The shelter was large enough to accomodate hundreds, and maybe thousands, of people, and it filled the whole of the south field in Kennington Park... [it] was an unpleasant place, and people only went there because the government stopped them going down into the nearby underground stations. One witness reported that "The public shelter was horrible, smelly. It had a mouldy slab of concrete for a roof. But you couldn’t go anywhere else - the Oval Station was full of barbed wire … they wouldn’t let you near it."
The direct hit on the shelter inevitably caused huge damage and horrible injuries. One witness reported that he "was 17. My job was helping to dig the bodies out. We put curtains up, so that people walking past couldn’t see in the pit. Eventually we couldn’t do anymore and we covered the remains with lime.". The chaos of war along with the need to keep up morale meant that no official toll of those dead and missing was announced, but historians now believe that 104 people were killed. It is said that 46 bodies were recovered but the majority of the bodies were left unrecovered when the site was levelled.
While lime-encrusted ghosts still walk the park, things are somewhat brighter in the area these days. Today, South Lambeth Road is famous for being the most Portuguese place in the world - Lisbon lags laughably behind in this regard. And less than one mile away from the strip of Portuguese cafes, bars, bakeries and bookshops is The Jolly Gardeners, where the Germans are brewing something. And it doesn't come in steins. Nor does it have a reliable centre-back pairing.
That was London's small-but-vocal German community during their 1-0 win over Austria. If you think that got them excited, well... you didn't see the wolf-whistles they gave Angela Merkel when she appeared on the big screens. The Germans are frisky, and the Portuguese will be all hopped up on salt-cod and lamprey rice. And let's face it, if you're hard enough to stomach that, then you're definitely on a war footing.
