大象传媒

It was a Saturday night on the 26th August 1942,we'd just returned from a weeks holiday in Blackpool, we being my mother, three Aunts, a cousin and myself, I was ll years old. The women wereall playing cardswhen the siren sounded, I remember my mother pulling her big washing machine out from under the stairs saying we could go in there if the bombing started. My father, an Air Raid Warden came to tell us we had to get to the shelter. We went down Wilson Street to Linthorpe Rd to the Leeds Hotel. My parents knew Mr.& Mrs. Wray who lived in the Leeds Hotel, they had decided not to go in the shelter as their son was home on leave from the R.A.F. As we walked down the street the searchlights were picking out planes in the sky and we saw traces of gunfire, I thought it was a pretty sight. My father rushed us down a street which ran behind the Leeds and Newboulds the butchers in Linthorpe Rd., down some steps into a cellar where my father left us to get settled. There were at least two other women in the cellar whom I didn't know. There were bunks for sleeping on but we were still standing when the biomb fell and demolished the Leeds Hotel killing Mr Wray, Mrs. Wray, their son and a young lady who was staying with them. We were all shaken and there were cries of fright as the lights went out. Torches were found and lit and the only thing I remember about the scene was water starting to trickle down the walls. My father hadn't been gone long and we thought he must have been hit but he flung himself to the ground in the doorway of Burton's the tailors shop on the opposite corner to the Leeds. When he saw the Leeds flattened he thought we must have been killed. Apparently down Wilson Sreet the shops had inter-connecting cellars and this was how they got to us. I'ce mnever forgotten my father's black face with streaks of tears running down his cheeks. We were taken to the Hugh Bell School where sthe Salvation Army looked after us. Next day we saw a sausage machine from Newboulds laying on the top corner of Burton's building. In our back yard we found tins of Heinz tomatoe soup which we hadn't seen since the war started.

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