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On the morning of 25th November 1940 three 17-year-old apprentices met as planned in the city to have a beer before starting a 2-10pm shift in the afternoon.

Seeing the chaotic aftermath of the first big raid on Bristol we presented ourselves at the (AFS) Auxiliary Fire Service Station in Rupert Street with the intention of signing on.

The first admitted to being 17 and was told to come back in a couple of years, the other chap and I instantly aged ourselves by two years, and suddenly we were in, and were told to report to our nearest fire station, and we would be given some pre training experience by doing some damping down. After we did this, we were put on the 12-4 am shift, which suited our working hours and though we did not know it, was the most unpopular shift.

The first night’s damping down was that terrible night when in Castle Street and Castle Green where we were pumping water from a bomb crater, with a broken water main in the bottom providing the water.

Later whilst having a break, I wandered through the ruins of Boots shop on the corner of Castle Green scrambling over smoking debris and found myself in a vaulted hall, thick with smoke and steam, quite spooky at about 3 am! I subsequently found out that it was the dining hall of Bristol Castle, still to be seen on Castle Green. After this I was told never to go wandering off on my own - ignorance is bliss.

Damping down continued for about a week or 10 days until the next blitz. Although not yet officially being in the AFS I went out again as a crew member. My station was an old tramway garage and housed a number of light trailer pumps and their associated equipment here, ladders etc, lacking only towing vehicles. That problem was solved by 'borrowing' suitable vehicles from wherever they could be arranged.

On this particular occasion we sallied forth in a coal merchants lorry complete with scales and crewed by a couple of firemen who delivered us to our fire, unloaded all the gear, left us to it and returned to the station to pick up another crew with their gear.

After fighting a fire in Brooks Dye Works we were ordered to Witts Bakery which meant manhandling our gear across some allotments. When this fire was extinguished, the other appliances were moved on but we were left to continue damping down, as we had no towing vehicles.

Early in the morning about dawn a fire broke out in the Victoria Paint Company in Sevier Street. Calls for assistance went unanswered until it was too late to save the building, the Fire Services being stretched to the limit by the end of a blitz.

In subsequent air raids I fought fires in and around Bristol and Avonmouth. Most big raids occurred on clear frosty nights and seemed to go on for ever, some I think for about twelve hours, and apart from the noise, weariness, cold, wet and hunger seem to be the predominant memories. Sadly, some of the fires I attended were burn-outs due to the shortage of water. Besides being overloaded by demand from numbers of fire pumps, I believe that water mains were fractured by bombs.

At the time of the raids I was seventeen/eighteen years old, but many of the auxiliary and later National Fire Service were then past their mid-fifties.

On the plus side there was a camaraderie that still exists among the very few non professional fire fighters still living.

Those were the days…..

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