It is silence;
It is the unknowable;
It is eternity;
It is death.
And only artists know these things.
The Zeppelins Over London
Richard Aldington
... The war saps all one’s energy. It seems impossible to do any creative work in the midst of all this turmoil and carnage. Of course you know that we had the Zeppelins over London? Let me give you my version of the affair.
It was just after eleven. We were sitting in our little flat, which is on the top floor of a building on the slope of Hampstead Hill. We were reading—I was savouring, like a true decadent, that over-sweet honied Latin of the early Renaissance in an edition of 1513! Could anything be more peaceful? Our window was shut—so the silence was absolute. Suddenly there was a Bang! and a shrill wail. “That was pretty close,” said I. Bang—whizz! Bang—whizz! Shrapnel from the anti-aircraft guns which are not five hundred yards from our house! (Of course, like boobies, we thought they were bombs.) I jumped up and got my coat, and grabbed the door-key. It took hours to put out the light! (All the time Bang—whizz!) It seemed interminable, that descent of those four flights of stairs, all the time with the knowledge that any second might see the whole damn place blown to hell. We could see the flashes of the guns and the searchlights as we passed the windows—they were pointed straight at us! That meant that the Zeppelin was either right overhead or coming there! Some excitement, I tell you. I shiver with excitement when I think of it. We stood at the porch for a few seconds—very long seconds—wondering what to do. You are supposed to get into the cellars, but we haven’t got cellars; and it’s very risky in the streets from the flying shrapnel. We could see the long searchlights pointing to a spot almost overhead and the little red pinpricks of bursting shells. A man came down from one of the flats—very calm, with field glasses, to have a look at the animal! Suddenly we saw it, clear over head, with shells from three or four guns making little rose-coloured punctures in the air underneath it. One shell went near, very near, the Zeppelin swerved, tilted—“They’ve got it! It’s coming down!” we all exclaimed. In the distance we could hear faint cheering. But the Zeppelin righted itself, waggled a little, and scenting danger made for the nearest cloud! Apparently a piece of shell had hit the pilot, for there was no apparent damage to be seen through the glasses. There were a few more bangs from the guns, followed by the cat squeals of the shells and the little explosions in the air. Then silence as the Zeppelin got into a cloud; the searchlights looked wildly for it, for ten minutes. Then they all went out and in the resulting darkness we could see the glow of the fires in London.
What rather detracts from our heroism is the fact that the Zeppelin had already dropped all its bombs in the middle of London, but we didn’t know it till afterwards.