took another route and I did my fire-wandering alone. Oddly

enough, I was never afraid. As I remember it, my only concern was lest

I get in the firemen’s way.

When I returned to our oasis shortly before midnight, just as I stepped

in the door the “raiders passed” signal sounded. Up in my room I

discovered that my feet were soaked and my coat drenched with spray

from leaky hoses.

When I turned out the light and pulled the blackout curtains from

across the windows the room was bright from the glare of the fires,

and it was hard to get to sleep. But I did sleep. And when I awakened,

about six o’clock in the morning, the great light in the sky was gone.

London again was almost as dark as it has been every night for a year

and a half. So well do the firemen of London do their work.

The coming of daylight is always a blessing. Things have a way of

looking overly grotesque at night. Today I can go out onto our balcony,

where we stood watching London burn, and London will look just as

it did the afternoon before the raiders came. True, property was

destroyed--much property, valuable both materially and sentimentally.

And lives were lost. But London is big, and its lives are many. You

feel a little abashed to realize the next morning that London is still

here. The skyline looks just the same. The streets are jammed with

human beings.

Life is going on--where last night you felt that this must be the end

of everything.

_3. THE LANDMARKS_

_London,

January, 1941_

Let us go for a walk on the tourist beat--or what was the tourist beat

in the days when tourists could come to London.

We see that Westminster Abbey has been hit. Its beautiful windows have

been knocked out. But ninety-eight per cent of the building is still

there, and it is still open to visitors. Today I stood over the small

new block of concrete in the floor that covers Mr. Chamberlain’s

grave, the Abbey’s latest.

It is darkish in the Abbey now, for most of the windows are boarded up.

Parliament? Yes, these buildings have been hit. But again it is a case

of a smashed finger, not a fatal injury. The entrance to the House of

Commons is gone; there is some damage to the interior; and the same

bomb damaged the rear end of Richard the Lionhearted’s bronze horse and

bent Richard’s upheld sword, but he still rides on.

This one amuses me: Before the war started, the great tower above

the House of Lords was shrouded by a maze of steel scaffolding, in

connection with a wide plan for remodeling and repair. So what did they

do? They went right ahead repairing.

And Big Ben? Well, he’s still striking the hours. He hasn’t been

touched, despite half a dozen German claims that he has been knocked

down.

Bombs have fallen around Trafalgar Square, yet Nelson still stands atop

his great monument, and the immortal British lions, all four of them,

still crouch at the base of the statue, untouched.

The statues of Lincoln and Washington have not been hit. You can still

get roast beef at Simpson’s (and you still tip the chef sixpence when

he wheels it to your table and cuts off a slice). If you had a favorite

pub, ten to one it is still serving ale.

* * * * *

With two exceptions, all the well-known hotels are still operating, and

are full. The exceptions are the Carlton and another that I can’t name.

The Carlton was burned, but they say it is going to be repaired and

re-opened.

The big hotels have music and dancing as usual. The lounges are utterly

packed at teatime with tea and coffee drinkers. The only difference

from peacetime is that you can’t see your hand in front of you when you

walk out the front door at night.

St. Paul’s Cathedral has been hit in the rear but the damage is not

nearly as bad as I had heard. The cathedral as a whole is still there,

and it is open. The damaged wing is shut off by a gate, on which a sign

says, not “No Admittance,” but “Out of Bounds.”

The people of London are both philosophical and proud about St. Paul’s.

They go to look at it without sadness, and they say, “We would rather

have it that way in a free London than have it whole like Notre Dame in

an imprisoned Paris.”

The Tower of London has been hit, and a bomb struck near the Bank of

England. But both places still stand. The Natural History Museum has

been bombed, and what many people consider a wonderful joke was a

direct hit on the million-year-old skeleton of a brontosaurus.

Londoners pray daily that a German bomb will do something about the

Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. If you have ever seen it,

you know why. As the British say, they could bear its removal with

equanimity. But the contrary Germans have only taken a few little chips

out of it.

Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks is open again, after being temporarily closed

by a bombing next door. There are bomb craters in all the familiar

parks. The American Express office in Haymarket has not been touched,

although buildings have been wrecked near by.

* * * * *

Some months ago Vincent Sheean had a piece in the _Redbook_

magazine describing the chaotic wreckage in the West End. I remember

specifically his picture of how Oxford Street was blocked off and

deserted and ankle-deep in broken glass and rubble. Friends of mine

were along when Sheean did his reporting for that piece, and they say

he gave a true picture. But he would be surprised to see Oxford Street

now.

It is as wide open as ever, jammed with buses and packed with

pedestrians. In fact, it looks about like F Street in Washington the

week before Christmas. Nearly all the stores are open. True, I could

count on my hands the stores left with their original windows. But

losing windows doesn’t cause a building to fall down. Business goes on

as usual.

Selfridge’s famous department store is standing, and is open. The

great Lewis store burned to the ground, as you may have seen in the

newsreels--they say this was London’s second biggest fire--but Lewis’

rented all the ground-floor shops in the next block and is open again.

Incidentally, Lewis’ gave London an awful shock the day after the fire,

for they carried ads in the papers saying they knew their customers

would be pleased to learn that a duplicate set of their books had been

removed to the country beforehand, and consequently they had a complete

record of the bills owed them.

All in all, it seems to me that London’s tourist beat has escaped

remarkably well.

Just the same, a few minutes’ walk will show you that this is a city at

war.

Every block is dotted with shelter signs. The official ones are black

metal plates clamped to lamp posts, like street signs. They have a big

white letter “S,” and underneath in small letters the word “Shelter”

and a white arrow pointing to the building in front of which the sign

is affixed. Each sign has a little V-shaped roof over it to keep the

dim night-light from shining upward.

Every block has a dozen signs of white paper, pasted on building walls,

saying “Shelter Here During Business Hours” or “Shelter for Fifty

Persons after 5 P.M.” A shelter is anything that protects you. It may

be an underground restaurant, a store basement, a bank vault.

I know buildings in London that go six stories underground. When the

banshee wails in London’s West End you wouldn’t have to run fifty yards

in any direction to find a shelter.

Other signs, in yellow and black, say “To the Trenches.” They point the

way to shelters dug underneath small downtown parks such as Leicester

Square. Every park and open space in London’s West End has a newly

built catacomb underneath.

Then there are surface shelters. You see these everywhere. They are

simply long, windowless, flat-topped sheds, about 8 feet high and

10 feet wide, stretching for a block or more. They are built of a

light-tan brick and are divided into sections, each of which will hold

about fifty persons. Some of them are built right down the middle

of wide streets. Others are on sidewalks, up against the buildings,

leaving only a couple of feet of sidewalk room.

There are also signs with arrows pointing to first-aid posts and fire

substations.

All over London, in little parks and areaways and alleys there are

tanks of water for fire-fighting. Barrels and buckets of sand, for

throwing on incendiary bombs, small pumps and auxiliary fire apparatus

are scattered everywhere. Even in the halls of my hotel.

A colossal amount of construction and repair work is going on all over

London. Thirty-five thousand men are engaged in cleaning up the rubble

of bombed buildings. Other scores of thousands work on the streets and

under them on the maze of utility pipes and wires. Thousands more dig,

build and hammer day and night, including Sundays, making more deep

shelters, bricking up window openings, throwing up auxiliary walls.

Many a building has a brick wall standing in the middle of the sidewalk

about three feet in front of its entrance, with a door in the middle.

A few have built brick walls that entirely blanket their store fronts.

And in some of London’s most important buildings workmen today are

bricking up every window opening, leaving only one little gunhole in

the center. This is for the invasion, if it ever comes and if it gets

this far. Of course nobody believes that it will get this far, but they

are taking no chances. They are making ready to fight in every street,

behind every wall, out of every window, if it must come to that.

Around some Government buildings there are nasty-looking mazes of

barbed wire. Some of the public statues are completely buried under

mounds of sandbags, but most of them aren’t.

Piles of sandbags buttress the foundations of thousands of stores.

Many of these sandbag piles look ragged and ratty now, for the bags

have sprung leaks from long exposure to the weather, and sand trickles

out of them. Many of them, for that matter, have been stabbed by fire

fighters getting sand to put out incendiary bombs.

Army cars run about the streets. Huge, streamlined buses, camouflaged

with a dull brown paint, come to town with soldiers on leave. You could

hardly count the pedestrians in one block who are in uniform. At the

cheaper restaurants the checkroom has more rifles than umbrellas.

Occasionally in some open space you see a flat sheet of brass-colored

metal on top of a waist-high post. It looks something like a sun dial.

This is a gas detector. If gas ever comes, this metal will change color.

Great parks are all dug up with trenches and mounds of dirt to keep

enemy planes from landing. St. James’s Park has its honorable bomb

craters, and its below-ground shelters, and even its barbed wire.

Occasionally you see a big gun on a rooftop.

All this panorama is in addition to the wreckage you see on every side.

Yes, London is a martial city. You can hardly conceive of Denver or

Indianapolis looking like it. And yet people are so accustomed to it

now that they seem hardly to notice anything different from normal.

Nobody, unless he is brand-new here, stops to look at bomb damage.

Londoners seem barely aware of the barbed wire, the dugouts, the

shelter signs. And I found that I, too, after a few days, could walk

block after block without particularly noticing any of these things.

It is a new type of life; and that life has now become, through months

of living with it, the normal life.

_4. ROUGHING IT_

_London,

January, 1941_

Some very wrong things were told me in America about the way I would

have to live in London.

I was told that even in the best hotels you could get hot water only

one day a week; that you couldn’t get laundry done, so you would have

to throw away your soiled shirts and buy new ones; that you couldn’t

buy any new ones; that there would be no decent hotel rooms; that you

could get only one egg a week, and no tea; that food was so scarce

it would be wise to bring concentrated food tablets and beef bouillon

cubes.

Well, you ought to see where I’m staying. My room is the last word in

good taste. It is completely modern and comfortable. There are deep

chairs, and a bed that is a dream. I have two telephones, and a waiter,

maid and valet who come when I ring. My bathroom is as big as an

ordinary room, and the water is scalding hot twenty-four hours a day.

Above all, the radiator gives off real heat. I’m as warm as I would be

at home.

On my first morning here I asked if it would be possible to get an egg

for breakfast. I not only got an egg--they brought me two eggs, ham,

toast, jam and coffee, and they’ve been bringing the same thing every

morning. Honestly, I feel ashamed to eat it. Of course only a tiny

portion of London’s population is living like this. My circumstances do

not give anything like a true picture of how England is living today.

But my life now is at least a true picture of how it is possible to

live in London if you pay the price. And the price I pay the hotel is

$6 a day, which includes breakfast.

All this makes it hard to realize a war is actually going on. But then,

there are things around the hotel that remind you.

Over the big windows of my room, looking out onto the Strand, hang

thick, heavily padded curtains. On the street side these are black; on

the room side, brown satin. Instead of being an unsightly makeshift,

they are beautiful. Hanging on them is a card warning me not to open

the curtains during the blackout under any circumstances. I was so

apprehensive about doing something I shouldn’t that I slept all that

first night without opening a window. I slept soundly, too, but

naturally I was groggy in the morning. So I asked a clerk what to do

about ventilation at night. He said, “Why, as soon as you turn out the

lights, go and open the curtains and the window too. It’s all right

just so you don’t show a light during the night.”

So you see I’m slow to catch on, but I’d rather be slow than dead.

The hotel’s big dining room has been moved to a lower floor, the

better to keep away from the bombs. Here the waiters are all in formal

clothes, an orchestra plays, and bellboys hurry about calling people to

the telephone. You’d hardly know there was a war except that half the

hats in the checkroom are tin hats, half the diners are in uniform, and

hanging from the great center chandelier is an old-fashioned kerosene

lantern, just in case.

On each table stands a handsomely printed card which says: “This room

is provided with special protection from blast and splinters. The inner

wall is 14 inches thick. The outer wall, five feet distant, is nine

inches thick. The brick joints in each wall are strengthened with steel

mesh, and the two walls support each other by 16 connecting steel rods.

There are nine floors, of steel construction, above this room. The

air-raid shelter is immediately below.”

But about those other warnings I had before leaving America. I have

sent out my laundry and my coat to be cleaned, and they will be back

tomorrow. They’d be back this evening if I wanted to pay extra.

As for shirts, I could buy any number of them, and heavy underwear,

socks, suits, coats and everything else any human being could think of

to wrap around his body or hang upon it. In fact, the store windows are

so entrancing that I’m buying sweaters and coats and things I don’t

need at all, just because they are so good-looking.

And about the concentrated food pills. Well, I haven’t wanted anything

to eat yet that I couldn’t get, except enough sugar.

I have heard that paper is running short, but yesterday I bought

500 sheets of the same kind of writing paper I use at home, and at

two-thirds the usual price.

Lastly, about those beef cubes I should have brought. Apparently the

national drink in England is a beef extract called Bovril, which is

advertised everywhere, like Coca Cola at home. Yesterday I went into a

snack bar for some lunch. I asked the waitress just what this Bovril

stuff was, and in a cockney accent that would lay you in the aisle she

said:

“Why sir, it’s beef juice and it’s wonderful for you on cold days

like this. It’s expensive, but it’s body-buildin’, sir, it’s very

body-buildin’.”

So I had a cup. It cost five cents, and you just ought to see my body

being built.

_5. WHOOO-ISSSHHH!_

_London,

January, 1941_

Although I’ve had my big night of fire and plenty of bombs too, I have

not yet achieved any intimate acquaintance with a bomb. And I’m quite

willing to have the introduction filed under “things pending.”

I’ve heard plenty of bombs explode at a distance, and I’ve even felt

the building I was in shake, but I have yet to go through that horrible

experience of hearing a bomb whistling right down toward me. Just the

same, I’ve had this weak old heart stopped once. It didn’t happen on

our big night of fires. It happened before that.

During your first few days in London you are all at sea. You are tense

and jumpy and expectant, waiting and wondering how you will feel when

you get your first bad scare. Well, one night I was awakened by the

guns about 2 A.M. They kept firing off and on for about an hour, and

then stopped. London was black and silent. There was no sound of any

kind anywhere. I just lay in the bed staring at nothing.

And then there was a small, muffled thud in the distance. I ducked

under the covers and waited for an explosion. But it never came.

Just that single ghostly “whooo-isshhh” and thud in the darkness, and

then hours of silence. It took me a good while to get to sleep again.

The next morning I described it to a friend and asked what on earth it

was, or whether I was just hearing things. And he said, “Why, no; that

was a piece of falling shrapnel.”

* * * * *

I suppose there isn’t an American newspaperman in London who lived

through the terrifying raids of August and September, 1940, who has not

been under the bed at least twice when the bombs were whistling and

dropping all around.

Everyone I have talked to, without exception, says it’s not so bad if

you’re with somebody, but you have an absolute horror of being alone.

Also, believe it or not, there is a general horror of being caught in

the toilet or in the bathtub.

I was alone in my room the first night I actually heard German planes

overhead. I was sitting at a desk writing when I heard the great

drone of the motors. For several seconds it didn’t sink into my

consciousness that they were not peaceful motors such as I might hear

over Washington or Los Angeles, but were German motors over London. And

then, I remember, I was furious because not a single antiaircraft gun

was firing.

“Good Lord!” I thought. “They’re right over the hotel. I can hear them

even with the windows shut. Why don’t those guys with the guns do

something?”

A minute or so later the guns did start.

The planes were probably a great deal higher than I thought. But I

could still almost swear they were no more than three or four thousand

feet up. If they dropped any bombs, though, none of them fell near us.

The sound of the motors faded out, but intermittent firing went on for

an hour. Then once again I heard planes overhead.

I couldn’t keep my mind on my writing. I sat on the edge of the chair,

ready to jump down behind the bed if I heard a bomb whistling. But the

funniest thing, when I look back on it, is to remember going around

the room straightening up everything. I remember laying out on the

desk coins and cigarettes and matches and my door key and knife, all

in a meticulous row. I had just bought ten packs of cigarettes, and

I stacked these neatly. All the letters on the desk I arranged in

regimented stacks. I put a flashlight and a jar of Vick’s salve in a

perfect line with the letters and cigarettes.

At the time I didn’t even know I was doing it. It was just a nervous

outlet of some kind. When I finally went to bed I suddenly realized

what I’d been doing, and laughed at myself.

* * * * *

This hotel has one of the finest basement shelters in London, but none

of the American newspapermen who stop at the hotel ever sleeps in the

shelter. I haven’t slept there yet either. In fact, I find lots of

Londoners who prefer to stay in their own beds.

The other day we went out to look at some new bomb damage a couple of

miles away. The destruction was ghastly. As we stood and looked, one

newspaper veteran of the Battle of Britain said:

“You see, you never know where it’s going to hit, and neither does the

guy six miles up there in the dark who lets it loose. Just think, if

he pressed the trigger at the particular time that would get you, what

would be the use of hiding? The chances of any certain bomb having your

number on it are very slim, but if it has, running and ducking won’t

help.”

As another newspaperman said, “Your best protection is the law of

averages.”

_6. SOUNDS AND SIGHTS_

_London,

January, 1941_

Before leaving the United States I told friends that one of the things

I wanted to do over here was to try to describe what the air-raid

sirens sound like.

Well, I will try to do it. They don’t sound quite like a fire-engine

siren, although they’re on the same principle. The tone has more of the

old-fashioned automobile Klaxon in it, except that at the same time,

instead of being harsh or squawky, it has an almost musical quality.

The siren sounds one minute for an alert, two minutes for the all

clear. On an alert, the sound goes from a low to a high pitch, up and

down every few seconds. The result is, if you aren’t close to it, it

sounds much like a train whistling for a crossing--except that it just

keeps on whistling for one crossing after another.

The sirens are scattered all over London. They are roughly fifteen

blocks apart. An alert usually starts in the south part of London. You

can hear the sirens to the south of you, then all around you, and then

beyond to the north. It is like a series of great sound waves washing

over the city. These waves overlap; and the time from the moment you

hear the first one until the last one within range of your ears is

silent may not be more than four minutes.

If you’re indoors, the sirens do not seem loud. In fact, during my

first few days here I didn’t hear them half the time. But when your ear

gets attuned to them, you know it the second they start. My hotel isn’t

close enough to any sirens for them to be annoying, however, or to wake

me up if I’m asleep.

I had wondered whether the sirens kept going throughout a raid. They

don’t. They sound the warning and then are silent until the all

clear--and the silent interval may be anywhere from ten minutes to all

night. The all clear is announced by the same sirens, but instead of

going up and down they go steadily for two minutes in the same tone.

To me, the sirens do not sound fiendish, or even weird. I think they’re

sort of pretty.

The other night when the all clear sounded I lay on the bed listening.

You could hear half a dozen sirens going at once, on exactly the

same pitch. The combined whirring of these great horns out there in

the still darkness gave off a sort of musical pulsation. In fact, it

sounded exactly like the lonely singing of telephone wires on a bitter

cold night in the prairies of the Middle West.

* * * * *

Now, what do the guns sound like?

Well, they sound like thunder in a violent electrical storm. When they

are very close they sound as though lightning were striking within a

quarter of a mile. They shake the floor and rattle the windows. Then

as other guns start up, farther and farther away across the city, they

sound like thunder traveling away from you.

In reading about the terrific noise of the sirens and guns in the great

raids of September, 1940, I often wondered just how close you would be

to the nearest antiaircraft gun. Well, they are all around you. The

farthest one might be only a mile from you.

People living in the neighborhood of one of these guns come to have a

possessive feeling about it. They call it “my gun,” and tell stories

about it to their friends. And they get quite annoyed if it’s moved

away.

In these last few weeks London has, with some outstanding exceptions,

been fairly quiet, while the Germans have been giving one-night blitzes

to other English cities. But a great many of the raiders pass right

over London, terrifically high, on their way north.

Our sirens sound a warning, apparently when the Germans cross the

coastline, usually about six o’clock in the evening. Then about fifteen

minutes later, our guns start up. They shoot sporadically for an hour

or so, and then all is quiet. Sometimes the all clear is sounded at

this point, but more often not. For usually there is shooting again

around 11 P.M. and 2 A.M., and the all clear ordinarily sounds about

three o’clock.

The guns naturally waken you and keep you awake. But more often than

not I am sound asleep when the all clear tells besieged London that it

can relax once more.

You’ve read about the barrage balloons over London. Their purpose, as

you know, is to keep German fliers high, from fear of running into them.

At night they are floated into the sky at the end of thin steel cables.

The balloons are silver-colored and shaped like very fat sausages; and

they have pudgy stabilizing fins at one end that make them look like

Walt Disney elephants with sour but coy faces.

I had supposed that these balloon cables made a great wall around

London, with the balloons themselves forming the top of this wall. But

that isn’t the way at all. Instead of making a border they run up all

over London, like candles on an eighty-year-old’s birthday cake.

When the weather is clear you can look up and see a couple of dozen of

them from any spot. They are floating at various altitudes, seemingly

about half a mile apart, and not in line. They’re just scattered up

there, and they look more like a ceiling than a wall.

As proof of how little the average person looks toward the sky, I have

thought to look at the balloons only two or three times since coming

here, and friends of mine say they haven’t noticed them for weeks.

Suppose, I asked, a German plane should run into a balloon cable

and cut it in two. Englishmen can’t do the old Hindu rope trick; so

consequently all those miles of free cable up in the sky would have to

come down. What happens then?

Well, it comes down all right, and plenty happens. The cable folds and

wraps itself around buildings all over its particular section of town.

This doesn’t happen often, but when it does I would just as soon be

elsewhere.

* * * * *

On New Year’s Day I took a long walk through Hyde Park and Kensington

Gardens. Believe it or not, there amid the trenches and the bomb

craters and in the raw, cold weather was a whole garden of red and

yellow roses in bloom.

* * * * *

A single bombing is referred to in London, with traditional British

reserve, as an “incident.” If you ask a bobby where that big one went

off last night he is apt to say, “Two blocks ahead, a block to the

left, turn right, and you will be at the scene of the incident.”

When you get there, the “incident” will likely turn out to be half a

block merely blown all to hell.

The other day we saw a fire engine dashing madly down the street.

There had been no alert, and no enemy planes were over the city. The

engine was simply going to an ordinary old-fashioned fire. It seemed

absolutely incongruous. We had forgotten that fires had been starting

without bombs for centuries, and that fire engines had been running to

them in peacetime for generations.

* * * * *

Antiaircraft guns, they tell me, can propel a shell upward for better

than four miles. The shells are set to explode at a given altitude;

or rather, a given number of seconds after leaving the gun. When they

explode they make a great flash, and fragments are thrown over a radius

of several hundred yards. Thus they don’t have to get a direct hit on a

plane, which would be more accidental than anything else. If they just

get somewhere near him the explosion will sure make him jump.

But what goes up must come down. The falling pieces of these exploded

shells are shrapnel. And if you get hit by a small piece of steel that

has fallen four miles you are going to get hurt. Hence the tin hat or

steel helmet.

Every man in uniform carries a steel helmet and a gas mask on a strap

over his shoulder. Even when on leave, men in the services are obliged

to carry them constantly. The rule is so strict that if a soldier

gets hit by shrapnel when not wearing his tin hat, then the injury is

considered a self-inflicted wound and he is disciplined accordingly.

But the people of London themselves have relaxed. Today on the streets

you don’t see one civilian in five hundred carrying either a tin hat or

a gas mask. In fact, real steel helmets are all gone. It is impossible

to buy one. But the stores are selling helmets made of a heavy black

fiber composition. They say these work just about as well as the tin

ones. I bought one the other day for three dollars, and within four

hours I had forgotten it and left it somewhere. So now I either have

to shell out another three bucks, or run the chance of going around

covered with self-inflicted wounds. I can’t decide what to do.

_7. BLINDFOLDED IN SAHARA_

_London,

January, 1941_

Now the days are getting longer, and the people of London count the few

precious minutes of added daylight each day as though they were pearls.

For truly the blackout is a heavy and insidious thing. It gradually

gets on your nerves until you feel as if you must throw it aside and

let the light out into the night. Modern man is not attuned to natural

darkness.

Every day the papers publish the exact minute for blacking out. When

I first came to London the nights were at their very longest. The

blackout went on as early as 5:19 P.M. and didn’t end until 8:35 in the

morning. That’s more than fifteen hours of blackness.

It is a finable offense to show a light from a window during the

blackout. You don’t even dare to light a cigarette in the street.

One morning a friend of mine, who is stopping in the same hotel, opened

his curtains at 8:25. His watch was fast and he didn’t know it. In just

one minute a plane spotter on a nearby roof had sent a man to knock on

his door and suggest that he be more careful in the future.

Every afternoon about four a maid comes to my room and asks if she

may “black out now.” But we have made an arrangement for me to take

advantage of the outdoor light as long as possible, and then close the

curtains myself about five o’clock.

* * * * *

Some friends of mine live in an apartment. Just before I came here

London had a hot and heavy night, with incendiary and high-explosive

bombs falling over the entire city. Apparently my friends were showing

a little light, for a warden came and warned them. And not a minute

after he had left, two or three bombs dropped within a block or so.

The warden came back and said: “Now you see? The Germans saw your

light. That’s why we’re getting these bombs here now.”

Of course he really didn’t think that, but it made a good joke. The

best “joke,” however, was that when the warden continued his rounds he

discovered that those two bombs he was talking about had blown his own

house to smithereens.

* * * * *

A few nights ago a warden knocked on my door and said a plane spotter

across the street had seen a light in my window. The warden inspected

the curtains and said they were perfectly all right. But about two

hours later he was back, saying the spotter still reported a light

from my window.

We finally figured out that a desk light on my writing table was

shining up toward the top of the curtains, and that a little light was

seeping through. So I moved the table to the back of the room, and the

next day the hotel put a heavy auxiliary hood across the top of the

window, around the regular blackout curtains. There have been no more

complaints.

* * * * *

London decided to keep daylight-saving time all winter. That puts

us six hours ahead of New York, and eight hours ahead of Denver. It

seems a little odd to think, when getting up in the morning, that in

Albuquerque it is the night before and my friends there are just going

to bed (or at least should be if they’re leading a clean, righteous

life like me).

* * * * *

Everybody has read thousands of words about the blackout, but you

cannot know what it’s like unless you’ve been in it.

There is a slight reflected glow on the streets from the lights of

automobiles and buses, when any of these happen to be passing. But if

no such vehicle is near, you simply have to feel your way with your

feet.

When I pull my curtains and open the window before going to bed, and

look out upon London, I can see no more than if I were standing in

the middle of the Sahara Desert on the darkest night of the year,

blindfolded and with my eyes shut. Looking down from my sixth-story

window, I can’t see a single pin point of light anywhere.

The curbs in London are painted white, which makes walking a little

easier. All light poles and safety-zone posts are painted black with

white rings. The fenders of cars used at night are tipped with white.

All moving vehicles carry lights, but they are mere pin points.

Pedestrians are permitted to use flashlights--called “torches”

here--provided these are small, or shaded, and aren’t pointed upward. I

had been told back home that torches and batteries could no longer be

bought in London, but they can. The price of batteries has been fixed

by the government at a maximum of twelve cents.

Traffic lights are hooded from above, and the glass itself is painted

a solid black except for a little cross in the middle. This is the

tiniest of slits, yet from two or three blocks away it looks like a

full green or red light.

People no longer motion for a taxi at night--it would be no use. They

just stand on the curb and yell. At midnight, if I lean out of my

window I can see no more than if I were blind, but I can hear people

all up and down the street yelling for taxis at the top of their lungs.

It’s miraculous the way taxis get about at night. When you get into one

the driver clips off at twenty-five miles an hour and just keeps on

going, ramming forward into nothingness.

I have achieved a new high in something or other for myself. The other

night I found the correct bus in the dark, rode three miles into the

night, felt my way across a street into a strange apartment house and

got clear up to the apartment of a friend of mine. It made me feel so

wonderful I took a taxi home.

_IV. THE HEROES ARE ALL THE PEOPLE_

_1. IT’S ALL TRUE_

_London,

January, 1941_

You have all read about London’s amazing ability to take it, and about

the almost annoying calm of Englishmen in the face of Hitler’s bombs.

Well, I am not going to dwell on this, since it has been much written

about already. But I just want to confirm that what you have read in

this connection is all true. I got it the very minute I stepped off the

plane from Lisbon, and I’ve been getting it ever since.

You get it in the attitude of people, you get it in the casual way

common folks talk, you get it just by looking around and seeing people

going about their business.

The day before Christmas a hotel maid said, “I’ll never forgive that

old Hitler if he gives us a blitz on Christmas Day.” That’s typical

British conversation. The attitude of the people is not one of bravado.

It is no self-injection of “Do or die for dear old Siwash.” It isn’t

flag-waving, or our own sometimes silly brand of patriotism. In fact,

I’ve never seen or heard the word patriotism since coming here.

No, it is none of these. It is simply a quaint old British idea that

nobody is going to push them around with any lasting success.

There are millions of people in this world who fear that England may

eventually lose this war. Such an ending is inconceivable to the

British.

* * * * *

The whole spirit of this war is different from that of the first World

War. Over here there doesn’t seem to be the pumped-up, hysterical

hatred that we had for Germany in the World War. I’ve heard Germans

referred to as “the Boche” only once in London.

You don’t hear atrocity stories told around here about the Germans.

You don’t hear people making outlandish remarks. You no longer hear

stories about Hitler being insane and a pervert. In fact, I’ve heard

him referred to several times as a mighty smart man who has made very

few mistakes. This isn’t spoken sympathetically, or by pro-Nazis, but

by common Englishmen willing to give the devil his due.

They say Hitler has made only one big mistake so far, and that was by

starting the war in the first place.

* * * * *

And the spirit of bravery in the face of death is different in

this war too. You all remember, or at least have read about, the

eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow-we-die spirit of soldiers on

leave in the first World War. It was fatalistic, and dramatic, and

what-the-hell. It was champagne and girls and on with the dance while

there’s still time.

That’s not true in this war. There is night life in London, but not

that daredevil kind of night life. People dance quietly. Late parties

are rare. Drunkenness is not common. Soldiers on leave act much like

civilians in peacetime. For in this war it isn’t the soldiers who may

die tomorrow--it’s the people.

When the King goes out to inspect his heroes, they aren’t long lines of

straight-standing men in khaki with polished buttons. They are grimy

firemen and wardens in blue overalls, so tired they can’t even stand up

straight for the King.

When just ordinary people at home may die tomorrow, heroics go out the

window.

People aren’t filled with a madly sweet compulsion to crowd a lifetime

of fun into their few remaining hours. No, they are too busy, too poor,

too tired, and too placidly determined to win by sticking it out.

It’s a funny war. As someone remarked, the front-line trenches are four

miles straight up above London, and the heroes are all the people.

* * * * *

It is true that all eyes in England look toward America.

My American accent alone is a key to unlock almost any door in

London--except the doors of the extreme upper classes, of course.

And just as American public opinion about the war changes gradually,

so I believe the British feeling about the possibility of our entering

the war is changing. A few months ago, they say, all England was rabid

for America to come in. But now many people are looking beyond the mere

emotional effect of our entrance. Many feel that if we came in, all our

production would be kept at home and England would get less than she is

getting now. About a third of the people I’ve discussed the matter with

feel that way. But almost without exception they do feel that we should

furnish cargo ships and convoy them with our warships.

* * * * *

Today every London conversation eventually switches around to “He’s up

to something. What do you think it is?” Nine times out of ten Hitler

is referred to as “he” rather than by name. Even the newspapers do it

sometimes.

Something is being cooked up--everybody is sure of that. Most people

think he will attempt an invasion before spring. Many think he will

unwind an aerial blitz over London this month that will make the

September bombings seem tame.

Any night he may start it. Any night people expect it. And they are

ready. They feel that Hitler has not got anything that they, the

ordinary people, can’t take.

And after being here with them for a few weeks I believe they are right.

_2. THE CUPBOARD’S NOT BARE_

_London,

January, 1941_

Food isn’t a very romantic subject. You’ve never heard of a medal being

presented to a war hero because he lived on one meal a day. The girls

don’t flock around the English farmer who makes two potatoes grow where

only one grew before. But believe me, food in this war is only a jump

or two behind planes and big guns in importance.

And as each month passes, the food problem will become increasingly

vital to both sides. Ultimately, perhaps years from now, it may be that

food will decide who is to win this war.

It is too early yet for any food shortage to begin making deep marks on

the warring populations. They say food is still plentiful in Germany,

and I know that England is in good shape. That is obvious to anybody

who just eats around.

There is rationing, of course. Prices are high, and some things are

so scarce they have almost ceased to exist. But as to the basic things

that are needed to keep body and soul together, the situation in London

hasn’t reached even dead seriousness.

* * * * *

“Dispersal” is becoming more and more the theme of England in

wartime--dispersal of troops, of factories, of children, of food. The

bombings have brought that about. Scatter every vital thing all over

England in tiny units and small groups--that’s the keynote. Today only

80,000 of London’s one million children are left in the city. They are

all over England.

They tell me that the soldiers, with some exceptions, eat and sleep

in groups no larger than thirty. Army trucks are always parked a good

fifty yards apart so a single bomb won’t get more than one of them.

Factories have branches everywhere. And as for food, it is stored in

thousands of nooks and crannies all over Great Britain.

There are stocks of food in empty garages, in old meeting halls, in

unused theaters, police stations, barns, cellars. No one-night blitz,

no matter how terrific, is going to wipe out any notable portion of

Britain’s stored food.

And speaking of dispersal, the Ministry of Food keeps only a skeleton

staff of 250 in London. The bulk of the ministry’s staff of about 2500

are in the country.

England began working out a wartime food-control plan four years before

the war started. It even had all the ration books printed and waiting

months before the war.

The first rationing was not put into effect until four months after the

war started--that is, in January, 1940. Bacon, butter and sugar were

the first items dealt with.

When a certain food is rationed, that does not necessarily mean the

country is running short of it. It means that the government considers

this particular food to be essential, and so it begins rationing to

conserve a surplus for the far future. Also, many things are rationed

to insure an equal distribution--so the rich people won’t eat up all

the things the poor couldn’t afford if there were no such controls.

Today in England it is almost impossible to get onions, raisins, eggs,

lemons or cheeses. Yet none of these things is rationed, because the

government considers them nonessential to sturdy, healthy living. It is

ready to let them go out of existence for the duration.

Today rationing applies to the following items in the following ways:

BACON AND HAM--Four ounces a week per person. (Peacetime consumption

averaged 5.6 ounces.)

BUTTER--Two ounces of butter and four ounces of margarine a week.

(Before the war, people averaged 7 ounces of butter.)

SUGAR--Eight ounces a week. (Consumption has been cut more than half;

it used to be 17 ounces on the average.)

TEA--Two ounces. (Prewar consumption was 2.9 ounces.) But tea is not

really short in England, as you can get it in any restaurant and nearly

every grocery. Consumption is down only about one-fourth.

MEAT--The rationing of meat is based on price rather than on weight,

because of the many qualities available. People today are allowed to

buy one shilling tenpence--about 37 cents--worth of meat per person per

week. This means about two pounds of fair beef. Fowl is not rationed,

and there is a good supply.

As an example of how rapidly things change, since I wrote the above,

two days ago, the weekly meat allowance has dropped to 30 cents’ worth;

and pork liver, kidney, heart and sweetbreads have been added to the

rationed list.

The government makes mistakes that cause some confusion, as all

governments do. For example, in dealing with rabbits the government

set a maximum price for the retailers but none for wholesalers. As a

result, the grocerymen must pay 17 cents a pound for rabbits but they

dare not charge their customers more than 15 cents. The upshot is that

plenty of rabbits are wasting away in warehouses.

The cut in sugar is probably what pains the average Englishman most.

The English people have been used to tremendous quantities of sugar,

probably a great deal more than was good for them. Doctors think this

cutting of sugar consumption in half will be a fine thing for the

national blood pressure.

The stores are nearly sold out of candy. I went to one today which had

just one box of candy left. Chocolates run from 50 cents to $1 a pound,

and they’re not very good either. Many of the pieces are filled with

dry cake.

When you eat in restaurants, the finest places give you two small cubes

of sugar with each cup of coffee; the medium-priced and cheap places

only one. And I don’t like coffee with one cube of sugar.

Back in Lisbon I kept slipping cubes of sugar into my pocket from the

hotel table, and I arrived here with about twenty. So for a while I had

an extra one to drop in each cup of coffee, but they’re all gone now.

If I were making this trip over again I would throw away my shirts and

bring three pounds of sugar.

* * * * *

There are approximately forty-six million people in the United Kingdom,

so England prints fifty million of her food-ration books. For everybody

must have one.

In the past, new books have been mailed out every six months. Starting

in July, 1941, the books will be good for one year. Also, instead of

tearing out coupons, the grocer will merely cancel them with a stamp.

People the world over love to figure out stupendous statistics, and the

Food Ministry is no exception. It has estimated that these changes will

save a thousand tons of paper and will dispense with the handling of

14,500,000,000 coupons a year.

Each member of a family, including each child, gets a ration book. Then

the housewife goes to her favorite grocer and registers. She isn’t

allowed to change grocers except at six-month intervals, unless she

moves. And she can trade only where she is registered.

Although I carry a ration book I couldn’t buy anything on it unless I

first registered at a store. Even then, if I wanted something scarce,

such as oranges, eggs or onions, they wouldn’t sell me any because of

my not being an old customer.

Rationing is a complex affair. If you eat at home you can buy only

so much a week. Yet you can go to a restaurant and get all you want,

without even showing your ration book.

The hotels do their buying in big lots and can get choice things, but

they, too, are rationed. Today they are allowed only 50 per cent of the

bacon and ham they used last May. In January, 1941, they are getting

less than half the meat they used in January, 1940; and now that is

being cut still further.

They are allowed to give each diner only one-fourth of an ounce of

butter and margarine (only one-twelfth of an ounce of this can be real

butter), and they will serve you only one meat course.

If you live in a hotel you can stay for five days without a ration

book. After that, they take the coupons from the book at the end of

each week.

You can eat in public places for practically any price you care to pay.

At our hotel it runs around two dollars for dinner, so I eat elsewhere.

Dinner at Simpson’s, with soup and dessert, will cost better than

a dollar and a half, yet the other night at one of Lyons’ numerous

“Corner Houses” we had a good enough dinner, with music and everything,

for 50 cents. The place was packed with soldiers and their girls, and I

don’t mean officers.

Only the more expensive places give you napkins now. At night, eating

places are rather infrequent, so you almost have to eat at whatever

place is handy.

You hardly ever see real butter in the restaurants. They serve

margarine instead. At the Food Ministry it’s pronounced with a hard

“g,” as in Margaret. It’s all right, too. The government now requires

that all margarine be injected with vitamins “A” and “D,” and they say

it has all the food qualities of real butter.

Also, you never see real cream. What you get is a ghostly white mixture

of vegetable oils. It’s thicker than cream and it has the oily texture

of mayonnaise, but I can swear that it isn’t bad at all.

As cargo space in English ships grows more and more precious, the

importation of foods is increasingly restricted. Anything bulky is

cut out. They have now stopped importing any fruit whatever, except

oranges. Even canned fruits have been stopped. To take the place of

fruit in diets, the government is encouraging Englishmen to eat more

vegetables and grow more vegetables.

* * * * *