It came out of nowhere. There was a sudden piercing shriek as if the jungle itself was screaming in agony, so sharp a sound it felt like someone driving a chisel into your ear. Yet it was only momentary—then came the numbing crunch of the detonation that shook the world like an instantaneous earthquake and everything was befogged by flying dirt and smoke and a vast shower of rain from the canopy. The explosion seemed to strike you in the stomach, nauseating and sending your senses into a panic. But even before you could turn toward Nigel and utter the ‘what the fuck was that!’ words, there came the howl of the hordes swooping out of hell, the banshee death scream of a jet low overhead, thundering away with the glow of its twin afterburners. Nigel’s white face was three perfect circles of eyes and mouth and you supposed your own wasn’t too different, and then he was gone, vanished as if he never existed, and then so had you. There was no need to discuss this—if there’s trouble, withdraw.

The first bomb fell soon after that, before midnight.
The concussions were considerable—they must have been, because he could remember nothing from the time that he put out his light and settled down to sleep till he was standing at the window with Joan, his arm around her shoulders, peering out into the rainy night. The bursts, distant as they were, were rocking the house and setting things tinkling in the room.
“Peter, what can it be?” she had asked. “They wouldn’t be firing guns for practise at this time of night, would they?”
He had shaken his head. “Not on a night like this. There’s nothing for them to see.”
And suddenly she had cried: “Oh, Peter! Look!”
He had looked, and he had seen a sheet of yellow flame perhaps a quarter of a mile away, outlining the roof-tops in silhouette. With that there came a shattering concussion, and another, and another, nearer every time.
“Oh Peter!” she had cried. “It hurts my ears!”
He had hurried her from the window; they crouched down on the floor beside the wardrobe at the far side of the room.
“Keep your hands pressed tight over your ears,” he had said.
“I think this must be an air-raid.”
   In this book, What Happened to the Corbetts,  Nevil Shute attempted to warn Britishers of the general effects of the air raids to come, for the book was written in 1938 and published the next year, four months before the war began. Officialdom were so impressed that they issued a thousand free copies to their air raid wardens.
     Although remarkably prescient, for Shute was able to draw on his aircraft industry experience and wide range of engineering contacts to try and get it right, there were a few things he missed out on. It was expected the gas bombs would be used which never eventuated, not because Hitler and the Nazis were troubled by the ethical questions involved but simply because, since everyone was issued with a gas mask, the effects were likely to be too limited. And he underestimated the vital role that fire would play in the blitz.
    But that hardly matters. What he did get right would be the dithering incompetence of government officials and emergency services under pressure­—indeed the primary intention of his book was to try and shake them out of their apathy—and most of all, the undaunted spirit of the people, in this case the population of the city of Southampton, and their determination to get on with their lives despite the attacks. For Shute knew that bombing cities has always been a waste of energy and resources, for both sides.