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Transcript

On Surviving the London Blitz

The London Blitz

Helen Kirkpatrick

Recast

  • Helen Kirkpatrick was born in Rochester, Monroe County, on 18th October, 1909
  • She braved some of the worst conditions of the World War Two to establish herself as a major war reporter
  • In 1940 she became the first woman reporter employed by the Chicago Daily News. One journalist complained:"We don't have women on the staff." She told him, "I can't change my sex. But you can change your policy." Soon afterwords she obtained an exclusive interview with Duke of Windsor.
  • Kirkpatrick remained in Europe during the Second World War and covered the Blitz for the Chicago Daily News. She wrote after one heavy raid:
  • "It is amazing this morning to see London traffic more like New York theater traffic than the slow dribble it had been during past months, but it is most amazing to see that there is any London to have traffic at all. It is pretty incredible, too, to find people relatively unshaken after the terrific experience. There is some terror, but nothing on the scale that the Germans may have hoped for and certainly not on a scale to make Britons contemplate for a moment anything but fighting on. Fright becomes so mingled with a deep almost uncontrollable anger that it is hard to know when one stops and the other begins. And on top of it all London is smiling even in the districts where casualties must have been very heavy."

A letter to your family explaining what has happened and your experience during the Blitz.

  • The Blitz comes from the German word, "lightning". It's aphrase used in English to describe the period of bombing of the United Kingdom by Germany during the Second World War.

  • Between 7 September 1940 and 21 May 1941 there were major aerial raids (attacks in which more than 100 tonnes of high explosives were dropped) on 16 British cities.
  • Over a period of 37 weeks, London was attacked 71 times, Birmingham, Liverpool and Plymouth eight times, Bristol six, Glasgow five, Southampton four, Portsmouth and Hull three, and there was also at least one large raid on another eight cities.
  • This was a result of a rapid escalation starting on 24 August 1940, when night bombers aiming for RAF airfields drifted off course and accidentally destroyed several London homes, killing civilians, combined with Churchill's immediate response of bombing Berlin.

A radio announcement about the Blitz and what is happening

A newsround script informing people about what is happening

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