How It Feels

In a brick cottage in Liverpool's Merseyside last fortnight, 19-year-old Ruth Owen wrote a letter to her sweetheart to tell him how it feels to be bombed. Her letter:

"The time is now 8:45 p.m. The warning has just gone and the guns are going. It sounds as though the whole German Air Force is over our house. Oh, I do hope they don't drop any bombs! But they are diving like they always do when they drop bombs. I wish you were here with me. Every time they dive I go all sick inside. Here they come again. I'm afraid it's our night tonight. To make things ten times worse the wind is howling something awful.*

"My two aunties are knitting. Mums is just sitting still. Dad is smoking and I am writing to you. Oh, you would laugh if you could see us all sitting by the inside wall, ready to make a dive under the table if things get too hot. If you don't mind, dear, I think I will stop for a bit as—My Lord, they have dropped something not far away, the house shook—my hand is getting tired. I am going to read your letter and see if it will give me a bit of pluck.

"My Lord, what a row! Machine guns and bombs and planes, ours and Hitler's. It's our night tonight, all right. I am now lying under the table. We have just had an incendiary bomb in the yard. My hand is shaking. ..."

Last week a demolition squad found Ruth's letter beside her body under the table.