大象传媒

Muriel Sloman died in May 2004 at the age of 90. But some 20 years before, she had written down an account of her experience of the war, to help our children, her grandchildren, understand. This is her account.

When the war began, I was living in a terraced house in Devonport, near the Dockyard and the Naval Barracks. My husband Bert was in the Royal Navy, and so was the husband of my friend Gladys, and they lived in a flat on our second floor. We did not know where our husbands were serving 鈥� a big secret.

There was no room for an Anderson Shelter, or an indoor 鈥渃age鈥� shelter, and I was asked to permit our cellar to be reinforced, and to share it with various near neighbours if an air-raid took place. On the morning of September 3rd, we heard the declaration of war over the radio. We were told that a warning siren would sound if an air-raid was imminent. True enough, about 11 a.m. that day, the siren sounded, and in alarm, Gladys and I took our two small daughters and retired to the safety of the cellar. Nobody else came, and everything was quiet, so after some time we emerged to find out what was happening, only to discover what we had heard was a test 鈥渁ll clear鈥� signal. We felt very foolish, and had a good laugh at our own expense, but the next time we knew the difference! That came on 30th June 1940, after France fell.

Shortly before the fall of France, we heard how the retreating British Forces were evacuated by an armada of various aged ships over a couple of weeks from the beaches of Dunkirk. I can remember, one hot day in late May, visiting my parents at West Hoe in Plymouth and seeing men of the French army arriving at the docks at Millbay. Some were bare-footed; the local people hurried to welcome them. Some gave the men boots, others cups of tea, or food, and ice-cream bought from street vendors. One shopkeeper gave each man a cigarette in his mouth until her complete stock was gone. The men were cared for very well. They were given the choice of returning to France on a warship that was made available, as the shuttle-service continued into June, or staying and joining the Free French Army to fight on alongside Britain. Some returned, but many stayed.

The air-raid shelters were to prove valuable, unlike the obligatory gas masks, which I think were mainly an aid to morale. The under-fives had 鈥淢ickey Mouse鈥� ones, the babies had the carry-cot type, covered and with a hand pump, but most people had plain grey masks in a square cardboard box.

In March 1941, I watched in horror from our avenue, up on the hill in Devonport, as German bombers attacked Plymouth. First came the incendiary bombs, starting fires that lit the way, and then the high explosives. The oil tanks on the far side of the City, close to the Mountbatten seaplane base, were hit, and they blazed for ten days or more, lighting up the whole area. The attack became a blitz.

One evening, after a quiet day, I left my daughter Angela in the care of my sister-in-law, Violet, and made my way to West Hoe to check on my parents. They were safe, having sheltered in a small room at the back of their house, which my father had strengthened. However, a bomb had hit the public air-raid shelter in a small park near to them, and many were killed. My cousin Lottie died in the Millbay Park shelter, with about 200 others; it took a direct hit, and became their grave.
After a brief time with them, I made for home again, and my father insisted on seeing me home. Part way, the sirens wailed, and the planes were overhead. My father and I sought shelter where we could. We part ran, part walked from shelter to shelter, or stopped in doorways. We had to skirt the Dockyard itself, and crouched against its walls as it was bombed, the anti-aircraft guns slamming off all around us, and the search-lights sweeping the sky.
After a long time, exhausted, we reached home safely, where I joined those in the cellar. My father, too tired to care, slept under the kitchen table. From time to time during that long scary night, either I or the man鈥檚 daughter would dash two doors down to make sure her invalid father was safe. He was too sick to be moved, and was shielded with pillows and bedding as best we could.
That night, we weren鈥檛 hit.

Occasional raids like those occurred, and Violet and I joined the street fire-fighting team. Violet had collected her helmet that afternoon, but its chin-strap was missing, so she threaded a scarlet ribbon through instead, which she thought looked very smart! I took the first turn, while Violet looked after Angela. Buckets, and any other available containers, were filled with water in readiness.
That evening, the planes came early. The incendiaries rained down. My sister-in-law Florrie had moved to a flat across the road from me three months before, when her husband, Will, joined the army. Florrie, her mother, and her two-tear old son David, now joined us in the cellar.
I could see the team tackling a fire in the downstairs front room across the road. I prayed aloud for courage, and ran across with two buckets of water to keep the stirrup pump supplied.
There was a terrific explosion, as a stick of three bombs fell across our avenues. They would fall on alternate streets as the plane passed over. Even though we were partly shielded by other houses, my house and many more close by, were blasted beyond repair.
I ran back in the dark, calling the names of my family, breaking the awful silence that followed. The air was filled with choking dust; I was afraid I had lost them all, but none of them was killed. Angela had temporary blindness, caused by the dust and the blast, and Florrie鈥檚 mother, sitting in line with the cellar door, had been hit on the back when it was blown off its hinges, though all she suffered was bruises and shock.
The shelter became a first aid post, as Wardens brought in the injured, until the ambulance came to collect them and the invalid neighbour. Some were not so lucky and died, and were laid out on the pavements next day, to be removed as soon as possible. I sent a telegram to my husband, then set about finding somewhere to stay that night.

A friend had recently moved to a shop in Yealmpton, a village nine miles outside Plymouth, and had a flat and a large empty room over the shop. Twenty of us slept there for a week, taking it in turns to care for the children, while the others went to Plymouth to try to save something from our homes. We travelled by bus or on foot, or hitching lifts; the buses were all driven out of town by night to try to preserve them.
A neighbour, Pat, had parents living in the village of Oakford, and she went to them with her small son Raymond. Friends of the family worked in the woods, and used a large lorry. They came twice to Devonport, with no charge, ignoring an unexploded bomb in the lower part of the avenue, and salvaged Pat鈥檚 belongings, and they also took mine and Florrie鈥檚, and stored them in a large barn on Exmoor, two miles from Oakford.

We were given one-way tickets to Taunton, to evacuate to Norton Fitzwarren, three miles outside, where we were billeted with friends for almost a year. We made two trips to Oakford, to sort out and assess the things in the barn, and Angela and I lived on a local farm there for eight weeks. These trips to the country in Summertime were very enjoyable, and Florrie鈥檚 husband, Will, was able to have some leave and joined us there once as well. The children loved it. Raymond, Angela and David revelled in the new sights and the freedom. We have a picture of David holding the farmer鈥檚 gun with a rabbit strung from the barrel. Angela was dared by the farmer to straighten a piglet鈥檚 tail, and he told her she could have the piglet if she did, an offer he hastily withdrew when she darted away after the piglet and caught the wriggling tail. We picked whortleberries, collected the daily milk from the nearest dairy farm, walked for miles. I joined the procession to the Rogation Sunday service at the village church, two miles away. I saw then recapture a swarm of bees in that churchyard. I took a trip to Tiverton, nine miles away, on a weekly bus packed to the last inch with people carrying produce to market, and returning loaded with shopping.
My brother Tom sent me a parcel of food when his ship visited Canada, and on Angela鈥檚 third birthday at Norton Fitzwarren, we used it all for a slap-up party to whch all the families were invited. My nephew David was fascinated by the balloons.

In 1942, Bert wrote in his letters that he would be coming home soon, so I moved back to Pomphlett, on the edge of Plymouth. Then came the dreaded telegram; he was desperately ill in Belfast. After a gruelling tour of duty escorting the Arctic convoys to Archangel, he had expected home leave, but instead had been posted directly to Freetown in Sierra Leone. There, he had collapsed, and was found to be suffering from Tuberculosis. They sent him home by sea, but the ship was torpedoed. They managed to nurse it, and him, back to Belfast.
Eventually, after a struggle, I managed to obtain permission to travel for myself and Angela, and never having been far from Plymouth before, set out now on the long journey to go to him. We first went to London, from there to Stranraer in Scotland, the only civilians in the blacked out train full of service people. We had to sleep where we sat, and arrived at our station in pitch blackness. We were escorted to the ferry as dawn broke, and taken across the Irish Sea, all equipped with life-jackets on, and escorted by destroyers. From Larne, we travelled by train to Belfast, and stayed there for nine weeks. There were more medical crises to follow, but eventually they decided he was well enough to move back to England, and we went with him and his nursing escort as they took him across to Bootle, and the next day on to a hospital near Plymouth, and eventually to a Sanatorium.
At the end of 1943, we moved to what was to be our family home for many years to come, a cottage high on a hill overlooking the village of Darite on the edge of Bodmin Moor. And from there, we could see the English Channel out from Looe, and on 5th June, 1944, saw the ships moving up Channel, to join, as we were soon to discover, the fleet for the invasion of Europe.

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