The Blitz - Arrivals
Aug. 8th, 2013 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seesblindOctober in London was usually a quiet time, in a normal year there would be plans to head to a harvest festival or to start laying wood and coal in for the cold winter nights ahead. 1940 was far from a normal year. The attacks had stopped coming during the daytime, Londoners had noticed. It wasn’t something they noted with much relief, the night attacks getting worse. Every day or night for a full month there had been an attack, and the wounds show starkly on the city.
There’s not a neighbourhood that hadn’t been touched in some way. Children were being sent north and sons and husbands had long since gone off to fight. Shops were shut and even when they opened they had little to sell. Buildings crumbled and bricks and stone lined most streets. Windows were shuttered or painted or papered over and everything has a pallor, a greyness about it.
It’s dusk now, the light fading and the skies clear. It’s those clear skies that worry Londoners rushing to their homes. Most dream for clouds and storms, for a night of uninterrupted sleep. It’s a dream that won’t come true, not for another few weeks. Heads down, they hurry through the streets, past the houses that their friends had lived in until a few days before. They ignore the craters in the road and the burnt out husk of the church that they’d worshipped in every Sunday of their lives. They’re too worried about how to make the rank cut of meat they’ve wrapped in paper palatable, or their children away in the North. They’re worried about tonight and how long it will be before the sirens have them scurrying off to the shelters again. They’re worried they won’t make it in time, or they’ll end up homeless, and worse, they know there’s nothing they can do.
There’s not a neighbourhood that hadn’t been touched in some way. Children were being sent north and sons and husbands had long since gone off to fight. Shops were shut and even when they opened they had little to sell. Buildings crumbled and bricks and stone lined most streets. Windows were shuttered or painted or papered over and everything has a pallor, a greyness about it.
It’s dusk now, the light fading and the skies clear. It’s those clear skies that worry Londoners rushing to their homes. Most dream for clouds and storms, for a night of uninterrupted sleep. It’s a dream that won’t come true, not for another few weeks. Heads down, they hurry through the streets, past the houses that their friends had lived in until a few days before. They ignore the craters in the road and the burnt out husk of the church that they’d worshipped in every Sunday of their lives. They’re too worried about how to make the rank cut of meat they’ve wrapped in paper palatable, or their children away in the North. They’re worried about tonight and how long it will be before the sirens have them scurrying off to the shelters again. They’re worried they won’t make it in time, or they’ll end up homeless, and worse, they know there’s nothing they can do.
