大象传媒

My father ran a local shop on Rodway Road, Patchway in Bristol, selling all kinds. As I was only at the tender age of eight years old, he would say come home as soon as the sirens go off.

Like many other young boys did, I went exploring on land on Callicroft Farm with my friend Les Ward. Suddenly the sirens went off and we dived into the local Air Raid shelter as hundreds of aircraft possibly as many as eighty came over, and totally unapprehended they dropped what seemed to me was a "swarm of locusts", these were incendiary bombs. This was the Wednesday 25th September 1940 bombing raid on the aircraft factories at Filton and Patchway. These bombs fell on West Works. I was terrified as one would expect to be.

There were lots of Westland Whirlwind aircraft based at RAF Filton which were damaged along with lots of other kinds of aircraft near the runways.

Whilst down inside the earth air raid shelter, it felt as though the ground was rocking, and the shelter seemed to be stood on its end, but in fact it was I that was thrown onto the floor!

I was crying and frightened. Half an hour later as we emerged we discovered that West Works was devastated, and people were streaming home, some with obvious wounds that had been bandaged up. Eventually when I got home I cannot repeat what my father said when he found out what had happened to me and my friend whilst out walking.

Two days later on Friday 27th September there was another air raid. The 504 Squadron Hurricanes were encircling the area high up out of the sun, and scattered the German Raiders when they were least expecting it. The German bombers offloaded their bombs at "Nutwoods" as these woods were known locally, which was fortunately derelict land. I daresay that other boys went looking for schrapnel to add to their collections!

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