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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Callington U3A csv story collectors Peter and Judy Foweraker, on behalf of Lilian Rowe, nee Veale, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

1939 was a very bad year for all families in England. War was declared in September of that year but for our family 1940 was even more tragic. In the January our mother died at 39 years of age after a bravely fought battle against kidney failure, leaving my father with a family of five — one son aged 16 and four daughters aged 14, 13, 6 and myself aged four years.

My father was in the Royal Marines and my brother was training as a flight engineer in the Royal Air Force.

We lived in one of my dad’s little cottages overlooking the Cattewater and Mountbatten, where Air Sea Rescue was based, and also, where the Sunderland flying boats and Catalinas were tied up, which meant that as the war progressed and the bombing started in Plymouth, our house was in a real hot spot for the German bombers!

During 1940-1941 we were awakened night after night by the air raid siren. The sky would be lit up with varie lights, or ‘flaming onions’ as they were familiarly known, and we would run, tin helmets on head and in our nightclothes, to the Anderson shelter in the garden, as pieces of shrapnel bounced off our helmets.

Finally, were bombed out; all the windows were blown out, the doors were off and water and power were gone.

At the peak of the bombing the people of Plymouth were advised to send their children to safety, and so it was that my sister and I were evacuated to a distant relative in a little village called Shaldon near Teingnmouth in Devon - to be safe in a little cottage called Rose Cottage — or was it?

One quiet morning in 1942, my sister and I, together with a little friend, were playing hide and seek indoors. I was searching and they, unbeknown to me decided to hide together somewhere where I couldn’t find them; stay quiet and so get rid of me for a while — as older sisters do! After searching the usual places for quite a while, I decided they must have cheated, so I started looking around more, but to no avail. By this time I was getting a bit fed up and thought my last chance was the vegetable garden. So I let myself out of the gate and walked the few yards up the country lane and went up the steps into the vegetable garden and chicken run, searching diligently for the girls.

Suddenly, the air raid siren sounded and the German bombers were bombing the railway sidings across the river in Teignmouth, which was a very important rail link between London and Plymouth Navel Dockyard. I turned in panic to run back to the house, when, without warning, a German fighter plane dive-bombed out of the clear blue sky, guns blazing, and so low I could see the outline of the pilot!

In utter terror, I threw myself down on the hard gravel beside the hen run as the chickens squawked and I sobbed in terror! I lay pinned to the ground, screaming for everyone I knew to save me. Like a miracle, in the middle of the raid my Uncle appeared and gathered me up in his arms and ran indoors with me. I don’t know who was more relieved, me, or him, as the family had been frantically searching for me, whilst my sister and our little friend sheltered in the Morrison shelter in the lounge — and waited for the reprimand they expected!

Sadly, in that air raid there were a number of fatalities in Teignmouth, but in Shaldon the only casualties were a number of cows in the field adjoining our house.

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