War's Worst Raid

Last week London lost the last traces of a sentimental old symbol--the Crystal Palace. A Victorian monster of iron and glass, surrounded by gardens full of melancholy statuary, the Palace had been since 1854 London's high-toned version of Coney Island. Thousands of contemporary Londoners had their first childhood outings there, listening to holy choirs, brass bands, evangelists; watching cricket, soccer, motorbike races; running through the gardens, boating on the pond. In World War I the grounds and building incongruously became H.M.S. Crystal Palace--i.e. a "training ship" for naval reservists.

In November 1936 most of the building, including one of the ugly twin towers, burned to the ground. But the North Tower remained. Recently the neighborhood began to think the Luftwaffe was using the tower as a landmark. The Supply Ministry also wanted its 840 tons of wrought and cast iron. So, one day last week, engineers packed 120 Ib. of gelignite against one side of the tower, touched it off, and watched this appendix of Victorian days topple.

Later that evening, which was bonny, clear-skied, and warm enough to discard topcoats, Hyde Park was lively with strollers and the Serpentine with boats, and a vendor at Marble Arch was briskly selling red rubber balls painted with the faces of Hitler and Mussolini. In Leicester Square crowds jammed the first anniversary showing of Gone With the Wind and the first week of Shaw's Major Barbara. On the radio, Sir Adrian Boult was conducting a memorial concert to Sir Hamilton Harty. Two hundred Harrod's employes carried home gas masks, after a gas test in the store. Freckled brown orchids sold at a half crown a bunch in Piccadilly, where the crowds window-shopped before late dinners or after big late teas in crowded Lyons' Corner Houses. Londoners were not liking the news from Libya and Greece, but were relaxing in the comfortable conviction that the war was receding from their doorstep.

When the alarm came, no one took it particularly seriously. Just another nuisance raid, most people thought. The Jerries zoomed over in waves, but no bombs seemed to drop for a long time. A few fire bombs began falling. People drove to watch fires for a lark.

Then the flares began to float down--long graceful chain flares, star flares, flaming onions, and Molotov chandeliers, which ripple down in long ribbons of fire. From all directions the planes began to dive-bomb, lower than usual, and more than usual. This, the citizenry suddenly realized, was a return visit for the big fire raid the R.A.F. had bestowed on Berlin's Unter den Linden the week before; this would be bad.

Wherever they were--on roofs dousing incendiaries, in basements trying to forget --Londoners could hear the terrible falling bombs, like ripping muslin at a distance, like nothing in the world but falling bombs at close quarters; and then the thuds. Some tried to read; most turned their radios off, because it was intolerable only ,to half hear the bomb each thought had his initials on it. Fire fighters and rescue workers at one flaming storehouse were not too busy to chuckle at the sign: "Store your furniture in our heated rooms." In the big hotels guests gathered in the lobbies, debutantes in negligees, duchesses in bedroom slippers and nightgowns, Lords of the Realm in rumpled felt bathrobes. In the Dorchester, painters went on with a redecorating job in the lobby.

The raid continued for eight hours, until 4:50 a.m. Everyone hurried to bed for a few hours of bottomless sleep before getting up to work.

London was defiantly gay the next morning. Huge crowds went into the streets, sightseeing. The women had on their cockiest spring hats, the men their brightest ties. Amid the shoveling of shattered glass and the pounding of hammers restoring shop fronts, were sounds of phonographs. Pubs did record business. But the gaiety was only to cover up the unprecedented horror.

The people knew that this was the worst raid of the whole war; the worst raid anywhere ever. They knew that about 600 planes had attacked and that the defenders had shot down only six. They knew that the casualties had been dreadful. They saw here an ambulance bumping along with two flat tires, only to stop and unload not the injured but some of the broken dead; there a clump of rescue workers pulling shape after nameless shape from the rubble. In almost every block, houses were down; in almost every house, windows were out.

Sir Christopher Wren's largest church, St. Andrew's, Holborn, was smashed, and this time St. Paul's Cathedral was squarely hit. Canon S. A. Alexander, who had been in the cathedral when it was hit, said: "I and several others were twizzled around by the blast." Treasures worth $4,000,000 were buried at Christies, where a jewelry auction was scheduled for the next day. On many a half-bombed house were scrawled huge chalk letters: BOMB BERLIN.

That night R.A.F. did. Two nights later the Luftwaffe came back at London. So, last week, was aggravated the futile, unmilitary, expensive, tragic process of trading eyes for eyes, teeth for teeth, and bombs for bombs. Unfortunately for London, it got much more than it gave. One thing some of the old folks, who through it all were still upset about the Crystal Palace, observed: "Evidently they didn't need the tower as a landmark."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.