Take note on:
1. Air raids
2. Strength of England’s Military
3. How life use to be
4. Damage in London
5. Affect on civilians
August 24th
London bombed for the first time. Many air raid warnings here. Incendary bomb fell on Epsom Common.
August 26th
Air raid warnings last night twice. Reigate badly bombed. Shelling from France. We shell back.
Wonderful epic in submarine Sealion damaged near enemy port. Only came up at night for repairs, reached home safely. Enemy boat went over here.
Started filling in my needlework for Josie Lawrence.
August 29th
Went to Cheam pictures to see Dark Victory last night - air raid warning in the middle. Stopped to see the finish, came out into a blaze of searchlights. Taken by warden to shelter. This was 9.30 p.m. We came out at 3.15 a.m. Bombs fell in Craddocks Avenue at end of Dorking Road, also Ashtead Park, soldier killed. Lovely day today no raids here but suppose they are waiting for tonight.
September 2nd
Air raids one after the other. Many on Ashtead not much damage. London bombed often, Berlin more often still - our planes are wonderful. Many brave and fine pilots doing their damnedest to win this war.
Machine gun just fired off in Dorking Road just outside our house. Made u[s] jump. waiting for all clear to go. Want to go to pictures at Cheam. Saw a parachutist yesterday. Had a lovely time at cricket at Ashtead. lovely game. Fine fielding. warning at breakfast this morning, Stopped to finish my work here. Then went to Ewell after all clear.
I wonder how the people are who have been bombed, I mean their houses gone. I can't imagine how sad I should feel, so lonely without this house and all it stands for. Perhaps what it stands for counts for more than what it is or what its value is. Shall we ever get back to previous times I wonder. The opera, days in town, the green line coaches - I haven't gone without yet, and even if I were without I've had such a grand time that thought alone with all its pleasant memories would serve me for many years. The tennis at Wimbledon, the excitement, the crowds, The Derby, the cars, horses, people's frocks, table tennis, cricket commentaries on the wireless, all have been great and delicious moments in my life and the memory of these will always be very fresh in my mind.
Well this all clear hasn't gone yet. I wish it would.
September 6th
King Carol of Rumania gets the sack too. A large raid today. German bombers came down in Ewell. Raids all night. Eric home on leave, Diddy expected tonight. Vickers bombed yesterday. Heard many bombs today.
September 8th 1940
Last night a huge fire was seen blazing over London. It was the docks - was burning from 5-6 hours to under control at 4 a.m. Went up to Castle Road to watch with some Army officers. Went to cricket. Cricketers very nice - not very brave. Looks like rain at last. Diddy came. Going up to London with Babe and Diddy. Hope we don't get an air raid. Saw one of our planes crash yesterday while we were at cricket. Heard that V C Nicholls is not dead after all. He has a young wife and baby. How wonderful for them. First official report on wireless about the London bombing and fires says London docks, oil refineries, store houses all fired. 400 dead, between 13-14 hundred seriously injured, Railways and communications badly damaged.
So glad they let us know and didn't pretend no such bombing took place. We can take it. 88 enemy planes down during raid. Now know 107 planes down.
September 10th
Left Ellis's today. Sorry to leave Diana. A bomb fell in Old School Lane near Ellis's house, broke window. June at Ewell Station shop had house wrecked by bomb. Next door here there are many people from London staying. Still very thrilled over yesterday's air raid. A wonderful formation with our little planes flitting in and out like moths and how that formation scattered.
London was badly bombed again last night - hospitals, children and maternity. I bet we pay them for it. The king visited some of the poor people, they cheered him and were grand. Trust the English people to take what's coming to them.
Hundreds killed, a good thousand seriously injured. Sudden death is very near to us all at the moment.
I think we are all more or less ready to meet what comes.
Ernie Pyle’s night during a London raid
Take note on:
1. Affect on civilians- 2. Damage in London- 3. How often bombed (especially at night)- 4. Fires in London- 5. If civilians should go explore the fires.
"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.
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.
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."
Battle of Britain Newspaper Article
For this activity each student should read one source about the Battle of Britain. For each source there is a section called “Take note on.” As you read through the primary source take notes on the items listed. After each student has read his/her part, come together to complete your newspaper article. Your newspaper article should include the following:
1. A title for the newspaper
2. A headline
3. What was life like before the Battle of Britain?
4. What were air raids and how did they affect daily life?
5. How strong was England’s military?
6. What was the damage to London? How often was London bombed?
7. Should civilians go out and survey the damage like Ernie Pyle?
8. Going a step further, explain whether the United States should help England in this situation.
Battle of Britain Newspaper Article
For this activity each student should read one article about the Battle of Britain. For each source there is a section called “Take note on.” As you read through the primary source take notes on the items listed. After each student has read his/her part, come together to complete your newspaper article. Your newspaper article should include the following:
1. A title for the newspaper
2. A headline
3. What was life like before the Battle of Britain?
4. What were air raids and how did they affect daily life?
5. How strong was England’s military?
6. What was the damage to London? How often was London bombed?
7. Should civilians go out and survey the damage like Ernie Pyle?
8. Going a step further, explain whether the United States should help England in this situation.