LONDON--Well, I've been doodle-bugged, flying-bombed, pilotless-plane, stricken or whatever else they may call it. 

I didn't like it. 

But, I'm not kicking; I was lucky. 

The thing happened about 11:30 pm, while I was walking aimlessly about London, getting a little air before I went to bed in the hotel.  

There was a terrific explosion. And, all about me, the night became a horrible flash of red. The sidewalk seemed to rise up and hit me a crushing blow on the lungs.

I lay on the sidewalk, conscious, but unable to move a muscle (the blast apparently paralyzed me temporarily). I wanted to feel my legs and my arms and my face, to see if I still had those things, but I couldn't do it. And that inability to touch the various parts of my body still seems the worst part of the whole experience.

A man came running by, probably bound for the scene of the blast. He pulled me to my feet, which seemed to put my muscles into action again. By some sort of miracle, a cab came along. The man put me into the cab, and I went back to the hotel and stayed in bed for two days.

Then, discovering my signature resembled that of a Gestapo agent, signing his own death warrant, I went out into the country a little bit, to a village, stayed there ten days, and came back to London feeling fairly normal.

(The doodles came over the village fairly regularly, but the atmosphere still seemed more peaceful.)

I was put on the blink by a flying bomb which hit a little less than a block and a half away from me. It doesn't seem very close, but a doodle carries a ton of explosive and the blast often is felt miles away. The effect of the blast is determined by the terrain of the place hit. Tall buildings may cushion the blast, which always seeks an outlet, so to speak.

My own particular bomb knocked the whole front and most of the interior out of a f'our-story building, cracked the walls and joints in adjoining structures, and broke all the windows in a block.

My experience proved to me the oft-heard expression that you will never hear the doodle which will kill you.

 I never heard a thing, no whistle, no nothing, the bomb being in a glide and, for some reason or other, emitting no whistle.