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A story gathered from Mrs. Hazel Crawley by Denis Price of the 大象传媒 Radio Humberside WW2 People`s War Team.

The first time I heard about bombing was at the very beginning of the war when we were all told that the Germans would be soon attacking all big towns and cities. Everybody knows about all the kids being evacuated but as well as them, all pregnant women were too, I know because I was one of them. It was October 1939 and being eight months pregnant I was put on a train to Bridlington a few miles up the coast along with about ten others in a similar condition. I`d left my husband Den in Hull, he was the assistant manager of the Criterion Cinema on George Street.
Moving to Bridlington wasn`t so bad for me as I had relatives there anyway and managed to get myself put with them. It was a funny business being split up and nothing happening, it was if our lives had stopped, like treading water. Anyway I had little Denny in the middle of November at the Avenue Nursing Home in Brid, I think they pulled it down just a few years ago. They treated us well there on the whole, although with the war just starting we knew that things would be changing. It was noticeable even to me as a young person that when some people put a uniform on they get quite bossy. I remember one of the doctors there especially. We were kept in hospital longer in those days so you can imagine a lot of bored high spirited young women itching to get home with their new babies and not taking kindly to new wartime rules and such. Well, this chap wouldn`t normally say boo to a goose and then one day he turned up in an army officer`s brand new uniform and started to chuck his weight about with the nurses which of course affected us. I can see him now strutting along the wards giving orders and generally showing off. Anyway we got our own back one day. It was mid morning and one of the nurses was in a bit of a state because they`d run out of milk for his Lordship`s coffee. Well I had always plenty to spare so you can guess what happened! I couldn`t look at him without laughing after that, uniform or not.
Well, as everybody knows nothing much happened for a few months , no bombing or anything so we all went back to Hull with our new babies. It wasn`t like that for long though, they called it the phoney war didn`t they? It stopped being phoney when the Jerries came and the bombing really started. By 1941 I`d moved in with my mother- in -law who was living down Lees Walk on Walton Street opposite the Fairground. Den, my husband was now in the army down in Devon. The bombing had been going on regularly by this time, the Jerries had an easy job finding Hull, they wanted to destroy the industry so all they had to do, even in the dark, was follow the river which had lots of factories around it.
The one experience I`ll always remember was in May 1941, I`d just had my twentieth birthday so it must have been May. The Air Raid sirens started about eight in the evening and I`d just got Denny, who was about eighteen months, down for the night or so I`d thought, so I grabbed him and our shelter bag. I always had this bag ready for the raids. I had his food, milk and changes of clothes and anything we might need in it. You had to be ready as when you were in the shelter you couldn`t come out until the All Clear sounded. We didn`t have our own Air Raid shelter, Mother in law and me shared with the family next door so we joined them. I`m not good at remembering what kind of shelter it was, it definitely wasn`t an Anderson one with the corrugated iron on the outside, I think it was brick with a concrete top. A funny thing though, this is what the family told me, the first person in the shelter when the siren went off was a local ARP Warden. It was his job to warn everybody else to take cover, maybe he`d seen too much of it! One thing I did notice was that the poor bloke was shaking like a leaf in the shelter. Another thing I have to say about the bombing is probably not kind but sometimes on a clear night when the warning siren had sounded you could hear the Jerries and after a bit you could guess they were heading for somewhere else and you were pleased because you knew it wasn`t going to be your turn that night, some other poor devils would be copping it.
I can`t say that I could hear anything when I was in there, not on this particular night, no bumps or thuds, nothing like that, maybe we were lucky in our part of Hull that night not to have any drop close by. What really did bother me was that my Mam and Dad lived on the other side of town down Stoneferry, which because of all its oil and feed factories on the River Hull was a real target for the bombers.
We had to stay in the shelter until the All Clear sounded, it was usually between half past four and half past six in the morning. Nobody really slept, just dozed. Denny had a little carry cot arrangement but he wouldn`t sleep in it, he`d just doze on my lap. The others would make a fuss of him and take him which would give me a rest. How the men and some women with day time jobs worked all day after a night in there, maybe after a few nights on the trot, was beyond me but everybody did it, it was how things were.
That morning when I came out of the shelter I tried to find out which parts of the town had been bombed. I knew that Hull City centre had been hit badly but that was all. You never did seem to learn a lot but that would be understandable with all the telephones blown up. I tried to ring Earle`s Cement Works at Wilmington in Stoneferry because Dad was the yard charge hand there. It was down Dalton Street and him and Mam lived down the next Street, Withernsea Street. I wanted to know if they were alright, anyway I couldn`t get through on the phone so I decided to go over there myself.
I had Denny in his tansad, that was like a light fold up pram, and we set off in the morning walking from Walton Street and down Spring Bank which was clear of any new damage I could see. It was when we got to Queen Victoria Square that it got really bad. It gave me a real shock to see something I`d always seen as permanent in such a mess. One thing I remember as well as all the damaged buildings was the terrible smell, the bombs must have blown up the gas and sewage pipes along with everything else. I tried to cross the Square with the tansad, climbing over all the pipes and hoses mixed in with water and broken glass . The only people around were firemen and one came up to me and really told me off for being there until I told him that I was trying to get to Stoneferry to see if my Mam and Dad were alright. Then he helped me carry Denny clear of all the pipes and rubble to the other side.
I was told later that the Prudential Building on the edge of the Square had been bombed that night and a lot of people who`d gone into its cellars for protection had been killed or drowned. Nobody knew how many, they couldn`t get any out so they just sealed it up. It鈥檚 a funny thing but I never even noticed, I must have been too wrapped up in my own worries My son Denny took me back there a couple of years ago and showed me a plaque on the ground where the building had been. It was nice that they were remembered but I do wish it wasn`t something to be walked on, they deserve to be raised up, if you know what I mean.
I carried on through Queen`s Gardens and over North Bridge and down Stoneferry to Withernsea Street. I was really relieved not to see any new bomb damage. When I got to number eighteen I knocked, I remember being tired out and Denny was fed up. My Dad came to the door, his first words were `What the `ell are you doin` `ere?` I`ll always remember that, no words of comfort from him. I suppose it was his way of showing relief that we were alright. He wasn`t a man to show his feelings, he`d been through all the first war as a regular soldier and in our home we had always known who was in charge. Mam fussed all over us both and Dad told us to `Get yoursen and the kid a cup of tea and clear off home before Jerry comes back` which is what we did, you didn`t argue!
There were many raids on Hull, sometimes it seemed night after night but that`s the one I remember most. Withernsea Street was bombed badly a bit later on, the whole centre of the street was demolished, by a landmine people said. Luckily Mam and Dad escaped, they were in Brid at the time.
Not long after I went down to Devon to join my husband in the army, but I`ll never forget that walk across Hull and the way I felt at seeing the destruction around something I`d always seen as solid and permanent. A few years ago after the graduation ceremony of one of my sons in the City Hall, we stood among the pigeons in Queen Victoria Square to celebrate and have our photographs taken. It was a lovely day for a lovely occasion but I couldn`t help but think back to that day in May and that plaque on the ground only a few feet away, and how lucky so many of us of that generation had been to survive and enjoy such times as these.

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