3-023-278 - British Pathe Ltd/Heritage Images

Crowds Walking Past Bombed Out Buildings, 1940. Britain during the Second World War: the Blitz. 'Any night, any time, summer 1940. Fire and flame, death and destruction...Any morning-after in London - or is it Coventry, Bristol, Portsmouth? Liverpool, Belfast, Birmingham? Plymouth or Glasgow?...Yet with each dawn's fresh havoc, wonderful how habit survives. It's hard to kill the regular life of a great city, hard to kill the habit of off-to-work-in-the-morning. But what unfamiliarity to be found on your too-familiar journey. Holes where there were no holes yesterday, no houses where yesterday's houses. Broken mains squirting water, sewage, gas or fire. Under one's feet the crunch of shattered glass, like walking on a pebbly beach'. From "Time To Remember - Standing Alone", 1940 (Reel 4); documentary film about events of later months of 1940.