The London Blitz of 1940 and 1941 saw many stories of heroism and sacrifice from Londoners. As German fighter planes dropped bombs on the city during the Second World War, the people of London rose to the challenge. There was a desperate scramble to rescue the trapped and wounded as well as tackling the danger posed by buildings close to collapse.
Take for example two female wardens in London’s West End – eighteen-year-old Carol Parsons and her sister Gladys. On April 22, 1941, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported that the intrepid duo had been working for four days solid rescuing neighbours trapped in basements. After so long without sleep, they told a journalist a break was needed to “have a bath and a hair-do”.
And then there was 22-year-old nurse, Daisy Jerome. She had been injured twice in the Blitz but went on saving patients – which earned her a medal. While working at the London Chest Hospital, the building had taken a hit from a very large bomb. But within an hour, sixty patients had been relocated to makeshift beds in a school nearby. During the explosion, Daisy had fractured four of her fingers.
An army officer, Peter Wendy, rushed back home from a tour of duty in the Far East to be with his mother who was seriously ill but also trying to survive as London faced the Blitz. Peter spent several days in underground shelters with his mother, which inspired him to write a theatre play titled Room V. A romantic story showing how the resolve of Londoners during the bombing would help them create a new society after the war.
Through connections, he got the play performed at the Garrick Theatre and somehow directed it remotely. He was back in the Far East on military service but used the “cablegram” – the submarine telegraph cable – to direct the production of the play.
