‘Rest in peace, Bertha,’ whispered Kathy into the icy night air.
‘At least it saved my hands from splicing that wire,’ added Diana.
They didn’t have long to muse about their new situation because all at once their collective reverence was cut short by another barrage of the tiny, fizzing green bombs, reminding them that though their balloon was gone, the German onslaught was still continuing viciously all around them.
‘Get yourself back to the barracks,’ ordered Sergeant Daly.
Hurriedly, they all started to file onto the truck. Diana turned to her sergeant. ‘Permission to check on a friend who may be caught in this bombing sir, if you won’t be needing me for the rest of the evening?’
Daly shook his head. ‘Granted. Just make sure you’re back on duty first thing tomorrow, Downes.’
She agreed. Because it was such a wild night she wanted to check on her friends; Julia worked not too far away from here and Diana wanted to make sure she had made it home safe. Bombs were raining down everywhere tonight.
She started to race across town. All the buses were stopped, and what greeted her was devastating. The whole of the City’s Square Mile was an inferno, a ring of fire around St Paul’s Cathedral. Holding a handkerchief to her mouth and nose to stop herself from coughing and protect her from the caustic, dense, black smoke that billowed around her, she kept moving forward. One building was roaring, and she enquired of one of the firefighters what it was. He shook his head with distress. ‘A Victorian book depository. What a sad, sad thing.’
No wonder the fire was taking hold so strongly, thought Diana as she watched pages and pages of different books burning up in the intense heat then floating down to the ground like little black feather bats that disintegrated into a thousand pieces above her head. Picking her way through the rubble and avoiding the numerous fires was slow going, but when she got to St Paul’s, there was a great deal of commotion.
As she passed one of the firefighters, she overheard him talking to what appeared to be a group of volunteers.
‘We’ve had a direct command from Churchill himself. He believes that the Nazis are targeting St Paul’s tonight. The formation the planes are coming in and the way the incendiaries are landing, we think they’re going to try and burn the cathedral to the ground. Mr Churchill has sent us a message, “Save St Paul’s at all costs.” We need all the help we can get. All hands to the pump. The prime minister is counting on us.’
Diana stopped and approached one of the men that rushed in front of her with a hose. ‘Can I help at all?’
‘Yes, love. You can. Get inside, up onto the roof and put out any fires that you can see up there.’
Diana raced inside the building; the walls and banners were charred and thick, black smoke was everywhere. In the crypt, the dean’s wife had set up a first-aid camp, that was already overflowing with people being treated for burns and injuries. All around the church building, a small group of church volunteer firefighters, including the dean himself, his face, hands and dog collar blackened with the soot, were manically trying to put out the fires. They all looked exhausted. She raced up the stairs and joined a line with a group of people as they chained water to wherever it was needed. On the roof the smoke and heat were intense and the sight was unbelievable. St Paul’s was completely surrounded by burning buildings with flames leaping high into the air all around them.
The man next to her informed her in breathy rasps as he sloshed full buckets to her that, though the dome was made of lead, inside it was a wooden structure, and if that caught alight, the whole roof could be lost.
Diana continued to work shoulder to shoulder with the other volunteers, fighting the choking, acrid smoke as the incendiaries continued to land all around them.
At one point, the dean came rushing up to them and informed them they had just had a call from Cannon Street station. The dome appeared to be on fire. Diana raced up more stairs with a group of volunteers into the dome. There she could clearly see the green glow of a burning incendiary from the rafters: the bomb had lodged in the outer lead casing and was burning