大象传媒

My father was 43 when WW2 broke out. After serving in WW1 as a Lieutenant with 8th KSLI in Salonika, his views on the approaching menace were trenchant and solidly middle England. He was an ENT surgeon but also he and my mother ran a General Practice from our home at 13 Lansdown Place in Victoria Square, Clifton, Bristol. Major air raids on Avonmouth Docks, Filton and Bristol City itself started in 1940 and, after one bad raid on 24th November 1940, my sister and I were evacuated to rural Somerset. Both our parents happily survived the blitz and the various near misses. During long nights of firewatching however, my father clearly felt moved to write down his thoughts to me in a long private letter; he noted on the first page that it was a letter for me to have on my 16th Birthday (in 1952), but in fact we found it in his papers only after his death in 1966 The letter comprises mostly the private thoughts and advice of a busy Bristol doctor and firewatcher to his 5 year old son, but there are some portions which may be, hopefully, of some interest to the general public, giving details of a few noteworthy incidents and his viewpoint on life lived through typical days and nights of the blitz. Roger Harris 鈥� 15th March 2005

These extracts are from the letter by Dr H Elwin Harris MA FRCS, with a few notes in brackets which I have added:

17th April 1941
鈥淎s I write this we are in the middle of the greatest war in history. Bristol has been bombed several times and much damage done, but we expect more to come. The windows have been blown in by a large bomb which demolished 3, 4 and 5 Victoria Square. We have also had an incendiary bomb on the roof which we managed to put out before it got a proper hold. We live on the ground floor and basement and are managing to keep quite cheerful; more bombing is sure to come. We have been waiting an invasion for the last six months and it is now prophesied for April or shortly after. Probably it will not come atall but we have to be prepared. Britain is probably in as parlous a state as ever before and I expect things will be worse before they improve. However we are confident of victory in the end. Life under the Nazi regime is not worth living; if Germany wins you and your children would be slaves, hounded about and treated worse than animals鈥︹�︹�︹��

September 1941
鈥淪ince last writing much has happened. My father (my grandfather) died on 20th May and there was a well attended service at St Paul鈥檚, Clifton (later to be destroyed by bombs) followed by cremation on 24th May. From the church to the crematorium we drove through the ruins of Park Street and the City, parts he knew so well. I am glad he never saw the ruins, though of course he knew about them. (A report on the state of play of the war follows here, ending)鈥︹�hings look serious for the future. We have got to beat Germany or we shall all perish. America is getting more warlike and will probably soon be in the war properly. Japan keeps threatening but is waiting to see how Germany gets on before plunging in. These are stirring times to live in with the whole future of civilization undoubtedly at stake. Germany are bullies and life under them would not be worth living so win we must whatever the cost鈥︹��.鈥�

15th October 1941
鈥淭he Germans are now nearing Moscow. Leningrad is still holding out as is Odessa in the south鈥︹��..鈥�

6th September 1942
鈥淚t is a long time since I added to this letter鈥�..(then another update on the state of play of the war ending with) 鈥�..in spite of all this we are fairly cheerful. We are going to win alright; we are bombing Germany hard and I don鈥檛 think the Germans like the war as much as they did.

All this will be in the history books, but here are some recollections of how we lived during the first winter of the bombing. Our first bad blitz was on Sunday November 24th 1940. I had put away the car at about 6.15pm and was sitting in the surgery when the siren sounded the alert. We had had several before. You children had just gone to bed in the shelter downstairs (the cellar had been strengthened with wood props). Your mother went down to you and I went to the front door to stand by. Soon the planes were dropping flares which lit everything up like daylight. These were followed by thousands of incendiaries. We had little defense in those days. What guns there were blazed away but the Hun had things his own way. Several incendiaries fell on the pavement and road outside but we soon had them out by putting sand on them. There was little high explosive this first night. About 10pm we found 10 Lansdown Place was well alight upstairs. The Bushes were away and had foolishly shuttered up the top floor windows. We tackled it with buckets of water but the fire had too big a hold. The water mains had been cut and nothing could be done except save as much of the furniture as possible. We then watched it burn and wondered if it would spread next door. The houses on either side were evacuated and we got ready to turn out. The raid finished about midnight. Presumably the later relays of planes did not come as the weather was uncertain. Bristol had been badly caught alight. At 10am of the 25th I surveyed the scene from our roof. No 10 was blazing in the foreground. Several houses in Richmond Terrace were well alight. The Parish Church was a mass of flames. The whole of the background was a mass of smoke, lit up with different colours. On the right, over the timber yards of the dock was bright white. It graded down to the left to a deep crimson. The whole town appeared to be ablaze and was a sight I shall never forget. When the raid started there was a service going on in the parish church; the congregation went into the crypt but when the church caught fire they had to rush for their homes; I helped some of the elderly. I also had to go to Vyvyan Terrace to a man with a heart attack. You children were good but rather frightened by the few high explosives; the nearest were a stick of bombs on the grass in front of Christ Church and the upper end of Canynge Road. Harley Place also had a direct hit. We had alerts each night of the week and on Friday there was a sharp raid on Brislington but nothing Clifton way.

The following Monday December 2nd the alert went at 6.30pm when I was seeing a patient in Redland. When I came out the whole place was lit up with flares. I got into the car and drove home, hell for leather. It was as light as day and bombs were beginning to fall. A very big one came down in Fosseway before I got home. Your mother was upstairs in the sittingroom and said it rushed past the window like an express train. When I arrived she and a number of passersby were down in the shelter. About 7pm a lot of incendiaries came down all round here. One was on our roof and I went up to deal with it with the stirrup pump. It was pretty exciting but we got it out just as the rafters were catching. We were in a pretty good sweat by the time it was finally out. Meanwhile your mother was in the housemaids cupboard calmly filling buckets. From the roof I could see many fires all over the town. All Saints Church, Pembroke Road, was on fire and Harley Place had caught it again. We came down and had Bovril in the kitchen. About 8pm they shouted down from the Warden鈥檚 Post that their messenger had been blown over and hurt his leg. After dealing with him I stayed there a short time; two women were rather frightened but they continued doing their jobs manfully until a bomb came when they disappeared under the table and later emerged like two dogs from a kennel. I returned to the house to see all was well and just as I got to the kitchen there was an almighty crash. I thought it was bomb next door but it turned out to be a very big one at the back of 4 Victoria Square. I went out at once. The garden was littered with glass and window frames. Lumps of masonry were everywhere. My car was outside but though it was covered with dust and a large piece of stone was under the radiator it was not scratched. Number 3, 4 and 5 Victoria Square were completely wrecked and 6 people killed. The houses in Mortimer Road were badly smashed. Every window frame in our house was out and all the shutters blown down. We were a sorry spectacle in the morning. The All Clear did not go till about 3am. Then I went down to the hospital but was not required. When I got back I found we had about 20 refugees sleeping in our kitchen and your mother acting as hostess, dishing out Bovril, tea etc. Most of them were able to go next morning but the Misses Alexandra of No 5 stayed on for a few days. They subsequently gave us a very nice wine decanter. Soon after this big bomb, the water and electricity gave out. For about 10 days we had to fetch our water in buckets from Oakfield Road, and we lived with oil lamps and candles; fortunately we had a good supply. Life went on much the same. The corporation soon had repairers around and I was seeing patients by oil lamp the same evening. Looking back it is curious how cheerful we kept, a bit jumpy perhaps, but when people came and sympathised we could laugh 鈥� we felt lucky to be alive.

After this, alarms went on every night. Most evening I turned out and stood about. We developed quite a club at the corner between bombs and were very friendly. Some nights nothing happened in our neighbourhood and we watched incendiaries coming down on other parts of the town and praised or blamed the district according to the speed with which they were put out. The outstanding memory of those nights was the cold; it was bitter. The front and back doors were open for anyone to rush in if a bomb came as they were passing, so the draught indoors was awful and one could not get warm inside or out. Your mother was splendid, always getting tea or soup or Bovril going on a primus stove, and always cheerful. The worst raid we had for discomfort was in February. It was an intensely cold night and, though nothing much fell in our immediate district, the bombing was severe and continuous from 6.30pm till 6.30am next morning. We had a number of strangers sheltering with us throughout.

And so the winter went on. Each day I would try and get work finished by 6 or 6.30pm. We then had tea and would sit about waiting for the siren, which normally went about 7 or 7.30, getting later as the days got longer, but one knew pretty well what time to expect it. This waiting was the most nerve-wracking part of the show. If the sirens did not go by 9pm we breathed a sigh of relief and hoped the weather was too bad and we were in for a quiet night. When the siren went the 鈥榗lub鈥� at the corner stood about, ready to rush in at the whistle of a bomb. Soon, the searchlights would switch on and we would hear the bombers. Then we would wait to see if they were coming for us or going on to Avonmouth, Cardiff or Liverpool. We soon knew. If flares were dropped we would say 鈥楢h, it鈥檚 our turn tonight鈥� and settle down for a night of it. But even when we knew it was us, it was not as nerve-wracking as the waiting for the siren to go.

On Good Friday 1941 we had a very bad raid. Bedminster got it worst of all and was in a nasty mess next day. Shortly after midnight some fell in Clifton, mostly Canynge Square and Clifton Park Road way. There was nothing for me to do and I was desperately tired, so I went to sleep on the floor after 1am, but was awakened by a crash at 3am, the whole house swaying about. I ran up to find 2 bombs had gone off at the bottom of Royal Park (about 70 yds from us). I went down with my bag thinking there must be a lot of casualties but there was only one man hit 鈥� he was killed by a bit through the head. It was extraordinary to see the people climbing out of the cellars of the wrecked houses, most of them quite cheerful.

A week or two later, a Hun plane coming back from Liverpool dropped two bombs in Regent Street at about midnight. It was unlucky that one landed on the gas main and set it on fire. This spread to both sides of the street and spread from shop to shop. Shortly after another Hun, seeing the flare-up, thought he鈥檇 add to the party by dropping incendiaries but they landed mostly in the Victoria Square gardens. It was my duty so I rushed to put them out. The gardens were lit with brilliant bluish light and if I鈥檇 had time I鈥檇 have enjoyed the spectacle 鈥� it was rather like fairyland. Later I went round to Regent Street. It was a real inferno, shops and houses ablaze on both sides of the road with showers of sparks floating down in between, with black snakes of firemen鈥檚 hoses coiled across the road and black figures rushing about salving their possessions and stacking them in safe spots. In the midst of this someone said a pet shop in Boyces Avenue might catch fire so we spent a lot of time trying to catch and rescue a very large and bad-tempered parrot; in the end we succeeded but the shop didn鈥檛 catch fire and we need not have worried.

Gradually the frequency of the raids subsided and our barrage became heavier and heavier. The noise of the barrage was terrific but it gave the Hun something to think about. I ought to have mentioned before about the two early raids we had in daylight. The first was about 11am on September 25th 1940. A fleet of planes came over and bombed Filton Aeroplane Works, doing a lot of damage. Several of them were brought down and I saw two Germans coming down by parachute. Two days later, the 27th, they thought they would have another go, but we were ready for them. We had a Squadron of Spitfires up and broke up their formation, bringing one or two down and driving the rest off. Not a bomb fell on Filton. It was a thrilling sight to see this battle, which I did from the top floor of St Mary鈥檚 Nursing Home. Penny (my first cousin) was born in the middle of it!

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