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This story was added by Clare Calkin at the CSV Actiondesk

I was only fourteen years old when war started, with my parents, sisters and brothers; we all had our thoughts as to what may happen, would we survive it to the end. My sisters were married, my brother Tom, had left school at fifteen years old, and was at HMS Impregnable( R.N training establishment in Plymouth). He got his first ship when he was sixteen years old, we were very proud of him. To me he was my hero. Many times we had to be blacked out, so as not to let enemy planes know a City was beneath them. (it was very gloomy) The air raids came bringing us fear and destruction al around us, it was only the start, worse was to come. Spending many hours in air raid shelters mostly at night, tired and fearful of the noise of bombs.

In 1941 we had the worst blitz, a bomb fell on a terrace of houses opposite us. We heard the piercing screams, we helped in the morning to dig with bare hands to try and find any neighbours alive, we were all crying as we found parts of bodies, and it was so very sad and scary. I was so young to experience such horror, I was nearly sixteen years old. My mother and I caught a bus to the edge of Dartmouth. With a blanket each we slept tucked up in a hedge. We barely slept, as we heard the planes, the now familiar whistle of the bombs destroying our City and a lot of its people. Often a plane was shown up in crossed searchlights, then all hell let loose, as our gunfire fired at it, cheers all round, as the plane was in bits, many time we saw this happen. Mum and I had to walk home 13 miles from our ‘hedge retreat’, we hadn’t enough money for bus fare. My dear friend Eileen Pethick lived next door to us, with her mum , dad and granddad, it was 12th April 1941, she said that she didn’t want to have her Birthday on the 13th April, unlucky number and it was, a bomb fell by their gate in the early hours. They all died, our neighbour Mr Hingston found Eileen some yards away, the back of her head blown off, an arm nearby. I cried so very much about this, I thought I’d never stop. Even now every April I take out a small photo I have to remember her.

I went to a cinema one Saturday and it came up on the screen that the siren was on outside, as an air raid was due, so by chance I decided to leave with several others to a nearby public shelter in a park we were all sat down. It was quite a long shelter, a bomb fell in the park, and a debris of trees etc blocked way out, so everyone in panic tried to get to the second exit, dust etc was falling in, we were all coughing. I really thought I was going to die, as did many others, it was 8.15 pm, little did we know we were to stay there for another hour, as wardens told us to stay put for safety, by 10pm we heard pneumatic drills used to unblock the entrance, so frightening, even now I can’t stand drills being used. My mother was so very pleased to see me that she cried. The public shelter was only two streets away from the naval dockyard (A prime target area). One of our neighbours had a relation in Widdecombe-in —the-Moor (part of Datrmoor) he borrowed an open lorry from the Dockyard and took mum and I with neighbours and a blanket each to the moor. We were put up above the cows where the straw was kept, we were so tired, and lay on the wood floor as best we could, rats scuttled about, it was awful. We heard the sirens 16 miles away in Plymouth, and from the skylight in the roof we could see the searchlights trying to target a plane, and destroy it, so not much sleep again. We felt safer. We left at 6am, as it was a long way home, and to get the lorry back to the yard as Mr Hingston worked there.

More destruction was to be seen of course. It was 1941, Christmas two months away, we wondered if my brother would be home by then. We had said Good-bye to him on Marth road station, Plymouth., when he was off to join a ship HMS Repulse. He was 17years old, we hoped he would be safe and return home soon. Christmas came and went, without him. On the wireless we heard the terrible news about Pearl Harbour and that his ship and the HMS Prince of Wales had been sunk on 8th December, in Malayan waters, by the Japanese bombers. Our family was in grief, it was not easy trying to come to terms with what had happened. My brother Ian gone from our lives, so hard imagining never seeing him again.

My parents were sent the confirmation from the Admirality. It seemed like the end of our world, the first of our family to die on his eighteenth birthday. So many tears, I still see him in my thoughts now, as come up to eighty years. I am the only one left of my family. I am not very religious. During the war the God I was taught about deserted me, and allowed all the destruction and loss of life. And still wars go on. ‘To all those lost and loved, I remember and always will.

I married a Lancashire sailor, December 26th 1945, I met him on V.E night dancing in the street on V.E night (8th May 1945). We moved to Rochdale 1946, had a daughter in 1948, a son in 1952. Moved a few times and settled in Minehead, where my husband worked for Clarks shoe factory, as a senior foreman.(He had been trained in this area before and after the war)He died in 1986, another sad time for me. How many memories I can recall during my life, some so sad, yet some glad. I survived it all.

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