The Daily Alaska empire., 1945-02-22
BRlT0NS DISLIKE
 LEAVING HOMES IN
 LONDON SUBWAYS
By CHARLES CHAMBERLAIN
 CAP Ne1pS featureS)

heath the city.
 Many were left homeless during. the 30-day robot blitz which de- stroyed or badly damaged some 823,000 homes in the London area. Others, accustomed to life in the underground tsubways), are reluct- ant to live anywhere else even though now the bombings have virtually ceased.
 Lord Woolton, minister of Re- construction, has announced plans for housing 10000 bombed-out vic- tins this winter in requisitioned and reconditioned houses in the center of London Many more will be sheltered in 10000 huts being built with wood and asbestos with concrete floors.
 Just To Be Sa1e
 Older persons, whose homes still are intact, have taken up their nightly residence underground just to be cn the safe side. Some have been tube dwellers so long that when they return to the surface, the unfamiliarity of night breeze and a comfortable bed probably will keep them awake.
 Instinctively each night the older folk return to the shelters, unaware that the menace from above is all but over The grifny subweY will be their haven until the war is over; only then will they grasp the fact that life on the surface can be safe.
 The largest tube dwelling is at the Liverpool station at the end of the underground line. Its half-mAe of unused extension sheltered 5000 persons nightly during the height of the blitz. The number has now dwindled to goo.
 LuIlaby Of Trains
 The seem contented to enter the strange, fantastic dormitory rather than hear the frightening skirl of the alert signal which occasionally breaks the night on the surface. Assigned to certain spaces in the lines of triple tier hunks, they sleep in comparative peace although thousands of persons pour in and out of the subway trains at their elbows.
 They carry their homes around with them-suitcases crammed with salvaged possessions. Some curl up in their hunks under coats; others are lucky enough to have blankets.
 In the mornings they tidy them selves as much as possible and de- part for work with a "Cheerio, old boy, see you again tonight at the Liverpool Station.'
 A 71-year-old woman said she had spent each night on the board slats of an underground station bunk for five years.
 T am one of the few who never has been able to drop off to sleep while the trains are running" she smiled. So I just wait until they stop around midnight and from then until about 6 o'clock in the morning I sleep like a top.
 Tt may sound silly, but in a way I will miss the subway living. I have struck up so many friend ships and that means much to a woman of my age"
 Romance Underground
 Romance, too, lives with the tube dwellers, some of whom have spent their evenings underground for the past five years. Take the case of Meyer Moses, shelter warden at one of the larger stations. ! Moses ,an old clothes merchant. who came to London B years ago, lived three years in the subways at night before he was appointed a shelter warden, non-paying post. That job brought him his wife. 1 When the first blitz started back in l940, was cut on the street selling clothes as usual,7 Moses said. Then the German bombers drop ped their stuff wholesale. At first I would just look up in the sky and stay there. But one day bomb hit too close and ruined my merchant disc, so joined the flying squad that's what we call people who run to the underground during an alert
 Every night for three years I spent in the shelters. finally be- came warden, which makes me very proud. Every day I carry on my business on the surface and at night I report for work in the underground"
 Moses found his future wife huddled in one of the three -tiered hunks on station platform. She told him how she had been bombed out. Moses heart went out to her and she took it and his name.
 Fate has been kind to me" Moses says. T would undergo the blitz all over again. I'm 45 and happy man with the wife I found in shelter"