大象传媒

This story is submitted by a volunteer on behalf of Radio Bristol Action Desk at City of Bristol College.

I lived adjacent to Temple Meads station which was a bad area for bombing.
My Mother and 3 sons (myself included) went to visit my Granmother in Bath. There were no air raid shelers . The first night we were there the air raid sirens went, Mother knew about them and said about getting under an old iron bedstead, (children Mother and my Aunt). My Grandmother stayed on her bed and ignored it, but she was draged under the shelter.
Within seconds a bomb fell in the garden next to us and the window blew in with debryu falling on the bed that was proviously accompied by my Grandmother. If it was a split second before she would have been on the bed.

The next morning we went to a school at Lark hall. From there they displaced us to Paulton. We were bilited with the lady of manor which is 3/4's of a mile outside the village. My aunt stayed in the villege while we were in the basement of the manor. My grandmother got double Pneumonia, luckily the lady of the manor was red cross organiser for Somerset and so treated my Grandmother.
This took place in 1941-42.
Ironically this was the only weekend that Bath had any bombings.

There were lots of comical things happening. After the harvesting children would be sent in to clean the wheat. The lady of the manor had an apple orchard I picked 7 wicket baskets and there were about 3 bad apples in them, I got given these. I wish I had thought of getting myself a bag.
Next door had about 3000 chickens, I offered to collect the eggs but they refused as they had a premium from their food. The only time we got an egg from them was when Grandmother was ill and they gave us Egg custard.
I went to the local school for a while, I think they started at 9am but some children came in at 11am and would sleep on the desks. It was put down to helping out on the farm and so they would be tired from working. At the time it was accepted as normal (in 1942/3). It was quite disruptive to learning and the academic side did faulter.

The other people that lived with us in Bristol used to pack up and go to the caves in Avon gorge at night.

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