After breakfast I strolled out into the market-place. It was a lovely m, kind of cool and still, with a pale yellow light like white wine playing over everything. The fresh smell of the m was mixed up with the smell of my cigar. But there was a zooming noise from behind the houses, and suddenly a fleet of great blabers came whizzing over. I looked up at them. They seemed to be bang overhead.
The moment I heard something. And at the same moment, if you』d happeo be there, you』d have seen an iing instance of what I believe is called ditioned reflex. Because what I』d heard—there wasn』t any question of mistake—was the whistle of a bomb. I hadn』t heard such a thing for twenty years, but I didn』t o be told what it was. And without taking any kind of thought I did the right thing. I flung myself on my face.
After all I』m glad you didn』t see me. I don』t suppose I looked dignified. I was flattened out on the pavement like a rat when it squeezes under a door. Nobody else had been half as prompt. I』d acted so quickly that in the split sed while the bomb was whistling down I even had time to be afraid that it was all a mistake and I』d made a fool of myself for nothing.
But the moment—ah!
BOOM-BRRRRR!
A noise like the Day of Judgment, and then a noise like a ton of coal falling on to a sheet of tin. That was falling bricks. I seemed to kind of melt into the pavement. 『It』s started,』 I thought. 『I k! Old Hitler didn』t wait. Just sent his bombers across without warning.』
A here』s a peculiar thing. Even in the echo of that awful, deafening crash, which seemed to freeze me up from top to toe, I had time to think that there』s something grand about the bursting of a big projectile. What does it sound like? It』s hard to say, because what you hear is mixed up with what you』re frightened of. Mainly it gives you a vision of burstial. You seem to see great sheets of iron bursting open. But the peculiar thing is the feeling it gives you of being suddenly shoved up against reality. It』s like being woken up by somebody shying a bucket of water over you. You』re suddenly dragged out of your dreams by a g of burstial, and it』s terrible, and it』s real.
There was a sound of screams and yells, and also of car brakes being suddenly jammed on. The sed bomb which I was waiting for didn』t fall. I raised my head a little. On every side people seemed to be rushing round and screaming. A car was skidding diagonally across the road, I could hear a woman』s voice shrieking, 『The Germans! The Germans!』 To the right I had a vague impression of a man』s round white face, rather like a wrinkled paper bag, looking down at me. He was kind of dithering:
『What is it? What』s happened? What are they doing?』
『It』s started,』 I said. 『That was a bomb. Lie down.』
But still the sed bomb didn』t fall. Another quarter of a minute or so, and I raised my head again. Some of the people were still rushing about, others were standing as if they』d been glued to the ground. From somewhere behind the houses a huge haze of dust had risen up, and through it a black jet of smoke was streaming upwards. And then I saw araordinary sight. At the other end of the market-place the High Street rises a little. And down this little hill a herd of pigs was galloping, a sort of huge flood of pig-faces. The moment, of course, I saw what it was. It wasn』t pigs at all, it was only the schoolchildren in their gas- masks. I suppose they were bolting for some