Night Out

The orchestra at London's Cafe de Paris gaily played Oh, Johnny, Oh Johnny, How You Can Love! At the tables handsome flying Johnnies, naval Jacks in full dress, guardsmen, territorials, and just plain civics sat making conversational love. The service men were making the most of leave; the civilians were making the most of the lull in bombings of London.

Sirens had sounded. Most of London had descended into shelters, but to those in the cabaret, time seemed too dear to squander underground. Bombs began to fall near by: it was London's worst night raid in weeks. The orchestra played Oh, Johnny a little louder.

Then the hit came. What had been a nightclub became a nightmare: heaps of wreckage crushing the heaps of dead and maimed, a shambles of silver slippers, broken magnums, torn sheet music, dented saxophones, smashed discs. One of the dead was Martinus Poulsen, who before the war owned a chain of night spots worth more than -L-250.000. But some of the carefree young survived. They dragged themselves out. They went with their bruises and grime to a West End hotel. They washed up. They went to the ballroom and ordered food and drinks. They asked the bandleader for a number they will never forget: Oh, Johnny, Oh Johnny, How You Can Love!

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