大象传媒

I remember all too clearly the day we were bombed out; I believe it was in 1942 (the memory for dates is not good) but we had to get out of the anderson shelter and walk down the fields to Doncaster Road (approximately a quarter of a mile) where we waited for my father to come from town and my sister from the Clifton Laundry in Southmead Road. My father was allowed to go to Ashburton Road and pick up various personal things from our house.

We walked down to Southey Street in Montpelier where my Grandparents lived. We also took our next door neighbours who stayed at my grandparents for a while along with us. I think we stayed there for 3 months. During the raids at this time we had to walk down the road to the shelters in Mina Road, which belonged to the Brooks dry cleaners.

Previous to this my brother who was 18 had been killed on Coastal Command over Norway. in January 1942. Of course our other worry was my other brother who was in the Reconnisance Regiment serving in Germany, however, he came home. The loss of my eldest brother was devastating for my mother and I find it very hard even now to come to terms with this sad loss. I remember the last time I saw him walking up Westleigh Road with his kitbag on his shoulder and waiving until he was out of sight, never thinking for one moment that I would never see him again in this world.

After the bombing and the sad loss of my brother my youngest brother and I were evacuated to Langport, he was very protective of me, because when we were lined up for people to say whom they would billet, a lady picked out my brother but he would not go without me and so we stayed with a dear elderly lady for 3 months before being moved to another family. We always said it was a little late for evacuation, (like closing the door after the horse had bolted). My mother fetched us home from evacuation after some 9 months, on the train journey home the Germans bombed our train as we travelled from Bridgewater to Bristol Temple Meads Station. We were scared, we than travelled up though the centre of Bristol by bus seeing all the bomb damaged streets. I can still see it in my minds eye.

Whilst we were evacuated my father used to visit us from time to time, bearing in mind he was in the Home Gaurd as well as doing his share of fire watch at the Distillery in Cheese Lane where he worked. How he fitted all that in I shall never ever know.

Both my parents were very caring and kind and it is sad to think that all they did to help all kinds of people have never ever been regognised, like so many other people of that time. For instance when the troops were billited at the back of our house,(this was all fields - Graystoke Avenue as it now is) my mother used to bake all sorts of cakes etc and my brother and I would take them to the men on guard in Trowbridge Road. My Mother also had the children and wives of these men to stay months on end in our house, they came from various parts of London where the V1's and V2's caused so much death and distruction.

My father had the task of putting three men's bodies together after there had been an air raid on the distillery (no one else would do it with him),he said that should it happen that he got blown up, he hoped his colleagues would do the same for him.

I remember all the nights, week after week we spent in the Anderson shelter,the water coming into it and spending the next night in with our next door neighbours. I think there were about seven of us altogether in one tiny shelter meant for five people.

After the sleepless nights we would have breakfast and then go to school.One day we were told that two of our teachers had been killed whilst serving abroad - what a sad, sad day that was!!

During the daylight raids by the Germans we would get half way to school and halfway home and was so scared we did not know what was the best action, but usually someone would come out of their home and take us home.

In the school playground all around the periphery were air raid shelters, they were made of brick (like tool sheds), so that when the air raid sirens went we lined up in class and marched in orderly lines to our designated shelter and sat on wooden benches and sang songs to keep our spirits up. Mind if any of the shelters had a direct hit we would all have been killed. Like the gas masks we carried, five minutes in them and we would have been dead - but we had infinite faith in these things and that is what kept us going.

We never as a family ever have celebrated VE/VJ day because we felt we had nothing to celebrate- our brother was dead with an unknown grave.

When I stood in Banwell Church grounds (St Andrews) on remembrance day at 11 o'clock in remembrance of my brother and my friends' father who was shot into a grave he was made to dig in Sandakan even though the war was over, four people came through the church yard and as they came past were disrespectful, this made me very, very, sad.

Subsequently 50 years to the day of being evacuated I went back to Langport to visit the daughter of the family who had taken us in and found that one of them had married a German Prisioner of War, who was adamant that if England had not declared war on Germany because they had walked into Poland, he said we would never have been targetted by Germany. Therefore it was Englands fault that the war had expanded as it did. He was very aggressive, but being a polite person I did not continue with the conversation and left at that point.

I thought since that it was ironic that having been protected against the bombings by the Germans by these people in Somerset that one of them subsequently married one of them.

I would like to dedicate this story to my brother and my Australian friends' father, his memorial is at Labuan Borneo, and his nameless grave, like so many is inscribed, "An Australian soldier, known unto God". My brother dosn't even have that. The only memorial to him is now in St Peter's Church, Filton, Bristol.

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