大象传媒

As I was born at the end of the war I was fortunate enough not to have been involved in the bombing raids over Bristol, but the story my mother told me was very frightening for her My father & neighbours whose houses in Walsh Avenue, Hengrove backed onto a paint factory had to endure many raids the worse one & final for them was the night the paint factory was bombed. My father was very ill in bed with pleuresy. When the raid started my mother realised it was bad when warned by air raid wardens so she filled the sinks upstairs & bath with water, put the plugs in & left the taps running as she felt the first bomb hit nearby, & smoke pouring through the windows, this enabled her time to try assist my father down the stairs to the shelter, she was told next day by the wardens that she had saved his life. The next day of course they all stood & looked at the smouldering ruins of their houses & the paint factory, realising except for a suitcase they had lost everything, just a few pieces of furniture & small items survived which I still have. My mother had made the sad decision the day before to have her beautiful 4yr old cat called Smudge put to sleep rather than risk him having to go through a dreadful time. My father was put in isolation at Ham Green Hospital weighing 6 stone so was very lucky to survive the cold. When he was better they rented rooms, he went back in the army as an ack kack gunner, I was born in 1944 & realise how lucky I was to have had such courageous parents. They were incidentally offered approx 拢250 which went towards an old property in Kingswood where they lived for 30 years.

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