大象传媒

When we had the first big raid on Bristol and all our shops and centre of the town was destroyed, I was with a girl friend in the Colston Hall where concerts were held. It was a Sunday evening and they used to have religious meetings there and invite well known singers. One night it was Webster Booth and Ann Zeigler.

That night we heard the sirens and then a lot of bangs which people round us said "Were the guns on Brandon Hill?" This went on for some time and eventually we were all told to make our way down the stone stairs and stay near the bottom until it was safe to leave. When we got out all our Bristol centre was on fire! The bombs smashed the roads and broke the water mains and the river was low so there was not water for the firemen.

The 'All Clear' was sounded so we had to make our way home. I left my friend near her home and then had to make my way to mine. It was dark but I could see the dockyard and the other side of the river burning. There was no one about. When I got home my parents and neighbours were in the road and I was surprised that they didn't seem worried about me. They had no idea how bad it was. The main cause was that at the beginning of the raid the planes dropped thousands of small incendiary bombs which could land on your roof and explode and make the buildings catch fire. This was all near the City Centre. When I told my father, he walked to town and when he came back he said "Bristol is gone". The place where he worked and all Victoria Street was in flames.

We had lots of sirens and odd bombs after that and most nights we ended up in the air raid shelter. When the German planes were bombing big towns in the Midlands they had to come over Bristol, so warnings were sounded to take shelter as you did not know where they were going to drop bombs. Often when they didn't find their target or had bombs left, they would just drop them anywhere, even out in the country where people thought they were safe.

We still had to go to work - even people who lived a long way away came to work. Often with the bombing the roads were all smashed up and no buses were able to run. Everyone came even if they didn't get there till lunchtime.

I can remember one morning when we had been bombed, it was a very cold winter and when I got to Prince Street the fireman were hosing the remains of the building called 'The Seamans Mission' and there were icicles hanging from the building as the water froze as it ran down. The road was littered with lumps of stone and earth where other buildings had been bombed.

After a raid gangs of men were brought in in lorries to repair the roofs where all the tiles get blown off when bombs explode even some distance away. If one roof is bad they took the good tiles from that to repair ones with less damage and then put all new on that one.

In 1940 the war was not going well for us and we had to evacuate as many soldiers as we could from Dunkirk. Just before the war we had started to call up young men of 20 to do National Service in the Army. When war started one of the young men working in the same offive as myself, was called up. After he had done 6 weeks training at Taunton he had leave before being sent to France.. He was just 20 and he came into the office to say Goodbye to us all. He asked if anyone would write to him and as no one else spoke up, I said I would write, which I did. I think he had one weekend leave before the war started in earnest. We did not have TV and things had to be kept secret so there was not a lot in the newspapers, so I really didn't know what was happening.

I got home one lunchtime and my Mother said 'you need to get down on your knees' and handed me a telegram. It said "Arrived England Safely". This was the end of May 1940 when we had to rescue thousands of our soldiers from Dunkirk in France. They were bombed waiting on the beaches and on the ships. My young friend had walked miles in the hot weather and got to Dunkirk where he eventually got on a ship. He fell asleep he was so tired, in spite of all the noise of guns and bombs. When he roused he found he was alone and when he got up the ship was tilted. He found the end of the ship was full of water so managed to get up on deck and found hundreds of soldiers at the top end, wondering what to do as there was a ship at the side to take them off. No one seemed to be doing anything so he got to the rail and managed to jump to the boat alongside where sailors were helping. Even that ship was bombed and right down in the water as it was loaded with oil which had been on its way to France. However he was saved like many others.

We arranged to be married in 1941 on the Saturday following Good Friday. On that Good Friday we had the worst air raid on Bristol. It went on all night and my Mother and I were in the shelter. We both huddled together on the floor and were really frightened. My Mother was saying "Keep us safe throughout the night, Let us see the morning light". My Father, being a Fire watcher with the other men, came and spoke to us from time to time. The men had to stay outside in order to put out any incendiary bombs that came down, to prevent fires spreading, as fires helped the planes to find their targets, factories etc.

When morning came and the All clear sounded, we were told to leave the house and go further up the road as there was an unexploded bomb near. A neighbour let us go into her house and I took my wedding dress with me. There was a huge crater at the bottom of the road, a hole right across the road and quite near was another, that was unexploded and could go off any time. Our own house had lots of tiles mising and we had the ceilings down.

As it was getting light, my father and I walked down to see the big crater. we had been warned there was an unexploded bomb but no wardens were about and no tape or barrier had been put to keep people away.
I said to my Dad "the manhole cover had been blown off" as I could see a hole in the centre of the road. At that time he said "this is where I put out an incendiary bomb" and bent down to lift the sandbag he had put on it. There was an enormous bang and all "hell was let loose". The manhole was not a manhole with cover off, it was the hole made when a big bomb had penetrated the road. It was an unexploded bomb! We both turned automatically to run backup the road, with all the lumps of stone and debris falling around us. It flashed through my mind that Dad had always said that in the first war if you heard a shell you lay down so he had done so. I didn't! I went running and then realised that I was going by a little shop and all the glass could fall on me so I turned back and ran to him. As I stopped by him I saw a long length of guttering hanging from the building to the side of us. I managed to get Dad up. The noise of explosion had made his hearing queer for a while but he wasn't hurt. I got him home and then went to the Air Raid Wardens Post which was in the school. I couldn't go the short way round the corner where the bomb had gone off so I had to go up our long hill and report that the bomb had gone off, though they would have heard it.

I still went to work as I recall, but my nerves were bad and Mum got the Dr who said they should get me away from it all.

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