大象传媒

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Myself and Roy Holland, who eventually became my husband, went to the Odeon in Plymouth to see a film called "North West Passage". There was a hissing noise and looking up, hanging in the roof of the dome was an incendiary bomb. We made a rapid retreat into Courtenay Street to meet an horrendous sight of Plymouth centre ablaze. There was no warning. In George Street we got into a cellar of Campbell's furniture shop - a huddled few - a bus conductress covered in dust screaming she had lost her bus and passengers. Later on an old man came down the steps carrying a bird in a cage which was covered with a cloth. He sat there all night and no one said a word and no one asked questions. No one could describe the bedlam outside - and the smells. Dawn came and we got into the street and the sight of my beloved city was heartbreaking - a thing I shall never forget. The old man stepped out into the rubble. He took the cover off the cage. The bird knew it was daylight and it started to sing.

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