7
When the bombing for the day ceased, Clyde and Celene would go out to collect piles of shrapnel-or leaflets that had been dropped. We had supper and put the children to bed. Happy, the dog, would cease his miserable shivering and get enough courage to leave me and wolf his food. All day he would stand leaning against me. Sometimes he would become so tired, he would fall over but would scramble back to position. I tried to have him destroyed, but no one would do it, and I couldn't. The three cats would come out of their hiding places from under the darkest chairs. Best of all was the comparative peace. The shelling was on the other side of the mountain and we heard it only at a distance. There was no night bombing by aircraft. The Chief Air Raid Warden called on us several times and suggested we should move. "Is that an order," I would say. "No, only advice." "Then I shall stay until I have an order."
His own wife had not yet left Felix Villas.
Saturday morning before dawn the telephone rang and the Warden said there was a car going to town and my cook would get a lift. He asked me to tell the French girl next door. Her husband had just passed his medical examinations and was on duty at one of the dangerous posts. I went next door and before I had time to speak Germaine said, "You must go, you must go, you must go." A reporter in the news office had telephoned her to say there would be concentrated bombing of the guns on our mountain this day and he said, "Tell Mrs. Cook, she must go." This was not the official order I expected, but the words were the sign. I returned to the house and told Miss Day. She and Clyde and Celene loaded what they could on Clyde's wagon and started out to get as far as they could before 8:00. They met a lorry load of soldiers who gave them a lift-wagon and all. I had asked Mrs. Clift by phone if we might come and stay with her near the University and she said we could have her sitting room where services were held on Sunday and Bible Study classes on Saturday evening.
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