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Doreen remembers:

It was early December, 1940, and my future husband, John Smith, and I had been shopping in Gloucester. We returned after darkness had fallen to Yate, where his parents lived.
Parnalls, the former airfield, then a munitions factory, was the target that night and incendiaries were falling. On entering the house Mr. Smith senior immediately pushed his wife and myself under the stairs!
When the raid was over John and I moved on to my home, Stanshawes Farm, a mile away. As we drove up the long drive there was debris all around, suggesting bomb craters somewhere near. (In daylight we subsequently discovered two).
On entering the farmyard I saw that our lovely house had lost a lot of its windows, but worse, there was no sign of my parents or the dog. After a search which included looking through the broken windows and seeing some of the damage inside, we heard voices across the fields… We discovered my parents, the dog and a number of villagers taking shelter by a hayrick. A farmer friend, living on the next farm, invited several of us to sleep there and then gave us a welcome breakfast! Of course the cows still had to be milked early as usual, but fortunately no animals had been hurt either.
A couple of months later a German plane could be seen hedge-hopping towards Parnalls before dropping its bombs. This was in broad daylight and 50 workers were killed. There is a communal grave in Yate churchyard to commemorate them.
It was certainly frightening to hear the German planes on their many flights to bomb Bristol.

Joy remembers the same event:

We lived at Stanshawes Farm, which my father farmed. For many nights we had already experienced the wailing of air raid sirens, then the drone of bombers passing directly overhead on the way to drop their load of bombs on Bristol. Flares lit their path, and so intense was their light that a newspaper could be read in our farmyard. Ack-ack guns sited in Yate fired at the flares to extinguish them, with limited success, and plenty of shrapnel flying to the ground.
I was a highly strung nervous girl of nine. Whilst I did have a bedroom upstairs, a single bed had been put in our downstairs hallway which was thought to be the safest place, and where I could shelter with other members of the family under the stairs for protection if we were bombed.
On 06 December 1940 at 8.13 pm. bombers were returning to their base having unleashed their deadly cargo on Bristol. However one of the planes had bombs on board and two large ones, land mines I believe, were ‘dumped’. One exploded approximately 500 yards to the front of the house, just missing a large lake, and the other exploded the same distance to the side of the house. The explosions and blast was enormous. The substantial house with walls two feet thick shuddered. The sound of shattering glass, bursting window frames, general debris crashing, was terrifying. We thought there must have been a direct hit.
Before the bombs fell my father, who had a fine herd of Shorthorn dairy cattle, was worried that because many had light coloured coats, they would be clearly visible from the burning flares, and could be in danger. The cattle were in a field by the house. He went out and called them. They followed him eagerly, as they too were frightened, and he led them to a large orchard where he thought, quite rightly, they would be safely hidden by the trees. As he returned to the house, he heard the whistling of the falling bombs, and threw himself into a very deep ditch. In the mean time my mother was convinced he had been killed, and was almost hysterical. When he appeared, he was quite cross with her, as he did not realize how close we had all been to death. In fact neither one person nor animal was injured, but oh dear the damage to the house and buildings was severe. Thirty sash windows, each with twelve large panes of glass, and twenty-eight blown out completely. All the guttering around the roof had fallen to the ground, and the inspectors reckoned the whole roof had lifted four inches releasing all the guttering, and then resettled. The blast from one bomb had done the damage at the front, and the other had dealt with the back and all the tiles from the farm buildings. No one realized the extent of the damage until daybreak.
To return to the night, we could not stay where we were, and I remember being encouraged to creep gingerly through the pitch black house, no electricity of course, only oil lamps which were destroyed. The blackout curtains flapped eerily in the wind through the splintered remains of the windows, wireless and other pieces of furniture strewn across the floor. Not knowing if there were any black holes to fall into, or indeed not knowing anything other than fright.
We started walking across the fields to our nearest farmer neighbour, meeting folk from the village who came to our farm during air raids because they thought they would be safe in the fields sheltering under the haystacks. A voice from the darkness shouted ‘halt, who goes there’ being convinced there had been an invasion. When we reached our neighbour, it was such a relief. Hot drinks all round, and ten of us slept in one bed, head to toe.
Next morning mother and father returned to Stanshawes to milk the cattle. What a task. The cows walked quietly into the milking sheds, but were so scared with the tiles on the floor and no roof, they stampeded out again. I think after several attempts they were persuaded to stay and give their milk.
I was more interested in the bomb craters, which were frightening, so deep, wide, and just huge. Large and small pieces of twisted metal embedded everywhere, and some stamped with numbers and writing we did not understand.
I do not recall being involved with much of the clearing up, but for eighteen months, maybe longer, we lived with no view from any window. After official inspections black canvas was quickly secured to the bottom half of all the windows and white for light in the top half. Very gloomy.
Other people in other places had far worse experiences of war, but this terrible experience is etched in my memory so clearly.. We thought we were so safe, living on a farm in the country. The bombs were not aimed at us. Just released at random. How lucky we were. Seconds could have destroyed our happy and peaceful existence.

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