大象传媒

This is a story of what happened to myself and the other people mentioned above during the German air raids on Plymouth, which also involved many outlying districts including Botus Fleming where I lived.

The blitz on Plymouth started in 1940 and usually before a raid, the Luftwafe (as they were known) would firstly drop flares so as to guide the following aircraft to their target. Myself and my neighbour鈥檚 daughter, Beryl Rodgers, were standing in our doorway watching the gunfire and searchlights as if it were Guy Fawkes night, seeing no danger to ourselves whatsoever, when suddenly a stray aircraft dropped twelve bombs in a line right through our village, killing a Mr Ernest Townsend, who had just come out from a Home Guard drill exercise. One bomb dropped in our garden about 100 yards from where Beryl and I were standing, blowing us through the doorway around a corner and into our lounge, where I received injuries to my legs, with shattered glass and shrapnel.

A few months after my friend, Terry Prideaux and I, went to a field where a bomb had dropped, to see its crater, a name used to describe a pit created by a bomb after exploding. Suddenly an unexploded bomb went off blowing us off our feet, but fortunately we escaped injury.

Air raids then became very frequent and usually lasted all night. We then became very frightened indeed and when the sirens sounded we would go under the kitchen table. Then, one night on April 27th 1941, about 8 pm, the siren sounded so we all went under the table, myself, our evacuee girl Betty Guelly, my gran and my grand dad, Fred Summerfield, my aunt, who had one leg, Bessie Pascoe, when suddenly there was a crash, a direct hit on our house. We were buried under tons of rubble choking with dust, trapped. Neighbours guessed we were in the house and alerted soldiers from a nearby camp, who eventually dug us out. What a miracle, we were exhausted but thankfully alive.

Our evacuee鈥檚 mother came down from Bristol and took her back home. We all then went down to Polzeath in Cornwall to get over our ordeal, until we eventually came back to live in the next parish Landullpho.

I remember going into Plymouth with my parents on the train from Saltash to Millbay Station at that time. The centre of Plymouth was flattened and a lot of shops were temporarily closed at Mutley Plain.

Also, during the war, there were lots of barrage balloons like giant kites raised over Plymouth to prevent dive bombers from attacking but if there was a thunder storm with lightening, they could catch fire as they were full of hydrogen gas and sometimes high winds would break them loose.

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