大象传媒

On the night of Sunday, 24th November, 1940, the sirens went at just before l.p.m. Mum and I (I was 10 at the time) were in the kitchen washing the dishes. Almost immediately there was lots of activity, lots of gun-fire, search lights etc. and we realised that there was going to be a heavy air raid.

At that moment there was heavy knocking on our front door and a group of people, who were on their way back from church, asked if they could come in and take shelter which of course we had to do, especially as the old lady looked as if she was going to faint.

During the few weeks previously, there had been more activity than usual and we had taken to sleeping in the cellar under the kitchen where father had fixed two double beds, for my parents and my six-year-old sister and me, but because of our 'visitors' we did not go down there. The house was a Victorian end-of-block-of three stone-built house, with two bedrooms, two reception rooms and a brick-built extension of a kitchen and down-stairs bathroom which father had built a few years previously with French windows leading from the dining room into the kitchen.

We all went into the dining room and Jan (my sister) and I were sitting on the settee, opposite the French windows mother was somewhere to my left and dad was over to the right - I don't recall where the visitors were. Suddenly, I don't remember how long afterwards, lots of plaster and dust were falling all around us and, looking out through the French windows, where the kitchen and bathroom used to be,I could see Bristol all in flames. Dad said 'I think that's the worst of it over - is anyone hurt?' Mum replied 'I've broken my ankle' so Dad took Jan and me over to the Nurses Home which was opposite and where there was a cellar then went back and fetched Mum.

I was wearing a new green dress with a lace leather collar and I was - aware that my head was bleeding and the blood was running down onto my new collar. I was very upset! They brought Mum in and it was obvious that she was badly hurt, so they sat her down and put her injured foot into a bowl of water. 'Come and see this, Margot' she said and I can still picture her foot with the flesh around the heel all white and the mixture of blood and water. It was a silly thing to say to a ten-year-old.

One of our neighbours was an ambulance driver and on duty that night and, learning there was a bomb near his home, came down to see if his family was all right, so he took Mum off to Cossham Hospital. There were lots of casualties there and she was put on a trolley and a doctor came and examined her and said he was sorry, but they would have to amputate her leg and she agreed, but later, thinking about it, said that what they might do now in an emergency they might not need to do later. The foot was badly injured and eventually on 23rd December, it was amputated. She WAS paid a pension for her war injuries, 3/6d a week, that's about 17p which wasn't enough to pay for having the washing done and she had to get her statement verified annually by someone like a magistrate or clergyman that she still only had one leg!!

Some while before, Dad and one of his workmates had agreed that, if either family was bombed they would go to the other's house, so Dad got out his motorbike, I don't know where it was, moved the telephone lines which were all down and put Jan and me on the back of the bike and drove us over to Fishponds by the back roads which were clearer. I don't think Dad's friends were at all pleased when we arrived but we stayed with them for about three weeks as my Grandparents, who lived next door, were also homeless.

My unmarried aunt and uncle, who lived with my grandparents, arrived home later that evening to find the houses damaged and people in them rummaging around. So much for the good fellowship we believed happened during the war.

Next day, Dad and I went back to look at the house and he, very sensibly, took pictures which later proved that the house could have been repaired so it was re-built after the war instead of paying us compensation which was only a few hundred pounds. Our bedroom was at the back so was very badly damaged but, as the 'bomb' was a landmine on a parachute and had landed in the apple-tree, most of the damage was to the top part of the house, otherwise we would all have been kilIed. Never-the-less, seven houses had to be demolished. In the dining-room we found two shrapnel-holes in the settee a few inches to the left of where I had been sitting There was someone up there looking after me, HE knew I was going to be needed in the next few years

Just before Christmas, Gran and Grandpa were re-housed and Jan and I spent Christmas Day with them, scraping brown paper strips from the windows - she wasn't having that mess on her windows!

In the New Year, the Council found us a cottage with two bedrooms - only one with a light in it, a living-room and kitchen downstairs and a toilet in a cubicle off the kitchen - and gas-light. The cottages weren't in a row, but in a 'bunch' so we had to walk across the front of two other cottages and between the next two to get to the garden. Dad's nearly blind mother from London came down to stay with us and help Mum who had only been discharged from hospital after about seven weeks on the promise that she would take things easy - with a cottage, husband and two children to look after!

Hanging out washing was a problem, you can't carry a bowl of washing if you are on crutches so Gran used to carry it and Mum followed behind 'the blind leading the blind' she used to say. We stayed there for three years, till Dad's firm had a house they owned to let - luxurious with a bathroom and electric light - and there we lived till our house was re-buili in 1947. Of course, food was rationed and until Mum got her artificial leg I had to go and buy every scrap of food that came into our house. I only have limited sympathy with children when they complain about the 'pressures' they are under these days - they don't know they're born.

I always remember the day Mum went to get her new leg. There had been stories on the wireless about this wonderful pilot, Douglas Bader, who had two 'tin' legs and still led a very active life and Mum's friend's husband also had one and could ride a bike so she expected to be able to do everything the same as usual. She had been so brave for so long.

That night, at tea (we didn't have 'dinner' in those days) we were talking and she just covered her face with her hands and cried and cried. She was so disappointed. I've never heard anyone cry like that.

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