But we were determined to see the drama out. It was more sensational than any “movie” show. Immediately opposite was a tall gin palace—“The Rising Sun.” Some strategist said, “That’s the place for us!” We raced across before the police could outflank us.
A Jew publican stood in the doorway, sullenly.
“Whatcher want?” he asked.
“Your roof,” said one of the journalists.
“A quid each, and worth it,” said the Jew.
At that time, before the era of paper money, some of us carried golden sovereigns in our pockets, one to a “quid.” Most of the others did, but, as usual, I had not more than eighteenpence. A friend lent me the necessary coin, which the Jew slipped into his pocket as he let me pass. Twenty of us, at least, gained access to the roof of “The Rising Sun.”
It was a good vantage point, or O.P., as we should have called it later in history. It looked right across to the house in Sidney Street in which Peter the Painter and his friends were defending themselves to the death—a tall, thin house of three stories, with dirty window blinds. In the house immediately opposite were some more Guardsmen, with pillows and mattresses stuffed into the windows in the nature of sandbags as used in trench warfare. We could not see the soldiers, but we could see the effect of their intermittent fire, which had smashed every pane of glass and kept chipping off bits of brick in the anarchists’ abode.
The street had been cleared of all onlookers, but a group of detectives slunk along the walls on the anarchists’ side of the street at such an angle that they were safe from the slanting fire of the enemy. They had to keep very close to the wall, because Peter and his pals were dead shots and maintained something like a barrage fire with their automatics. Any detective or policeman who showed himself would have been sniped in a second, and these men were out to kill.
The thing became a bore as I watched it for an hour or more, during which time Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, came to take command of active operations, thereby causing an immense amount of ridicule in next day’s papers. With a bowler hat pushed firmly down on his bulging brow, and one hand in his breast pocket, like Napoleon on the field of battle, he peered round the corner of the street, and afterward, as we learned, ordered up some field guns to blow the house to bits.