大象传媒

Although serious bomb incidents were few in the Kirklees area of West Yorkshire, many local people faced danger in other parts of the country eg eg those on essential war work, in the Forces or in Fire and Rescue Services sent to blitzed cities. Isobel, a Wren from Huddersfield based in London during the war, relates some of her experiences:

鈥淭he V1 [Doodlebug] started coming over about June or July [1944] and they were frightening because you could hear them coming along like an ordinary small aeroplane now, and then suddenly it stopped, the engine cut off, and you knew it was going to drop. And then suddenly 鈥極h no!鈥� 鈥� a mighty explosion and it had landed somewhere. And you thought, 鈥極h thank God it hasn鈥檛 landed on me鈥�. But if you were very close to it you could hear it whistling down. It was frightening. We had to take all our bunks and bedding and sleep down in the cellars at Quarters 鈥� it wasn鈥檛 very nice and there were cockroaches running about on the floor. We hated it.鈥�
鈥淥ne of the girls lived in east London, and her mother said, 鈥楤ring some of them for the weekend鈥�, you know, 鈥榟ave a good nights sleep here鈥� 鈥� Her mother played the piano and we all had a good singsong, and we were singing 鈥楶edro the Fisherman鈥� oh, very heartily and loudly when suddenly there was a great explosion. And because we were singing we hadn鈥檛 heard the Doodlebug coming you see.

All the lights went out, plaster started dropping from the ceiling and the glass from windows all came in and we were all choking with dust and soot. Course it was black dark 鈥� we had to pick our way through the house and out into the back garden where they had a shelter sort of half submerged in the garden, and spent the rest of the night in there 鈥� the bomb had actually fallen in the next street where two or three houses had been demolished 鈥� people were killed.鈥�

We heard another coming over during the morning 鈥� it had cut out but you could hear it whistling and we knew it was coming somewhere very near. In fact it fell on the chapel in Wellington Barracks. It was full of people at a service and many were killed and the place was demolished. It was a real tragedy. Some of our Wrens were there, it was full of service people and their friends. And that鈥檚 the next building to ours and of course when it landed there was this terrific explosion and, well I was just swept off my feet 鈥� and into the next room 鈥︹��

鈥溾�� all the trees were stripped of leaves 鈥� they were in full green leaf all the way down and they were just stripped off and all laid on the road with the force of the explosion. And of course the fire engine and the ambulances were all coming to rescue these people who were in Wellington Barracks. It was terrible. So we got on the train and we went up onto Hampstead Heath and we all just laid there on the Heath and we all just cried. After that, well that frightened us, we didn鈥檛 go out very much after that. We stopped going to the theatre because we just felt you know we couldn鈥檛 take the risk.鈥�
Isobel(born 1923), Huddersfield. Wren

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