Fire Evacuation Quotes

Reader, do you remember that ridiculous movie Volcano, the one with Tommy Lee Jones? Do you remember how they stopped eruption in the middle of downtown Los Angeles? They diverted it with cement roadblocks and pointed fire hoses at it, and rerouted the lava to the ocean, and everything was fine? Sweet reader, that is not how lava works. Anyone can tell you that. Here is the truth: I keep waiting for my anger to go dormant, but it won’t. I keep waiting for someone to reroute my anger into the ocean, but no one can. My heart is closer to Dante’s Peak of Dante’s Peak. My anger dissolves grandmas in acid lakes and razes quaint Pacific Northwest towns with ash and asphyxiates jet engines with its grit. Lava keeps leaking down my slopes. You should have listened to the scientist. You should have evacuated earlier.

I did remember. The librarian had picked me up and held me to her chest as we evacuated beneath the flashing fire alarm. I'd felt so safe and nonflammable between her breasts. "So what's that got to do with you?" I asked. "I knew you liked her," Luke said. "So I set that up." "You pulled the alarm?" I asked, shocked. "No!" Luke protested. Then he grinned. "I set the fire.

A crematorium crisis: the coffin got stuck halfway in, so the oven door couldn’t close properly. The coffin caught fire and the smoke seeped into the chapel. The crematorium had to be evacuated. Anyone who hadn’t already been weeping emerged teary eyed. That’s what I call a spectacular way to say goodbye.

On April 11, 1945, my father’s infantry company was attacked by German forces, and in the early stages of battle, heavy artillery fire led to eight casualties. According to the citation: “With complete disregard for his own safety, Private Pausch leaped from a covered position and commenced treating the wounded men while shells continued to fall in the immediate vicinity. So successfully did this soldier administer medical attention that all the wounded were evacuated successfully.” In recognition of this, my dad, then twenty-two years old, was issued the Bronze Star for valor. In the fifty years my parents were married, in the thousands of conversations my dad had with me, it had just never come up. And so there I was, weeks after his death, getting another lesson from him about the meaning of sacrifice—and about the power of humility.

Far more humbling to me was a letter I received years later from Sergeant Talbert. Referring to the attack at the intersection, he wrote, “Seeing you in the middle of that road, wanting to move, was too much. You were my total inspiration. All my boys felt the same way.” “Tab” was far too generous with his compliments. His own action at Carentan personified his excellence as both a soldier and a leader. He helped clear that intersection and carried a wounded Lipton to safety. Later when the Germans finally counterattacked, Talbert was everywhere, directing his men to the right place, supervising their fire, before he himself was wounded and evacuated.

Her family was at least as dysfunctional and peculiar as his own, riven with scenes that to other people might've been epoch defining—'it was a month before Daddy torched Mummy's portrait in the hall, and the paneling caught fire, and the fire brigade came, and we all had to be evacuated via the upstairs windows'—but to the Campbells were so normalized they seemed routine.

clutching whole homes in its grasp. The people of Malibu knew how to evacuate. They’d done this before. They would do it again. By the time the fire was contained—the mansion turned to a charred, wet frame, the neighbors’ homes singed and covered in ash, the sky stained gray, firefighters wiping their brows—the lady of the house was nowhere to be found. Nina Riva was midflight. She would read about the fire later in an American paper and clutch her chest, relieved no one had been hurt. She would think of the damage and the distress it must have caused. But she would understand that it was one fire, in a long line of fires in Malibu since the dawn of time. It had brought destruction. It would also bring renewal, rising from the ashes. The story of fire.

They have found a house in the stay-away zone, under the barrage balloons south of London. The town, evacuated in ’40, is still “regulated”—still on the Ministry’s list. Roger and Jessica occupy the place illegally, in a defiance they can never measure unless they’re caught. Jessica has brought an old doll, seashells, her aunt’s grip filled with lace knickers and silk stockings. Roger’s managed to scare up a few chickens to nest in the empty garage. Whenever they meet here, one always remembers to bring a fresh flower or two. The nights are filled with explosion and motor transport, and wind that brings them up over the downs a last smack of the sea. Day begins with a hot cup and a cigarette over a little table with a weak leg that Roger has repaired, provisionally, with brown twine. There’s never much talk but touches and looks, smiles together, curses for parting. It is marginal, hungry, chilly—most times they’re too paranoid to risk a fire—but it’s something they want to keep, so much that to keep it they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for. They are in love. Fuck the war.

They have found a house in the stay-away zone, under the barrage balloons south of London. The town, evacuated in '40, is still "regulated"—still on the Ministry's list. Roger and Jessica occupy the place illegally, in a defiance they can never measure unless they're caught. Jessica has brought an old doll, seashells, her aunt's grip filled with lace knickers and silk stockings. Roger's managed to scare up a few chickens to nest in the empty garage. Whenever they meet here, one always remembers to bring a fresh flower or two. The nights are filled with explosion and motor transport, and wind that brings them up over the downs and a smack of the sea. Day begins with a hot cup and a cigarette over a little table with a weak leg that Roger has repaired, provisionally, with brown twine. There's never much talk but touches and looks, smiles together, curses for parting. It is marginal, hungry, chilly-most times they're too paranoid to risk a fire—but it's something they want to keep, so much that to keep it, they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for. They are in love. Fuck the war.

I don’t like stories. I like moments. I like night better than day, moon better than sun, and here-and-now better than any sometime-later. I also like birds, mushrooms, the blues, peacock feathers, black cats, blue-eyed people, heraldry, astrology, criminal stories with lots of blood, and ancient epic poems where human heads can hold conversations with former friends and generally have a great time for years after they’ve been cut off. I like good food and good drink, sitting in a hot bath and lounging in a snowbank, wearing everything I own at once, and having everything I need close at hand. I like speed and that special ache in the pit of the stomach when you accelerate to the point of no return. I like to frighten and to be frightened, to amuse and to confound. I like writing on the walls so that no one can guess who did it, and drawing so that no one can guess what it is. I like doing my writing using a ladder or not using it, with a spray can or squeezing the paint from a tube. I like painting with a brush, with a sponge, and with my fingers. I like drawing the outline first and then filling it in completely, so that there’s no empty space left. I like letters as big as myself, but I like very small ones as well. I like directing those who read them here and there by means of arrows, to other places where I also wrote something, but I also like to leave false trails and false signs. I like to tell fortunes with runes, bones, beans, lentils, and I Ching. Hot climates I like in the books and movies; in real life, rain and wind. Generally rain is what I like most of all. Spring rain, summer rain, autumn rain. Any rain, anytime. I like rereading things I’ve read a hundred times over. I like the sound of the harmonica, provided I’m the one playing it. I like lots of pockets, and clothes so worn that they become a kind of second skin instead of something that can be taken off. I like guardian amulets, but specific ones, so that each is responsible for something separate, not the all-inclusive kind. I like drying nettles and garlic and then adding them to anything and everything. I like covering my fingers with rubber cement and then peeling it off in front of everybody. I like sunglasses. Masks, umbrellas, old carved furniture, copper basins, checkered tablecloths, walnut shells, walnuts themselves, wicker chairs, yellowed postcards, gramophones, beads, the faces on triceratopses, yellow dandelions that are orange in the middle, melting snowmen whose carrot noses have fallen off, secret passages, fire-evacuation-route placards; I like fretting when in line at the doctor’s office, and screaming all of a sudden so that everyone around feels bad, and putting my arm or leg on someone when asleep, and scratching mosquito bites, and predicting the weather, keeping small objects behind my ears, receiving letters, playing solitaire, smoking someone else’s cigarettes, and rummaging in old papers and photographs. I like finding something lost so long ago that I’ve forgotten why I needed it in the first place. I like being really loved and being everyone’s last hope, I like my own hands—they are beautiful, I like driving somewhere in the dark using a flashlight, and turning something into something completely different, gluing and attaching things to each other and then being amazed that it actually worked. I like preparing things both edible and not, mixing drinks, tastes, and scents, curing friends of the hiccups by scaring them. There’s an awful lot of stuff I like.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has provided a preliminary estimation that between 16,400 and 18,800 civilians were in the WTC complex as of 8:46 am on September 11. At most 2,152 individual died in the WTC complex who were not 1) fire or police first responders, 2) security or fire safety personnel of the WTC or individual companies, 3) volunteer civilians who ran to the WTC after the planes' impact to help others or, 4) on the two planes that crashed into the Twin Towers. Out of this total number of fatalities, we can account for the workplace location of 2,052 individuals, or 95.35 percent. Of this number, 1,942 or 94.64 percent either worked or were supposed to attend a meeting at or above the respective impact zones of the Twin Towers; only 110, or 5.36 percent of those who died, worked below the impact zone. While a given person's office location at the WTC does not definitively indicate where that individual died that morning or whether he or she could have evacuated, these data strongly suggest that the evacuation was a success for civilians below the impact zone.

These assurances were taken by the PLO to constitute binding commitments, and it was on their basis that it agreed to leave Beirut. On August 12, after epic negotiations, final terms were reached for the PLO’s departure. The talks were conducted while Israel carried out a second day of the most intense bombardment and ground attacks of the entire siege. The air and artillery assault on that day alone—over a month after the PLO had agreed in principle to leave Beirut—caused more than five hundred casualties. It was so unrelenting that even Ronald Reagan was moved to demand that Begin halt the carnage.37 Reagan’s diary relates that he called the Israeli prime minister during the ferocious offensive, adding, “I was angry—I told him it had to stop or our entire future relationship was endangered. I used the word holocaust deliberately & said the symbol of his war was becoming a picture of a 7 month old baby with its arms blown off.”38 This sharp phone call impelled Begin’s government to halt its rain of fire almost immediately, but Israel refused to budge on the crucial issue of international protection for the Palestinian civilian population as a quid pro quo for the PLO’s evacuation.

Radioactive reactor fuel and graphite lay everywhere. Part of the roof had collapsed into Unit 4’s section of the turbine hall, setting turbine 7 on fire and breaking an oil pipe, which spread the fire still further and set the hall’s roof alight. Falling debris had broken the pressure valve on a feed pump, which was gushing out boiling, radioactive water.135 Men and women rushed past chunks of uranium fuel as they battled to contain the blaze, isolate electrical systems, and manually open oil-drain and cooling-water valves. Many of these brave souls later died, unaware they had been running among pieces of reactor fuel. For their part, Akimov and Toptunov stayed at the plant after the morning shift relieved them from duty at 6am, choosing to join the desperate effort to salvage the situation. The pair decided water flow to the reactor must be blocked by a closed valve somewhere, so they went together to the half-destroyed feedwater room, where they opened valves on the two feedwater lines. Next, they moved to another room, where they stood knee-deep in a highly radioactive mixture of fuel and water for hours, turning half-submerged valves by hand until the radiation drained their strength and they were evacuated to Pripyat’s hospital.136 Their noble efforts were in vain. The water lines had been destroyed along with the reactor - they were opening valves to nowhere - yet still the control room operators continued redirecting water towards the reactor even six hours after the explosion.

He wrote to Alexander on the 20th, as autumnal rains finally quenched the fires, which in some places had burned for six days. (The letter was delivered by the brother of the Russian minister to Cassel, the most senior Russian to be captured in Moscow, which shows how thorough the nobility’s evacuation of the city had been.) ‘If Your Majesty still preserves for me some remnant of your former feelings, you will take this letter in good part,’ he began. The beautiful and superb city of Moscow no longer exists; Rostopchin had it burnt … The administration, the magistrates and the civil guards should have remained. This is what was done twice at Vienna, at Berlin and at Madrid … I have waged war on Your Majesty without animosity. A letter from you before or after the last battle would have halted my march, and I should have even liked to have sacrificed the advantage of entering Moscow.37 On receipt of this letter, the Tsar promptly sent for Lord Cathcart, the British ambassador, and told him that twenty such catastrophes as had happened to Moscow would not induce him to abandon the struggle.38 The list of cities Napoleon gave in that letter – and it could have been longer – demonstrates that he knew from experience that capturing the enemy’s capital didn’t lead to his surrender, and Moscow wasn’t even Russia’s government capital. It was the destruction of the enemy’s main army at Marengo, Austerlitz and Friedland that had secured his victory, and Napoleon had failed to achieve that at Borodino.

By April 23, 2014, thirty-four cases and six deaths from Ebola in Liberia were recorded. By mid-June, 16 more people died. At the time it was thought to be malaria but when seven more people died the following month tests showed that was the Ebola virus. The primary reason for the spreading of the Ebola virus was the direct contact from one person to the next and the ingesting of bush meat. Soon doctors and nurses also became infected. On July 2, 2014, the head surgeon of Redemption Hospital was treated at the JFK Medical Center in Monrovia, where he died from the disease. His death was followed by four nurses at Phebe Hospital in Bong County. At about the same time two U.S. health care workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and a nurse were also infected with the disease. However, they were medically evacuated from Liberia to the United States for treatment where they made a full recovery. Another doctor from Uganda was not so lucky and died from the disease. Arik Air suspended all flights between Nigeria and Liberia and checkpoints were set up at all the ports and border crossings. In August of 2014, the impoverished slum area of West Point was cordoned off. Riots ensued as protesters turned violent. The looting of a clinic of its supplies, including blood-stained bed sheets and mattresses caused the military to shoot into the crowds. Still more patients became infected, causing a shortage of staff and logistics. By September there had been a total of 3,458 cases of which there were 1,830 deaths according to the World Health Organization. Hospitals and clinics could no longer handle this crisis and patients who were treated outside died before they could get help. There were cases where the bodies were just dumped into the Mesurado River. The Ivory Coast out of compassion, opened carefully restricted humanitarian routes and resumed the previously suspended flights to Liberia. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the president of Libera sent a letter to President Barack Obama concerning the outbreak of Ebola that was on the verge of overrunning her country. The message was desperate, “I am being honest with you when I say that at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us.” Having been a former finance minister and World Bank official, Johnson Sirleaf was not one for histrionics however she recognized the pandemic as extremely dangerous. The United States responded to her request and American troops came in and opened a new 60-bed clinic in the Sierra Leone town of Kenema, but by then the outbreak was described as being out of control. Still not understanding the dangerous contagious aspects of this epidemic at least eight Liberian soldiers died after contracting the disease from a single female camp follower. In spite of being a relatively poor country, Cuba is one of the most committed in deploying doctors to crisis zones. It sent more than 460 Cuban doctors and nurses to West Africa. In October Germany sent medical supplies and later that month a hundred additional U.S. troops arrived in Liberia, bringing the total to 565 to assist in the fight against the deadly disease. To understand the severity of the disease, a supply order was placed on October 15th for a 6 month supply of 80,000 body bags and 1 million protective suits. At that time it was reported that 223 health care workers had been infected with Ebola, and 103 of them had died in Liberia. Fear of the disease also slowed down the functioning of the Liberian government. President Sirleaf, had in an emergency announcement informed absent government ministers and civil service leaders to return to their duties. She fired 10 government officials, including deputy ministers in the central government who failed to return to work.

The earth and all life upon it endured and was devastated by what can only be described as a globally distributed firestorm at the onset of the Younger Dryas around 12,800 years ago. In this planetary debacle, 10 million square kilometers of trees and other plant matter burned. To put that in perspective, the United Kingdom was in a state of traumatic shock in late June and early July 2018 after 4,942 acres of Lancashire moorland were consumed by wildfires. That's an area of just 20 square kilometers, but firefighters and emergency services from seven counties were utterly overwhelmed by the blaze and the military had to be brought in to assist. Meanwhile, a report in the Sacramento Bee dated July 2, 2018, opined that California's wildfire season had started early, with two 'major fires' already fought at huge expense and requiring evacuation of local residents. These two fires were estimated to have consumed 85,000 acres, which sounds an awful lot but in fact converts to just 344 square kilometers. The previous years, 2017, was California's most destructive wildfire season then on record, with a total of 1.25 million acres burned. The cost of dealing with the disaster, including fire suppression, insurance, and recovery expenditures, was estimated at US$180 billion. Yet 1.38 million acres converts to just 5,585 square kilometers--an insignificant fraction (around 0.05 percent--that is, a twentieth of 1 percent) of the 10 million square kilometers destroyed in the Younger Dryas wildfires.

The fire is near... brush explodes everywhere... choking on thick smoke... gasping for air... people running past, over me... being evacuated

Now all those diverted cars are going to hit the surrounding streets and canyon passes at the same time hundreds of homes are being evacuated, clogging roads just when fire trucks are trying to get to a raging fire that’s roaring through ravines and up the dry hillsides faster than Superman with dysentery looking for a bathroom.

Fuck / Our Future When our scorching planet ignites the last evacuating airship to cook its soft cargo of human flesh in an expanding fireball and fragments of its propeller blades thunk inches deep into tree trunks in the straggling forest beneath / What I want to know is which will survive / which strain / which wood grain will hold encoded / like a fingerprint pushed into wet clay / that final day of reckoning when this cerulean blue ordained world we have corroded a toxic grey / begins its self-reclamation starting with that tree / a lone lieutenant / a desperate sentinel / erect / through the falling ball of fire / het fuel and smouldering meat / its face of leaves weighed with dust / its waist of branches noosed in plastic bags / yet standing stubborn in its shaggy majesty / admist the ship’s carnage / like a righteous middle finger thrust at all humanity / proud in the snarling sky

The poem "Fuck / Our Future" (p. 49): When our scorching planet ignites the last evacuating airship to cook its soft cargo of human flesh in an expanding fireball and fragments of its propeller blades thunk inches deep into tree trunks in the straggling forest beneath / What I want to know is which will survive / which strain / which wood grain will hold encoded / like a fingerprint pushed into wet clay / that final day of reckoning when this cerulean blue ordained world we have corroded a toxic grey / begins its self-reclamation starting with that tree / a lone lieutenant / a desperate sentinel / erect / through the falling ball of fire / jet fuel and smouldering meat / its face of leaves weighed with dust / its waist of branches noosed in plastic bags / yet standing stubborn in its shaggy majesty / amidst the ship’s carnage / like a righteous middle finger thrust at all humanity / proud in the snarling sky

If these same people were evacuating from a building during a fire alarm I would have surely joined them, so why did I sit idly by as they left this neighborhood?

The Confessor laughed gently. “How very sweet. But you’re not quite one of them, are you, Cass? You’re worth more than any of them. This Piper, at least, must have realized what you could be worth to them, or he’d have killed you as soon as he got hold of you, to be rid of Zach.” She cocked her head slightly as she stared at me. “Though I’m beginning to wonder whether I didn’t overestimate you. Whether we all didn’t. I’m sure you have your moments. I’m guessing we have you to thank for the evacuation of most of the islanders; probably the fire at New Hobart, too. But I’m surprised at your blind spots. You still haven’t harnessed what you’re capable of, it seems.” She’d drawn even closer to us, but as always it was her mental presence that was most confronting. The calculation behind her still eyes; the probing that made me want to wince. “You’re disappointing, Cass. Like these machines. It turns out they’re not everything we might have hoped. Oh, they’re great for storing the information. It’s all in there.” She waved vaguely at the stacks of machines below. “You should have seen the record chambers at Wyndham, before Zach and I had it moved into the computers here. They had the information, but it was so unwieldy. Now, if I need to find something straightforward, it’s phenomenally good. Think of the thousands of clerks we’d need, all scuttling about with millions of files, just to keep track of the basic details. With the computer, it’s all synthesized, in one system. Like a live thing. So I can tap into it, interact with it, use the information as fluently as thinking. If we’d stayed with paper records, we’d never have been able to do what we’ve done.” “And what a tragic loss that would be.

Is that what they talk about sitting at the fire at night? Shiting? ‘Did you have a good shite today, Eddie?’ says she. ‘A grand one,’ says he, ‘and yourself, Bridie, how was your shiting today?’ ‘Grand, Eddie. Grand. That fresh fruit is a great yoke for the evacuation of the bowels.’ For Christ’s sake!

I stood on the old ferry dock and watched the icy sludge slide by. Patches of white ice slipped through, but mostly it was grey slush, sluggish and heavy looking. The air was sharp and clear, one of the few benefits of the evacuation and reducing temperature, the centuries-old odour of industry and modern life frozen and discarded, leaving a crispness previously only found among the peaks of mountain ranges. On the far bank stood the ruins of Birkenhead, where the riots had been particularly bad and the fires that followed were allowed to rage out of control. It had taken weeks for the conflagration to finally die, leaving behind soot-blackened husks of buildings, grotesque sculptures of melted glass and metal and more dead than anyone ever cared to count.

Suddenly Fred closed his book and jumped to his feet. He pretended to be holding a microphone and facing a TV camera. "Hostiles broke out here in the early hours following a dispute over supplies," he said in a breathless reporter's voice. "The Red Cross have asked for a cease fire at ten-thirty to bury the dead, evacuate the wounded, and so that everyone can go to the loo. This is Fred Parsons in the war zone at Walnut Farm, handing you back to the studio.

and even if you had supplies for a long siege… you could still be hunkered down in your fortress, feeling nice and safe – and then a fire breaks out. Enjoy your fire drill. Your rendezvous and evacuation point is down there, on the corner of Dead Guy Ave and You’re Fucked Street.

all private citizens had to deliver their radios to the authorities, at the building of the former stock exchange. The threat, in case of non-delivery was so severe, that nobody would have dared to be found in possession of one. On the day, before the abandonment of the town, the building with the radios was set on fire. Not a single radio was left in town. Before the retreat, they also destroyed the electric utility station, the railroad bridge as well as the pedestrian bridge over the river Prut, the post office and the stocks of arms which they could not evacuate. Of course, we were left without electricity; no water pumping station. Those were inconveniences; we were left in a much more desperate state, unsure of our lives from that day on. The Russians were gone within 8 days. They offered no resistance against the German troops.

The only casualty attendant upon the affair was the death of one man and the wounding of several others by the explosion of a gun in the firing of a salute to their flag by the garrison on evacuating the fort the day after the surrender

A Pentagon investigation found that the team of mostly Green Berets was scheduled to meet with local leaders, but had to change their mission after a drone spotted an Islamic State potentate. Their captain, the target of blame from a Pentagon report that the soldiers’ relatives denounced as a whitewash, expressly warned his superior officer that the unit was neither equipped nor informed enough to execute the raid. More than a hundred militants opened fire on Operational Detachment-Alpha Team 3212. Air support and evacuation did not arrive for four hours, by which time Sergeant First Class Jeremiah W. Johnson, Staff Sergeant Bryan C. Black, and Staff Sergeant Dustin M. Wright were dead. Sergeant La David Johnson was missing, and his body would not be recovered for two days. Less than two weeks later Trump called Johnson’s grieving widow. Myeshia Johnson was with her mother and a family friend, Miami congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who paraphrased Trump as saying that Johnson—whose name Trump evidently didn’t remember—must have known what he had signed up for.

The first phase of the war was led by the IAF. It targeted Hamas rocket launchers, commanders and command posts that Hamas deliberately embedded in Gaza’s densely populated civilian neighborhoods. It placed its main headquarters in a hospital and its stockpiles of rockets and missiles in hospitals, schools and mosques, often using children as human shields. Before bombing these Hamas targets, in an effort to minimize civilian casualties the IDF issued warning to civilians to evacuate the premises. Hamas continued to rocket Israeli cities. I instructed the army to prepare for a ground operation to take out the tunnels. Our soldiers would be susceptible to Palestinian ground fire, booby traps, land mines and antitank missiles, some fired by terrorists emerging from underground. As casualties would inevitably mount on both sides in this door-to-door warfare, I realized that Israel would face growing international criticism. But there was no other choice. I called Obama, the first of many phone conversations we had during the operation. He said he supported Israel’s right of self-defense but was very clear on its limits. “Bibi,” he said, “we won’t support a ground action.” “Barack, I don’t want a ground action,” I said. “But if our intelligence shows that the terror tunnels are about to penetrate our territory, I won’t have a choice.” I repeated this conversation with the many foreign leaders whom I called and who called me, thus setting the international stage for a ground action. Most accepted what I said. The same could not be said for the international media. It hammered Israel on the growing number of Palestinian casualties from our air attacks, conveniently absolving Hamas of targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians. The media also bought Hamas’s inflated numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties, and even its staging of fake funerals. We unmasked many of those being claimed as civilians as Hamas terrorists by providing their names, unit affiliation and other identifying data. I visited the IDF’s Southern Command to meet the brigade commanders who would lead the ground action. They were feverishly working on the means to locate and destroy the tunnels. They were brave, resolute and smart. They knew very well the dangers they and their men would face. So did their soldiers, many of whom did not return.

To set the scene: Madzy Brender à Brandis was a young mother with two small children, trying to survive through years of hardship and danger – and some unexpected pleasures. In May 1942, after her husband was suddenly taken prisoner and sent to a German camp, she began writing a diary to record the details of her life – for her husband to read when he returned, if he returned. She called it “this faithful book.” Here are some passages: 28 October 1944 [when the electricity was cut off because of lack of fuel for the generating plants]: “We have to use the daylight to its utmost, and we figure this out already in the morning. [At the end of the afternoon] We flew faster and faster to use the last bits of daylight, lay the table, lay everything ready so that at 5:30 we could eat in the dusk until we couldn’t find our mouths any more. Blackout and one candle, finished eating and washed the dishes. Read to children in pyjamas and then they to bed. Then unraveled a knitted baby blanket [so that the yarn could be used to knit other things] and at 9:00 blew out the candle and continued by moonlight. But now I’m going to bed, tired but satisfied with my efforts, though very sad about all the misery.” 1 November 1944 [after a threat of having the house demolished]: “Well, our house is still standing. I filled a laundry bag with many things, and everything is standing ready [in case there was a need to evacuate]. Because there is much flying again. At one moment an Allied fighter plane flew over very low; just then three German soldiers were walking past our house and one, “as a joke,” shot his gun at the plane. Tje! What a scare we had!” 24 December 1944 [addressing her husband, still in the camp]: “The whole house is in wonderful peace and I’m sitting by the fire, which gives me just enough light to write this. [The upper door of the small heater, when opened, gave a bit of light.] My Dicks, I don’t have to tell you how very much I miss you on this evening. It is a gnawing sense of longing. But beyond that there is a sorrow in me, a despair about everything, that pervades my whole being. Besides that, however, I’ve already for days seen the light of Christ coming closer and in these days that gives me hope. So does the waxing moon, the hard frost, the bright sun – in a word, all the light in nature after that endless series of misty, rainy, dark days. And so I sit close to my unsteady little light, that constantly abandons me, and think of you. It’s as though you are very close to me. I’m so grateful for everything that I have: your love, the two children, and everything around me.” 12 February 1945 [during the “Hunger Winter” of 1944-45, after one of her trips to forage for food]: “Today I went to Rika in Renswoude: 1¼ hours cycling there, 2½ hours walking back pushing a broken-down bicycle and with 25 pounds of rye [the whole grain, not flour] through streaming rain, while there was constant booming of artillery and bombing in the distance.

Increasingly, U.S. submarines preyed upon the dilapidated little trawlers, junks, and sampans that were always found teeming in those waters. Most were innocently laden with noncontraband cargoes such as rice, grain, fish, coffee, sugar, or salt, and manned by Chinese, Thai, or Malayan crews. But they were plying the coastal trade between ports in Japanese-occupied territories, and that was enough to doom them. In a July 1945 patrol off the east coast of Malaya, the submarine Blenny sank sixty-three small craft with her deck guns. In most cases, but not all, skipper William Hazard gave the crews a warning before opening fire, allowing them to evacuate their vessels and take to their rafts and lifeboats.