大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Plymouth Library Services on behalf of May Down. The author fully undertands the terms and conditions' of the website.

I was twelve years old when war was declared on that never to be forgotten Sunday morning in September 1939. I lived in Bristol with my parents and younger sister and was still at school.

We had an underground air raid shelter in our playground where we spent quite a few anxious times during the daylight raids. One frightening incident was when our anti-aircraft guns shot down an enemy bomber, we could hear it gradually losing height, the noise was tremendous it sounded as if it was going to crash in our playground but thankfully it missed and crashed further away on a steep hill, the pilot was buried at our local cemetry.

Bristol City Centre was completely destroyed one Sunday night after wave after wave of German bombers dropped their high explosive and incendiary bombs on the city. Many people were killed and injured. It was very sad to see our beautiful city destroyed.

I also lost two school friends. One Sunday night they had been to the evening service at our local church. When the warning air raid sirens sounded they were making a dash to the nearest underground shelter in our local park, but were caught by the blast from two bombs that dropped nearby, before they could reach the shelter. It was a very sad day for us at school when the news was given by our headmistress.

We had an Anderson air raid shelter in our garden where my sister and parents spent frightening hours listening to the droning of enemy aircraft raining down terror on us, we never knew when we emerged from the shelter after the raid, whether our house would still be standing as streets around us were completely demolished.

One of the frightening things was when they dropped flares to light up the target, you could read a newspaper by the glare it was so bright, then of course they dropped the high explosive or incendiary bombs.

One awful memory that I still have was the day they bombed our local aircraft factory in a daylight raid, there was no warning siren for some reason, so all the workforce were unaware of what was happening until the bombs were dropping when they frantically tried to get to the air raid shelters, one shelter had a direct hit and everybody inside was killed. It was a dreadful day.

The air raid wardens, ambulance and fire service had a mammoth task rescuing people. They were wonderful, sometimes going without sleep for hours to be on duty. Everybody helped everybody else.

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