大象传媒

Growing up in Bristol.

I was an infant when World War II began in September 1939 so the War was my childhood and memories come in little flashes like trailers for a television show.

I was born in Bristol in 1938 and my house was next to a large sports field belonging to the Bristol Aircraft Company. One of my earliest memories is of being taken for a walk on the field to see the 鈥渆lephant鈥� floating in the air. It was chained to the ground but floating around in the wind making a strange buzzing noise. It suddenly lunged towards me, I was terrified and set off as fast as my fat little legs could carry me.

The grey silky 鈥渆lephant鈥� was in fact a barrage balloon put there to scare low flying enemy aircraft. I don鈥檛 believe that it was very effective because not long afterwards a squadron of German planes attacked the aircraft factory, targeting the canteen at lunchtime and many hundreds of people were killed. One of the bombs landed on two houses opposite mine. The occupants of one of them were all out at work but in the other people were killed. The blast this explosion created broke all the glass in our windows and left a gaping hole in the roof. Fortunately my mother and I were visiting my grandmother who lived in the centre of the city and there we stayed for some months amongst the bombing.

My father was too old to be called up for the Army so instead he joined the Home Guard and most nights he patrolled the boundaries of what was left of the aircraft factory, using a motorbike with a gun slung across his back. I am not sure whether he had any ammunition for this gun or indeed what he would have done if had come across a group of German soldiers!

People didn鈥檛 travel about much at that time so it was quite an event if you had visitors, especially so if they were strangers.

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