Word: dover
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School started again last fortnight in Dover, most dangerous spot in England, for the first time since Dunkirk. In the teeth of big German guns across the Channel, most of the 1,300 moppets still left in the city emerged from chalk-cliff cave shelters to hour-and-a-half sessions of the three Rs in six shell-scarred schoolhouses (glassless windows were boarded, roofs patched from bomb hits...
...Because Dover still gets eight to ten siren warnings daily, the first lesson in 18 months was an air-raid drill: Teacher cried "Get in the cave," and pupils grabbed gas masks, cleared out in 30 seconds. At the second lesson they learned to dive under desks at the word "Shell...
...schools were opened over the protests of Dover's school-board chairman, Captain F. R. Powell, who demanded that the Government force the youngsters out of town. Said he: "Children are living in caves and getting as pale and miserable as possible. ... If a shell from German Channel guns falls into one of our schools and kills or injures any of the children, the parents themselves will be to blame...
Despite such warnings, nearly a third of Dover's 4,300 children have stayed on. Typical was a mother of nine, who grudgingly let one child be evacuated, soon called him back because "if the [rest of us] were killed, Harry would be lonely...
Words Without Music, by Norman Corwin for Columbia. A half-hour of poetic comedy with Arnold's Dover Beach tossed in for good measure...