People stopped walking and stood rooted in their tracks. There came a kind of boom, then an ear-splitting roar. I felt the sidewalk beneath me move. Two blocks away I saw a building, lighted by fire, crumple into the street, and it seemed to me that tons of glass were crashing everywhere. There was something more terrifying about the robot pilot in a V-1 than there was when bombers came over with live pilots in them.There was an awful uncertainty...

An Englishman, who was standing mear me, said it was a good thing that D-Day came when it did of the Germans might have wiped London off the map with their buzz bombs. He said when the buzz bombs first started coming over, all the anti-aircraft guns in London would open upon them but after a week of this, the military decided not to shoot at them and maybe some of the bombs would go on past London, which they did. I was astonished at the casual way the Britisher talked. From his tone of voice, we might have been in the Savoy-Plaza Bar, having a Scotch-and-soda, and I wondered if we Americans would have stood up as well if the tables had been turned.

By this time the fire fighters, rescue squads, and the Home Guard were on the scene, and they all swept into action. I tried to do what I could to help but the English moved too swiftly for me. I walked back to my room at the hotel but not to sleep.

It didn't take London long to set up a good defense against the robot enemy. On later missions I saw great masses of balloons several thousand feet high in the air. These balloon barrages were centered southeast of London - between London and the Channel- and there was also a large concentration of guns placed in this area, which was known as "Flak Alley." This stretegy greatly eliminated the number of bombs that got over London.

The People were taking to the air raid shelters, as they had done during the blitz. In the early part of the afternoon the Londoners would begin making their makeshift beds in the shelters and in the corridors and stations of the subways. By 11:00P.M. one could hardly get on and off the subways for all the sleepers around.

We Americans tried to be pretty fatalistic about the buzz bombs. We wouldn't go to the air raid shelters. We figured sort of foolishly if our time had come, the bomb with our number on it would find us whereever we were - in the American Melody Bar or in the air raid shelter.

The night before I left London I had gone to bed early. I had spent hours at headquarters that day waiting to see the Colonel, only to be told nothing save to come back the following day. I was mortally knocking it off when the next thing I knew I was sitting squarely on my behind on the floor and there was the most awful rocking you've ever felt. For my money, the hotel was doing a Betty grable rhumba, and I clipped it down to the air raid shelter and spent the rest of the night there- to he**, with that stuff about your number being on it...

The buzz bombs seemed to pursue me. The next morning on my way to headquarters I could tell we were going to have an unwelcomed visitor. The people on the street were freezing up and waiting to see if they were going to have to fall flat on the sidewalk. Sure enough we had to fall flat, and it would have to be raining that morning.

The English showed a courageousness during the buzz bomb season that was unequaled by anyone else so far as my personal knowledge went. They'd go to work in the morning, not knowing if they'd have an office to work in, and in the evening when they started home they'd never know whether they had a wife or a home to come back to.

The uncertainty was far worse than when the bombers came over. The Britishers had warning then, but the buzz bomb was right there --bringing sudden slaughter, ravaged homes and buildings, and anguish and sorrow.

(From Happy Jack's Go Buggy)