A perilous rescue in the Blitz

30th October 1940: The true horror of the bombing of Britain does not emerge until a few accounts are published years after the war

A Bombed Hospital Ward, Kathleen Guthrie, 1940.

Homeless, Clifford Hall, 1940.

The British government carefully controlled the public narrative during the war, especially during the Blitz. In all the images taken of the massive wave of destruction that was hitting London, it is impossible to find photographs, passed by the censor, of people in distress. Even the contemporary artwork only hints at it. The paintings acquired by the War Artist Advisory Committee only obliquely depict human suffering. Blood is shown on the sheets, but no one portrayed is injured. The faces of the homeless survivors, clearly facing the most miserable conditions, are not seen.

The scale of destruction - and dead and injured - continued unabated:

Civilian Casualties.¹

87. The approximate figures for the week ending 0600 hours, 30th October, are 829 killed and 1,379 wounded. These figures include the estimated casualties of 519 killed and 970 wounded in London, and 149 killed and 197 wounded in Birmingham.

… the appalling sound coming from the hole. Someone was in mortal anguish down there.

Few people wrote about the absolute terror that was faced daily, even retrospectively. One graphic account of what a bomb hitting a group of people sheltering in a basement really meant to those injured and to those attempting a rescue was only written much later and published in 1959.

Frances Faviell² was a volunteer nurse working at the Chelsea Hospital in London. She was returning home, in uniform, at the height of the Blitz:

I saw a little group of people bending over what seemed to be a hole in what had been the basement of a house but which now appeared to be filled in with debris. A car stood in the road with the notice ‘doctor’ on it. It was dark, but I could see that there were three men bending over the hole and one woman. The woman wore nurse’s uniform.

As I hurried by she turned, said something to the others, then called to me, ‘Nurse.’ I went over. The man bending over the hole straightened up, but I could not look at him because of the appalling sound coming from the hole.