大象传媒

For three nights from the 25th April 1942, the town experienced intensive air raids that killed four hundred and seventeen people, injured hundreds and destroyed and damaged about two thousand premises.

My father working in a government department in Deptford had been transferred in 1941 to take charge of a Royal Naval garage in the city of Bath. Our family already evacuated out of London, came to join him. Our house in James Street West was next to the garage. I remember the horror of the night as enemy planes hummed over us. We crowded into a downstairs room and my mother wrapped in a blanket sat in a chair near the fireplace, whilst my brother, wearing greatcoat and tin hat hunched in a corner. My father threw himself over me protecting me from glass splinters and a rain of incendiaries and bombs that flashed the sky. The noise and juddering was deafening as the ground shook and our house rocked but stayed intact. All the windows had blown out and dust, grit and plaster covered everything. I was so frightened I couldn鈥檛 stop trembling.

There was no gas or water so I queued at a static water tank with my bucket. It was the church opposite that had shielded us from damage. It had a mattress pinioned on its steeple. All the tiles and most of the glass windows had gone. Walls had collapsed and the heavy doors wrenched from the brickwork had blasted away. People wandered around in a daze, and one man stumbled gripping a blanket round his naked body. My brother took me to see the ruins and we didn鈥檛 need to go far. A shop had bricks spewing out of its windows and houses and shops were collapsing. Alarmingly there were soldiers patrolling with rifles to prevent looting!

The next street, the other side of the church, had disappeared. It was as if a crazed monster had passed by lashing its tail, spraying bricks into large heaps. People buried in the rubble, their arms and legs sticking out, stared like dummies in a clothes shop onto a world of devastation. Public services were overstretched, after all Bath was considered a safe town with nothing of value to the enemy! Royalty came to visit and I stood in line to watch Queen Mary wafting like a silver ghost through the gates of a smouldering rubber factory. That night it was decided for our safety we should sleep outside the city.

Furniture vans met at the end of the road, and armed with blankets and pillows we clambered aboard and sped out to the hills. What excitement.
"Take your shoes off and sleep in your clothes.鈥� My mother advised.
Vans pulled back to shelter under high rocks. It was like a huge picnic as everyone had bought cocoa and sandwiches, which we ate under the night sky. Anyone that lit a cigarette was told: 鈥淧ut it out, it glows in the dark, do you want them to know where we are!鈥� (The raids hadn鈥檛 even started.) I slept in a space above the driving compartment. Grown ups lay on the van floor and with the tailboard up and curtains drawn across, it was a dark snuffly world of strangers coughing or snoring. Searchlights pinpointed planes as they returned from bombing Bristol docks. Through a hole in the curtain, I could see out to a world alight with flares, fires and incendiaries. Our van rocked as bombs dropped. Enemy planes spiralled and ended in a brilliant flash, which sent us cheering.

An unexploded bomb half buried near petrol tanks in the garage next door to us made us leave our home. Work called my father to take charge and we didn鈥檛 see him for days. Dressed in Sunday best, we bundled into vans for our journey away from the lethal weapon. Some camped in hill caves but we were billeted with a family. When the raid started we sheltered under a large table with a cloth down to the floor. It was a frightening night with droning planes overhead and bombs whistling and machine guns rattling. I plugged my ears and shut my eyes tight. By daylight we saw the walls, and paths had been riddled with bullets.

Next day we went back to feed the cat and collect more clothes, but were barred by a policeman who warned us that the road was unsafe and not to stay long. I couldn鈥檛 believe what I saw as I climbed over piles of bricks, jumped holes, debris, glass and splintered wood to get to our house. It was as if I had trespassed into a nightmare world. The garage was the only building standing. Our house was now a heap of blackened smouldering timbers. Floors had fallen into the cellar, an empty fireplace gaped skywards and there was not a wall standing. Even the thick slab path had been smashed and thrown over the road.

We picked our way looking for anything familiar. Nothing. Our cat cringed to where a garden wall had stood. He was wild and run off like one possessed. Other buildings weakened by fire were cracking and falling.
鈥淐ome on misses, it will all go in a minute鈥�, a warden shouted.
The road was alive with snaking pipes as water shot skyward from fractured water mains. Gas pipes twisted and broken, reared like roaring monsters as gas escaped. The street was flooded, and cracked glass had washed into crystal pyramids along the road. As we climbed clear, a thudding roar and a cloud of dust told us our house had disappeared.

We found shelter with our country friends who wouldn鈥檛 come near me as I came out in vast itching sores. Work kept my father in Bath for three months before he could return to London and find lodgings for us to be together. It was from here that I was to experience further war time terrors.

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