大象传媒

I came to Bristol in 1938 and married a Bristolian. I had a baby girl during 1940, and my husband was called up into the Army when she was three months old.

When war broke out (3rd September 1939) my husband came home and blacked out the windows with newspapers, because we had no black out curtains. I could not believe that this was happening, because in 1938 Neville Chamberlain (then the Prime Minister) had gone over to Europe (with the Munich agreement) and came back with the famous document declaring appeasement (the "Here is the paper" film clips you see).

So when war broke out I was pregnant and I just could not believe it! It was such a let down and a real shock. Here I was in this position of being pregnant and war breaking out in an uncertain and unstable future.

We lived in Langham Road, Knowle (Bristol). During 1940 the bombing raids started. Bombs fell all around where we lived. They destroyed a house completely two houses down, and brought down the front of our house. Also at the front of our house was a huge crater in the road. We were taken to Wells Road School, and found to our horror that the Infants School next to the Junior School was demolished. The shops by our school were on fire, and there were explosions all round. We were to find out later that the bombing raid on Filton Aircraft works had happened the same day.

Another time later, after we had been allowed back another raid broke over us and machine guns were let off all along the gardens. "Did the enemy see grass and vegetables an enemies?"

Food was rationed, it was "make do and mend". Dried Egg, Spam, Grey bread which was unsliced, there was no sliced bread in those days. You had to grow whatever you could in the garden. We often ate boiled Beetroot as vegetables could not be purchased and if you could not grow anything else you had to eat what you could grow.

Whilst our house was being rebuilt after the bombing we lived with my Mother-in- Law. We had soup and a bread roll in the nearby Chapel everyday until our house was secured.

In the hallway of my in Laws we kept our Gas masks and an all-in-one contraption which you could put the baby in, and you had to keep pumping air into it. I did not put my own Gas mask on.

There were timed bombs which went off after they landed, not straight away (delayed action bombs). Castle Street, the Registry Office were all ruined. All the big stores that were around then in those days were all flattened.

We had to shelter under the stairs, until the Anderson Shelter was built. It was a bit cramped under the stairs, as you can imagine. The Anderson shelter was not the nicest of places either. Cold damp and cheerless.

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