On Hold – A Vivid Account of London Burning in the Blitz

In June-July 1940, the Luftwaffe targeted Royal Air Force airfields for destruction in preparation for a German invasion of Britain. Failing to gain air superiority, invasion plans were put on hold, and Hitler determined to demoralize the population and force the British to come to terms.

On September 7, he initiated the Blitz – a period of intense bombing of London and other cities that continued until May 1941. For the following months, London was bombed either during the day or at night; fires consumed many portions of the city. Residents sought shelter wherever they could find it, many fleeing to the Underground stations during the night. Edward R. Murrow reported this to a riveted America in broadcasts introduced with the phrase, “This is London.”

The Blitz cost the lives of more than 43,000 civilians, and another 139,000 were injured. But it was a failure, as the British put up a determined resistance. This is the living experience of the Blitz, movingly related in a series of letters by Brigadier Frederick Dickins, a senior official with the Ministry of Economic Warfare.

Here are a few exerpts.

September 29, 1940: “I feel I really must write you a short description of this new City of London – in very truth a City of Dreadful Night, with death hovering on droning wings over it; but our people are undismayed. I have always been proud, very proud, of belonging to the English race. I never thought I would have reason to be as proud as I am. One and all, rich and poor, man and woman, they have come up to scratch and play their appointed parts in contempt of all danger, dismay, and personal sorrow. Beloved homes are destroyed, beloved people are mangled and pulped, old, cherished landmarks crumbled into masses of rubble, blackened beam, and twisted girder Ð but everywhere you see the patient people, firm, set-faced, determined, getting to their daily task I spite of every difficulty and danger, imperturbable, but angry, bewildered, but undismayed.

"Trains and buses are crowded, roads are blocked with the debris of collapsed homes, the office that was there yesterday is gone today; nights, night after night, spent in the shelters, in tubes, and in basements, the whole night long hideous with the roar of anti-aircraft guns, with the crash of bombs, the sinister rush, and hiss, and whistle of the latter sounding like some dread gale from hell Ð tired, red-eyed, dirty, the Londoners carry on with their job, confident that in the end, dawn will come…From the poorer districts, where the terror has been worst, pour no frightened unmanageable mob of panicked people. Orderly, soberly, frightened, with even jest and song, they do what they are told and go where they are told. The very children are undismayed…

"When dusk falls, you wait Ð the siren sound their mournful wail Ð distant sounds of gun-fire!!! Crunch of bombs, then the sinister, uneven drone of enemy planes, coming nearer and nearer, over you, all around you Ð when, where will the next bomb fall? The planes always seem to be just over you. Then the heartening, but somewhat devastating crash of the anti-aircraft guns, and shortly the drone fades away, and you know that the planes have been driven away. But sometimes there comes a deafening crash, and the house shakes – sometimes a rising hiss and a rushing noise, and perhaps a horrible whistling – that must be coming close – but it may be half a mile away. Or does it fall close, and you wonder how the old house remains standing.

"If…you look out from your bedroom window, you see the horizon and the clouds lit up by unending flashes, with here and there the red and sinister glow of fire; and all the time the rumble and thud and bang of guns, shells, and bombs. In the sky, if it be starlight, as are most nights now, you see strange new yellow stars; yellow, red, and white, that give a flicker and are gone – the defense of London…Oxford Street Ð Yes. But where are the big shops? Where is Lewis’s? A few gaunt walls and blackened rubble. Madame Tussaud’s bears a faade almost untouched, but behind there is nothing Ð just nothing but a mound of rubble. The little tobacconist I patronized close here Ð just gone Ð vanished. Two hundred yards from my hotel, in the Cromwell Road, stands a shell; but the inside of the house is just gone Ð and the people with it…I was on my building on the first great night attack; and I saw the black silhouette of St. Paul’s and the Tower Bridge against a furnace, a reddened sky Ð a grim, sinister, and frightening sight. All around I could see most of London Ð hell was let loose Ð fires here, fires there, flashes, crashes, from the Kent Hills to…Hampstead. It really was heartstopping, and I knew fear. But next day we were all at work again Ð all, that is, save 400 dead and 2000 badly injured Ð whole streets of little homes made desolate. and heaps of blackened bricks for their graveyard.

December 30, 1940: “Every night my staff… young and old…girls who have been behind the counter in shops, men from stock broker’s offices, the common insignificant-looking clerks and working girls of the common insignificant London streets – they go at night…cooped up in darkened busses and trains, through the darkened street they go – not knowing and apparently not caring whether death will suddenly call them. And what do they go home to? A cellar – a shelter – a tube station. Next morning they come along again, all dolled up a lipsticked, trim and tidy, laughing and shouting, having taken perhaps two hours or more to go to work because the line has been bombed; perhaps their home has been bombed. More than once I have learned that Mrs. Smith’s home was totally destroyed the night before, that Mr. Smith has lost all he possesses…But I have not heard one word of complaint.

"I myself, in my hotel, was sitting just ten feet away from a 1,000 lb. which crashed from roof into cellar – it did not explode or I shall not be writing this. But from the damage it caused, you might have thought it had. I was only conscious of a shocked, stunned feeling – all in pitch darkness in a room full of asphyxiating dust. One waited- would the whole house collapse?” A “heart-stopping” narrative from what has come to be called Britain’s “finest hour.”