But today, July 4, 1943, they wander about in a
daze of homesickness, seeing nothing, hearing nothing but the faces and voices
of their own people.
THE PEOPLE OF DOVER
DOVER, July 6, 1943—Dover, with its
castle on the hill and its little crooked streets, its big, ugly hotels and its
secret and dangerous offensive power, is closest of all to the enemy. Dover is
full of the memory of Wellington and of Napoleon, of the time when Napoleon
came down to Calais and looked across the Channel at England and knew that only
this little stretch of water interrupted his conquest of the world. And later
the men of Dunkerque dragged their weary feet off the little ships and
struggled through the streets of Dover.
Then Hitler came to the hill above Calais and
looked across at the cliffs, and again only the little stretch of water stopped
the conquest of the world. It is a very little piece of water. On the clear
days you can see the hills about Calais, and with a glass you can see the clock
tower of Calais. When the guns of Calais fire you can see the flash, while with
the telescope you can see from the castle the guns themselves, and even tanks
deploying on the beach.
Dover feels very close to the enemy. Three
minutes in a fast airplane, three-quarters of an hour in a fast boat. Every day
or so a plane comes whipping through and drops a bomb and takes a shot or so at
the balloons that hang in the air above the town, and every few days Jerry
trains his big guns on Dover and fires a few rounds of high explosive at the
little old town. Then a building is hit and collapses and sometimes a few
people are killed. It is a wanton, useless thing, serving no military, naval,
or morale business. It is almost as though the Germans fretted about the
little stretch of water that defeated them.
There is a quality in the people of Dover that
may well be the key to the coming German disaster. They are incorrigibly,
incorruptibly unimpressed. The German, with his uniform and his pageantry and
his threats and plans, does not impress these people at all. The Dover man has
taken perhaps a little more pounding than most, not in great blitzes, but in
every-day bombing and shelling, and still he is not impressed.
Jerry is like the weather to him. He complains
about it and then promptly goes about what he was doing. Nothing in the world
is as important as his garden and, in other days, his lobster pots. Weather and
Jerry are alike in that they are inconvenient and sometimes make messes.
Surveying a building wrecked by a big shell, he says, “Jerry was bad last
night,” as he would discuss a windstorm.
