I DECIDED to write this book four months ago, while lying under a freight car. The freight car was on a siding which led to a dock at Pointe de Graves. I was waiting to get a ship for England. Pointe de Graves isn't much of a place. It is about sixty miles from Bordeaux, at the mouth of the Gironde River. It has a dock, a monument commemorating the arrival of American troops in 1917 and a railroad spur. Anchored out somewhere in the harbor there were an English cruiser and two Dutch freighters. When dawn came a small boat was to take me to one of the Dutch freighters which would then go to England.

It was a brilliant night and the moon gleamed whitely on the neat, roofless dock. The dock had been built after the war as part of the Reparations Plan. It had been built by a German engineer, and when he had finished building it he had said bitterly, "Well, I have built your dock for you because I was forced to build it. But I promise you that one day I will come back and destroy it."

An English sentry, standing on the dock, had told me that. We had both laughed a little but not too heartily. It was a fact that bombers had come over the night before and had dropped bombs within a quarter of a mile of the dock. But they may have been aiming for the English cruiser. We had laughed and then I'd crawled into a sleeping bag, used my typewriter for a pillow, and tried to sleep. The mosquitoes were very bad. A sleeping bag doesn't cover your face. The mosquitoes buzzed and buzzed and then there was a louder, even more persistent buzzing which wasn't a mosquito. The German motors sing a throaty contralto. The French and English planes sing a high tune. They are strictly Johnny-one-note crooners. They sound much like the buzzing of a bee. These were German bombers all right.

Vague forms around me were getting out of sleeping bags leisurely. There were thirteen of us scattered on the dock and near the dock. We pulled on our shoes and stretched and yawned and slapped mosquitoes, and then looked around. The bombers were getting closer now and from their sound we could tell they were very low. I moved back from the dock fifty yards. It was then that I saw the freight car. Usually you lie in a ditch when bombers are near. But there were no ditches here.

The planes were almost directly overhead now and the guns started to spit bullets up into the night. There is always danger of being hit by one of these when it comes down. One fell two feet from me and I heard it land with a clink on a stone. So I crawled under the freight train. A freight train is a fine shelter. It protects you from falling shrapnel, and it protects you from bomb fragments. I lay there between the wheels and it wasn't very comfortable. Sharp grass sprang up from between the railroad ties and the mosquitoes were annoying. I'd change my position and find hard gravel and that wasn't good either.

I had slept in a bed only once during the past eight days. Sleeping in fields and on hard floors isn't bad at first, but gradually you develop a thousand sore spots. Your side and your hips protest very vigorously after a few nights. Except for that one night, I hadn't had my clothes off either, and that never makes you feel better. I had been coming from Paris, always staying one jump ahead of the Germans, and it had been a hard trip. I lay there under the freight car feeling sorry for myself. A bomb fell perhaps half a mile away and then another fell closer. The planes were flying up and down this part of the coast, giving it a good going over; looking, I imagine, for the English cruiser.

I was feeling sorry for myself. What the hell was I doing here under this freight car?

Then the night was lit up with a brilliance that turned it into daylight. A bomber had dropped a flare. Its light completely banished the night for a moment and then the bomb came. This was one of the half-ton bombs. It landed perhaps three hundred yards away. It is impossible to describe the incredible loudness of a bomb. It is all the claps of thunder you have ever heard rolled into one roaring crescendo. After its first sharp explosion there is a sort of rumbling for a moment, as though the bomb were growling because it had missed you. Then an overpowering silence. Perhaps that's because you are deafened a little. Then you hear the humming of the planes again. You must remember that this was June 29, 1940. This was before the real Battle of London began. Fools like myself thought that this was the worst that could happen. I was grateful for this bomb. Now I knew what I was doing there under the freight car. I laughed at myself for having been such a fool. I had a front row seat at the biggest show ever staged. What was I doing under the freight car? I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world. If I were in New York I would have been miserable knowing that others were covering this war and I wasn't. If I were in Hollywood I'd be talking of the war and envying those who were there, actually seeing it. I wasn't sorry for myself now. I was sorry for my colleagues at Collier's, who weren't with me.

It had gotten better. The anti-aircraft guns were firing rapidly now. They sounded very small and very futile. Now and then another bomb would fall and for the moment overshadow the barking of the guns. The humming of the planes was the melody in this symphony. It was always there when the bombs and the guns died down. And then suddenly, the bombing stopped. The guns barked a few times in angry disappointment, the hum of the planes grew fainter and fainter, and once again Pointe de Graves was nothing but a dock, a railroad siding and a monument commemorating the arrival of American troops in 1917.

Once again the moonlight bathed the dock and the monument whitely, and now you could hear the soft lapping of small waves against the dock and the shore. It was then that I decided to write this book. Years from now, when I'm tired perhaps of being a reporter, I'll read it and remember the terrific exaltation I felt this night under the freight car. If I become jaded and begin to take my job for granted and think that it is a futile, useless job, I'll read this and know better. I'll remember that I had a ring-side seat to watch the greatest fight ever staged.

I must put it all down quickly before I forget it. Barry Faris, the International News Service chief, used to tell me, "Stories are like vegetables. Use them quickly or they spoil." He was right.

And so this book.

London,
November 1, 1940,

Foreword

I. ---I'll Cable the President

II.---The Champagne Was Warm

III.---Front Seat in Flanders

IV.---The Wounded Don't Cry

V.---And So Paris Died

VI.---Bordeaux Was Crowded

VII.---I Gave Him Double Talk

VIII.---They Call Him Revolving Reynolds

IX. ---The Irish Don't Believe It

X. ---Time Out for Gossip

XI. ---I Wished the Kid Luck!

XII. ---It's Still Churchill's Channel

XIII. ---All Aircraft Returned Safely

XIV.---London-City of Caves

XV.---Britain's Labour Boss

XVI.---Direct Hit

XVII.---The Man Who Didn't Quit

XVIII.---A Plane Is Born

XIX.---Week-End in the Country

XX.---Nobody's Better Off Dead

XXI.---It's Noisy Tonight