"Casualties and Some Damage"

This morning enemy aircraft dropped bombs at several .places in southeastern and southern England, causing a number of casualties and some damage.--London Communique, Sept. 29.

The Junkers 88 slipped in under the clouds that hung over southern England and thundered over the town, flying so low that it appeared to be no higher than the church spire.

Miss Weekes did not see the raider. She was presiding over her classroom. But she heard the roar, of course, and the rat-a-tat of its machine guns. The Jerry must be raking the streets, she decided, and. as quickly as she could, she herded her class into a place which she considered comparatively safe near a hallway. In another classroom Headmaster Stevenson said briskly: "Under the desks, boys."

Then the world of Miss Weekes, Mr. Stevenson and 58 English schoolboys seemed to explode. The headmaster flung himself on top of one of his pupils to protect him as bricks and timber crashed.

When the Junkers had vanished and the white-faced townspeople came running, the school was gone. All that was left was the part where Miss Weekes and her pupils had gathered. Miss Weekes, though hurt, had survived. So had her class. But the headmaster, an assistant teacher and the elderly woman who took care of the laundry had all died. Of a dozen boys who had left one street for school that morning, only four were still alive. From the rubble heap left by the Junkers' bombs and from the streets near by, where some of the children had been hurled, 24 bodies were recovered. Two of these were not identifiable and six boys could not be found.

At week's end Army trucks carried a line of small coffins to a flower-banked parish church. While Miss Weekes and the rest of the village looked on, the boys, their headmaster and the assistant teacher were laid away in a common grave.

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