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In 1940 I went with my husband Reg to Plymouth, where he was stationed in the army. Reg had to live at the barracks, so he had to find me digs. The firs place I stayed in was so dirty that I couldn’t eat any food and so I asked my husband to find me somewhere else to stay, which he did. The night after I moved out of the house it was bombed. I had a lucky escape. The old lady, whose house it was, was killed.

I got a job at a butcher in town where I was quite happy for a while until the bombing started again. I wonder if the bombing happened because the then King and Queen had been visiting the previous day and it was rumoured that they were staying just outside Plymouth, with Lord and Lady Astor. I remember the visit as it was a glorious day and we were allowed to come out of work on to the street to see them go past in their coach. I looked up at the two main department stores — one was called Dingles and the other was called Spooners — and all the flower boxes were filled with daffodils.

One of the main air raids I remember happened the day after, on March 20th 1940. My husband Reg took me to the pictures, as it was his birthday, to see ‘Strike up the Band’ with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. Inside the cinema we could hear the bombs dropping outside. I had always said that I would stay indoors during a raid as I thought I would be protected. A quarter of the way through the film, the manager of the cinema advised us to leave and go into an air raid shelter. I am yet to see the end of the film.

When we came out of the cinema, I was amazed by what was happening in the sky — it was like a film. The sky was lit up, planes were nose-diving, shrapnel was raining down, there were fires everywhere and everybody was running for shelter.

We eventually got into an air raid shelter, which already had quite a few people in it. Everybody in the shelter was silent until what we thought was a cannonball rolled down into the shelter and everyone gasped. This turned out to be a dead cat that had been rolled into a ball by the shrapnel.

We came out of the shelter about 3am and an awful sight awaited us. The streetlights had toppled to the ground, there were people dead and holes in the ground exposing the gas and water mains. Everything on Plymouth Hoe was flattened, except for the butcher shop that I worked in, and the shoe shop next door. Smoke was rising and there was devastation everywhere. I could see for miles. I walked back to my digs, which remained unscathed as it was slightly outside of the city centre.

The next day, I went back to work at the butcher shop. There were still bombs going off and there was no power, so the butcher was giving his meat away before it went bad. This whole experience is still very clear in my mind, especially the image of the sky when we came out of the cinema.

I stayed in Plymouth for a while longer until my husband was moved to India, and there was no longer a job for me. I returned to Ross-on-Wye, where I was directed to work in the munitions factory.

As told to Julie Bell in Blaydon Library on Friday 8th October 2004.

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