大象传媒

Sunday 25th November 1940, my friend, Marjie Mitchell and I were out walking with two lads. Normally I would have been home before the sirens but they were early that day. We were on our way home near the Prince St bridge when the sirens started.

There was a terrfic bang; windows shattered in nearby buildings. A policeman appeared from nowhere and told us to run to an underground shelter in Queens Square.

How I got there I shall never know - my legs could hardly support me.
There must have been other people there, but to be honest, my mind is a blank!

When the 'all clear' was sounded, we came out of the shelter to see the whole City Centre was one mass of flames - I shall never forget it.

I lived in St Phillip's Marsh; my friend Marjie at Knowle and I can't remember where the two lads lived, but all I know is that we just wanted to find a way home.

There was so much water on the roads. Two firemen carried my friend and I over the water.
In the road next to Baldwin St there was a camera and photography shop and the contents of the window were all over the road, but all we were concerned with was finding a way to get to my house as it was the nearest.

How we managed it is a complete blank in my memory - but my mother was waiting for us at the top of our street and thankfully our home had not been damaged.

I was working at that time at the Coop grocery in Axbridge Rd Knowle. My Mum let me sleep late the next day - so I didn't arrive at work until lunchtime - when the deputy manager saw me and said '' Other people were on time and so should you have been ''.

From then on, every night coming home from work, bombs were dropping somewhere in Bristol. I would have my tea in the Anderson shelter that was in the garden until the bombing stopped.

On the first daylight raid in Bristol, the manager had a job to get the customers to leave. There was an underground shelter in Redcatch Road Park, Knowle and we had to run like mad.

On the Friday there was no nee to ask the customers to leave - they were gone !

In the shelter there was a fanlight and I could see our fighters having a go. Of course, it was only later we realised that the target was Filton Aerodrome

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