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Audrey Taylor (Née Barnes) - Reminiscences Of The War Years in Chichester

At the age of about 8 in 1944 I was in bed fast asleep in a big double bed with my mother beside me. This was in the back bedroom of our rented house in Chichester West Sussex, when our house was bombed along with several others in our road by the Germans in the middle of the night.

I always slept very soundly and that night was no exception. My poor mother kept trying to waken me up and eventually gave up and carried me to the ground flour of the semi-detached house where we lived at No. 43 Armadale Road. Eventually my mother gave up trying to waken me up and carried me down what was left of the staircase, i.e. shattered glass, bits of bricks, concrete etc and no stairs at all. And she did this in her bare feet and carrying a heavy sleeping child.

At first we had a red-haired girl from Leeds I believe, who came to stay with us as an evacuee but then she was wanted back at her parents’ house and we were given a pilot officer from R.A.F. Tangmere whose radio works went through our road and was probably the reason why our road was so badly bombed. We also had his wife and little boy although on the night of the bombing none of them were there as they had gone to visit family somewhere in the Midlands I believe.

My maternal grandmother and her youngest daughter, my mother’s youngest sister and my godmother lived in the other side of the house. They had a Belgian Lady and her Royal Air Force pilot officer billeted with them. Unfortunately I have no-one to confirm all of this information of that dreadful night as my grandmother died soon after this and her daughter who lived with her died just two years ago. My Aunty Mary was my godmother and I have subsequently become the godmother of the granddaughter of one of her daughters, Anne, and we recently spent some time visiting Katherine at her home in Aldwick Road quite close to the Norfolk Hotel, whwere she lives with her partner Will and their 10 week old baby suiatablycalled Finn Euan as my mother and all of her sisters and brothers and my grandparents were Irish from Donegal in the North-west of the Republic of Ireland, where my paternal grandfather and grandmother had lived when they were first married. I was supposed to be called Patricia Mary Ann but unfortunately on my father’s side there were two female births before I made my entrance and they were both named Patricia so they had to find a different name for me and I was baptised Audrey Mary Ann after my godmother and then Anne as my confirmation name which I chose as it was the name of the Virgin Mary’s mother’s name.

If I had wanted to write this during the lifetime of my mother it would have been so much easier but unfortunately she died juat a year after my husband and I were married.I was an only child and when my father returned from the Middle East having spent some 6 years there, I didn’t know who he was and although my mother repeatedly told me who he was and how much he loved him but he looked so different from when he left for the Middle East of which had masses of photographs and he had changed so much.

My mother, father and I lived in the end house next to St James’s School and just inside their grounds a shelter had been made and covered with grass. My husband who was in the R.A.F. checked in some records and found that Armadale Road was directly in line with the school (where there was apparently a radio station as a link with Tangmere R.A.F. station) and that was probably why we were so badly bombed.

When Mummy finally got outside of our house with me she went to the first of the 8 air raid shelters there were in the road and she was turned away because they were full up — just like Jesus Christ when he was born.

Finally as each one refused her she decided to go to the house of some friends whose house had not been bombed and who lived at the end of the road.

The following day an ambulance arrived for my mother to take her to St Richards hospital. I was not taken as they considered I needed no treatment.

For some months thereafter I was talking in my sleep and eventually walking in my sleep so that my mother had to double lock the front door and ensure that I was well barricaded in my bed.

Then we had to find somewhere to live a bit more permanently and Aunty Mary left Mummy and I and Granny in Chichester while she went to Glasgow where we had relatives to see if they could put us up. In the meanwhile Mummy contacted the owners of the houses in Armadale Road and Bridge Road (the next road) to see if we could have another one of their houses. Aunty Mary came back to us with the good news that a relative by marriage was prepared to have us until we had something permanent in Chichester. Then we had some further good luck because Mr Groves got in touch with my mother and said that if we moved in immediately we could have No. 18 Bridge Road so we immediately said yes please and he also said that Aunty Mary who was about to get married to a soldier coming back from fighting in Italy. He said that as soon as he knew the date of their marriage he would allot them a house at the other end of Armadale Road as a definite promise.

So at last we were no longer homeless!!!!!!

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