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Memories of World War II
By J. Venn (13 year old schoolboy at the time)

I lived with my mother in Bath, (my father having died as a result of a fall whilst being a Sergeant in the Home Guard in 1941.

My first real memory was scouring the fields at Newton St. Loe — where a German Bomber had dropped his bombs — looking for shrapnel. Hundreds of people were also there.

Now turning to April ’42, when for two nights Bath was on the end of the Baedaker raids — reprisal for us bombing German towns. We lived in a big 3 storey house on a corner of Snow Hill. My brother and I were in the pantry during this — all that happened to me was a large lump of plaster falling on me — no real damage at road level. We had a cellar and I and possibly up to 12 people were sheltering inside.

Down the road some third of a mile on another corner the entire family were killed — name of Pearson. We did not know it at the time but the blast travelled up the hill and weakened the big wall overlooking the road above the cellar causing the wall to belly. Some two days after the blitz was over (it had lasted just two nights and they never returned for a third) a crack appeared on the stone stairs. I believe they were huge and then they collapsed! If it had happened on the night all would have been killed. It made the house unusable and we went to stay in Weston-Super-Mare for some 3 months until a temporary wooden set was put in place.

On the third night of the raid — nothing happened — but everyone went away from the town. We finished up in a Village Hall several miles away.

Years after I found out that my wife’s brother was machine gunned whilst walking home from his girl friend’s on the night of the 25th / 26th April 1942 (the Blitz). It was such a lovely moonlight night. His body was one of the 400 killed during those two nights and it laid in a temporary morgue until found by his mother.

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