The Cellar Beneath the Bombing

In September 1940, German bombers pounded London for fifty-seven consecutive nights. Margaret Hutchinson, a schoolteacher in Bermondsey, led her fourteen students each evening into the cellar beneath St. James Church. The walls shook. Dust sifted down like grey snow. Children pressed their faces into her coat and wept. Above them, entire blocks burned. The docks along the Thames glowed orange for miles.…