大象传媒

This is how my mother and father were nearly shredded in an air-raid following the main Blitz of Plymouth. I have heard the story from both of them. For a time during the war my parents Winnie and Vernon Salter rented an upstairs flat at 94 Mainstone Avenue, Cattedown, Plymouth. The date of this particular incident was probably the night of 11th - 12th August, 1943. My parents had been up for several nights beforehand thanks to air-raids and my father, who had a heart defect, working as an ARP warden and firewatcher at Post 2A1, Plymouth. The sirens sounded when my parents had been in bed for several hours. Dad said "It's an air-raid - we'd better get up". He got up and dressed, but my mother didn't want to until he said "Don't be daft, we'd better get moving!!" They went downstairs to shelter in the cupboard under the stairs with Lena the landlady and her husband until the "All Clear" sounded an hour or so later. When they came back upstairs, the bed and the pillows had great wedge-shaped pieces of glass speared into them from the shattered bedroom windows, pieces around 7 inches (18 cm) long. Showing the tremendous force of the blast, two shards had also gone through the thick doors of a solid oak wardrobe and punctured my Dad's trilby hat sitting on an inside shelf. I have seen this wardrobe myself in later years and can testify to its considerable solidity. The bedroom was at the back of the house and looked out towards "gasometers" (gas storage tanks) which may well have been the target for the bombs. My mother says that after years of air-raids on Plymouth and its major naval base at Devonport Dockyard, people became almost used to them and treated them as more of a nuisance than a serious danger. But if Mum and Dad had not both got up from bed yet again on that particular night, they would both have been shredded!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.