大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by CSV Storygatherer Janet on behalf of Ms Joan Sommers. The story has been added to the site with her permission. And Joan Sommers fully
understands the terms and conditions of the site.

(A6042043)

In 1939, I was 9 years old and rushed into Greenbank Hospital (now gone) with suspected appendicitis on 31st August.

I remember seeing lots of young nurses who used to tend and read to all the children in the ward and used to push us, in our beds, onto the balcony sometimes.

Then suddenly, beds started being moved up to one end of the ward, convalescing children sent home and a lot more space being made for extra beds which seemed to come from nowhere.

There was an air or urgency, but not a word was said about anything being wrong and it wasn鈥檛 until I asked my mother on one of her visits, why the nurses were putting up long, black curtains to the windows, did she finally tell me that war had been declared two days previously and because of this, I was going to be discharged earlier than expected.

To a 9-year old, who had not long been back from a seaside caravan holiday, I had no clue that war had been imminent and little did I know, that lessons would be interrupted by air raids and spent in the school air raid shelters, or that I would be travelling in a lorry early evenings with 5 other families into the country to escape the air raids, until it was too cold for us all to sleep in the open air.

Arrangements were then made for us to have a couple of rooms in a house in nearby Horrabridge, one for the men and one for the women and children, in which to sleep. We used to leave again at 5 a.m. in order the men to start work, some at the Dockyard, and the children to school. Incidentally, we used to pass a prisoner-of-war camp en route at Pound Corner, via Crapstone.

My father worked at the City Hospital (later to become Freedom Fields and now gone). One evening, he came home to tell us that casualties from Dunkirk would be arriving the following day. (He was particularly interested because he, himself had been a severely wounded soldier in the first war). We duly went up to see the lorries and ambulances arrive with all the poor wounded men, some of them with missing limbs and in a very distressed condition, but all they wanted at that minute was a cup of tea and a cigarette.

When the raids got heavier, we stopped going out to Horrabridge and it was decided we would take our chances at home and a bed was made for me under the stairs in a big cupboard. When the blitzes started, we used to go up to the crypt of Mutley Baptist Church (just at the top of the road) and stay there until the `All Clear鈥� sounded.

It was there one night in 1940/41, after heavy bombing and gun fire, that we felt a massive impact and we knew something had landed quite near. Then a neighbour came running in to tell us that a land-mine had dropped behind our house in Houndiscombe Road and 4 or 5 houses were gone. Later on someone else told us Hyde Park School was hit and was burning badly. We children didn鈥檛 know whether to laugh or cry, as a few of us had taken the `scholarship鈥� (old 11-plus) that morning. We consequently, had to go Laira Green School on a part-time basis, later again, to Hope Baptist Church which had been taken over for education. From Mutley, we used to travel on the tram, which was great fun in the nice weather.

When we arrived home after the land-mine had dropped, we found all our windows were broken, hanging pathetically by strips of adhesive tape which had been put up to the windows, walls partly down and soot down all the chimneys.

My mother began a mop-up operation, sending me to my grandmother鈥檚 for the morning. When I came home for dinner, I found that our road had been cordoned off and an A.R.P. warden was at the top of the road, stopping people and traffic from going through, en route to the railway station.

He saw me and gave me a ticking-off for being there, saying there were unexploded bombs in the area. I told him I lived there and he reluctantly let me through.

When I arrived at our flat, my mother had cleaned up as best she could, finding an incendiary bomb under our gas cooker. It had come straight through the kitchen window and rolled underneath. A previous raid had destroyed the gas and electricity supplies, so she had worked hard to get the old coal range working.

My father arrived home for dinner and promptly took the bomb out to the courtyard to defuse it. I remember watching fascinated as he unscrewed the fins and emptied out the white explosive powder (he was a trained fire-fighter at the hospital). He then put the bomb back together, put it in a galvanised bucket and told me to take it up to the air raid warden at the top of the road.

When the warden saw me coming, he couldn鈥檛 believe a small child could be coming towards him with this bomb in a bucket, and went as white as a sheet. I then proudly told him what my dad had done, and that warden couldn鈥檛 dispose of that bomb quick enough!

A friend of mine, told me of an occasion when he was 7 years old, living in Stonehouse, in the thick of the raids, coming home from a public air raid shelter with burning buildings all around, to find his house had had a direct hit, when someone shoved a bucket of water at him and told him to put the nearest incendiary bomb out. He said he automatically did it, but now when he looks back, it was an incredible experience for a 7 year old.

One of the jobs I was given on a Sunday morning was to collect the dinners from about 4 families near and take them home to my mother to cook in the coal range, and then take them back again when they were cooked. My mother felt she was helping to repay them for their kindness in letting us travel on the lorry with them to Horrabridge. The cooking arrangements were later taken over by Bedford鈥檚 Bakeries on Mutley Plain.

At school, we were encouraged to knit balaclavas for the Russion soldiers and our school responded well (the thought of all that black wool now!).

Another incident, working at the hospital as a fire fighter, my father was there when the Nurse鈥檚 Home and Children鈥檚 ward received direct hits and he had to pull out the dead 鈥� they were indeed terrible times! Later, Flete House was then taken over as a Nursing Home.

To sum up, I think we saw so much tragedy from my own age of 9 -16, that I lost my childhood along with other friends, who were eventually evacuated, or in some instances, were killed (some were in the Portland Square shelter, which received direct hits).

I look back to that particular period and think of some of the children of a similar age and how some of them behave and wonder, 鈥渨as it all worth it?鈥� Children of today don鈥檛 know how lucky they are.

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