大象传媒

In 1939 my mother, Elsie Larcombe, was 14 years old when war started. At that time she had just completed a shorthand typing course at the Bristol Modern Office Training College and was employed as a shorthand typist at Grace, Derbyshire and Todd in Corn Street in the centre of Bristol.

She lived at home with her parents, 3 sisters and a brother in a 3 storey house at 13 Fairfield Road, Montpelier, Bristol. Because they had 2 spare attic rooms 2 war reservists were billeted with the family and their rent and rations helped to feed the occupants of the house. Food was scarce and rationing affected the family although they didn't starve as they had all the basics but there were no luxuries like bananas.

Daily routine continued for Elsie, both at home and at work, but it was interrupted by the many air raids that occurred once the Bristol Blitz had started. At first the outskirts of the city were hit and she can remember going up to the attic to watch Filton being bombed. It was not until November 1940 that the centre was hit. Then, if the air raid sirens sounded at Grace, Derbyshire and Todd during the day, Elsie, along with the rest of the staff, would go to the vaults that had been specially reinforced as air raid shelters.

However, it was the evening of Sunday, 16 March 1941 that was to change her life for ever. Along with her parents and younger sister Mildred, Elsie had been to visit relatives. The air-raid sirens had sounded whilst they were there and after some bombing the all-clear had sounded so the family started for home. Half way there the sirens sounded and they just got in when the raids commenced again. Her father, Walter, who was an Air Raid Warden in the Home Guard, went straight out and Elsie and Mildred entered the understairs cupboard whilst her mother, Lily, went under the kitchen table. Little did they know what was going to happen next.

Elsie and Mildred stayed there for some time listening to the bombs falling with their hands over their ears. Suddenly a stray bomb from a plane homeward bound after its main bombing raid was dropped in the street outside 13 Fairfield Road. The front door was blown down and a piece of shrapnel came through the stairs and caught Elsie's left hand as she was taking it away from her ear, injuring her hand very badly. After receiving first-aid at an air-raid shelter under the playground of Fairfield School, Elsie was taken to the Bristol Royal Infirmary to be attended to where she subsequently had the 2 little fingers of her left hand amputated and lost the use of the third finger through tendon damage.

The next day Elsie was transferred to St Martin's Hospital, Bath where she stayed for 6 weeks. It was also on that day that she learnt her father had been killed by the blast from the same bomb that caused her injuries. He had been coming home after helping with other casualties in another street and was found without a mark on him.

The family had to leave their house from March until August 1941 until it was repaired. Elsie could no longer continue her work as a shorthand typist as she only had the index finger and thumb on her left hand and was now classed as 30 per cent disabled. However, she remained with Grace, Derbyshire and Todd and retrained as an auditor's clerk.

Later in the war, when Elsie was 17 years old, her older sister Winifred was working in a munitions factory in Kingswood where she met Marion Pinch who had come from Cornwall to also work there. Marion had 3 brothers in the war, one of whom was called Reginald familiarly known as Rex. He was experiencing a tough time as a driver in the Army responsible for taking supplies to the front line and had served in both Europe and North Africa. As he was feeling homesick Elsie agreed to write to him. Rex subsequently met Elsie when he was finally de-mobbed prior to returning to Cornwall. They got engaged then and married in 1947 when Elsie left Bristol for a new life in a little village called Bugle, Cornwall and I was born along with my still-born twin sister on 14 January 1949.

Elsie now entered fully into village life on a purely voluntary basis never letting her disability stand in her way. She helped with the Girl Guides, became a member and Trustee of the Bugle Chapel, taught in the Sunday School for 25 years, acted in the Bugle Players and served on the local Arthritis and Rheumatism and Cancer committees for many years. As a member of the Womens' Institute since the late 1950s she has held office as President, Vice President, Secretary and Programme Secretary and is a Trustee of the WI Hall. Her interest in music led to serve as Secretary of the Bugle Music Festival committee for 34 years and she is also a life member of the Bugle Band Festival for her work as Convener organising the refreshments for the annual Band Contest.

After nearly 30 years of marriage Rex died of a heart attack in 1977 and in 1981 Elsie married Herbert May, another stalwart of Bugle community life, but was widowed again when Herbert finally died aged 96 years in 2001.

I cannot imagine what it was like for my mother to be disabled by the same bomb that killed her father and to have lived with that reminder for over 60 years. That is a truly devastating effect of war. However, I have every reason to be thankful that the Second World War happened because without it I could not have been born as my mother and father would never have met.

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