´óÏó´«Ã½

When I was about 10 we moved from Skegness to Cleethorpes having a house in New William Street off Mill Lane. My Father was excused military service as I had severe asthma and bronchitis. He was a bus driver for the Lincolnshire Roadcar Co. One of the shifts they had to do was start at 9pm taking workers to Brigg Sugar Beet Factory and bringing others home acting as ‘fire wardens’ during the night and taking the 6am workers to Brigg, then bringing the night shift home.

When my dad was on this shift my brother and I slept on a bed settee in the lounge and mam rested in a chair. When there was an air raid we would shelter under a heavy oak table, one night, during the blitz on Grimsby docks, a ‘stick’ of bombs were dropped round us. Mother could hear the whine of the bombs falling and boldy pulled my young brother and myself off the bed and under the table. The blast of the explosions blew the doors and windows in. The plywood blackout shutters were blown across the room and stood on the sideboard, on the opposite wall and never disturbed any of the things that were on the top.

The bedsheets where we were sleeping were cut to threads with the broken glass from the window, if my mother hadn’t pulled us off the bed I wouldn’t have been writing this now.

The shock of the raid and the results sent me blind. One of the bombs hit the grocer’s house and shop on the corner through the roof bedroom and living room into the ground below but didn’t explode. Consequently we had to move out for about a week to ten days while they defused and removed it. So we went to stay with my aunt and grandfather in Carr Lane, Grimsby, while there, we used to go to the Anderson shelter and the bottom of the garden during the air raids.

One night whilst in the shelter a bomb landed 3 or 4 doors for us sending tons of earth into the air. The earth fell and blocked the door to the shelter and we were trapped inside until the ARP men came and dug us out. The shock of all this resulted in my eyesight returning.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.