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I was fourteen years old when I started work at Wills Tobacco Factory. We lived in a terraced house in Willway Street, Bedminster. There was a railway running at one end of the street and a tannery and a factory (known as the Malthouse) at the other end, so whenever there was an air-raid it seemed to rain on us. The most dramatic of all was Good Friday 1941. During this air-raid, we piled into the Anderson Shelter which was in the back garden; my father stayed in the house. Suddenly it felt like a train going through a tunnel but a bomb had fallen just behind the Anderson Shelter. I must have been unconscious and when I came round I could see the stars and my father was calling to us to get out; I got up and ran to the house opposite. My mum and sister were taken to hospital, my older sister had a nine month old baby boy who was sat on her lap, unfortunately the bar which was holding the shelter up had fallen on the baby and killed him, my sister had an injured foot, and mum and my other sister were hurt but not too badly. The Anderson Shelter had been well built but nothing could have stopped the bomb; the house was almost cut in half.

I had a new white mackintosh in one of the rooms, I clambered through the rubble and took a rake to grab it; when my father found out he was furious at the danger that I had put myself through.

We often walked out into the countryside to get away from the air-raids and slept one night in Long Ashton in a church! The bombs continued to drop and eventually Willway Street was obliterated. Lots of people we knew were killed there. This really upset my mother. We went to live with relatives in Windmill Hill until the Corporation re-housed us.

In the factory we sometimes had entertainers in the canteen.
ENSOR-ENTERTAINMENT — Roll out the Barrel — Vera Lynne’s -
White Cliffs of Dover — Pack up your Troubles — Blue Birds and We’ll Meet Again was played often over the tannoy when we had our tea-breaks, cigarettes still had to be made during the war and this kept us going. During the lunch-breaks while we were eating we were entertained to keep up our morale.

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