Word: roofs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...book shops in Boston, or dodging around the coast in a dinghy.... Today, if I am not in the foundry, the machineshop or the drawing office until midnight, I am at home figuring out some new precaution against air-raids, erecting a steel shelter for fire-watching on the roof, propping up the basement to strengthen it, or sharpening axes and replenishing the emergency lamps with oil, and many other jobs which, if sinister, prove, nevertheless, to be interesting...
...going to bed it is necessary to lay by one's side, ready for instant use, an obscured torch, thick clothing, heavy boots and oilskins.... After the first thrill of excitement wears off, fire-watching on the roof for four hours in the early hours of a mid-winter morning is cold work. What did I say! (one word censored) we are precipitated from sleep by the repeated wails of the sirens. The heart beats a little faster and one feels tired and fed up, stumbling into ones clothes in the dark, cursing the fact that tomorrow's work will...
...climb out through the attic light, slide down the slates onto a flat part of the roof and begin the vigil. Most of the household are in the basement by now, but they will bring up some refreshment in an hour...
...thrown to and fro by the A.A. fire which is now thundering out, and spitting forth glowing streamers of tracer bullets. We put on our steel helmets and take as much cover as possible for showers of shrapnel fall, fragments of steel cutting slap through the slate roof and tearing off hunks of stone from the walls. The house seems to lift off its foundations as a nearby gun opens fire...
...church's dome started burning. Elderly Fireman Thompson scrambled nimbly up an iron ladder to the dome, picked up a hot bomb, hurled it to the ground. Losing his balance, he tumbled down the dome, got wedged against a parapet. Freeing himself, he spotted another incendiary the vestry roof, walked atop a twelve-foot wall carrying a water bucket. The bomb responded to the water treatment by exploding and hurling Fireman Thompson to the concrete pavement below...